Kicking the Eclipse habit
Thu, May 17th 2012 2:25p Ben Poole Eclipse is a wondrous piece of work, and extremely useful. I have cooked up many lines of code in that IDE over the years (I’ve deleted lots of lines in it too, which is as it should be), and will probably bust it out again and again in the future. But for now? For now I’ve parked it. Too many UI quirks getting in the way, too many dependent pieces of code ’n’ plug-ins, too much waiting for “tooling” to pull its trousers up. I like it simple: one or three bare-bones editors, and the [read] Keywords: cascading style sheets
css
development
eclipse
interface
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A decade!
Sun, May 13th 2012 1:14p Ben Poole Not that you’d know it given blogging levels for the past eight months or so, but today this site hits the merry old age of ten! Crikey, how time flies. When I started, there was one other Domino chap out there writing a regular Domino dev site (hello Jake), and that was about it. A flurry of Domino sites followed. Who could forget the original Blogsphere templates, Mike Golding’s NotesTips site, or the original long-lost blogging template, FreeDomBlog? Ah what larks.
So anyway, here’s to [read] Keywords: domino
blogging
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241
Significant releases
Mon, Apr 30th 2012 1:45p Ben Poole Two important releases today. First up, we have the latest instalment of the Wormworld saga from Daniel Lieske, hooray!
Chapter 3 - A Monstrous Forest.
Chapter 3 was a huge challenge for me as I wanted the first impression of the Wormworld to be a lasting one. This chapter is the longest chapter so far and it is full of elaborate full scale backgrounds. Including prelim, concept art and layout, I worked over 400 hours on Chapter 3. I think that it shows and I hope that everyone will enjoy the [read] Keywords: development
java
mac
oracle
122
Oh my word it’s April!
Wed, Apr 4th 2012 3:00p Ben Poole This has to be the slowest blogging year I’ve had since I began this blog (almost a decade ago). The ironic thing is that ordinarily I would have more time than ever to keep the ole’ site up to date. Since I started contracting at a certain national broadcaster some six months ago, this has meant my working away from home during the week. A short (walking) commute coupled with no family or household chores in the evening surely mean oodles of time for blogging, hobby projects, and ge [read] Keywords: blogging
java
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449
HTTP 701 meh
Sat, Jan 28th 2012 10:11a Ben Poole Hopefully you are a github regular and have already seen this README, but just in case not, be sure to check out John Barton’s RFC for some extra HTTP codes. My favourites are 701 and 748. [read] Keywords:
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More on testable code
Wed, Jan 25th 2012 12:31p Ben Poole Following on from my previous post, I stumbled across a most excellent resource, Miško Hevery’s Guide: Writing Testable Code. This is detailed, helpful and above all eminently readable—well worth running off and keeping.
Hevery’s document contains a number of tips designed to make code more testable, but really it goes wider than that. Hevery picks out four basic flaws, gives examples of each, how to detect them (“warning signs” if you will), and of course, how to [read] Keywords:
306
Making code test-able
Tue, Jan 17th 2012 12:37a Ben Poole There are two things a developer needs to make his or her output testable (and therefore more robust. Hopefully):
The “How would I test for xyz” mind-set, and;
A fast simple development environment
That’s it, that’s all you need. The first comes with practise, and the second is pretty straightforward nowadays. Of late I have been writing a lot of PHP in Eclipse, Coda and the new kid on the block, Sublime Text 2 (check it out: very nice). All of these tools make it eas [read] Keywords: agent
domino
lotusphere
development
eclipse
java
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Resolutions for coders
Thu, Jan 5th 2012 11:51a Ben Poole Yesterday I posted about Code Year, an initiative to get people learning the gentle (chortle) art of programming. But what of the seasoned professional, the much-maligned code monkey, the long-suffering developer?
Well, Matt Might has a splendid list of twelve resolutions for the rest of us:
Matt Might, 12 Resolutions for Programmers. [read] Keywords:
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Codeyear and site design
Wed, Jan 4th 2012 3:42p Ben Poole After checking out the Code Year site recently launched by Codecademy, I moved on to read an interesting post from that site’s designer, Sacha Greif: How I Designed CodeYear.com in 1 Hour. Definitely check this post out: Sacha deftly guides the reader through the over-arching thought processes behind an effective site re-design. There are some handy tips and links along the way for any budding designers, or coders like you and I who simply want to to create more pleasant web experiences.
