Monthly Archives: May 2007

Creative Industries Network Alert Widget

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CIF Network Alert WidgetFinally finished the Creative Industries Network Alerts Widgets (CIAlerts.widget Yahoo! flat-file, ~250k). Its purpose is to allow system administrators at QUT, where I work, to send out network alerts to staff and students when things go wrong on any of the servers.

You are free to download it, but be warned that you probably wont see very much (if anything) because it requires that someone send out an alert; and only Admins at QUT, where I work/study, can do that. The widget’s dynamically loaded source code is also available.

The widget is accompanied by a website from which the alerts are sent. Network admin can send three kinds of alerts: “Please Note”, “Attention”, and “Very Important”; each kind of alert comes with its own color (as seen above and below).

CIF Network Alert Widget in Please Note state CIF Network Alert Widget in Very Important state

Using XMLHttpRequest, The widget works by periodically polling the server for new alerts. The alerts are sent as a JSON header string and processed in the widget. The widget features:

Dynamic BootStrapper (bootstrap.js):
…details coming soon.
Custom Animation Engine:
…details coming soon.
Custom event subscription model:
…details coming soon.
Alerts database:
…details coming soon.
Simple Dock manager:
…details coming soon.

Widget Processing Model

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Widget Processing ModelStarted to diagram the a high-level flow-chart of the Widget Processing Model for the Widgets 1.0 Spec using Visio. It is still early days, but hoping to submit it to the WAF Working Group soon for discussion. I’ve particularly focused on resolving the localization of content problem following the model used by Apple, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Opera does not support localization of their widgets through automated folder selection, which makes them the odd one out.

If you have comments, you can post them here or on the WAF public list (public-appformats@w3.org). I’m also hoping to republish the Widgets 1.0 Requirements document within the next few weeks.

GPS Course: Great Brisbane Bike Ride

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Garmin ForeRunner 305I finally got around to publishing the GPS course for the Great Brisbane Bike Ride. If you live in Brisbane, Australia, you are free to download it and use it (race against virtual me :) ). I will put more GPS courses up as I capture them.

The courses were captured using a Garmin ForeRunner 305 which I recently purchased (pictured on the left). If you are into running or cycling, I highly recommend this nifty device; I use it almost every day. It tracks everything including your heartrate, and even lets your race your (virtual) self. It comes with great software (The Garmin Training Center – see their website for screenshots and details) for keeping track of all your stats and for viewing all your captured information on a map.

Unistalled Windows Vista!

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If you are thinking of installing Vista, don’t! It is easily the biggest waste of time and money ever. Their campaign should really focus on the “Wow! now that’s total crap” factor. Easily the most counter productivepiece of software I have ever used. After using it for 6 months I swear I was about to throw my laptop against the wall. I don’t usually experience frustration with software, but Windows Vista just goes too far. It’s slow, even with all the glitz turned off, and nothing works properly: could not print as the spooler service would constantly crash on start-up, explorer.exe constantly crashed, slow, slow, system freezes, more slowness, would not come back from sleep mode, argh I get angry just thinking about it!!!

I instead reverted back to WindowsXP (which we have now dubbed “the workhorse”). Out of frustration I also installed Ubuntu, hoping to free myself from Microsoft… alas, Linux still has a few years to go. The world is rosey again :)

April wrap up…

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Anne Van Kesteren and Marcos CaceresApril was a pretty crazy month. I held a WAF Working Group meeting at QUT, left the HTML Working Group, and then took a week off to walk the Overland Track in Tasmania (flickr photos!).

The working group meeting went well despite the fairly average attendance: we only had six members attend. I had hoped that at least 10 people would show up. On the upside, I finally got to meet Cameron McCormack and Lachlan Hunt (two new Australian recruits to the WAF Working Group) and we got lots of stuff done. The other people who attended included Art Barstow (Nokia, the Working Group chair), Guido Grassel (Nokia), and the always entertaining Anne van Kesteren (see picture, on the left). The minutes of the meeting are publically available at the w3c.

Wombat

The meeting centered around our current work:

And Anne van Kesteren gave a presentation to QUT staff and students about the future of HTML… HTML5. Continue reading →