Please excuse the occasional glitch while I finish the current redesign…
There’s been an awful lot of griping on the NUG over the past few months. Now, I understand that everyone’s entitled to an opinion, but some of it has gone waaaaay over the top. In that spirit, I present the Top 5 Things I’m Digging About RB 2005/2006. Just to be clear, I started using RB2005 exclusively from the moment it was available, and I’m currently using RB2006r2 full-time. I use REALbasic for my job every day, so I’m not just dabbling here. Anyway, here’s the list.
I know it’s not for everyone, but I’m digging it. Admittedly, when I first saw Geoff’s demo at REAL World 2004, I was horrified. About five minutes later, I got it. Now I can’t go back to RB 5.x. It’s too awkward.
When they were first available, I was stoked. Then I lost interest, because I didn’t really have a need for them. Then I found a great way to use them, and I was again stoked.
For some reason, I just get a kick out of controls having a “Right As Integer” or “Bottom As Integer” property. Of course, there are useful applications as well.
Yes, it definitely has some issues, and yes, I’d love to be able to print from it, but dang, it sure has made Tangelo prettier and more functional.
Wicked fast, and eminently hackable, not that I condone such behavior, because I don’t.
I’ve neglected to mention that I’ve written an article for REALbasic Developer. The editor and publisher, Marc Zeedar, attended my Kodiak session at REAL World a couple months back, and recently asked me if I’d be interested in writing one of the magazine’s Postmortem features on my baby bear. Naturally, I jumped at the chance.
If you don’t subscribe, now’s a good time to do so, unless you don’t actually program in REALbasic, in which case you should just plan to buy the next issue.
Here’s a brief excerpt from article, and I hope Marc doesn’t mind my quoting it here:
But Assessment Tools left me with an additional problem: now I had student data spread across three systems instead of two. The following week, I went to Dave and said, “I think we should build our own system and pull the plug on one of the others.” He thought it was an idea worth pursuing, since it seemed it would solve several problems at once: the server crashes, data consolidation, and faculty acceptance. Since this wasn’t a decision to be made lightly, we approached Dave’s boss, the Assistant Superintendent, and she agreed to talk to the Superintendent to get his thoughts on the matter. He said we could do it, with the understanding that if we failed, he would do nasty things to us.
Reuters: A South Korean man upset at not being able to find a job protested his plight by climbing into a zoo pen with a pair of rhinoceroses.
Well, that just sounds super-productive. I’m sure it will help him find a new and better job right away. Lots of high-paying companies are probably in the market for a new desperate idiot.
I’ll admit it: I’m a big softie. I have a long and storied history of crying at movies, dating back to my childhood when Snoopy, Come Home always choked me up.
This afternoon, the movie of choice was Because of Winn-Dixie. It was a good movie, very cute and family friendly. And yes, it made me cry.
Now, before you go hurling epithets at me, let me explain. There were several themes at work in this film. First, there was the (very obvious) dog theme. I’m a dog-lover, through and through (note my Snoopy reference above), so dog movies get me every single time. Second, there was the father/daughter theme. Being the father of a young girl myself, I have an automatic affinity for such stories. Then throw in the redemption theme and toss in a world-weary guitarist who just wants to play music for animals, and you’ve got yourself a surefire tearjerker as far as I’m concerned. I didn’t stand a chance.
All kidding aside, I was very interested to see how Dave Matthews did in this film, as I’ve never seen him act before. I thought he did a good job, although it would have been tough for him to mess up the whole freaky musician thing. His guitar playing, which I nearly always enjoy, was a really nice touch in several parts of the film.
Anyway, Grace had invited a friend over to watch the movie, and the two of them were lying on the floor in front of the couch, so I don’t think they saw me wiping my eyes. I’m not sure if Jen did or not, but I was slightly more confident that she wouldn’t tease me as much as the girls would have. In the end, nobody said anything, so either Jen didn’t see, or she was being kind. I could go either way.
Let me conclude by saying that this curse is genetic. My mother cries at coffee commercials, so at least I’m a step up from that. By the way, Mom, feel free to leave a comment some time. I know you read this. 
Ah, a good day!
Today concluded my pilot run of online testing at Etown. It went swimmingly. This is a strange feeling for me, becuase everything at Etown is typically two or three steps more difficult than it has to be. But this actually went well.
