Month: December 2001

Cool Yule Retail Stores

We visited the new Apple Store in the Cambridgeside Galleria today with our friends Charlie and Carie. Being able to wander around in a space like that and play with all the cool tech is really great. It had an unexpected effect: Lisa is now fascinated with digital video! We talked for a long time with the store clerk, who was great, about the DV cameras, how they work, and what the path is for getting them into the Mac to edit them and then burn them to DVD. That might be a really cool thing to have if we’re on the other side of the country (of course, then our parents would have to get DVD players–details…). I actually heard Lisa say, “If we get you a new computer, can we get it with a DVD burner?” I tell you: more visits to the Apple Store are definitely in the cards. 🙂

Until we meet again

Great party last night to say goodbye to our friend Dubhfeasa, my classmate Niall’s girlfriend. She’s heading back to Ireland where she has a great job in a hospital near Dublin. She’s one of our favorite people, and we’ll miss her tremendously. We’ll have to get to the Emerald Isle soon to visit her.

Good software makes up for a lot

E-Lab is done, except for our final presentation to the company we consulted to. Kickin’ back with some software. The new developer tools are out, and I’m a playin’.

AppleScript Studio. I love it. Mac OS X, an IDE free in every box (or at least downloadable). From the documentation distributed with the dev tools:

AppleScript Studio combines an application framework with a development environment, allowing you to provide sophisticated user interfaces for applications that execute AppleScript scripts. AppleScript Studio comprises features from AppleScript, Project Builder, Interface Builder, and the Cocoa application framework. With AppleScript Studio, you can quickly create native Mac OS X applications that support the Aqua user interface.

AppleScript Studio requires Mac OS X version 10.1.2, or the December 2001 Developer Tools CD.

Rockin’ like Dokken (er, or something like that)

One more down. I finished the Finance final yesterday afternoon just in time to run to the first of a series of meetings.

I looked over the day’s updates late last night and was surprised to see how calm I was yesterday morning. By last night I was a mess. I finished the first pass at the final E-Lab slides, took the Finance final (a take-home) for about three and a half hours, and headed in to our team meeting. That necessitated a redo of my slides, and ran until E-52s rehearsal was to start for the talent show. I grabbed a plate of food from a reception that was going on (hey, I was invited), ran rehearsal, and then we split for the auditorium.

The talent show was a lot of fun. The Sloan Hanukkah Song was cute, although it’s a shame it took three guys to do what Adam Sandler could do by himself… A few of the Italians from our class performed the Three Tenors (with pillows under their tux shirts) singing “O Sole Mio”–and followed with a singalong. I had a lot of fun bellowing in my best Pavarotti. Maybe there’s something to the concept of learning some of those songs like Lisa keeps asking. The group did really well with our three songs–got a lot of compliments. The highlight, though, had to be Bob, Barry, Chris, Juan, and Sam performing a plugged in “Sweet Child O’ Mine” as the Jack Tang Orchestra, looking a lot like G’n’R and sounding really really good. I guess everyone’s as happy to be done with the semester as we are…

Now playing

Currently playing song: “The Downtown Lights” by Blue Nile on Hats. (Hey, Esta, listening to Mr. Mister is no shame–at least they had top 40 hits!)

They even have a mailing list!

Like Tim, I haven’t blogged much lately. Unlike Tim, I don’t have as good a reason. Everything’s okay, just not particularly newsworthy. At least not for public consumption. 🙂 I’ve been feeling quiet about the upcoming holiday season…not a particularly jolly aspect. But I’ve finally decided that it’s okay to have a blue, blue Christmas. I’ll be with my family; that’s what counts, and that’s what I’m looking forward to. That, and my Mom’s fruitcake. Don’t scoff: this fruitcake is the king of the breed that will turn naysayers into ardent fans.

