tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-356871512012-02-17T02:19:13.521ZA now just-over-50 wannabe author who tortures computers with Python, and used to sell quite a lot of books via the Amazon MarketPlace.Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.comBlogger571100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-66725235706659329382010-06-12T18:23:00.004+01:002010-06-12T18:36:02.259+01:00

One reason I'm falling in love with Erlang is its brevity. For example, here is an example from Joe Armstrong's book "Programming Erlang" (ISBN 978-1-934356-00-5): -module(geometry). -export([area/1]). area({rectangle, Width, Height}) -> Width * Height; area({circle, R}) -> 3.14159 * R * R; area({square, Side}) -> Side * Side. A Python version is not too wordy, though not as clear: def area(

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-1349450268831510852010-06-09T21:02:00.000+01:002010-06-09T21:02:15.853+01:00

Saving a document with a password in MS Office used to be a joke.  For all I know it still is (I can't afford a copy to check).  Would OpenOffice be any better?  I decided to try. Using a paltry 6 character password, I expected one of the pieces of cracking software to break it in short order. Not so.  One ran for 48 hours before giving up, but give up they all did. Using a decent password of,

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-954071355301331592010-05-09T16:29:00.000+01:002010-05-09T16:29:25.157+01:00

My original Intel (i.e. 32 bit) Mac Mini running OS-X 10.4 is nippy enough.  As Tiger is rapidly losing support (e.g. from Mozilla) and I'm too mean to upgrade to Snow Leopard, I thought I'd give Xubuntu 10.04 a try. Not nippy.  Agonisingly slow, in fact.  I've no idea why, and hadn't the patience to find out.  Instead I tried the full Ubuntu, which runs beautifully on my Inspiron laptop.

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-76953867012015010102010-05-05T18:02:00.001+01:002010-05-05T18:04:18.776+01:00

Once upon a time research was easy.  A visit to the local library to browse as many specialist titles as available, plus a quick skim of the Britannica article(s) in their reference section, was as good as any non-academic could achieve.  Missing the latest research?  Blame the library.  Used the wrong equation?  Blame the publisher.  As soon as you walked out, notes under arm, your job was done.

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-40406697036767055182010-05-04T23:11:00.000+01:002010-05-04T23:11:37.300+01:00

Once upon a time, when I was a mere lad, the worst thing a writer had to fear was a blank page.  Today that's a choice.  More often we fire up a computer, and then... Procrastination pen-in-mouth was private.  Hours could pass with nary a doodle.  A type of meditation, p'raps, the mind a-framing (wow: I meant to write 'dreaming' - let it stand!) thoughts within thoughts, feelings within feelings

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-46996870586107155712010-05-03T10:44:00.000+01:002010-05-03T10:44:02.462+01:00

Blogging is all very well if you've a single point to express (as I have here).  Communicating multiple points of view on a topic is harder.  Distinguishing each perspective with a single voice is tricky.  We naturally (i.e. unconsciously) try to associate a single POV with a specific voice.  [Which perhaps is why Plato wrote dialogues.] Maybe the answer is 'conversational blogging': i.e. using

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-39422094907206917742010-04-28T23:18:00.002+01:002010-05-02T22:31:21.474+01:00

One little detail seems to be missing from the pydev django support: pydev runs a process on port 8000, conflicting with the django runserver. Easily solved though.

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-1238732548939409732010-04-03T10:39:00.000+01:002010-04-03T10:39:57.805+01:00

Before writing a new tool, it's only sensible to review what's already available. The project I have in mind is intended to facilitate the creation of fiction for reading online.  IOW it's a web-shaped project.  The output is a series of connected html pages.  At this stage of the projet I'm not going to experiment with radical hypertexty stuff: sequential content with at most some pop-up

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-85625712520065124182010-03-27T15:36:00.004Z2010-03-27T16:03:25.628Z

[ It's been a while. For anyone interested, my wife is very much alive, thanks to the UK NHS and http://www.xigris.com/.]I've decided to start a new programming project. Blogging about the course of its development might keep me on-track. We'll see.So, what is this project? The title of this post is 'fictioneering', which should give you a clue. Blogs are all very well, so far as they go.

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-29094269701957264042007-11-10T22:35:00.000Z2007-11-10T22:36:23.094Z

... as soon as my wife is out of intensive care ...

