What’s Aptana Up to?

Ever since they first appeared on the scene, I’ve kept an eye on Aptana. First, because I like knowing about the IDE options available to me for the various languages and technologies I work with but also because they had taken on one of the few Ruby IDEs that I had been comfortable with, RadRails.

Of course, I haven’t been using Aptana recently since most of my recent work has been in PHP and with ExtJS and I hadn’t been really happy with Aptana’s support (as I’d last seen it) for either. So I was excited to hear that there was a new beta version of Aptana available that had better PHP support. And when I checked out the news, I was even more excited to learn that there was also something called Aptana Cloud in the new release!

I did some further checking and all that I read seemed to indicate that this was something that I’d be really interested in So I went ahead and applied to be a beta tester yesterday and today in the morning, when I checked my e-mail, there was my invitation to join the beta. Talk about fast!

I was busy most of the morning doing other stuff but just got time to start doing a little work with Aptana. And so far, I like what I see There is a new home screen which looks sparkly and pretty and there’s lots of new stuff to discover and explore. Of course, the first thing I did was to create a project based on an existing application that I was working on and then create a Cloud for it. And let me tell you, the Cloud creation couldn’t be any simpler (or faster) even if they tried

I had my Cloud, and a blank website, up in less than a couple of minutes. Then I used the project synchronization feature in Aptana to upload all my project files to the server. Two or three mouse clicks and the project synchronization was underway. Once the synchronization completed, I took a look at the various server status information displays which are accessible from within Aptana itself. Pretty nifty. I could check on server status, browse the databases on the server and do several other things from one centralized interface!

I then changed one of the project files externally by overwriting the version in the project directory with a different one and tried synchronizing again. Aptana did a comparison of the two sets of files and let me know that the changed file needed to be synchronized again. So far so good! But when I checked, it turns out that Aptana had downloaded the version on the server down to my local machine because the local version was older. Ah well, guess I can’t expect it to be a mind reader :p

There’s a lot of other stuff to explore in the new version of Aptana that I still haven’t gotten around to because the evening’s coming to a close and I have to get going. Hopefully, when I have a spare moment, I’ll be able to come up with another blog entry detailing my further adventures with Aptana Studio …

Aptana Home Page

My First Cloud Site

Synchronizing Project

Server Status

True Knowledge

Like most people, I use Google most of the time when I need to find some information. I do my unit conversions in Google too - if you didn’t know how to do that, you can simply type in "20 km in miles" or "10 usd in lkr" into the query box and you’ll be provided with the correct conversion. But what about the times when I need specific information? Like say Sir Issac Newton’s birthday?

What I’d normally do is go to Wikipedia, look up Sir Issac Newton and find the information. It’s not that hard but it could get a bit complicated if I misspelt the name or if I’m looking for somebody who might not be listed on Wikipedia yet. And then there’s things like "How old is Michael Jackson?". Nothing that I knew of, till now, would give me that answer because it’s an ever changing answer.

Well, that’s where True Knowledge comes in It *can* tell me how old Michael Jackson is! In fact, it is a new search engine which tries to answer your questions with a direct result rather than a list of search results which might (or might not) have the answer you’re looking for. You should really take a look at their demo video to get a clearer overview of the capabilities (and goals) of the search engine than my not very clear or concise explanation

True Knowledge does a lot more than tell you how old Michael Jackson is. It can answer questions by inferring the answer using the facts in its database. If True Knowledge does not have the answer, you can even submit a correct answer yourself and expand the extents of the information contained in their database. Pretty cool

The search engine is in beta at the moment and so you need to get an invite from them to participate in the beta testing. However, it is well worth testing out if you are geek just to see where search engine technology is headed

Ruby, Ruby, Ruby

I formatted my OS partition and re-installed Vista a month or so ago. At the same time, I did a complete overhaul of my old applications partition and removed a lot of folders/apps that I had had installed that I hadn’t used in a long time. Ruby was one of those folders to go since I don’t do much Ruby development. However, I wanted to re-install Ruby yesterday because I wanted to test out the latest crop of Ruby IDEs. But would you believe that there appear to be no instructions anywhere on how to install Ruby on Windows manually?

Most other languages/compilers at least have a text file which describes how to set it up under most of the major platforms. But Ruby simply says something along the lines of "if you don’t know how to set Ruby up manually, then you shouldn’t be trying to do so. Instead, use the one-click installer." Wherever I looked for help on installing Ruby manually under Windows, all I saw were references to the one-click installer. No info on how to do the deed yourself if you wanted a svelte and compact installation that had just the bits you wanted.

So I decided to try it myself And here are the steps in case somebody else is looking to find out how to install Ruby manually under Windows.