Can’t even say I’m listening to any good music to redeem this blog. Yes, folks, I broke out the Mr. Mister today. I’m truly amazed that they have a fansite. Good for them!
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Wrap-up, Day 1

It’s a quiet morning. I have a few things to work on today: a few last slides for my E-Lab project, a take-home final for Finance II. And a thick fog outside that blots out the top of the tall buildings normally visible from outside my window.

No classes until February. Kind of nice, actually. I’ve spent–I think all my classmates have spent–the entire semester since 9/11 waiting for the other shoe to drop. Now it’s going to be all done in less than a week. What have I accomplished?

Well, the out of class things spring to mind first. We found some great first years to run with things for e-MIT–starting with rebranding it, to Sloan Entrepreneurs. Which just makes so more sense. And the E-52s got past a rough start to be a really cohesive group. We have our final gig of the semester tonight, and I’m just going to enjoy it.

Reaching the end of Finance II is a big deal… We wrote a really great paper for eBusiness…. I think it’s too early to decide the accomplishments for the rest yet, but somehow just getting to the end feels like an accomplishment.

Well, almost to the end. Gotta go hit those slides…

Script update

New script update today. I made a minor change to one of my supporting scripts, SOAPXMLRPCHandler, that should improve the ability of scripts calling it to return successfully when talking to slow websites. If you are using any of my *2Manila or *2Blog scripts, you’ll want to download this performance fix.

Making money from web services and other problems

Web Services: The Next IT Revolution?, which I co-wrote with three other MIT students for a course in eBusiness at Sloan, is now available on-line. We discuss the basic technical architecture of the IBM/Microsoft model of web services (as well as the current implementation practices), privacy and security impacts for individuals and organizations, the effects that web services will have on the software industry and on consumers, and how we think people will make money on web services.

If you aren’t familiar with the technology, you’ll probably be hearing more about it soon–it’s the paradigm behind Microsoft‘s .NET, Passport, and Hailstorm.

If you’re really familiar with the space already, you’ll probably find lots of places where we’ve made mistakes or consciously excluded things. One of the things that we consciously excluded was implementations that don’t follow the Microsoft and IBM model, including XML-RPC. Originally we wanted to include a balanced comparison of the different approaches, but realized we were limited on both time and space. In partial compensation, the website points to a couple of really good discussions of alternatives to the SOAP/UDDI/WSDL implementation approach.

My co-writers, Adam Brady-Myerov, Buddhika Kottahachchi, and Wenona Charles, have put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into this project and have had some really valuable things to say. It’s been a real pleasure working with them.
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It doesn’t feel like the last day of classes

Ugh. Three courses down, three to go. I just delivered the final paper for my eBusiness course (more on that in a second). Now I need to catch my breath and turn around a take-home final, write a final paper for Literature, Ethics, and Authority, and finish our group presentation for eLab. (By the way, all of the above is why I haven’t blogged much lately.)

Merry Christmas from Google

I thought that this would be a day without blogging — I’m just dealing with the usual end of semester crap and didn’t have anything new to say. Then I saw the announcement: 20 years of Usenet available via Google.

I had forgotten some of the stuff I used to spend time writing about–poetry, fonts, even some stuff in PowerBuilder. But it’s not forgotten any more — both from my days at Virginia, where I had my first Usenet access, and at AMS, when I was first a programmer.

One thing I’ve noticed: my sense of typographic anal-retentiveness in monospaced type. I must have spent a really long time in the computer lab getting that early .sig file lined up just right…

Would you like herring with that solo?

I forgot to mention: the E-52s had their inaugural gig on Thursday. It was surreal. We were singing for penguins. No, real penguins. The faculty party was at the Boston Aquarium, and it was a hideous performing space. Think cement cube with balconies facing into the center, which has a column of aquatic exhibits going up to the roof and a spiral ramp around it, and a pond at its base with rocks and penguins. The best option for singing was on a small alcove on the first floor facing the penguins. No one could hear us. But it was fun anyway.