[read] Keywords:
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Here’s to next year
Fri, Dec 30th 2011 9:46a Ben Poole Yes, it’s me ;-). Time to break the long silence with an end-of-year post! No exhaustive review (especially given the paucity of posts in the first place), just a simple summary:
Music
I loves my music I does, and 2011 was another corking year. Far from the madd(en)ing crowd, there’s always plenty of good stuff out there being made and re-discovered. The year started off with my continued rediscovery of Frank Zappa (one of my early music loves), and a special new liking for the 198 [read] Keywords: connections
domino
ibm
xpages development
java
javascript
mobile
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Where’s Benny?
Wed, Nov 2nd 2011 4:58p Ben Poole Ooops. I haven’t updated this blog in precisely one calendar month. How bad is that? There’s stuff piling up to be written and posted, honest guv—it’s just a matter of finding enough hours in the day.
Almost three weeks ago I started a new full-time contract, unusual for me in that it is based miles away from home in Manchester (MediaCityUK to be precise). I’m working as a mobile web developer, using technologies such as HTML, CSS3, Javascript, Linux and PHP (Zend [read] Keywords: javascript
linux
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Update!
Sun, Oct 2nd 2011 2:21p Ben Poole Manic times! I should really lift the nose from the grindstone and fill you in. It’s interesting (I think). So, this is what’s been a-happening:
Big-ish project customising IdeaJam for a major global financial customer. Gave me a chance to really dig in to Matt White’s code and find out that, you know, it’s good.
Two projects for some smaller companies, dealing with greenfield IBM Connections / Domino integration for one, and modernising some exceptionally well-coded [read] Keywords: connections
domino
ibm
lotusscript
xpages application
ideajam
integration
iphone
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“Do you recall using Notes?”
Sun, Sep 18th 2011 2:55a Ben Poole I worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers for twelve years, and well remember the early years (in what was then Coopers & Lybrand) working on old Toshiba Satellites with Windows 3.1 and Lotus Notes 3.3. Heady days! Both Price Waterhouse and C&L really steered the product in some respects, so their merger in 1998 (shortly after we in Coopers had moved to Windows 95 and Notes 4.5.3) certainly made sense from a technological perspective if nothing else. This is an interesting piece from ReadWrite [read] Keywords: collaboration
lotus
notes
enterprise
facebook
podcast
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An album I cannot wait for
Fri, Sep 16th 2011 2:02p Ben Poole In ten days time an album comes out which I simply cannot wait for: Grace For Drowning by Steven Wilson. Long-suffering readers of this site will know that I am a massive Porcupine Tree fan, and will (probably) understand. An amazing producer, songwriter and performer, Wilson is bringing out his most ambitious work to date: a double album of material, apparently veering away from the “metal-esque” leanings of recent PT output towards a sound more reminiscent of the golden age of R [read] Keywords:
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Time flies when you’re having fun
Tue, Sep 13th 2011 7:29a Ben Poole So what’s new round these here parts? Well, things have been up and down. I have been out of the mainstream full-time contracting world for almost ten months now, and can recommend it. Sort of. The loss of regular income is a nightmare, I grant you, but the opportunities to try new things, work on varied projects, and more importantly do so on your own terms does help make up for that, I promise :-)
In recent months I’ve enjoyed working on very interesting projects courtesy of some [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
lotusphere
xpages application
community
development
dojo
javascript
mobile
network
twitter
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Netgear ReadyNAS & OS X: fixing printing
Mon, Sep 12th 2011 5:50a Ben Poole I’ve used my trusty Netgear ReadyNAS for several years now, it’s super. When OS X Lion came out, Apple twiddled with AFP in the network stack, which meant that using many NAS implementations (Netgear’s included) as Time Machine targets no longer worked.
To their credit, Netgear had beta firmware releases out in no time, which addressed this issue. However, one side effect seemed to be that for those of us who also use the ReadyNAS as a print server (it’s a Linux box basi [read] Keywords: administration
notes
apple
linux
network
server
wiki
78
Friday posers…
Fri, Sep 9th 2011 9:50a Ben Poole Recent projects have meant lots and lots of Javascript. Other work has led to a need to really study the language, and look into more than the odd jQuery plugin and wot-not. This has been a rewarding experience: challenging received wisdom, ensuring that I know more about all those concepts that spend years just floating out there on the edge of one’s understanding.