1. Download the Ruby binary ZIP file from the Ruby site’s download page. At the moment, the latest stable appears to be 1.8.7 and the development version is 1.9.0. But this will of course change.
2. Extract the ZIP file (keeping the folder structure intact) to the folder where you want Ruby installed. In my case, I extracted everything to D:\Ruby.
3. Add the Ruby bin folder (in my case, D:\Ruby\bin) to your system path.
4. Download zlib for Windows from the site and copy the zlib1.dll (from the bin folder inside the ZIP file) as zlib.dll (the renaming is important) to either your Ruby bin folder or to your Windows system folder. (I believe it just needs to be in your system path somewhere).
5. Download iconv from the Sourceforge site and add the iconv.dll file (from the bin folder inside the ZIP file) again to your Ruby bin folder or to your Windows system folder.
6. Now download RubyGems to add gems support to your installation of Ruby. You can either download the ZIP file or get the .gem file but my instructions are for working with the ZIP file since there is no .gem support in the installation of Ruby we’ve done
7. Extract the RubyGems ZIP file to a temporary folder.
8. Open a command prompt, change the folder to the temporary folder from step #7 above and run the following command:
   ruby setup.rb
9. Once the gems installation completes successfully, you can remove the temporary folder and your Ruby installation should be ready

Plugging Away at Plugins

Interesting how things work sometimes depending on the test data. I use the WP-ShortStats plugin to keep track of the traffic statistics to my blog. And of course, one of the most interesting stats to watch is the search keywords because sometimes you get such weird stuff

I like the WP-ShortStat plugin because it is compact, unobtrusive and gives a lot of stats which warm the cockles of a geek’s heart However, a couple of days ago, I noticed that the plugin was giving me only a couple of search keywords instead of the longer list I had been used to getting before that and none of the terms which had appeared for a couple of weeks before, were now appearing. I thought maybe there was some automatic purging code in place which removed older entries and thought no more about it. At least for the time being.

Today, I felt like doing a little bit of digging since the ShortStat display was getting cluttered by lots of spam referrers and so on. So I took a look at the plugin code. It turns out that the plugin simply pulls the last 100 records matching certain criteria to give a list of search terms. So I ran the query on my data to see what I got. I noticed that of the 100 records returned, very few actually were search queries

So I took a look at the SQL and the ShortStat plugin code to see if there was a way to improve upon the code. It turned out that I could add an extra condition to the SQL query to return results which were more likely to be search queries. I did that and I suddenly had a full list of search terms in my WP control panel again!

I’m sure that the WP-ShortStat developer did a lot of testing of the plugin before you released it. However, as I mentioned initially, sometimes it’s the data which determines what sort of output you get. And no, this is not really a bug in the plugin but it did explain some unexpected behaviour and in case somebody else is in the same position I was in, hopefully this clarifies what is going on

Loafing Around

Some time back, I wrote about my search for a good time tracking application and how I couldn’t find anything which really met my needs. As I mentioned in that post, I coded my own app, named Loafer, since I wanted specific features from a time tracking application. At that point in time, I wasn’t sure if I was going to release Loafer as freeware or not.

However, I realized that I liked releasing applications that I found useful, as freeware. It seems wrong to charge money for an application just because I can code it and somebody else can’t. Besides, if I were to charge money for the app, I would have to handle all the support issues that come along with a paid app

Anyway, even after I had decided to release Loafer as freeware, I never got around to doing it since the app wasn’t totally complete. It was able to track time without any trouble but I wanted reports, I wanted billing management and I even wanted some way to do invoicing. At last, I’ve got most of that in place (minus the invoicing) and so I’m ready to release the first version of Loafer to the public. Go get it from my downloads page …

It does what I want from a time tracking app but you might want a lot more. If you do, do drop me a line and I’ll see what I can do about adding the extra functionality in

The Expectations of Imagination

I just finished reading King of Foxes, the second book in Raymond E. Feist’s Conclave of Shadows series. I woke up in the morning thinking of something that I had first thought on reading the first book in the series, Talon of the Silver Hawk. So what was I thinking? I was thinking that it ruins the magic of an imagined world when the author takes shortcuts

Of course, I must start off with the disclaimer that Raymond E. Feist is a successful author and I cannot claim to be anywhere even remotely close to his level as a writer, in terms of success. However, I’m not writing as a writer but as a reader and all a reader needs to criticise a book is the fact that they didn’t enjoy it thoroughly

Now in the case of Raymond E. Feist, I can’t say I haven’t enjoyed his writing. in fact, quite the reverse. However, the more I read his work, the more I realize that he tends to use shortcuts in building his world and this tends to disappoint me. I expect a completely new world springing forth from the author’s imagination when I read a novel which is set in another world, not a pale imitation of our own clothed in slightly different trappings to hide the fact.