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-68675949018945885222007-07-22T10:31:00.000+01:002007-07-22T11:25:22.548+01:00

People are not particles. The behaviour of the subject of our experiment cannot be described by a few simple equations, whereas that of a particle can. We believe this because we are people too.The difficulty with quantum stuff is that we are trying to measure the properties of things by using those same things. It's like trying to deduce the movements of the players on a football field by

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-57624057330122549372007-07-01T12:43:00.000+01:002007-07-01T13:36:41.445+01:00

I've just read Chapter 1 of Volume 3 of the Feynman Lectures on Physics (ISBN 0201021188) "Quantum Behaviour". Therein is described the definitive two-slit experiments that reveal the quantum weirdness of wave/particle duality.A couple of thoughts struck me:'particle' is a locality with specific properties; e.g. momentum'wave' is a propagation; e.g. of energy or information.Feynman's

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-48428431414127707412007-05-13T09:54:00.000+01:002007-05-13T11:59:25.596+01:00

There's a lot more can be said about our two point universe. So far we have recognised:DistanceTimeand made some assumptions: the Points themselves, and the lawfulness of the background universe.There is as yet no physical substance here. Points, and the properties they reveal, are meta-features. From these we can derive meta-meta-features; e.g. the range of possible motions of our two points

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-82153579271070140522007-05-12T22:48:00.001+01:002007-05-12T22:50:40.176+01:00

"Go back to First Principles" is a common request of pedants and managers.Okay, let's do it.Imagine a universe containing a single Point. It has no structure, no mass, no energy, or any property of any sort: it's just a Point. Only there is no point to a single Point. It exists, as we have defined it; but that's all: it only exists. It has no position, as there is no frame of reference for it to

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-46068991613376840982007-05-08T09:33:00.001+01:002007-05-08T09:33:51.121+01:00

I've just discovered Jabber (XMPP).  Which inspired one thought ...Sun Inc use the strap line; "The network is the Computer".  True enough.If Jabber had a strap line, it would be "The Conversation is the Computation".  Which paradigm makes soluble a lot of otherwise intractable problems; e.g. the need for GUI goodness.  GUIs, afterall, are mere frozen conversations.Powered by

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-57153999196444966672007-04-24T16:00:00.001+01:002007-04-24T16:00:42.977+01:00

Discovered ScribeFire here.  This is just a test post, to make sure I've grokked it.Powered by ScribeFire.

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-71601602438337278082007-04-15T22:35:00.000+01:002007-04-15T23:49:45.559+01:00

Both Newton's and Einstein's mechanics treat time as just another dimension. According to the math, movement forward and backward through time should both be normal. This cannot be the reality. Not only would such temporal freedom contradict our direct experience, there is a philosophical argument also.Diffusion would occur.Consider a box of gas. Every molecule of the gas is free to move in

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-42137642069917483792007-04-04T13:50:00.000+01:002007-04-04T14:01:33.214+01:00

While hunting the soap in the bath just now, I had an Archimedes Moment. It suddenly struck me that text is an awful means of communication. It would take a top notch writer to get across the mixture of thoughts, feelings, sensations, etc and so on that I was feeling at that moment.No wonder NLP etc are so hard. It takes many years of constant practice to train a human brain to use text

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-52535171324950750422007-03-12T09:48:00.000Z2007-03-12T10:42:17.609Z

This blog entry got me thinking: just what do I want the computerverse to do for me? Some thoughts:GUIs - a 2.5D visual + speech alternative: no monitor required, ideallycrashes - failure should be graceful, biologic-likecost - a fixed price subscription, UK TV licence stylemalleable - a user-centric meta-config that "just works"not just my (sometimes perverse) slave, but my (usually trustworthy)

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-12976425646909883312007-03-11T12:28:00.000Z2007-03-11T13:33:13.319Z

There are more products in more categories, and more variations thereof, than ever before. Which means more adverts competing for our attention.Once upon a time (like, a decade ago) it was relatively easy to "get the message out". TV was a captive audience of many millions. Ongoing sagas, such as the Bisto family and the Gold Blend couple, became part of mainstream culture. Today, TV

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-47982965230459849162007-03-10T11:43:00.000Z2007-03-11T12:59:52.599Z

We are all uncultured. Examplesmore classic fiction was written in the 19C than there is time to read in a single lifetimemore classic movies were produced in the 20C than dittomore classic blogs are written daily than dittoErgo the "common" culture is shrinking. And our personal cultures are fragmenting as the broadcast media (print, radio, TV) lose relevance.There is a new provincialism

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-91483444208798086042007-02-17T11:59:00.000Z2007-02-17T12:18:35.037Z

I need a head mouse or similar NOW.Having multiple monitors is great - except when I find myself typing into the window on the 'wrong' monitor (i.e. the one I'm not looking at) for the umpteenth time in a morning.Having the title bar of windows changing colour when they get focus isn't good enough any more. On high res' monitors, the area of change is too small to be noticeable. A subtle

