We rarely think about how other see us. When I started with Internet in some mid 80ties, internet was fantastically anonymous. Soon afterwards this anonymity was ridiculed in many ways. Then suddenly in 2000+ things take amazing turn: Instead of preserving anonymity, whole approach turned upside down and suddenly people registered to Internet as themselves. Not only that, but they started bluntly sharing their personal lives with others. Once someone's personal life becomes public life, rules of the game change. Someone can actually look what you think, what you like, what tick you. Of course if they are interested in you, which many put forward as an argument. Additionally since you declared that this is yourself on the internet you can use it as some sort of ID. And voila suddenly we have OpenID ... http://openid.net/ extremely useful but double edge sword web facility.
There is another side of the coin too. Do you google yourself? What google knows about you someone will also research if they are interested in you. Who that may be? One very important player in your life - your employer! Internet savvy employers may screen candidates by their digital footprint. So I will ask you again: do you google yourself sometimes? I found out that I am contributor to some church in Vancouver area :) I am not of course, but searching my name and surname brings lot of funny outcomes. Even photos!!!
To take this thing lightheartedly and see benefit of it rather than dark side it does pay a little bit of attention what you publicly say....
On the other hand you may gain something else ... being recognized. How to do that read on http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/12/lightweight-identity.html
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Wired
Now this is something! I write to you about Galaksija and then this comes out on Wired! No less!
http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2011/12/dead-media-beat-the-yugoslav-galaksija-pc/
http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2011/12/dead-media-beat-the-yugoslav-galaksija-pc/
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Life rummage
It has been ages that I have written something here. Its about time, as few new developments are worth noting...
First, blast from the past. Some almost 30 years ago I have participated in Computer revolution by being a member of the team that have built these computers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaksija_Plus and later http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIM-011 what wikipedia tells you is not really true, as behind Tim 011 there was only 3 persons that were not from the Institute Mihajlo Pupin. But that is political matter. Official history is not always true. But that is life matter. (it also puts me to thinking how many "facts" on wikipedia may be untrue) However, something has happened that has made me smile and that was this one:
http://galaksija.petnica.rs
I find this move of authors ingenious... Galaksija that in our case has spawned plus version and later TIM computers has actually been forgotten for nearly 30 years. In the meantime Z80 processor that has been heart of so called home computer revolution of early 80ties has found its place in most unexpected places: telephones, advanced calculators, tv sets, all sorts of micro controllers, etc...
Riding bad political vibe but excellent explorers vibe I wish and will strive to give my tribute to this project as to make some kind of life circle.
This small package is surprise on its own.
Webbing
I have put aside for a while working on web development, although I finally stepped on some great stuff. Would like to draw your attention to couple of web places I find increasingly amusing.
http://www.wolfcms.org/ - why I find it amusing? Because it is at the right middle between some web framework and over-bloated CMSes like joomla, drupal or typo3. For ones that need a website that they can extend with their web wizardry this one is more than recommended.
Web framework quest
Ones that have read my previous posts could have noted my Oddysey through web frameworks while trying to find something that would help me to write web applications quicker and more standardized. If you haven't done so, read previous posts, to find discussion of the requirements that I sought. Finally and almost accidentally I stepped on this, I must say, ULTRA FINE approach to framework:
http://www.slimframework.com/
Its simply a piece of WEB ZEN! If you are after small web app that may grow, consider not starting from an empty code page in editor but starting with the Slim Framework and you could get amazed what it can actually offer to you.
Re-Microsofting
People that know me know that I'm not particularly fond of Microsoft. I never was. Its also true that programming Microsoft stuff has paid some of my life periods. I could be hitting such period again, not too happy about it but also amazed with some movement within Microsoft area. I will point you to two for me pretty amusing areas, but before I do lead you into Microsoft dark forest :) I'd like to mention another aspect of my understanding. I never liked Java as well. More world has been pushed towards Java i felt more animosity against it. Poor Java, it is not that bad language with good intentions and dirty business games. Microsoft .NET answer to that made me not even thinking of starting to do something with either of them....