At Etown, we do a lot of testing. Each student takes a pre-test and a post-test in both reading and math. We look at this data in several ways to track and predict student progress. This is a good thing.
However, since 1998 or so, this has all been done with Scantron stuff. Now, don’t get me wrong: I like Scantron. My new ES2260 scanner rocks. It’s blazing fast. But OMR scanning technology has serious limits. It needs perfect paper. Wrinkle the paper and the test won’t scan right. Staple, fold, or clip the paper, and the test won’t scan right. Dump coffee on the paper (I received a stack of coffee-stained tests just yesterday, thank-you-very-much) and the test won’t scan right.
And when the test won’t scan right, that means we’re not being as accurate as we could be. Not to mention the huge waste of resources in re-printing tests and copying answers from a bad sheet to a good sheet.
In short, these scan forms are the bane of my existence. Well, ones of the banes of my existence.
So what’s the solution? REALbasic and PostgreSQL to the rescue, naturally!
I recently began working on a solution that would allow our students to take their tests on the computer instead of on paper.
As a brief aside here, there was some initial resistance to the idea from some of our elementary folks, who were no doubt well-meaning in their dissent. They were afraid that taking the test on the computer might be too daunting for some of our younger students, who may have trouble reading what’s on the screen. This perplexed me, so I asked how they read what’s on the paper now. “Oh,” someone told me, “they don’t take the tests themselves. An aide writes down their answers on the test sheet!” When I suggested that said aide could simply enter these answers directly into the computer, I was met with wide-eyed stares.
At any rate, after a few false starts and some discouraging delays, yesterday was the big day. One brave Middle School math teacher offered to let me use one of her classes as my guinea pigs. And they loved it. As I circulated during the test, one kid looked up at me and said, “This is awesome.” Wow.
And the teacher loved that she could see the results in real time. That was a huge plus for her.
Today, as the test wrapped up and the next class began to filter into the room, some of them asked what the computers were for. My guinea pigs replied that they were taking their post test online. “No fair!” shouted the newcomers. “How come we don’t get to take our test online?”
I call that a success.
From McSweeney’s Internet Tendency:
When me get back to apartment, after cookie binge, me can’t stand looking in mirror—fur matted with chocolate-chip smears and infested with crumbs. Me try but me never able to wash all of them out. Me don’t think me is monster. Me just furry blue person who love cookies too much. Me no ask for it. Me just born that way.
McSweeney’s continues to publish some of the funniest things I’ve ever read. Just the thought of Cookie Monster standing in his apartment, filled with self-loathing, is something I find hilarious. I highly recommend checking out some of their lists and Open Letters To People Or Entities Who Are Unlikely To Respond.
Of course, in our politically correct and hyper-sensitive world, Cookie Monster has declared that cookies are a “sometimes food” these days. Sacrilege.
Via The Dilbert Blog:
Savannah: “Scott, did you tell Justin that pedaling backwards makes you weaker?”
Me: “Um…I might have.”
It was then that I realized I probably ought to undo some other things I had told them, before they mention those things in school and get put in some sort of slow learner program.
Wow. GData. This is cool stuff.
I’ll be honest: I haven’t read the spec in its entirity yet, but I gotta say, this had the potential to be very, very big. Especially this part: the Calendar Data API. Check this out:
Google Calendar allows client applications to view and update calendar events in the form of Google data API (“GData”) feeds. Your client application can use the Google Calendar data API to create new events, edit or delete existing events, and query for events that match particular criteria.There are many possible uses for the Calendar data API. For example, you can create a web front end for your group’s calendar that uses Google Calendar as a back end. Or you can generate a public calendar for Google Calendar to display, based on your organization’s event database. Or you can search relevant calendars to display a list of upcoming events on those calendars.
I’m thinking that this could be the elusive shared calendar solution we’ve been searching for at work. If multiple people can edit it remotely, plus people can use iCal to enable synchronizing (at least on the Mac), then this has huge potential. Time to dive into web services again, I suppose.
Via Gadgetopia.
This is one of those things that if you get it, it’s really, really funny. And if you don’t, no amount of explaining will help.
From David Weiss’s blog. Good stuff. And the obligatory joke:
Q: What do rocket scientists say when they want to describe a portion of their work as easy?
A: “This bit isn’t exactly brain surgery.”
