James Tauber's Blog 2004/03
Naked Objects
One of the key concepts behind Redfoot and, more recently, the TrIM project I'm working on with my sister, Jenni, is the notion that with a rich enough object schema, UI can be provided by the framework and objects can be manipulated and relationships express via that generic UI.
Via the session schedule for the Boston No Fluff Just Stuff conference, I found out about Naked Objects.
The session description reads:
"What if you never had to write a user interface again? What if you could simply expose your business objects directly to the end user? How would this affect your productivity? The way you work? The flexibility of your applications? Is this even possible? Sometimes, yes. This talk describes a style of application development, Naked Objects, where you write just the business objects, and a framework lets your users interact directly with these objects."
I tracked down the Naked Objects website and it turns out there is a book, which definitely looks worth getting.
A quick perusal suggests that the approach (at least as it is implemented) relies on classes written in some specific OO language rather than something like RDF. I think I'd prefer the flexibility and interoperability that declarative object schemas would provide and there's no reason why the Naked Object approach couldn't use RDF (or perhaps XMI?) with logic written in something like Python.
by jtauber : Created on March 31, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
Geometric Algebra and Maxwell's Equations
My latest Amazon.com shipment included what is shaping up to be my favourite book in the area of mathematical physics: Doran and Lasenby's "Geometric Algebra for Physicists".
The elegance of geometric algebra is clearly evident in that fact that Maxwell's equations become a single equation in this algebra. I recall my delight when I discovered that a tensor treatment of Maxwell's equations resulted in two equations instead of four. This takes that to the next level.
It got me thinking that it would be fun to put together a document that took the reader on a tour of vector calculus, tensors and geometric algebra, in each case using Maxwell's equations as the common thread.
by jtauber : Created on March 27, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : Categories mathematics books : (permalink)
GA Tutorials
If you are interested in learning more about geometric algebra, there are some interactive tutorials at http://www.science.uva.nl/ga/tutorials/ which are worth checking out.
The tutorial adapted from a talk on GA at GDC2003 is excellent! The GA Viewer software that it uses is a nice piece of work too.
by jtauber : Created on March 27, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : Categories mathematics : (permalink)
WebDAV Support
Yesterday, I was talking to Jenni about what we could use as a server for shared calendaring (she runs Mac OS X; I've been checking out eventSherpa). Jenni mentioned that iCal supports WebDAV which got me thinking: I should add WebDAV support to this site.
by jtauber : Created on March 25, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
Goodbye Origin
Tonight I had the pleasure (and honour) of attending the closing down party / wake for Origin Systems.
It was recently announced that Electronic Arts was closing down their Austin office (i.e. Origin) and relocating the team to the Bay area.
Literally hundreds of ex-Origin employees (and a bunch of outsiders like myself) gathered at Lord British's huge lake-side property (complete with wooden fort and pirate ship) for a night celebrating the remarkable achievement that was Origin Systems.
Origin produced the games that had the biggest influence on me growing up. Hearing Garriott and others recount stories made me wish I'd somehow been a part of it.
by jtauber : Created on March 20, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
Great Music / Great Food
This evening I caught up with my good friend and mValent co-founder, Duane Tharp who is visiting Austin. Along with his French friends Stefan and Raoul, we went down to the Town Lake Stage at Auditorium Shores.
First we heard Toots and the Maytals - probably the best reggae I've ever heard. I'll confess that until Raoul explained it to me, I was unaware of just how significant Toots is in the world of Reggae. I might have to buy an album now.
Next was Joss Stone who completely blew me away. I can't express it any better than this quote from the SxSW website: "Joss Stone may well be best old-school, roof-raising, Southern-style soul music to appear in the 21st century: a claim made all the more remarkable when you consider Joss Stone is a 16 year-old girl from England." All I can add is: wow!
After listening to Joss for a while, we went to Austin's best Italian restaurant Vespaio. Thanks to Claude and Alan for fantastic food and wine.
After the concert and food I was unsure if I had the energy to head off to catch the special secret act closing the Barsuk Records show at The Parish. Fortunately, The Parish was very close to the hotel so I decided to go, despite feeling exhausted. The secret act was afterall, my favourite band of all time: They Might Be Giants. (Thanks to my sister Leonie for letting me know they were performing!)