Time passed and my animosity towards these approaches kinda wearied off. I was not pushed to use them, they could exist aside from me and I could perfectly spend my time on HTTP waves and web applications. But... recently I got request to re-think some system, and being old school of windows programmer that spent time with COM and COM inproc's started wading trough new MSDN. To my amazement I found some neat new stuff while noting that MSDN of some 12-14 years ago at which I would swear at was chamomile tea compared to over-written-under-meaning msdn of today. But somehow I find it fun to start writing windows service in vb.net and explore these two things I want to mention as things worth noting:
First one, which I did not go deep to explore but understood potential was a new command shell for windows called Power Shell....
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa973757(v=vs.85).aspx
do not be a-strayed with MS definiton of it. It is fine programming tool that DOS shell (or 4DOS shell) was attempting to be and WSH (windows scripting host) was too much of a programming approach. I believe for ones that would like to blend programming with the system administration and creating solutions out of business rules and procedures I would recommend spending some time studying Power Shell.
Second thing that has caught my attention quite strongly is another aspect of .net world. But before I explain what it is let me go back a bit into world of early MacIntosh computers. I know you'd murmur WTF? But i will be bold and toss in first generation of digital mobile phones, old Netscape browser and WWW into the soup and claim they have all attempted the same! I could possibly hear louder WTF? has Microsoft, Old MacIntosh, Netscape, cell phones may have in common. And I will say - DECOUPLING! Story begins with HyperCard on an old Mac's - HyperCard was possibly the most humane software ever built for information processing - that was never understood until WWW proved to be success - but WWW was only a HyperCard concept put on a network... First generation of cell phones have had WAP system that was conceptually based on stacks of presentation cards - almost a clone of HyperCard on post stamp size screen, Netscape made simillar attempt with web page editor built into the browser and putting JavaScript both on client and server side. All of them attempted decoupling we call today MVC paradigm (Model View Controller), in my understanding this shall be rather called VCM by seeing first View of a stuff, then through Controller understand Model of a database (or knowledge storage). Where is in all that soup a .net? It is not actually .net itself but something called Windows Presentation Foundation (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Presentation_Foundation) to be more particular something that I find rather usable is XAML:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Application_Markup_Language
The idea that you can build webbish like front end which is decoupled is rather fine stuff that Microsoft has jumped on. And voila, you'll see that this thing will drive new windows things like Metro on cell phones and Windows 8. It smells strongly to be in that direction. But I will recommend to dwell a bit into XAML, and if MSDN is dry and boring place to read about it (as on):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms752059.aspx
then you could have some entertainment and watch this 4 year old and mostly undernoticed video about Vista... it was not Vista!!!! it was about Windows Presentation Foundation!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTfM5pmUrnU
Hope I have got your attention.
First, blast from the past. Some almost 30 years ago I have participated in Computer revolution by being a member of the team that have built these computers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaksija_Plus and later http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIM-011 what wikipedia tells you is not really true, as behind Tim 011 there was only 3 persons that were not from the Institute Mihajlo Pupin. But that is political matter. Official history is not always true. But that is life matter. (it also puts me to thinking how many "facts" on wikipedia may be untrue) However, something has happened that has made me smile and that was this one:
http://galaksija.petnica.rs
I find this move of authors ingenious... Galaksija that in our case has spawned plus version and later TIM computers has actually been forgotten for nearly 30 years. In the meantime Z80 processor that has been heart of so called home computer revolution of early 80ties has found its place in most unexpected places: telephones, advanced calculators, tv sets, all sorts of micro controllers, etc...
Riding bad political vibe but excellent explorers vibe I wish and will strive to give my tribute to this project as to make some kind of life circle.
This small package is surprise on its own.
Webbing
I have put aside for a while working on web development, although I finally stepped on some great stuff. Would like to draw your attention to couple of web places I find increasingly amusing.
http://www.wolfcms.org/ - why I find it amusing? Because it is at the right middle between some web framework and over-bloated CMSes like joomla, drupal or typo3. For ones that need a website that they can extend with their web wizardry this one is more than recommended.