I don’t know if I was aware of the similarity to Japanese culture in Feist’s Tsurani when I first read his Magician and the other two novels in the series. But then again, that was close to 20 years ago. However, when I read Talon of the Silver Hawk, I was immediately aware that his Orosini were lifted wholesale from various North American Indian (or Native Americans or First Nation or whatever they are called today …) tribes. Then I woke up today with the realization that the continent on the other side of Midkemia, the world that Fiest’s stories take place on, is called Novindus. Nov + Indus as in New India, get it? Like Columbus thought America, the continent on the other side of our own world, was India. (Then again, apparently Novindus is supposed to be shaped like India and so it is actually India since the known world in Midkemia might be the Americas …)

There probably are other races and other places modeled after our world in Feist’s novels. And I’m not saying a writer has no right to do that, it’s a writer’s prerogative to write their story (and build their world) in any fashion they choose. But as far as I’m concerned, when somebody copies stuff from the world we know simply because it’s easy, it takes something away from the overall story. Now Terry Pratchett copies countries and people from our world in his Discworld series but that’s for satirical effect, there is a purpose to it. Not to mention that PTerry’s copies are never exact copies

But I see no real purpose to Feist’s wholesale copying of nations and peoples except that it’s easier to do that than to create something completely new. Perhaps I am mistaken and am assigning incorrect motives to Feist, Perhaps he did have a reason for creating these parallels. But if so, I can’t see that reason. All that it’s done for me is to slightly dilute the enjoyment of reading his work. And I don’t think any writer wants that ….

King of Foxes (Conclave of Shadows, Book 2)

Pages: 400
Price: $7.99

Talon of the Silver Hawk (Conclave of Shadows, Book 1)

Pages: 400
Price: $24.95

Magician: Apprentice (Riftwar Saga)

Pages: 528
Price: $7.99

All Things Art and Good VI

(The reasons behind the series of articles titled All Things Art and Good and the format followed in each article is explained here, in the first post in the series.)

I have not been able to find the first artwork of Ron Crabb’s that I saw on his site. Instead, I guess I will have to link to it at the original location at the CGTalk forums. The painting, called Keep a Sharp Eye, is simply brilliant! It’s from a series that Ron calls Illustrations from Untold Stories and is supposed inspire writers, storytellers and other imagineers to come up with a story to fit the image. And I tell you, this is the kind of image that can send you off on all sorts of voyages of the mind

I absolutely love the dark and gloomy swamp, the little flickers of firefly glows creating holes in the shroud of darkness, the warm glow of the torch held by the boy at the front of the boat, and overall, the entire image which seems to proclaim that dark and foul (or mysterious and exciting) events are afoot. Most of all, I love the feel of the painting. It has the the feel of an oil painting by one of the old masters like Rembrandt or Da Vinci - clean lines, great lighting and great colouring. Yes, if you couldn’t tell by my previous words, I love this style of digital painting

Exploring Ron’s site, I came across more gems in a variety of styles. There’s the imposing and mysterious Petra which seems to hint at a forgotten civilization and age-old buildings full of treasures hidden away in the mountains or the desert. Or the breathtakingly golden beauty of Arabian City, left and right, which I can’t help wishing was available as a single image so that the viewer can see the full glory of that wonderful mural. I love the little splashes of colour from the awnings on the buildings appearing as sudden splashes of colour across the golden browns and yellows of the desert and the buildings. And those feathery streamers of clouds across the blue sky sort of crowning the whole thing, what can I say except that this is another painting by Ron that I just love gazing at for hours?

If you wanted something different, then there’s the cartoony line drawings like the Kitsap County Fair mascot - the horse reminds me a bit of Jolly Jumper, Lucky Luke’s horse Or, there’s the Foosball table top which is colourful and interesting and has a different style. And of course, if you were to explore Ron’s Fine Art section, you’ll find a whole new world of paintings to gaze at for hours on end

Keep a Sharp Eye

Petra

Arabian City - Left

Arabian City - Right

Kitsap County Fair Mascot

Foosball Table Top

Interesting, but weird :)

Apparently, I’m published with Reuters. Yes, *the* Reuters I didn’t know about this at all, though I believe traffic has been slightly heavier than usual, till today And even then, it was totally by accident.

This blog is part of the BlogBurst network, which syndicates blog RSS feeds to online media sites. I’ve been with them for years and as far as I know, I haven’t been featured by any of the BlogBurst media partners. So I haven’t actually paid much attention to what was going on with BlogBurst.

However, I was fiddling around with the RSS feeds for the site today and so decided to go check if BlogBurst can still access my RSS feed and to my surprise, I found that my site had been featured on Reuters! Of course, I was curious to see what had been featured and so I did some more digging and came up with this article.

Now the funny thing is, that article is on the Reuters Investing Blog but it has nothing at all to do with investing So I’m not sure why the article was picked unless it was the word "China" in the title. Guess I should experiment by adding more country names to my titles :p

No updates, update

Things have been rather quiet on the blog because I’ve been busy plugging away at a couple of projects. I’ve also got to get busy on the next issue of C3, the magazine I edit and that’ll mean even less time to update the blog or do any of the other hundred odd things that I keep meaning to do/fix on my site

I’ll get back to the All Things Art and Good series soon, I promise …