MCslp

Another developerWorks podcast interview

I’ve been interviewed again for developerWorks in their weekly podcast. As it happens, the interview took place on the one day in the middle of my move that I happened to have to have to work. In some ways it was nice to have a break, but in others, if it sounds in any way less coherent than normal, then you have a reason!

For this interview, I’m asked about my new article on JsonML. During the interview, Scott also takes the opportunity to check out how the move is going!

Read the overview: TWOdW for July 3, 2007 podcast show notes or listen to the podcast.

Moving is not conducive to blogging

Just in case you wonder why it’s been so quiet, I’ve just moved house, which means I’ve got a bunch of things to catch up on…

Despite the fact that I went on holiday and moved house over the period of four weeks the articles and pieces just kept on coming, so expect a sudden rash of follow up posts on the most recent articles and happenings later today.

Opening up comments (thanks Akismet)

For a long time I disabled comments on the site because I received a huge amount of comment spam. I’ve been running with Akismet now for months (and filtered over 11,000 items in the process), so I’m going to open up the site for comments.

You’re still going to need to register, but otherwise feel free to get involved!

Parallels blogs my Solaris/Parallels post

The team over at Parallels noticed my Working with Solaris 10 in Parallels Desktop piece over on Coalface, and had a few nice words to say about me. In particular:

For those of you unfamiliar with Martin, he’s a well respected tech journalist who contributes to a number of leading tech magazines and all-around computer guru. He just wrote up a great blog post about Parallels Destkop for Computerworld, titled “Parallels Lowers the Impact of Boot Camp.”

Read the short, but sweet, full post

Perl/Eclipse tutorials picked for top 27

My Building Perl Applications and Debugging Perl Applications with Eclipse tutorials have been picked in a list of the top 27 Eclipse tutorials.

You can see the full list here.

Grid Meter mentions Grid/Web Services Series

Greg Nawrocki, over at Grid Meter, has mentioned the convergence of SOA (Service Oriented Architectures) and Grid technology, and points readers to my recent Building a Grid with Web Services series (which I wrote with Tyler Anderson).

I agree 100% with Greg - if you aren’t already working with SOA and want to get into Grid development then you should take a look at SOA now. If you are already working on SOA applications, then you already have a good base for migrating that into Grid tech.

If you want to get the jump, start reading Building a Grid with Web Services right now!

TAB named in Top 10 Feeds of the Year

The Apple Blog - a blog where I post regularly, has been placed as one of the top 10 feeds of the year over at Feedster.

Better still, the screen shot composite of past posts included on the info page for TAB includes two of my posts!

Cheffy goes live!

Over the years many of you will have heard me mention things like Foodware, Cheffy and Foodies. All names for essentially the same thing, a recipe site that does more than just provide you with a simple way of finding recipes.

Today, 18th December, we went live and we (Suna and myself) would like you to be among the first to visit and try out the site.

The basics of the site are simple; you can search by ingredients, diet, nutrition, a whole range of keywords and you can combine all of this to pick out exactly the recipes you want. When you find the recipe you want, the recipe is fully scalable, up and down, and you can view in any of the available measurements to suit your preferences.

All recipes include full nutritional information, calories, and even the glycemic load and index for each and every recipe.

At the moment we also provide customized viewing preferences (sort order, measurements and quantities), your own cookbook and shopping list functionality.

The site is still officially in beta, but consider the bulk of the site and functionality (as advertised) to be complete and working. We do, of course, appreciate feedback and bug reports on anything that you find that doesn’t look right.

Waiting in the wings, there’s a meal planner, recipe ratings, comments and the ability to add your own recipes - all with full nutrition and searching capabilities from the moment you add it to the database.

Please visit the site: http://cheffy.com

We also have a blog where we are asking for comments in input at http://blog.cheffy.com.

Please feel free to contact me or use the contact form on the sites to convey your views.

And meanwhile, spread the word!

Cited in the Linux Journal

It can be quite a surprise to see your name in a magazine when you didn’t expect it…

There I am, reading the latest issue of Linux Journal (January 2006), and there I am, quoted in their ‘They Said It’ section at the front.

They chose to quote my mega Solaris/Linux/Distributions post. Just the first couple of sentences:

If there’s one aspect of Linux that has lead to its popularity it is the ability of a suitably enthused individual to produce their own distribution. It has spawned thousands of different solutions and, in turn, has lead to the creation of numerous tools and products that we all find useful.

OpenSolaris and Linux

Regular readers will know I am both a fan of Linux and Solaris, for different reasons and, often, different solutions and environments.

Back at the beginning of October I wrote this mammoth piece on my Computerworld blog: Distributions and standardization. It looks at the movement of Linux (an open source OS) towards a standardized base just at a time when OpenSolaris has been released, an OS based on standards that is now open source. There’s the potential here for OpenSolaris to have the advantage over Linux in this regard.

I was asked by Computerworld to condense that piece down into an article to appear in the printed magazine, which now appears online as OpenSolaris Has a Leg Up on Linux.

The latter has solicited more comments (directly by email) than the blog post, but the common thread is the same - Solaris may have an advantage, but it could be its only one.

I’m not here to take sides, merely to point out the situation - I always will choose the operating system according to its target use and environment - but the OpenSolaris/Linux debate is going to be an interesting one to watch.