To that end, here are a few interesting tid-bits which I have found—typically whilst researching more involved stuff l [read] Keywords: javascript
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Configuring multiple email addresses in iOS
Fri, Sep 2nd 2011 3:00p Ben Poole It’s (probably) a little-known secret that you can specify multiple “Sender” email addresses in the default OS X mail application. Once more than one address is specified in preferences, the “From” field in any mail composed becomes a drop-down from which you can choose the required address:This is pretty handy if, like me, you use multiple addresses. OK, so here’s how to set that up in Mail.app’s preferences: go to the “Account Information” tab in the “Accounts” pane, and [read] Keywords: application
bug
email
google
iphone
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Reeder
Sat, Aug 27th 2011 9:50a Ben Poole I’ve been using OS X since its inception, way back in 2001. And since I’ve been using OS X, I’ve also been using NetNewsWire, the wonderful news reader originally developed by Brent Simmons. There was a sea-change this summer though, oh yes! Tired of the latest version of NNW (and its beach-balling), I opted to switch.You see, I tried NNW on the iPhone (it was OK but didn’t really “stick” for me). I “upgraded” to the NNW 4 (the app store-friendly i [read] Keywords: google
integration
iphone
mac
twitter
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HTML5 field types (in brief)
Thu, Aug 18th 2011 5:00a Ben Poole [ If you’ve been following some of my recent posts on off-line apps, Web SQL and all that, you will have seen that all my mark-up snippets were in HTML5. And no doubt you have seen a lot of the brou-ha-ha around HTML5 too, and probably know that introduces some more field types and attributes.
Rather than go into a whole exposition of HTML5 (which others have already done brilliantly) I want to take a moment at some real-life applications of some of this HTML5 lark. I’ve already t [read] Keywords: applications
email
firefox
javascript
mobile
sql
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More local Web SQL
Thu, Jun 30th 2011 3:20p Ben Poole In my last post on this topic, we looked at how one might use Web SQL in a local web application, and I supplied some code which initialised a local database and pulled data from its lone table. All well and good, but what about the realities of using this data? Specifically, let us look at how one re-loads, edits and saves the data.
“Eh?” I hear you ask. “Surely you just load up data in the normal way, and then, um, well put it somewhere…” (reader tails off q [read] Keywords: application
applications
css
database
javascript
security
server
sql
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Wormworld is coming sooner
Tue, Jun 28th 2011 2:53a Ben Poole Readers may recall that some months back I posted about Daniel Lieske and his on-line graphic novel, Wormworld. Well, now we have some great news from Daniel:
I realised that I hadn’t worked my ass off over the last 18 months only to hand my rights over to someone else. But I’m deeply thankful for their approach because it made me crunch my numbers and it got me thinking about the financial potential of the Wormworld Saga project. And I realised that it could work…
Danie [read] Keywords:
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Off-line web apps: local Web SQL & Javascript
Wed, Jun 22nd 2011 3:46p Ben Poole So, you know how to take our site off-line: events are triggered, caches are swapped, and even though you still have that (apparent) server-based URL going on in your address bar, you are off-line! Yes! Stick your device in airplane mode and revel in how your website is still doing its thing. Clever.
However, your world is incomplete. You have some pages going on, some links between them, stylesheets—maybe some whacked-out Javascript doing wondrous things—but something is still miss [read] Keywords: application
database
firefox
google
interface
javascript
mobile
server
sql
wiki
57
The old “native vs. web” chestnut
Thu, Jun 16th 2011 3:30a Ben Poole What ho! Just over a week ago I picked up on this opinion piece from Hutch Carpenter, in which there is much discussion about mobile apps—specifically why enterprises should look at the mobile web route, rather than native applications. Carpenter makes a number of points supporting his case, and I can’t say I disagree. of course there are scenarios when a native app is the only way to go, but for a lot of this stuff, the web is spot-on—and of course, they’re hardly exclus [read] Keywords: apple
applications
development
enterprise
javascript
mac
microsoft
mobile
python
69
Offline web apps: the cache (serious this time)
Wed, Jun 15th 2011 10:43a Ben Poole OK, so that last post was a bit annoying. Let’s do it for real this time!
Modern web browsers combined with HTML5 give us decent off-line capability, but usage isn’t too widespread at the moment it seems. Two things: (1) what do we mean by “off-line”? and (2) why go off-line at all?
