Technical Overview - Native Client — Google Developers

Technical Overview - Native Client — Google Developers

This allows you to compile C/C++ as a kind of in web browser app. I could build some very cool things with this ( If I had the time).

kuler colour composition

 One day I would write a book about HCI for programmers and this book would contain all the things they don't teach you on an HCI course but you need to know about to make software that works. In this case it would be a short intro to colour theory.

Setting up a colour pallet before you start your design is one of those things you need to do and
kuler
is a lovely tool to help you do it.

Jaron Lanier - You Are Not A Gadget

Basically argues that we should treat our selves as super natural ( not emulatable by a machine ).
Also wants to go against the everything for free culture of the internet. Which is funny this is precisly what Ted Nelson approached in computer lib.

Handy website of the day

I found this a websites from the late 1990's with the original site + anonymised log data.

handy could do with a few more.

more ethernet sensors

PIC MAXI-WEB Server (60 proper dhcp)

Arduino shieild

Tables and chairs

Very excellent talk from Gonzalo Garcia-Perate yesterday. He of ArtifcalTrousisum and Making Sense of Space He had some nice chairs he was working on plus some lovely building based stuff not to mention advice on how to get ZigBee working with Aduino. 

I should email him to get info about the Arups group innovation somethign and foresight they sounded quite cool. 

Demoed the table to Yvonne looks quite cool now. I'm definitely leaning towards using Reactorvision as the primary engine. 

Looks like the Putnam visit will be a big deal. Some curiosity in the visualisations and floor stickys. 

The Audon sensor turned up looks good but needs a PC to operate.

Wiki thoughts

I'm sitting in a meeting about Wikis (Wikies?). 

The thing that strikes me is that there are two features that would be useful which are not currently available. 

1. A view when you can see the text coloured by 

 a) who has edited this (last) 

         b) How old is the text being edited. 

2. We need a wiki based on CVS (or subversion). This way may people can edit simultaneously, with out locking. 

The other thought I find interesting is a web based editor to collaboratively edit code. 

web2 meets games

So much for my web2.0 meets games idea for mike 

Modelling4All

Computer modelling is playing an increasingly important role in fields as varied as sociology, epidemiology, zoology, economics, archaeology, ecology, climate, and engineering. This project, led by Ken Kahn and involving Howard Noble (both at the OUCS, University of Oxford), will attempt to make such modelling more widely accessible by developing easy to use Web 2.0 services for building, exploring and analysing models, encouraging the development of an on-line community where models and model components are shared, tagged, discussed, organised, and linked to other resources.  Furthermore, the project will explore the possibilities of providing an immersive first-hand experience of the execution of models within Second Life.

Ambient compiler

There was some thought about how to improve the teaching of programming at the OU. I had an odd thought.

Why not have a 'compiler' on line? that is your code is stored on the server and then you access the code from a text box on a web form. One of the form buttons is 'compile' which does some ajaxy magic which then sends the text back to the server where the text is compiled. The error messages are then stuffed back into the html code. When the user clicks 'run' the code is executed on the server and the result is piped back to the output a new window on the client.

Ok why do this? The problem is how to automatically evaluate the work of students. I suspect most people think about how to take the 'product' ( final source code) and mark it ( together with supporting info). This requires trying to understand the process from the source (alone). That process is one which requires someone experianced not only in the lanaguage but java and process I belive that would be impossible to automate. The degree of success of this depends on how much you belive in automatic teaching.

Well if you have the code on the server then you get a stream on log files that indicate who the code evolved. the problem is to find out if the code genuinly the result of the pupil or the result of some creative 'cutting and pasteing'. As such providing the code matches the desired output then if the production process appears normal then the pedigogical results must be achived.
http://try.flex.org/ example of one line compiler of a flex language.
http://nirvana.informatik.uni-halle.de/~thuering/php/latex-online/latex.php Online LaTex compiler.
Online java upload based compiler

i like the idea of a website where the documentation and compiler text box are surrounded by other useful links ( chat room?). not perfet for hard core coders but good as a beginner space.

Web CGI idears

I bumped into AT who was building a CGI interface in C++ and complaing over the extra 800k the C++ cgilib adds to each CGI script.

I suggested the idea of doing a Ruby on rails with C. I have two suggestions

1. An XML/HTML document format that mixes HTML with C code like this ( filemycgi.XCGI )


[HTML]
[TITLE] HELLO [/TITLE]
{bODY]
[TABLE]
[% int i ; for( i = 0 ; i < 100 ; i++ ) { !%]
[T-D] [!% printf("%d i"); !%]
[ !% } // NEXT !%]
[/TABLE]
[/HTML]



each CGI would then be run through COMPILER which would take the HTML and embed it as printf()s into a c source code file then pass the C file to gcc with a small library. producing the mycgi.exe or a.out. This way when you run the CGI you get a high speed response and a pre compiled language. Even the CGI source can be removed to make the code work.

The system would come with a number of libaries that would make working with a database and other files work. Possibly even a template re-writing system.

2. Second and slightly diffrent idea.
Have a pre-adaptive system. In essance you set up a watcher that scans the file system/database/time/ to pre-build html files then write them out to disk.

It would work like this. In your watcher file.

Database "urbanist" on localhost with user 'watcher' and password 'bobo' has trigger 'triggerone'
change to table products -> doreformatproducts.watcher ;

Database "urbanist" on localhost with user 'watcher' and password 'bobo' has trigger 'triggerTwo'
change to table users
-> donewuser.watcher < { (select * from users where time > last_time } ;
-> last_time = getimeseconds() ;

file template.css hashchanges -> doformatproducts.watcher ; // this generates producs.html

// touched is any ateration.

file products.html touched -> email( "sheep@mywerbsite.com" , products rechanged ) ;
// backward changes sidebar.html depends upon template
file sidebar.html <-( directory /usr/web/html/www/mysite/folders changes ) dosidebar // generates sidebar.html

file sidebar.html touched -> ssh it to sheep@website.com:password // moves it to website on outside firewall.

change can have multiple dependaces and multiple actions
// time acts like
time every day at 1:00am -> doformatproducts.watcher ; // update products once per day.
time every week -> doformatproducts.watcher ; email("me@myself.com" , "products changed " ) ;

so conceptually a combination of cron,triggers and file updates with make.

odd proxy thought of the day.

Another couple of times my machine has been hanging to display the page while it gets an image from an avertising server ( hint store them locally guys).

I just had the idea of a local proxy server ( possibly a permachine proxy or local grou better ) this would look for requests or adverts and banners. The concept would be to replace these with calls you make up special banners for you. For example you might find an avert repalced with 'bob you have a meeting in 20mins'. Or info on your disk usage ( 2 years 3 months until hard drive is full or Email from ruth arrived in 10 mins.

I quite like this combined with the RCA products avertsing features for things you already own.
'Want to make you images look older look for sepia in your copy of Photoshop'.

I've already had thoguhts on a local P2P proxy. Everytime you machine asks for an image or static page the UDP request goes out to the local network to see if anyone has it. This way people share cache space with out complex proxys.

Perhaps you could combine this with a web only style suggestions 'you looked at this and you might want to think about that web page that someone else looked at at the same time'.

Finally you could also include the southhampton addtion of suggested links. That is it looks at the content and adds links to enhance the content ( although there should be something that does that statically for all web pages ).