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-38313575068710632382007-02-16T20:54:00.000Z2007-02-18T00:07:42.304Z

The four F's of evolution are one of those seductive simplifications that seem so wise and thus deceive so well. The choices to fight or flee, to feed or breed, are obviously important to both individual and group survival; but they are neither the whole story, nor a meaningful condensation of that story.Evolution does not occur in isolation. Over the generations, that which is fled from will

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-2149100380207248302007-02-14T13:36:00.000Z2007-02-14T13:42:58.875Z

It dawned on me while avoiding a van avoiding a cyclist avoiding a parked car that there's another 'f' word vital to evolution. Possibly the core concept, of which evolution is but an example:Feedback.Given its pervasiveness, hence near invisibility, I'm labeling it the "zero f" word; making six in all (maybe).

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-83965924829592402702007-02-04T11:28:00.000Z2007-02-04T11:35:08.568Z

Richard Dawkins famously promotes the "selfish gene" as the replicator on which all others rely. That individual genes are critical to survival is undoubtedly true. But a gene on its own is just a bunch of chemicals: it would quickly be eaten by a more organised entity. A genome on its own, no matter how large and complex, is just a larger bunch of chemicals, so would quickly be etc..For

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-9686887240479675262007-02-01T09:59:00.000Z2007-02-01T20:21:25.431Z

Documentation is difficult. Design documentation especially so. Traditional documentation tools, like Word and OOo, get in the way: using them is like wearing boxing gloves to build sandcastles. There has to be a better way.To be useful, design documentation has to:be written collaborativelyhave rich internal linking (which doesn't break!)have rich external linking (with breakage and change

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-58358865322638910422007-01-13T14:55:00.000Z2007-01-13T15:17:33.027Z

One minor bane of modern life is the plethora of remote controls needed: one for the tele', one for the DVD, another for the VCR, yet another for the Mac , not to mention mobiles that need answering etc.. By the time I've found the remote(s) wanted, it would often have been quicker to walk over to the kit and poke it (very subtle geeky pun intended) directly.Voice control probably isn't the

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-33448136401976355822007-01-04T22:42:00.000Z2007-01-04T23:00:39.019Z

BBC Radio 4's "In Our Time", hosted by Melvin Bragg, is far and away my favourite (always streamed across the net, but you get the idea) radio program. Where else would you get a discussion of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics mixed with depictions of Hell (a much more modern notion than many might think) next to an examination of anarchy (also a much misunderstood ideal, being more Semco than

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-45978148497873737692007-01-04T00:17:00.000Z2007-01-04T00:28:03.365Z

It's not water, but you can run on it. Walk tho', and you'll sink. And it's not an exotic substance at all!

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-54388745723298619302007-01-03T23:50:00.000Z2007-01-03T23:59:30.536Z

You may or may not recall my wittering on about 3D interactive whiteboards and stuff earlier on. To make such a beastie work, you either need to identify a "broad enough" algorithm, a "close enough" heuristic, or - the exciting new option - make it autonomic.This really is exciting stuff. And having recently read works like John McCrone's "Going Inside", I believe it's possible, too.

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-5369473202228443772006-12-30T15:40:00.000Z2006-12-30T16:31:24.778Z

The Earth is doomed. Sometime in the future, a giant asteroid or comet will strike it, or a gravitational anomaly will eject it from the solar system, or the Sun will expand and engulf it, or a black hole will gobble it up, or ...The Earth is doomed. Humanity with it, unless we conquer space; or evolve into / create a species that can do so.I can imagine four fates for humanity:Easter Earth====

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-51511409708312469842006-12-28T22:59:00.000Z2006-12-29T01:07:02.444Z

Scott Adams book "God's Debris" took my fancy today. An interesting read, as much for the errors therein as the ideas.The most blatant factual error is that gravity propagates at the speed of light, not instantaneously as stated. Not that any crucial part of the argument is affected thereby, but...The most glaring logical error is that God had at least one choice other than self-destruction;

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-37594142601396522792006-12-25T14:17:00.000Z2006-12-25T19:42:08.394Z

I never thought I'd find myself pitying a mega-corporation. It's happened twice now.First was IBM, with their Luciferine fall from the top-spot in 1991. Now it's Microsoft, who seem to be making many of the same mistakes, for similar reasons.IBM had for some years before their fall treated their customers as serfs, believing that LNA and RPG and PL1 etc. were eternal features of the

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-90371868839287569952006-12-23T13:10:00.000Z2006-12-23T14:21:53.918Z