Whilst it is true that web browsers cache content, that’s always been about improving the connected experience, reducing the performance hit. Off-line websites however are designed wit [read] Keywords: agent
atlantic
application
applications
css
development
javascript
microsoft
mobile
network
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48
Starting with offline web apps: the cache
Thu, Jun 9th 2011 3:03p Ben Poole When coding off-line web applications, you have to use a thing called a “cache manifest” (more on these later, I promise). Put simply, these are text files which dictate to the user agent which web pages, images and resources should go off-line and which should not. The browser will not detect changes you make to your pages, Javascript etc. unless the byte signature of the manifest has changed in some way. Typically one does this by adding and / or removing comment lines in the manif [read] Keywords: agent
atlantic
applications
javascript
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Old farts & some new content ideas?
Wed, May 18th 2011 11:15a Ben Poole In what is now an annual tradition, yet again I have missed this site’s birthday. I have had a web presence under the benpoole.com moniker for nine years as of last Friday. Crikey! That makes me some kind of old fogey in web terms doesn’t it?
As mentioned in my previous post, it’s pretty busy at Poole towers at the moment. My current work is all wrapped up with HTML5 development, specifically for mobile devices. I am having way too much fun working with oodles of Javascript, o [read] Keywords: agent
xpages applications
development
javascript
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A break in the silence…
Tue, May 3rd 2011 4:13a Ben Poole … to tell you that the LDC goodies page has been updated with our latest set of wallpaper designs for your desktop of choice. Thanks to the Wookiee, our in-house artist liaison, for sorting these out.
As for the silence on this ’ere site, that will be on account of the sheer volume of work (interspersed with camping trips) going on at the moment. Normal service will resume I can assure you. [read] Keywords: desktop
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Starting with Ruby - part 5
Thu, Apr 7th 2011 2:06p Ben Poole The last four posts have been pretty lengthy, in a bid to get us going along the Ruby way. Now it’s time for something far more brief (but fun!): Ruby Kōans:
The koans walk you along the path to enlightenment in order to learn Ruby. The goal is to learn the Ruby language, syntax, structure, and some common functions and libraries. We also teach you culture. Testing is not just something we pay lip service to, but something we live. It is essential in your quest to learn and do great thin [read] Keywords: wiki
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Starting with Ruby - part 4
Wed, Apr 6th 2011 7:59a Ben Poole Hurrying on from part 3, let’s wrap up the basics of a Ruby class and get to testing!
You will recall that in defining the BlogPost class, we used a funky accessor generator, so let’s look at accessors in a little more detail. First, here’s how we define getters and setters the old-fashioned way:
#A getter
def title
@title
end
#A setter
def title= new_title #Note spacing, it's important
@title = new_title
end
… all well and good, but we like shortcuts. Instead [read] Keywords: application
database
integration
java
network
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On Karl-Henry’s frustrations…
Thu, Mar 31st 2011 3:23a Ben Poole In a weird synchronicity, Karl-Henry Martinsson has just posted about some frustrations he’s been having with Domino Designer (I haven’t added the “Eclipse” bit to the end of “Domino Designer” because (a) I know Maureen doesn’t like it :-), and (b) because this issue affects Designer 7 too). So how does one get to this sad state of affairs?
The dutiful developer performs a “compile all” in their database, and is shocked to see a whole load o [read] Keywords: domino
lotusscript
notes
notes client
script library
application
bleedyellow
bleedyellow.com
database
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Starting with Ruby - part 3
Tue, Mar 29th 2011 3:40p Ben Poole Before we get into how Ruby works with classes, its type model and the philosophy of form and being (oh yes), let’s take a tiny gander at the syntactical basics: (1) how do you define a class in Ruby, and (2) how do you instantiate it?
It won’t take long—this stuff is nice ’n’ easy, so feel free to follow in your text editor of choice (or even irb if you like. See my previous posts if you need to catch up.
First, let’s define a simple class called BlogPost (a [read] Keywords: notes
java
wiki
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I wrote this blog post in 47 seconds
Tue, Mar 29th 2011 3:05a Ben Poole All this talk of coding a functional web app in x minutes is an utter nonsense. I’m completely baffled by it.
