Wacky Wiki

I have a much longer post in the works (mentally) on a related topic, but I had to get this thought out…

One of the main things I look for in the software that will run my web sites is something that (once installed) I can completely manage through the browser. I’ll accept that software upgrades may require working at the command line, but if I want to change content or layout, don’t make me edit files or muck around in the code.

For that reason, I think my use of MediaWiki may come to an end. I need to check out the new version (I’m using 1.4.x, and 1.5.4 is available), but from what I’ve seen in the few configuration changes I’ve made, I can’t imagine it being satisfactorily improved in the new version. The latest frustration point (changing the contents of the navigation sidebar) has been fixed in 1.5, so we’ll see…

My candy is trying to tell me something

Just now I ate a few Dove dark chocolates (very tasty)…

On the inside of the wrapper, they have quotes. The first one said “Find your passion.” I didn’t think much of it until I opened the next one, which said “Live your dreams.” Does my candy know something I don’t?

I better not read too much into it; the next one said “Be mischievous. It feels good.”

Get another Life!

I read today about Second Life, which sounds really interesting. It is “a 3D online persistent space totally created and evolved by its users”. Similar to Project Entropia, it has an in-game currency which can (at least in theory) be easily converted to real-world currency. Project Entropia really plays up this aspect, luring you to try to earn money by playing their game. Second Life seems more directed at designers and content creators, but they also promise the ability to “make real money in a virtual world”.

You can create one avatar in Second Life for free, but additional accounts (and premium accounts, which allow access to land ownership and a higher weekly allowance) cost $10 per month.

Fab Lab

“Fab Lab” is an abbreviation for Fabrication Laboratory. It is a group of off-the-shelf, industrial-grade fabrication and electronics tools, wrapped in open source software and programs written by researchers at the Center for Bits and Atoms.

Flexing

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.

Can Web Design Be Taught?

I am a software developer by trade. For the past several years, my work has almost exclusively been server-side Java coding. While this has been profitable in the corporate setting, it has limited my ability to branch out.

Because I’ve worked mostly on server-side coding, I have done very little with user interface design. When I was working with Smalltalk, I did some GUI design — all of it for desktop applications (mostly Windows), most of it based (at least loosely) on CUA. Unfortunately, this hasn’t helped me much as more of the world has moved to a browser environment.

The little bit of design I’ve done for web-based applications has been either very basic, built on a template or an installed application…