From a survey reported in the Guardian, "religion" is seen as a cause of division and tension by 82% of adult Britons. (I'm one of 'em).Interesting contrast with the Generation Next series on the BBC World Service, where teenagers from around the world were asked a similar question. (I can't find the exact link, which is annoying; and I'm not sure which of the broadcast programs included this

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-75490984024100305722006-12-16T14:54:00.000Z2006-12-17T13:12:50.407Z

Evolution is a simple idea. So simple it is frequently misunderstood. Although usually thought of in biological terms, of species and genes, the general principle has been found applicable on many scales, from entire socio-eco-politico- systems to the firing patterns of the neurons in our own brains (examples here).Whenever there is a population of entities that tends to increase in number, in

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-13723506011447643562006-12-11T18:28:00.000Z2006-12-11T19:56:21.723Z

Religions don't need gods . Buddhism, for example, regards super-natural life forms as subject to the Wheel of Life too. But a religion must have a satisfactory answer for the core question: Why? Why does the Universe exist? Why do we exist? Why do we suffer? Why do we die? ( and ask all these questions?)Answers do not have to be true (i.e. conforming to an objective reality), only credible

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-76792235946769942302006-12-09T22:56:00.000Z2006-12-09T23:27:31.346Z

Just an idle thought: what might a space-species be like?Not a quadruped or biped, that's for sure. No "ped" at all. Limbed maybe, but multi-armed rather than -footed, I think. But "arms" with suckers, so as to be capable of moving across surfaces and resisting mild accelerations.A separate head wouldn't make sense either: there's no meaningful up-n-down in zero G. A brain suspended at the

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-89578603525610253812006-12-09T11:53:00.000Z2006-12-09T12:23:36.754Z

Coincidences often appear intentional. I start blogging about religion, rediscover the bible given me aged 15 to commemorate my induction as a Salvation Army cadet, and just now a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses have left a copy of the Watchtower.Once upon a time, not so long ago, I would have stood on our doorstep as if in a dock. Facing me were people who were Certain of Themselves, and of the

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-64088669148744719552006-12-07T01:03:00.000Z2006-12-07T01:07:05.048Z

Nicholas Petreley makes an interesting suggestion here:"... I urge contributors to the main branch to work on interoperability that does not include Microsoft patents, but includes means of translating things like VBA code into something native - and GPL - to OpenOffice.org."Sounds plausible. Any language more powerful than VBA should do the job. Python is shipped with OOo. Ergo...Not a small

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-20054447795391063612006-12-05T15:04:00.000Z2006-12-07T00:57:42.162Z

Religion is as old as fear, philosophy as curiosity. Both probably date from the first moments of mutual symbolic communication; i.e. language. Religion symbolically encompasses the unknown and the inexplicable, philosophy the known and knowable. Both are psychologically empowering. Both are Memes, helping us to surviveWere we inherently logical creatures, the known would steadily supplant

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-66975853118918682212006-12-02T10:39:00.000Z2006-12-02T15:04:20.119Z

"To grow up is to shrink in importance. To learn is to gain ignorance."Paradoxes?No: linguistic tricks. Those sentences are true, but so are their opposites; as are an infinite number of variations thereon. What matters is what they mean, and what they mean depends on their context. And the ultimate context is the unique state of the readers' minds at the moment of comprehension (whatever

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-9689114519222206292006-12-01T19:30:00.000Z2006-12-01T20:48:52.563Z

Having just read The Gripes Of Wrath (and drunk a mite too much Pusser's Rum) it's struck me that two centuries of Enlightenment thinking has given us... perversion. Instead of Superstitious Fears we have Nuclear Weapons. Instead of the Preaching of Hellfire we have evidence of Global Warming. Imaginary horrors have been replaced by real destroyers. What kind of sapient being would have

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-83873758561075413092006-11-25T18:00:00.000Z2006-11-25T18:05:11.628Z

Word and OOo both behave in ways that drive me mad! Why, when I delete a line immediately preceding a heading, does that heading lose its heading style, for example? Time to dump these paper paradigmed monstrosities for tools more relevant to the screen paradigm our kids are growing up with.