Come now, get a grip. Everyone knows that proper developers (and, more importantly, their managers) measure productivity in lines of code. [read] Keywords: xpages
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Daniel Lieske & Wormworld
Thu, Mar 24th 2011 4:20a Ben Poole No matter what people say about him (much of it justified), the Wookiee has his plus points. One of them is how, a couple of years ago, he re-introduced me to the joys of graphic novels and comics. I still refuse to read them on the train, and I only possess a few, but they’re damned good ones!
So anyway, what with being a web geek, a sucker for adventure tales, and revelling in beautiful design, I couldn’t help but fall head over heels in love with the Wormworld Saga. I urge you to [read] Keywords:
42
Twitter comments
Wed, Mar 9th 2011 3:29a Ben Poole Thinking about following the crowd, and using twitter for published “comments” against a blog post or news article?
I wouldn’t. It just looks really ploppy if your article is re-tweeted ad infinitum! [read] Keywords: twitter
56
The end of the IT department
Thu, Feb 24th 2011 6:41a Ben Poole David Heinemeier Hansson has written a provocative post on the 37signals blog about the end of the IT department, with somewhat predictable comments ensuing. I particularly enjoyed John Gruber’s pithy analysis of said thread:
Certain of the comments on Hansson’s post remind me of this quote from Upton Sinclair: It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
:-) Anyway, back to Heinemeier Hansson:
At the same time, IT jo [read] Keywords: policies
exchange
exchange
security
server
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Starting with Ruby - part 2
Tue, Feb 22nd 2011 11:39a Ben Poole So, here we are. By now you have Ruby up and running, and you’re itching to flex those coding muscles (no? OK, back to the beginning for you). We’re going to kick off with a few of the basics, using irb. In going through the inevitable Hello World example, you’ve seen how to just echo stuff to the console. But what about something, well, more? For those of you coming from a Java background, this “suck it and see” approach using the Ruby shell (irb) is rather pleasan [read] Keywords: java
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On re-designs & media queries
Thu, Feb 17th 2011 5:48a Ben Poole .comments {color: green}
So what with rebuilding servers and things the other night, I figured what the hell, and instead of replicating my old website back up to the box, I slung my new design up instead. There were a few bits that needed sorting (server re-directs, some configuration, a few HTML tweaks), but overall the new design was 95% there, so perhaps this was the kick I needed to get it out.
The re-design was originally done in HTML5, just to see if I could. Worked pretty nicely, but [read] Keywords: agent
domino
apple
application
cascading style sheets
css
development
firefox
iphone
linking
mobile
server
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Starting with Ruby
Wed, Feb 16th 2011 4:43a Ben Poole What is Ruby? How do I get started? What’s this “Ruby On Rails”? All good questions, which I shall answer in good time. Put simply, Ruby is a fully object-oriented, interpreted programming language. It was developed some fifteen years ago by Yukihiro Matsumoto, and the underlying philosophy was to develop something that was enjoyable to use, and that abided by the “principle of least astonishment” (POLA). Unlike say, Java, Ruby is dynamically typed (and famously mak [read] Keywords: application
database
development
interface
java
linux
mac
mysql
wiki
ubuntu
42
Pardon our dust
Wed, Feb 16th 2011 3:17a Ben Poole An unscheduled maintenance window opened up last night (cough), and I took advantage of this to stick the new version of my site up. It’s barely tested, so if you encounter anything unusual, please bear with me! [read] Keywords:
45
Pardon our dust
Wed, Feb 16th 2011 2:50a Ben Poole An unscheduled maintenance window opened up last night (cough), and I took advantage of this to stick the new version of my site up. It’s barely tested, so if you encounter anything unusual, please bear with me! [read] Keywords:
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DDE on Mac & Linux? Nope.
Tue, Feb 15th 2011 12:47p Ben Poole The whole Designer-on-Mac / Linux thing has cropped up again of late, and there’s been a flurry of activity around the associated IdeaJam posts too. Bill Malchisky’s post has a very eloquent take on it all.
