I've been playing around with some of the rapidly appearing http://ajaxian.com/archives/nine-tips-for-rich-internet-applications toolkits, in order to see what all the fuss is about. I'm generally of the opinion that client side Javascript is considerably more frustrating and less efficient for a developer than even the most inefficient server side development environments (like Java Servlets, for instance). It's hard to completely ignore Javascript, because of the "rich client" functionality you can layer on top of your existing web application. Of course, this path is frought with pitfalls like cross browser compatibility and accessibility problems , but in general, I think there are some good tools to be found.

In particular, I think the http://blog.dojotoolkit.org/2005/12/19/dojo-021 has a lot of potential. It seems to be approaching client side Javascript from a more general angle (and possibly lower level) than other frameworks like prototype or Scriptaculous. While Dojo doesn't have all of the prebuilt fancy special effects some of the other toolkits have, it does benefit from having slightly better documentation, and some really cool extra features, like client side crypto functions. It does seem to be a good bit more complex than prototype, but I think that the folks at the Dojo Foundation are aiming for a broader target.

As a test of some of the features, I've added some AJAX functionality to FinScribe over the last day or two. You'll notice that the login feature, as well as the blog post and actions butttons are all dynamic and ajax enabled. I've also added an Dojo DatePicker to the blog post form. I'm still thinking about exactly whether and how to include this type of functionality into FinScribe, as well as the Fins framework itself. It may eventually go away if I feel that it's AJAX for the sake of AJAX. Time will tell, and your comments and suggestions are welcome!

I'll go on record as saying that RSS has some very useful applications. However, I think that a lot of people are focusing on the wrong way to use it. There's a lot to be said for the ability to share and present information that may be interesting across multiple applications, such as this site, which uses RSS as a means of displaying my recent SmugMug albums, or listing recent checkins to my CVS repository. However, a large segment of RSS usage is based around the idea of getting all of your favorite news items delivered to you in one place.

Approaching RSS from that angle, http://helicopter.geek.nz has been working on what could be an incredibly useful tool for RSS, called http://helicopter.geek.nz/feedbox. It's based on the (arguably very accurate) notion that we don't need yet another application just for the purpose of reading RSS feeds. I find the whole idea of having a whole application (or even a separate "mode", as in the case of Safari, just so I can keep up with RSS feeds I find interesting is counter productive. James quite rightly points out that you should be able to get all of the feed items delivered directly to you via email, which you can then read at your leisure.

Written in Pike and based on a number of modules I had a hand in writing, feedbox is designed to be run periodically from a crontab or such. I played around with a prerelease version, and it works pretty well, delivering emails to you as RSS feeds are updated. The only drawback I can see is that you get a separate email for each item in an RSS Channel. If you subscribe to a lot of active feeds, that could get overwhelming. I'm sure eventually there will be an aggregation option for lumping several items together.

All in all, a pretty cool idea, and one who's time has come. Nice work, James!

Pike 7.7, currently in development, supports rudimentary embedding of the Pike interpreter in other applications. While this support is currently pretty basic from the standpoint of niceties (such as simple functions for calling code and so forth), it works and is ready for user comment.

I put together some simple code that creates an embedded interpreter and calls some code. You can check it out here: http://hww3.riverweb.com/dist/pike_embedding . Note that you'll need a current check out of Pike 7.7 from CVS. To create the pike shared library, run "make lib" from the root directory. There are some basic compilation commands that you'll need to adjust according to your environment, but it should produce a working embedded interpreter.

Check it out, and feel free to mail your comments and suggestions to the pike development list (pike-devel at lists dot lysator dot liu dot se.

Those of you who know me well may recall that one of my hobbies is photography. I've got thousands of photos ranging from travel photos to macro photogrphs to silly snapshots of doughnuts falling through space. I've been trying to come up with a workable solution for sharing these photos online. I've tried writing scripts that generate static galleries, and I've tried photo gallery apps like phpGraphy (though I'm loathe to use PHP if I can avoid it).

Finally, a few weeks ago, I read about http://www.smugmug.com/?referrer, a hosted photo sharing site. It's not free, but it's worth every penny. You get a dedicated website (mine is http://hww3.smugmug.com ) and can arrange your photos in a number of ways, with huge traffic allowances and the ability to provide full resolution photos. Best of all, there's no advertising, no need for people viewing your photos to create spam magnet accounts, and totally independent of all of the big players (unlike others, like Flickr and Ofoto), if that's important to you. The Recent Albums section at the right hand side of this page is automatically syncronized with my SmugMug galleries via RSS.

If you click this http://www.smugmug.com/?referrer, you'll get $5 off your first year's subscription fees (around $30 bucks).

After a completely exhausting weekend, I'm pleased to say the the Monotype move was a complete success. Aside from the fact that Saturday ended up being a 21 hour day, we were able to load, move and unload everything without any problems. The only snag was a spilled mat case. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of us loading up (I was too busy working,) but you can check out the photos of the http://hww3.smugmug.com/gallery/963021. I should have a more detailed description prepared later.

This weekend, we're picking up some more Monotype equipment. This time, it's an American Composition caster with Display, a Keyboard and a bunch of smaller items. With any luck, photos of the move will be available Monday. Stay tuned!

If you're a semi-regular visitor, you'll probably not notice the major change that occurred here last night. I replaced the SnipSnap software that I had been previously using to run this site with a new system that I wrote myself. The software is tentatively called FinBlog, and is written entirely in pike using a MVC (Model-View-Controller) framework I've been writing, appropriately enough called Fins.

It (FinBlog and Fins, as well) is still a work in progress, but it's got enough functionality now to replace http://snipsnap.org, which was causing problems due to its slowness and tendency to allocate huge amounts of memory within minutes of startup. FinBlog only uses 9MB of RAM, which is a great improvement.

Go ahead, kick the tires. Let me know what you think.

It's been a busy week, I save 2 pieces of equipment from the scrapper. First up was a Chandler and Price Craftsmen paper cutter down in Baltimore. That got completely broken up and hauled away in a van, which worked out nicely as it started to rain on the trip home. It's in pretty good condition, except for a few minor fix up points, and should work out pretty well.

The second piece of equipment was a Chandler and Price 12x18 New Series press. The story of this press is rather interesting (and incomplete). I received it from the http://www.pennsvalleymuseum.org in exchange for a small donation. What is interesting is that it was in what appears to be its original shipping crate. Whether it was ever actually used is undetermined at this point, but it certainly doesn't wear in any of the usual spots. There's some writing on the crate that I've not yet decoded. Read more about this at crated press.

I just returned from a week in West Virginia, attending Monotype University 6. You can read all about the experience in monotype university 6.

I've received some photos of the machines as they were delivered earlier this week. Hopefulyl the inside of the crates will be in good condition too!