When I arrived at The Parish I got my first ever taste of VIP treatment by bouncers. There was a huge line outside (word had gotten around that the secret act was TMBG) and at first I was worried I would never get in. But as I approached the bouncer to confirm that the line was indeed for the Barsuk Records show, he saw my platinum SxSW attendee badge and let me in ahead of the line.
I slowly made my way to the front of the stage, about twenty minutes before the two Johns, two Dans and a new drummer (Mike?) came on stage. They played a bunch of stuff from their upcoming EP and album. The Linnell-sung songs all had his characteristic style (yet more ascending scales in the melody) but they were just as catchy as ever. "Experimental Film" might just be my favourite song de jour. Also fantastic was "Memo to Human Resources".
Other highlights were a phenomenal two-minute classical guitar intro to Istanbul from lead guitarist Dan; Particle Man, with some very funky bass from other Dan; Birdhouse, which is still probably my favourite song of all time; and the first live performance I've heard of Fingertips which they actually pulled off.
Probably the best TMBG concert I've been too and a perfect ending to an awesome night.
by jtauber : Created on March 19, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
David Allen's Blog
Well, Scoble did it. David Allen now has a blog.
Welcome to the blogosphere, David!
by jtauber : Created on March 18, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
SxSW Dinner
At about 6pm I was unsure whether to bother going to the official SxSW Music dinner but I'm so glad I did.
The event was considerably smaller than I expected -- I guess SxSW attendees aren't used to paying for expensive conference dinners. There were only five people on my table, including myself but it was a much better environment to talk to people than I've experienced probably the whole of SxSW (although the Austin Game Developers' Happy Hour was pretty good).
Renee Sebastian is a Pop/R&B artist based in San Francisco. She's released stuff on her own label and it sounds pretty good to my ears!
Kimberly Guise and Steven Erdman run GO Records based in New York and are currently working on an album featuring Brit James Hunter. If Steve's passion is anything to go by, the James Hunter album should be awesome.
I'll definitely be watching both Renee's and Kimberly and Steven's efforts. You might want to do yourself a favour (to quote Molly Meldrum) and check them out.
They were certainly a wonderful bunch of people to spend an evening talking with.
by jtauber : Created on March 17, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
Versioned Literate Aspect-Oriented Programming
As I've been developing a GEF application, I've been thinking about turning it into a tutorial. I immediately wondered if it might be a great project for literate programming.
I could write a web and then tangle it to generate the GEF application and weave it to get the tutorial. But as features are incrementally added to the application over the course of the tutorial, conventional literate programming might not be enough. At the very least, some kind of versioning would need to be included.
But then it occurred to me that it's perhaps best thought of not just as a versioning issue but as an aspect-oriented one. For example, if step four of the tutorial is adding undo support then that would involve not only new classes but the insertion of code at points in existing methods.
I wonder if such a system exists?
by jtauber : Created on March 15, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
Onfolio
Via Scoble, I've discovered Onfolio and it looks awesome.
At one level, Onfolio is very similar to where my sister, Jenni and I are headed with a little Python tool we're writing code-named TrIM. Both essentially allow files, links and fragments of information to be managed in an organized collection.
Onfolio has nice integration with IE, which makes it great for web-based information gathering (although it does support dragging-and-dropping of arbitrary files like TrIM). It also has a nice publishing mechanism (including ability to publish information collections as RSS feeds).
by jtauber : Created on March 14, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
RSS Feed Coming Soon
I've become more and more addicted to a small handful of blogs lately (I'll put together a blog roll soon) and so finally switched to using an aggregator.
It now makes sense for me to implement an RSS feed for my own blog so other people using an aggregator aren't shut out. I've been GEF-hacking while not attending SxSW sessions and events but I may need to pry myself away from Eclipse to add RSS support to the homegrown Python code that generates this site.
UPDATE : An experimental atom feed is available at http://jtauber.com/atom/.
by jtauber : Created on March 14, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
SxSW: Day Two
Decided to take it easy during the day. Glad I did because I didn't get back from the short film screening until 2.30am tonight.
