Jim Roepcke's weblog have browser, will travel (est. 1999)

Cherry on Rome’s show

Cherry on media: 'pinko, Commies'

Don Cherry rocks. I've always loved and respected him, and I've always tried to be like him (my dad is the same way). I say it like I see it and if you don't like it, that's your problem.

Hydra: collaborative text editor

Hydra looks very, very good. Steve and I just tried it out together on a python module and it was amazing.

RE: Soybo, a long time coming

Digging deeper into Soybo, the packaging is not great. Unfortunately, one has to manually download and install MySQL, PHP, and more. Not sure why, but I thought that this would have come with dedicated binaries for these components. Hopefully some day there's a proper installer available that ships with all the binaries required to get it running (Apple's GUI Scripting would still be a separate download/install though, I guess). If that's too heavy, maybe using a smaller database engine like SQLite would work.

Soybo, a long time coming

I've been waiting over 4 years and 7 months (at least) for something like this...

"Soybo is a cross-platform and device independent technology for enabling remote access to computing resources."

What does that mean? It's a bridge between the internet and your desktop applications (and other capabilities of your computer). Access specific functionality of programs on your computer without using a screen-sharing program like VNC or Timbuktu Pro.

I've done one-off things like this over the years, but never got around to building a framework for simplifying and securing the concept. I've just downloaded Soybo and started looking at the included scripts. PHP or AppleScript, two languages I don't like to code in, but it sounds like it will be possible to write scripts in other languages later on.

I think Soybo has a lot of potential.

Wind Waker will sell a ton ‘o Cubes

Nintendo: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

This game is unbelievable. The graphics and animation are truly amazing. The detail is breathtaking. I think this game is going to take quite a while to finish.

And we (Shane and I) still have to finish Ocarina of Time from the Wind Waker bonus disc! Agghh!

Classy tennis fans in Florida

Booed Loit suffers loss

It's one thing for the Montreal hockey fans to boo the US national anthem, and the Atlanta fans to return the favour... they're booing the national anthems, the countries, not the players, the teams. It's political, but it's not aimed at the people on the ice.

But to boo a solitary athlete like that, that's just pathetic. The level of discourse is hitting all-time lows lately.

Canada is a crappy friend

National Post: All we had to do was be a good friend - "Canada noticeably absent from the list of U.S. allies thanked"

Reading this made me sad. Really, really sad. It should make all Canadians sad, regardless of what side of the ideological fence they sit on regarding the war with Iraq. This war is happening, whether anyone likes it or not. That doesn't mean all Canadians have to support the war itself, but considering how important our relations are to each other (Americans who don't think Canada is important to them simply haven't done their homework, but that's okay, we're used to being obscure and don't mind that much) we do need to be good friends and support each other through these times.

This period, this administration, is going to end. Whether it's 1.5 or 5.5 years from now doesn't really matter, but it's going to end. Unfortunately our Americans neighbours' memories of how our leaders, how WE turned our backs on them isn't going to end, not in 5 or 10 years. Maybe not even in 20 or 50. And that really sucks for us. Honestly, I hope Americans forget really soon, or, we get the courage to do something about it now before it's too late.

The reality is, even if we wanted to send troops into Iraq, we couldn't have. My understanding is we're fully committed already, pretty much everyone is in Afghanistan. Our military is small. Good, but small, and very overextended. But like this article shows, we didn't need to send troops or planes in order to be good allies, we just had to be supportive neighbours. We couldn't even manage that. How embarassing.

This afternoon I saw a piece on CBC Newsworld about some heated discussion in the Canadian House of Commons today between the PQ and our Prime Minister. Apparently, 31 Canadian soldiers ARE in fact fighting with the coalition in Iraq, having been transferred to the armies of other coalition countries. So fellow Canadian, next time your American friend mentions we aren't contributing, remind them that we are in some small way, whether you agree with it or not, and then apologize on behalf of all Canadians that our leaders are too arrogant and snooty to acknowledge it and support our allies.

When I first heard Bush say "You're either with us or against us", I never thought Americans would stand behind that statement. But by and large they have, and now the French, Germans, Russians and Canadians are suddenly bad guys. That's unfortunate, there is so little respect for alternative views anymore in America. We're with American on this war on terror, but some people think that it can be dealt with in a different way.... and that doesn't make those people the enemy.

VoodooPad source license?

Gus Mueller replied to my request for source licenses to commercial applications I use, including his VoodooPad application.

His response is very encouraging! I hope other developers feel the same.

This morning I noticed that the four applications I want the source to are all writing apps, or closely related to writing. OmniOutliner and VoodooPad are purely writing applications. Sid is a writing application for Conversant weblogs. NetNewsWire isn't purely a writing application, but it has two writing components, the weblog editor and the notepad. I'm not sure I'd want NNW's source to change/improve the writing components specifically, but I have a lot of other ideas for NNW.

As I was writing this, I was thinking of what other benefits developers could get out of having a source licensing program. Having a private developer community sprang to mind. People who bought a source license would be allowed to subscribe to a private mailing list that only other source licensees were on. Licensees could share ideas with each other, help each other add the features they're trying to implement, etc.

(Rambling now...) I can see this being a bit of a support headache for the developer, if the licensees asked too many questions or requested too much free support. I think the developer could help themselves by setting clear expectations of how much time he/she was willing to spend on the list answering questions or participating, or by also setting up a paid support program in addition to the source license program. (end of rambling)

So what would a developer get out of this? Well, imagine if you had one or more of the following developers purchase a source license and be an active participant on the list: bbum, sabi, Mike Ferris. I think a developer could learn a lot simply by following a discussion where these people were discussing different aspects of your codebase. And I think the other licencees could get just as much out of it. And if you ever needed to hire another developer, either full time, part time or for a short period, you'd have a good stable to pick from.

Source License for Commercial apps?

Lately I've been wishing I had a source license for some of the closed-source Cocoa applications I use on a daily basis. I'd like to be able to add personal features without having to wait for the vendor to add them. I can hear some people saying already, "AppleScript", or "Services menu", or "contextual menu plugin". No, no, no. I want fully integrated features, not disjointed scripts in languages I'm not proficient with. Given the opportunity, I can write features seamlessly into the application directly using Objective-C, and to me, that's a lot more productive and gives better results.

Most of the things I'd like these apps to do are things that are too specific to be useful to a broad audience, and are unlikely to be implemented otherwise. But then again, if they are useful features, and the vendor would like to merge my private improvements into their app, they could license that code back from me, saving them from having to do the implementation from scratch themselves. But that's not a serious part of my motivation... I just want to be able to make these applications do all the things I want them to do.

I'm not looking for a way to make a custom version of an app and redistribute it. I'd certainly want the right to be able to say what I've done with my copy, but not necessarily be allowed to redistribute my changes publicly. I guess that all depends on what the vendor is comfortable with allowing.

So why not use an open source application to begin with? Well, I do use open source applications, but for the apps I'm wishing source licenses for, I would not seriously consider abandoning them for weaker (or non-existent) open source alternatives. Not to mention I do like to support developers! I don't hesitate to register software when I plan to use it. Sometimes I even register software before I try it... for example, I registered CodeTek's VirtualDesktop product before I even downloaded it. Unfortunately, I found the application didn't meet my needs at the time, but since then, the product has improved immensely, and I believe that my early support and the support of others was what funded those improvements.

I do not think that many closed source vendors are necessarily against letting users license their source. I don't think trade secrets are the reason the apps are only shipped as binaries. I think developers want a fair reimbursement for their work, so they can achieve their goals, personal and business.

I do think that a source license is worth a lot more than a binary license. How much more? Not sure. But 2-10 times more seems realistic and reasonable to me, depending on how much the application cost to begin with.

Realistically, the market for source licenses is small indeed, and the risks very high, so I imagine developers get a little squeamish thinking this. It would certainly suck if someone were to publish someone else's proprietary source, and it would be hard to find out who did it. Personally, I would be happy to sign an NDA and whatever other legal documents (within reason, and nothing that would harm my own livelihood) to make a vendor comfortable letting me have access to source code.

So, what apps do I want source licenses for?

NetNewsWire
VoodooPad
OmniOutliner
Sid

Your thoughts about this?

VoodooPad is for real

I'm addicted to VoodooPad after using it for only two days. This afternoon I hit the limit of 15 pads for the unregistered version, and the application popped up a dialog to tell me so.

I immediately clicked the button to go register my copy, and bought two licenses. A few minutes later I had my registration number entered and I was able to continue expanding my VoodooPad document.

If you haven't tried it out yet, please do. It's such an intuitive and useful application. I'll sure I'll continue using OmniOutliner for structured writing, but the live Wiki mode is really great for me stream of concious writing and building up an organized (but unstructured) set of information, which is a mode I work well in.