Web framework quest
Ones that have read my previous posts could have noted my Oddysey through web frameworks while trying to find something that would help me to write web applications quicker and more standardized. If you haven't done so, read previous posts, to find discussion of the requirements that I sought. Finally and almost accidentally I stepped on this, I must say, ULTRA FINE approach to framework:
http://www.slimframework.com/
Its simply a piece of WEB ZEN! If you are after small web app that may grow, consider not starting from an empty code page in editor but starting with the Slim Framework and you could get amazed what it can actually offer to you.
Re-Microsofting
People that know me know that I'm not particularly fond of Microsoft. I never was. Its also true that programming Microsoft stuff has paid some of my life periods. I could be hitting such period again, not too happy about it but also amazed with some movement within Microsoft area. I will point you to two for me pretty amusing areas, but before I do lead you into Microsoft dark forest :) I'd like to mention another aspect of my understanding. I never liked Java as well. More world has been pushed towards Java i felt more animosity against it. Poor Java, it is not that bad language with good intentions and dirty business games. Microsoft .NET answer to that made me not even thinking of starting to do something with either of them....
Time passed and my animosity towards these approaches kinda wearied off. I was not pushed to use them, they could exist aside from me and I could perfectly spend my time on HTTP waves and web applications. But... recently I got request to re-think some system, and being old school of windows programmer that spent time with COM and COM inproc's started wading trough new MSDN. To my amazement I found some neat new stuff while noting that MSDN of some 12-14 years ago at which I would swear at was chamomile tea compared to over-written-under-meaning msdn of today. But somehow I find it fun to start writing windows service in vb.net and explore these two things I want to mention as things worth noting:
First one, which I did not go deep to explore but understood potential was a new command shell for windows called Power Shell....
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa973757(v=vs.85).aspx
do not be a-strayed with MS definiton of it. It is fine programming tool that DOS shell (or 4DOS shell) was attempting to be and WSH (windows scripting host) was too much of a programming approach. I believe for ones that would like to blend programming with the system administration and creating solutions out of business rules and procedures I would recommend spending some time studying Power Shell.
Second thing that has caught my attention quite strongly is another aspect of .net world. But before I explain what it is let me go back a bit into world of early MacIntosh computers. I know you'd murmur WTF? But i will be bold and toss in first generation of digital mobile phones, old Netscape browser and WWW into the soup and claim they have all attempted the same! I could possibly hear louder WTF? has Microsoft, Old MacIntosh, Netscape, cell phones may have in common. And I will say - DECOUPLING! Story begins with HyperCard on an old Mac's - HyperCard was possibly the most humane software ever built for information processing - that was never understood until WWW proved to be success - but WWW was only a HyperCard concept put on a network... First generation of cell phones have had WAP system that was conceptually based on stacks of presentation cards - almost a clone of HyperCard on post stamp size screen, Netscape made simillar attempt with web page editor built into the browser and putting JavaScript both on client and server side. All of them attempted decoupling we call today MVC paradigm (Model View Controller), in my understanding this shall be rather called VCM by seeing first View of a stuff, then through Controller understand Model of a database (or knowledge storage). Where is in all that soup a .net? It is not actually .net itself but something called Windows Presentation Foundation (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Presentation_Foundation) to be more particular something that I find rather usable is XAML:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Application_Markup_Language
The idea that you can build webbish like front end which is decoupled is rather fine stuff that Microsoft has jumped on. And voila, you'll see that this thing will drive new windows things like Metro on cell phones and Windows 8. It smells strongly to be in that direction. But I will recommend to dwell a bit into XAML, and if MSDN is dry and boring place to read about it (as on):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms752059.aspx
then you could have some entertainment and watch this 4 year old and mostly undernoticed video about Vista... it was not Vista!!!! it was about Windows Presentation Foundation!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTfM5pmUrnU
Hope I have got your attention.
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