Went to the "I Am Stamos" party and caught up with Alex Eastburg (Writer/Producer), Rob Meltzer (Writer/Director) and Karl Preusser (Composer) all of whom I met at the Film opening party last night. Also met Robert Peters, John Stamos and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos.
The party included performance art that I could only describe as chinese acrobatics meets lesbian French maids (that'll bring some interesting Google searches to this site!)
After the party, went back to the hotel and did some more GEF programming before heading off again for the midnight screening.
There were nine films in total ranging in length from four minutes to seventeen. The overall theme was clearly the absurd. Most of the films got at least a laugh out of me - some were absolutely hilarious. My two favourites were I Am Stamos and Walkentalk (the latter an absolute must-see for fans of Christopher Walken). Interestingly, they were the two shot on film. Also worth seeing (although not quite as good as "I Am Stamos" and "Walkentalk") is The Frank International Film Festival, a mock video diary of a visit to the most exclusive Film Festival in the world.
by jtauber : Created on March 13, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
Free Markets and Ecosystem Simulation
Last night, Richard said that a lot of the world simulation aspects of Ultima Online had to be taken out because players didn't behave as expected. I have another theory.
The example he gave was that they originally set things up so that surrounding a village were sheep and deer and further out were wolves and dragons that ate those sheep and deer. The idea was that if players killed off the population of sheep and deer too quickly, the wolves and dragons would have to venture closer to the village and the village would cry out for a hero to kill the wolves/dragons. Hence the system itself would create the need for kill-the-dragon-type hero quests.
Unfortunately, players killed everything and so the system never had time to restore balance and so the concept had to be removed. Richard said there were lots of examples of this.
I wonder if the concept might have worked had human populations been susceptible to the same forces. It's a classic example where a free-market-like system won't lead to equilibrium because there are constraints which prevent the system from operating on each participant.
The moment you set up some 'protection' for one participant in the system, the natural balance will be lost.
So if you want to simulate plants and animals in an ecosystem realistically, you've got to include humans and allow for disease, famine and player death.
by jtauber : Created on March 13, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
Richard Garriott and Warren Spector
I was thrilled when I recently found out that Richard Garriott would be speaking at SxSW. It's hard to overstate the impact that Richard's games had on me growing up. Not just the hours I spent playing them with my sister but also everything I learnt trying to hack them (especially IV and V) to see how they worked.
The panel was excellent and Richard and Warren Spector (who worked with Richard on Ultimas VI and VII and designed Deus Ex) make a wonderfully entertaining pair to listen to.
First a few anecdotes about the origins (no pun intended) of the Ultima series:
- Back in 1977, Richard attended a camp for mathematically-inclined kids. There he was introduced to four things: D&D, Lord of the Rings, computer programming and women (the incongruous inclusion of which had the audience errupting in laughter)
- Richard worked on a bunch of D&D-related computer programs culminating in the game Akalabeth (a name which he didn't realise for years he had subconsciously pinched from Tolkien).
- Akalabeth was written after school and on weekends in BASIC over a seven-week period. Bill Budge published it and Richard made $5 on each copy sold. Richard netted a cool $150,000 for seven weeks part-time work (gasps from the audience) and thought 'imagine what I could do if I actually put some real effort into a game'. The result was Ultima I.
There were a lot of things that Warren and Richard agreed on. Both thought story was core. And both commented on the fact that the D&D sessions they most enjoyed were where the rules were almost forgotten about and a game centred around story telling.
(As an aside: I remember when I first started AD&D with school friends in 1985, we hardly even used dice at all. I remember one adventure I DMed on a bus with no dice or character sheets or handbooks - just storytelling.)
Interestingly, Warren (who worked at TSR for a while) said that TSR deliberately left aspects of AD&D underspecified to encourage players to augment the rules (and therefore get them more attached to the game).
Where Warren and Richard differed was on single-player versus multi-player and that largely seemed to stem from their different goals in audience size.
Warren pointed out that if the number of people that played the most successful computer game of all time was the audience number for a new TV show, the show would get cancelled after two episodes.
Warren clearly wants a bigger audience which, both he and Richard agree, means consoles.
Richard is happy with the smaller audience interested in MMOGs - largely because of the economics. The profit margins on successful MMOGs are much greater than those on single-player games and even greater than on console games. Apparently EA made about $100 million on $2.5 billion revenue last year. In contrast NCSoft made $50 million on $125 million revenue.
All the business comments Richard made had Warren staring in disbelief: 'Richard Garriott died five years ago and was replaced by his brother', a reference to Robert Garriott who ran the business side of Origin Systems.
At the end I spoken briefly to Richard and had the opportunity to thank him, not just for a great panel session, but for the last twenty years.
by jtauber : Created on March 12, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
SxSW: Day One
Back in Boston, if I mentioned I was going to Austin, they'd rave about what the weather would be like this time of year. So I arrive in Austin around noon and it's raining :-)
Checked in at the Hilton then crossed the road to the convention center to register. There were a pile of Australian Music Guides - the newspaper that Phil Tripp put together which includes a photo of yours truly - so I picked up a couple of extra copies for my family.
My Platinum pass gets me in to the Film, Music and Interactive sections of the conference as well as the Film and Music festivals. The music side of things doesn't start for a few days so I only got the conference material and goodies bag for the Film and Interactive streams. It's already clear I'm going to have a hard time picking how to split my time.
Even though I have absolutely no room in my suitcase, I splashed out a little on SxSW clothing including a hemp jacket, sweatshirt and three t-shirts.
There are a bunch of films on each day - hard to pick which ones to see.
This evening I went to a panel session featuring Richard Garriott and Warren Spector. It deserves an entry on its own. Later on, I briefly popped into the opening party for the film stream - met the guys who made the short film "I Am Stamos". They have a party tomorrow night and then the film is being screened.
by jtauber : Created on March 12, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
XSL by Wayback Example
Earlier today a colleague mentioned that he had stumbled across my (very) old "XSL Templates by Example" article. I was surprised it was still around as I haven't hosted it for years.
This evening a quick Google search resulted in a hard-to-read text version. So a visit to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine and I had the original HTML from an archived version of the XMLSOFTWARE.COM.
It's completely out of date, but I've made it available at a new permanent home at http://jtauber.com/1999/03/03/xsl-by-example.html.
I'll see what other artifacts I can dig up from the attic of past websites.
by jtauber : Created on March 10, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
Blogs and David Allen
A link from Tim Bray's blog led me to Robert Scoble's blog (which I must read more). Reading some entries nearby to the one Tim referenced, I discovered Robert has recently attended a David Allen seminar.
David Allen's book is probably the best I've read on organization and productivity and Robert has become a fan. Robert also suggests David Allen should start writing a blog. I for one would definitely read it!
by jtauber : Created on March 9, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
OSAF and David Allen
I got around to downloading Chandler 0.3 this evening. Looks like good progress has been made on the core although it will probably be a while before I really get to dig into it.
Reading Ted Leung's blog inside Chandler I noticed that Ted referenced Robert Scoble's entry about David Allen. He further added that he himself is a fan of David's approach.
There's even a page on the Chandler wiki that talks about the David Allen method as a usage pattern for Chandler.
by jtauber : Created on March 9, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
Eclipse GEF
This weekend I tried out the Eclipse Graphical Editing Framework. First impressions are that it is a very rich, mature, extensible framework. Like Eclipse itself, there is enough decoupling and extensibility hooks that it takes a while longer to get a basic application up and running; but once you've reached that stage you can keep adding features in an extremely flexible way.
With its model, parts, figures, policies and commands, GEF makes MVC look tightly coupled. The two examples that come with GEF are excellent examples, although I found they were a little too advanced to base my first application on. At some stage, I'll post my first application with documentation as I think it might provide a useful stepping stone to a more complex example.
Look out for some future open-source projects from me based on GEF.
UPDATE (2004-11-03): Now see Six Snapshots of a Simple Eclipse GEF Application.
by jtauber : Created on March 7, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)