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-89276161362000969522006-11-25T17:44:00.000Z2006-11-25T17:59:06.204Z

Is the pursuit of economic growth (i.e. more money) isomorphic with increasing happiness? If so, why do the Japanese and Scandinavians, among the materially richest nations on Earth, have record high suicide rates?Money appears to be a poor (ouch! :-)) measure of personal happiness, too. (Lack of it tho' is an excellent indicator of misery.) Is Bill gates really 50 times happier than Mark

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-89072449355322169732006-11-25T17:35:00.000Z2006-11-25T17:44:20.056Z

Digital Rights Management has so far been touted as the saviour of big media, forcing us hoi polloi to do as we're told. That's bad for us hoi polloi.Government and corporations will increasingly digitise and consolidate the data they hold about us, as citizens and consumers etc.. That's potentially bad, too, if inaccurate or badly managed. The Data Protection Act does give me some rights to

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-27537890686654676512006-11-25T17:24:00.000Z2006-11-25T17:34:42.613Z

Modern system software is so flexible, integrateable, mashable, and generally malleable, that it's increasingly difficult to document: there are too many contexts to consider. Then there's GUI stuff that reconfigures itself depending on how its used, making screenshots irrelevant. {Aside: getting difficult to write meaningful reviews on stuff too}Alternatives? Maybe write interactive

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-1162808497739297302006-11-06T10:01:00.000Z2006-11-06T10:21:37.746Z

I've just been reading how the threat of US style software patents has delayed the Munich to Linux. Which set me thinking. Is it reasonable to provide the same protection for a software "feature" as for a new drug?A new drug costs hundreds of millions of dollars to develop and launch. A software idea takes at most a few months, all of which (in the US) could be spent writing the patent

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-1162325832696740122006-10-31T20:15:00.001Z2006-10-31T20:17:12.703Z

Some interesting ideas here: http://elevate.sourceforge.net/

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-1162253412219145862006-10-31T00:07:00.000Z2006-10-31T00:10:12.253Z

This is the weirdest way I've yet seen for a feature to be written: http://duncan.mac-vicar.com/blog/archives/140[more 3D stuff once the Rocky Horror Medical Show has ended!]

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-1160860069015263182006-10-14T22:03:00.000+01:002006-10-14T22:07:49.030+01:00

The following quote from the title link caught my attention:"The next version of Second Life will be seamlessly integrated with the Web, making it easier for real-world businesses to sell items through SL. For example, a retailer like L.L. Bean could have a “door” to an SL store on its Web site, inviting people to jump from 2-D browsing into a 3-D saunter around, where an avatar with your exact

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-1160838196690754662006-10-14T15:08:00.000+01:002006-10-14T16:03:16.726+01:00

Designing anything is an activity fraught with difficulty: software design especially so. It's easy enough to check whether physical widgets fit together, but software is virtual. It has no physical presence, even once it exists. All too often people will agree on a set of documents and diagrams, yet have radically different expectations of the eventual product. The most detailed

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-1160596165549506202006-10-11T19:06:00.000+01:002006-10-11T20:52:13.500+01:00

[ok, so this is my next-but-one post :-)]Here we are (or, rather, our avatars are) gathered around a virtual table. Our task is to produce a project plan for the creation testing and deployment of a bookselling application.Said application is toallow the import of inventory from various sources into a common 'stock'enable the adding, editing, and deleting of individual books, updating the

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-1160468247177555232006-10-10T09:15:00.000+01:002006-10-10T09:17:27.183+01:00

Slim Geek puts a whole new meaning on the "keep fit by cycling to work" idea :-)[But why the CRT monitor? Tut ...]

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-1160427316678497622006-10-09T20:54:00.000+01:002006-10-09T21:55:16.696+01:00

Paper still has its uses (monitors make bad airplanes). Terminals are still appropriate for some tasks. WIMPs are best for the personal editing of document-like material. But for socialising or other forms of shared experience, we need something better.Current 3D interfaces are 2D windows onto a simulated world. Controlling an avatar is not totally intuitive. One day we will have true VR, so

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-1160333731394383762006-10-08T18:59:00.000+01:002006-10-08T19:55:31.403+01:00

Being of a certain age, I have witnessed a progression of UI's: real paper, 80x24 terminals, WIMPs, and now, the web (a backward step as a UI, IMO).At each stage, I saw resistence:Paper users treated the IBM XTs with Lotus 123a that landed on their desks as just more Spawn of Management, and ignored (or sabotaged) them as long as they could get away with it.DOS users took perverse pleasure in

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-1160328850268245872006-10-08T18:31:00.000+01:002006-10-08T18:34:10.276+01:00

So long as JavaScript is on, anyway.Now all I have to do is decide which of my myriad topics of interest to start with. [Q: how do you toss a hypercoin? Or get one from ...]

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35687151.post-1160306225884661262006-10-08T12:11:00.000+01:002006-10-08T12:17:05.893+01:00

It's a sign of age, perhaps, that starting this blog was a fraught decision. Kind of like starting a new job, blindfolded...Now to twist some knobs and whack some buttons to see what breaks :-)

Peter Jacobshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02736938810206762383noreply@blogger.com0