Some of us have been clamouring for Domino Designer back on the Mac since it was pulled in release five. The Mac OS landscape (and mindshare of course) has changed dramatically since the R5 days, and then IBM came along and added fuel to the fire by using Eclipse as the base for [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
lotusphere
notes
notes client
R5
xpages development
eclipse
ideajam
ideajam.net
java
linux
mac
server
websphere
ubuntu
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Introducing Couchbase
Tue, Feb 8th 2011 2:11a Ben Poole Ooh now this is an interesting development: Damien Katz: CouchOne + Membase = Couchbase Together as Couchbase, we’ll have the fastest, most scalable (both scale up and scale down) NoSQL solution. We will become the standard storage for mobile devices, and the standard server technology for syncing them all together. Our unified solution will dramatically simplify your technology stack and maintenance for building fast responsive apps that scale to millions of users, and also scaling down to ph [read] Keywords: development
mobile
network
server
28
Have you played yet?
Mon, Feb 7th 2011 9:54a Ben Poole Volker has a cool thread running in which you can take a guess at the various Lotus-y individuals, companies and doo-dads that litter the piece of pixel art we at the London Developer Co-op commissioned for Lotusphere this year. It’s good fun, go and take a peek! [read] Keywords: lotus
lotusphere
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No redeeming qualities, just bitter invective
Wed, Jan 26th 2011 1:37p Ben Poole Larry Bowden, Vice President of portals and web experience at IBM, has written an article entitled, How to make your website more enjoyable which is fascinating, for all the wrong reasons. I don’t know whether I should even link to it (Hah! Of course I do. Here it is). It seems extraordinary to me that IBM have a senior person in charge of the car-crash that comprises their website—especially when said individual then feels compelled to write an article asking readers whether they “delight [read] Keywords: ibm
email
mobile
profile
38
James Governor on Lotus
Thu, Jan 20th 2011 1:52p Ben Poole Industry analyst James Governor has published an article in the run-up to Lotusphere, talking about the Lotus brand “re-building” its developer story. It’s a good piece and doesn’t re-hash the same tired themes from certain other quarters of the IT press: take a look, see what you think.
James Governor, Lotus Gears Up To Embrace The Web, Rebuild its Developer Story, pwn Social Business.
The developer’s lot, when it comes to Lotus, is something a lot of us take an [read] Keywords: collaboration
domino
ibm
lotus
lotusphere
notes
application
development
interface
33
Why ask the Product Managers?
Wed, Jan 19th 2011 1:28p Ben Poole Splendid discussion today, over at Peter Presenell’s site about the new “Ask the product managers” session at Lotusphere this year. I skimmed the post, and read the comments: lots of good points being made in there. One comment stands-out, from John Head:
A customer with tens of thousands of seats will always be able to call up their Lotus contact and have more influence than someone posting an idea on the web.
He is spot-on. And for me, therein lies the rub: this is why Note [read] Keywords: lotus
lotusphere
notes
bleedyellow
bleedyellow.com
Starting with such sad news
Tue, Jan 4th 2011 2:37p Ben Poole So, to all a happy new year. Here’s hoping it gets better…
You know, I hate to start things on a downer, but first Pete Postlethwaite and now Mick Karn? (Not to mention Gerry Rafferty). This is a terrible start to the year: three extremely talented men, with a lot more to give us. R.I.P. each of you. [read] Keywords:
25
So, that was 2010
Fri, Dec 31st 2010 5:09a Ben Poole I always do some kind of “year in review” post at this site, which is interesting for me if no-one else. However, I have been disinclined to do so this year. I’m not entirely sure why, but suspect it has to do with a combination of factors:
I’m lazy
I’ve only written forty-six posts this year (not including this one): less than one a week!
It’s been a bit of a strange year, with a lot of doom ’n’ gloom in the wider world
However, during the cou [read] Keywords: domino
notes
macbook
wiki
47
How to fix a lack of PDFs in iBooks
Wed, Dec 29th 2010 4:08p Ben Poole (A wee post for Mr. Google if no-one else). The Apple discussion forums are full of disgruntled iBooks users, lamenting the loss of PDFs they have sync’ed (or are trying to sync) to their iPhone or iPad, and I joined their serried ranks recently.
I updated to the latest ’n’ greatest (version 1.2), and sure enough: no more PDFs.
“What the flip?” thought I. Like many, I gather PDF-based texts as I pootle along the highways and by-ways of t’internet, and it’ [read] Keywords: apple
application
google
iphone
33
Merry Christmas!
