For Hour of Code, Orchard Park Elementary School asked if anyone wanted to talk to the students about programming. I volunteered, and decided to show them Processing.js. They gathered each grade in the library where I demonstrated what they could do. The students then returned to their classrooms, and the group that had were in the computer classroom got the opportunity to tinker with the sketches to see how it would change.
While searching the archives of the Processing forums, I discovered Thinking Machine 4. I especially like what it does when it is not thinking about a move, just showing the squares that are influenced by pieces on the board.
Several weeks ago, I started creating a similar visualization, but the complexity quickly became too much for me to deal with in my spare time. This will inspire me to take a fresh look at the problem.
Before I describe what I did, let me point out that this might not be the best way (or even a sane way) to solve this problem. Regardless, it worked for me and I wanted to record it for posterity.
I have a SharePoint list (named “MLD” for short) that has two lookup columns, as shown here. Each one has a supporting list that the users maintain.
Originally, there was no connection between Release Lookup and Project Lookup, but I realized that Projects are tied to a Release (i.e. Everything in Project X will be in the same release). To support that, I added a Release column to the Projects list. I now had Release being set in two places, and maintaining the same information in two places is just asking for trouble. However, I didn’t want to remove Release from my MLD list, because I still want the ability to sort & filter by Release. What I needed was a workflow that would set the Release on MLD list items based on the Project that was chosen for that item.
I fired up SharePoint Designer (version 2007, which is the latest version compatible with my SharePoint site), and created a new workflow that would run any time an MLD item was created or updated. First, I created a variable to hold the ID of the selected project:
The next step was to store the Project ID from the current item in that variable, then look up the Release for that project in the Project Lookup list and assign that Release to the current MLD item.
I am looking for a way to migrate documents from one SharePoint site to another, and create items in a separate SharePoint list. I found a blog post that looked promising, so I fired up PowerShell to poke around.
I quickly found that my version of PowerShell (v1.0 on Windows XP) didn’t have the Get-SPWeb cmdlet that seemed to be the first step toward my goal, so I went in search of a newer version. I found another blog post that provided a link to the 2.0 download, but it also recommended articles by the Scripting Wife that I want to check out.
I installed 2.0, but I still don’t see the Get-SPWeb cmdlet I need…
I couldn’t get Xen to work on Fedora. I was following a quick start guide, but the computer failed to start with the Xen kernel.
I downloaded VMWare server and registered for a free license. During installation, it needed to compile a module; I didn’t have the compiler or kernel headers installed, so I had to dig around for the right packages to install. But once it was compiled and running, I installed Windows XP in a virtual machine on top of Linux.
I confirmed basic functionality (opened Internet Explorer and browsed to an external site), but the next step is to apply the all of the patches (including XP SP2). Then I’d like to clone the image and set up one for general use (Quicken, etc) and another for programming (compiler, debugger).
I noticed recently that Fedora Core 5 includes Xen (or at least makes it easier to install). I hadn’t used my Debian installation for a while, so I decided to wipe it and install Fedora. After I found the network install (boot.iso) and struggled a little to figure out the full URL I needed to enter for it to find packages, the installation was off and running.
Similar to Debian, it installed some packages I didn’t want, but the installation was fairly painless. It ran a long time, but I’m sure a large part of that was downloading packages. I actually started the installation twice, but the first time I entered a location in Norway (mostly because I had a better idea what path I needed to enter) and the downloads were taking forever. On the second attempt I found a server at NC State, and the installation went much quicker. It would be nice if the installer provided some assistance in identifying a fast mirror and the necessary path.
I did encounter two small problems:
More observations to come…
Looking back at previous posts, I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned Ruby or Rails yet. I guess I did post a few things on my wiki back in December and January, but nothing here.
I recently discovered radrails, and when I tried to create a rails project with it, my antivirus program barked:
Of course, when I try to view the virus information, there’s nothing there. I Googled for “spy.ruby.ka” and found only one page, which indicated that the virus signature was just added yesterday.
In my last post about Flex, I mentioned that there was a non-commercial license available. Well, I took the time to apply, and after several weeks (after I had given up hope, really) I got an email that I had been granted a license. The email contained a one-time link to the adobe store where I could buy Flex 1.5 and Flex Builder for the cost of shipping & handling. The online store didn’t handle the transaction correctly, but after contacting customer service a totally free copy was on its way to my house.
The CDs arrived this week, and I installed Flex Builder last night. When I find time to experiment with it I’m excited to see what I can produce…
One thing I love about blogs are sites like Technorati that make it easy for others to find blog entries. For example, John Dowdell found my post on Flex. He found my post using Technorati, and I found his the same way. I’m betting we used different search terms to find them, but the fact that one service connected us is pretty cool.
But what I really wanted to write about is Flex itself. I’ve always been intrigued by Flash, but could never justify the cost of the Flash development tools. I’ve looked at OpenLaszlo, which is great for the price (free) but lacks a good graphical development tool. If your idea of an IDE is Notepad, OpenLaszlo may be just what you need. They go one step further with their Eclipse plugin, but all it really provides is coding assistance, not graphical design tools.
I downloaded FlexBuilder 1.5, but haven’t had much time to work with it. With the little bit I have done, I’ve been impressed with the tools. What scares me is the price. What does it cost? Actually I have no idea. If you go to the Flex page and click on “Purchase Information“, you get a page that I interpret as “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it”.
I did see information about a non-commercial license, but it was confusing. It’s actually a non-commercial deployment license, implying that you don’t need it until you are ready to deploy your application. However, the copy of FlexBuilder I downloaded requires a license after an initial trial period, so it may expire before I can build anything.
Maybe I should skip version 1.5 and check out Flex 2 at their Labs site.
I continue to be impressed with the Windows tools in Helix, but have decided that it is really geared more toward criminal forensics than data recovery (it’s even got a chain of custody PDF).
I went back to DistroWatch.com and discovered a different category in the distribution search that appears more appropriate: Rescue. See my wiki for more details.