Fri, Dec 24th 2010 5:35p Ben Poole So, the veg. are done, the table is laid, the turkey a-ready: I can now sit down and wish my readers a very merry Christmas and happy holidays! You three make my day, and I run this site just for you guys. Here’s hoping for a splendiferous 2011 for us all (and let’s face it, it can’t be any worse than 2010, surely??!) [read] Keywords:
44
Delicious tip
Thu, Dec 16th 2010 6:50p Ben Poole In light of today’s leaked news re Yahoo! killing Delicious, amongst other services, you might find this wee command handy if you have a *NIX shell to hand: curl -o delicious.xml https://{your username}:{your password}@api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/all What is it with social bookmarking sites? First ma.gnolia died on me, and now this. Bah! [read] Keywords: password
social bookmarking
xml
Dr. Donald Ferguson on complexity
Thu, Dec 9th 2010 9:22a Ben Poole Dr. Donald Ferguson, CTO at CA Technologies, is asked what his biggest technology mistake is:
When I was at IBM, I started a product called Websphere…
’nuff said as far as I’m concerned, but the interview has more detail if you can stomach it In all seriousness, the article contains some good messages about the future of IT, and the main challenge it faces: complexity.
Read more at BBC news: The mantra of CA Technologies’ Donald Ferguson: Simplify. [read] Keywords: ibm
websphere
33
It’s A Small Lotus World
Thu, Dec 9th 2010 5:01a Ben Poole All of us at the London Developer Co-op are privileged to be part of a fund-raising effort conceived by Bruce Elgort, and the lovely Gayle in aid of the Children’s Cancer Association (CCA) in the US.
Please head on over to Bruce’s site to read the full story, and for details about the piece of “isometric pixel art” we commissioned as the prize in our charity draw! Here’s a sneak preview:
As implied in the name, the drawing will take place at Lotusphere—spe [read] Keywords: lotus
lotusphere
wiki
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Erm. Comments are fixed (blush)
Mon, Dec 6th 2010 5:50p Ben Poole I have been a-tinkering with this site, cleaning up code and design elements (some of which are over five years old!) in readiness for the new design going live here soon.
Inevitably, in the process, I ballsed up my comments form. Dear oh dear. Anyway, should be fixed now. Sorry about that! [read] Keywords:
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Get on Route 53
Mon, Dec 6th 2010 6:50a Ben Poole Now this is good news for AWS customers: A reliable, cloud-based DNS service has been one of the most requested offerings by our customers. With Route 53, you can create a “hosted zone” to add DNS records for a new domain or transfer DNS records for a domain you currently own. The rate at which Amazon implement customer requests is pretty impressive. This issue came up a few times at the AWS seminar I attended recently, and now I understand the odd wry grin from the Amazon staff there. There [read] Keywords:
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New London Developer Co-op site is live
Mon, Nov 29th 2010 1:10p Ben Poole Us folks at the London Developer Co-op have finally released our new-look website in to the wild. There are a couple of interesting things about this site: It’s coded in IBM Lotus Domino! Domino is a cracking platform for small ad hoc content management systems (CMS), and if you already have the infrastructure, why not use it? It’s not hosted on a normal Domino box. It’s in the cloud baby!—Amazon Web Services to be exact There are some CSS3 goodies in there, including @media directives [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
lotus
cascading style sheets
firefox
iphone
java
javascript
mobile
server
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"There Will Be Code"
Wed, Nov 10th 2010 3:15p Ben Poole I spent a very interesting afternoon yesterday in west London, at the free Amazon Web Services Tech Summit for Developers and Architects. It was quite something, and my little brain is still cogitating, ruminating and speculating, but I shall attempt to summarise nonetheless…
The event was billed as something that would show developers, engineers, and architects how to get started with AWS infrastructure services and how to architect applications for the cloud, and on that they mos [read] Keywords: ibm
application
applications
development
google
interface
mysql
oracle
security
server
twitter
wiki
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Changing education paradigms
Mon, Oct 25th 2010 10:30a Ben Poole They’ve done it again. The whizzes at RSA Animate have come up with another inspiring animation, worked around an informative and fascinating talk from Sir Ken Robinson concerning education: Read more: the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (they even have an iPhone app now). [read] Keywords: application
iphone
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Rework: more important than ever?
Thu, Oct 21st 2010 12:33p Ben Poole Some months ago parts of the techie web was a-twitter with posts about a new book from the 37signals guys entitled REWORK: Change The Way You Work Forever. This is a shame. Not because the book isn’t good (it most certainly is), but because it deserves an audience far wider than the one I suspect it has. This is a book that just about anyone should read because its lessons are far-reaching, and it abounds in sense which is most definitely of the “common” variety. Whilst this book is most d [read] Keywords: twitter
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Matt White demonstrates SSO with Facebook
Wed, Oct 20th 2010 5:07a Ben Poole M’colleague Mr. White has posted a quick video showing off a nifty new feature in the forthcoming 1.1 release of IQJam: single sign-on (SSO) with Facebook! Very clever, given that Domino has no native OAuth integration options at present. This post is also timely given the current focus in Lotus land on directory integration, identity management, and the like. Check it out! Read more: Matt White, Facebook SSO to XPages. [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
lotus
xpages enterprise
facebook
integration
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Today’s coding WTF
Tue, Oct 19th 2010 8:30a Ben Poole This is some code—nothing added, nothing taken away—that I’m having to work with today. The temptation to rip the whole lot out and start again is so strong, I cannot tell you. Must… be… strong… function functionNewDocSFSubmit01() { submitForm("01"); } function functionNewDocSFSubmit02() { submitForm("02"); } function functionNewDocSFSubmit03() { submitForm("03"); } function functionNewDocSFSubmit04() { submitForm("04"); } Help [read] Keywords:
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Porcupine Tree last night
Fri, Oct 15th 2010 3:30p Ben Poole Well that was just astounding… Last night was spent in the beautiful environs of the Royal Albert Hall enjoying the last night of the mighty Porcupine Tree’s current tour—and what a night it was! The gig started at 7.45, and went on ’til dead-on eleven. No support, just the band, with two small intermissions. The band opened with a semi-acoustic set at the front of the stage, featuring electric piano, guitars, double bass and brushed drums. After a break they then “went electr [read] Keywords: facebook
Domino and CXF web services
Wed, Oct 13th 2010 6:50a Ben Poole My colleague / partner in crime Mr. Myers (AKA “The Wookiee”) has published a useful post about getting Domino 8 up and running with Apache CXF for web services. I know, I know, Domino 8+ has its own web service consumer design element, and that’s all well and good, but when you want to use a heavy-duty framework with lots of possibilities, CXF appears to be the main way forward. So here it is, enjoy! Mark Myers: CXF webservices on Domino. [read] Keywords: domino
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CSS performance
Wed, Sep 8th 2010 5:00a Ben Poole blockquote cite {font-style:normal; display: block; margin: .75em 0 0 0} blockquote cite:before {content: '—'} pre {background-color: #eee; border: .1em solid #ccc; color: #000; padding: .5em; width: 80%} Some thoughtful and useful reading if you’re at all interested in CSS best practice and performant web site design: Decorating your markup with classes and ids and matching purely on those while avoiding all uses of sibling, descendant and child selectors will actually make a page perfor [read] Keywords: archive
best practice
cascading style sheets
css
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Java dates ’n’ Strings: oh noes
Tue, Sep 7th 2010 10:49a Ben Poole Today’s Java WTF: parsing a two-digit year value from a time-date value expressed as a String. Meh, that’s not brittle or anything… String tmp = someDoc.getItemValueString("someDateField"); String arrTmp[] = tmp.split("/"); int year = Integer.parseInt(arrTmp[2]); That which is seen in one’s IDE cannot be unseen. Don’t do this at home kids. [read] Keywords: development
java
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How to work with your developers
Mon, Sep 6th 2010 8:20a Ben Poole p.preamble {font-style: italic} The first part of an occasional, irregular (in every sense of the word) series of posts outlining how to get the best from your developer. The software developer is a simple soul. Whilst you should keep yours caffeinated and with a steady supply of things to whine about (I think everyone knows those rules), there is a fine line on the “whingeing” part: you can go too far with your developer! Here are some tips to bear in mind when trying to optimise your devel [read] Keywords: css
email
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Dander 2010: Yorkshire Three Peaks
Thu, Aug 19th 2010 11:40a Ben Poole So it was that time of year again: another dander! After the success of Malham last September, we opted for an August jaunt around the Yorkshire Three Peaks, a somewhat more challenging trot. Once assembled at Kings Cross, your intrepid danderers (Matt White, the brave / crazy Alison, The Wookiee (plus his long-suffering wife Aliki), and yours truly) were good to go. We grabbed a train to Leeds, and then met up with Eileen Fitzgerald for the branch line out to our destination, Horton-in-Ribblesd [read] Keywords:
