Author: Tim Jarrett

Well, that’s one kind of feedback!

I was so busy with classwork, I almost didn’t notice. But I got one of Dave‘s nominations for the Scripting News Awards, in the category of Best Scripting Weblog. I guess that’s further validation that what I’ve been doing is valuable.

I don’t really feel worthy to be on the same list as Suck, Blogdex, Adam Curry, Doc Searls, and all the rest of the talented nominees. I have no illusions about my worthiness relative to Mark Pilgrim, Sjoerd Visscher, or View from an Iowa Homestead. But I’m putting up a “Vote for me” link anyway.

Thanks and keep the feedback coming

I kind of paused this morning after I wrote the last entry. I’m surprised looking back at it that I’m still working on these scripts. I mentioned the first script I was going to write in July, half joking, in an email to Dave when Apple announced they were going to be baking in SOAP support in 10.1. I wrote the script when I got 10.1 more as a proof of concept than anything else. It works reasonably well. Why am I going forward?

Well, I never had the time to learn all the stuff I wanted to know to program in Cocoa, for one thing, and this is a quick way to learn Interface Builder and some of the other tools in the free Dev Tools IDE. There have been other features that I’ve wanted to add to my existing scripts–it bugs me, for instance, that you type your password in plain text in a dialog box, and that there’s no interface for clearing your stored information.

But mainly I’ve had feedback from a number of people who have convinced me that this stuff is worth investing time in. One, the server guy at a major state university, wanted help in getting his faculty to use the web for knowledge management. (I still haven’t added his feature. Soon, hopefully.) A few scripters have thanked me for the effort I had put in because they use the tool every day.

It’s great to know people are out there reading and blogging. If you find my tools useful and you have suggestions for how to improve them, or just want to drop me a line, please do. My mailbox is open, and as soon as this last paper’s done I’m going back to do some more scripting.

Manila Envelope – Part 1

I started writing the next generation of my Applescript-based tool for posting to Manila last night using AppleScript Studio. The first pass was just to host some of the existing scripts in an AppleScript Studio based application and get them to work. I got it working partway but I think ASStudio (I won’t fully abbreviate that, for reasons that should be obvious) uses different mechanisms for accessing functions contained in separate script files. I need to dig a little more deeply.

By the way, the name of the tool will be Manila Envelope (sorry for the bad pun). I plan to wrap as much functionality to access Manila inside the tool as possible while still making it pretty seamless to use.

AppleScript Studio vs. old AppleScript, take 1

I’m digging deeper into AppleScript studio this morning. It’s really starting to blow my mind. The basic concept is simple: take the power of Cocoa applications, object oriented applications that can tap all the built in frameworks to add lots of power to your application, and build an application on top of them — specifying the actions to be executed using the English like syntax of AppleScript. This is so much more powerful than just providing GUI for AppleScript. It’s like getting PowerBuilder, my old programming language, dropped into my lap all over again.

I’m going through the tutorial now and am noting differences between “old-school” AppleScript under Mac OS X and the new AppleScript Studio. Some starters:

  • You write AppleScript Studio applications in Project Builder and do the user interface in Interface Builder. This gives you access to a lot of features, like…
  • …a built in debugger!
  • It looks like it’s now up to the developer to make source for AppleScript Studio applications available as a separate file. Under old AppleScript, you could distribute an AppleScript “application” that was doubleclickable but could also be opened by Script Editor if the recipient wanted to see how you did something.
  • A small point: the “display dialog” command now creates a window that has a proper title bar.

Over the next few days I’ll be going through this stuff in more detail (while I’m writing my last paper of the semester) and will post my findings.

Cool Yule Retail Stores

We visited the new Apple Store in the Cambridgeside Galleria today with our friends Charlie and Carie. Being able to wander around in a space like that and play with all the cool tech is really great. It had an unexpected effect: Lisa is now fascinated with digital video! We talked for a long time with the store clerk, who was great, about the DV cameras, how they work, and what the path is for getting them into the Mac to edit them and then burn them to DVD. That might be a really cool thing to have if we’re on the other side of the country (of course, then our parents would have to get DVD players–details…). I actually heard Lisa say, “If we get you a new computer, can we get it with a DVD burner?” I tell you: more visits to the Apple Store are definitely in the cards. 🙂

Until we meet again

Great party last night to say goodbye to our friend Dubhfeasa, my classmate Niall’s girlfriend. She’s heading back to Ireland where she has a great job in a hospital near Dublin. She’s one of our favorite people, and we’ll miss her tremendously. We’ll have to get to the Emerald Isle soon to visit her.

Good software makes up for a lot

E-Lab is done, except for our final presentation to the company we consulted to. Kickin’ back with some software. The new developer tools are out, and I’m a playin’.

AppleScript Studio. I love it. Mac OS X, an IDE free in every box (or at least downloadable). From the documentation distributed with the dev tools:

AppleScript Studio combines an application framework with a development environment, allowing you to provide sophisticated user interfaces for applications that execute AppleScript scripts. AppleScript Studio comprises features from AppleScript, Project Builder, Interface Builder, and the Cocoa application framework. With AppleScript Studio, you can quickly create native Mac OS X applications that support the Aqua user interface.

AppleScript Studio requires Mac OS X version 10.1.2, or the December 2001 Developer Tools CD.

Rockin’ like Dokken (er, or something like that)

One more down. I finished the Finance final yesterday afternoon just in time to run to the first of a series of meetings.

I looked over the day’s updates late last night and was surprised to see how calm I was yesterday morning. By last night I was a mess. I finished the first pass at the final E-Lab slides, took the Finance final (a take-home) for about three and a half hours, and headed in to our team meeting. That necessitated a redo of my slides, and ran until E-52s rehearsal was to start for the talent show. I grabbed a plate of food from a reception that was going on (hey, I was invited), ran rehearsal, and then we split for the auditorium.

The talent show was a lot of fun. The Sloan Hanukkah Song was cute, although it’s a shame it took three guys to do what Adam Sandler could do by himself… A few of the Italians from our class performed the Three Tenors (with pillows under their tux shirts) singing “O Sole Mio”–and followed with a singalong. I had a lot of fun bellowing in my best Pavarotti. Maybe there’s something to the concept of learning some of those songs like Lisa keeps asking. The group did really well with our three songs–got a lot of compliments. The highlight, though, had to be Bob, Barry, Chris, Juan, and Sam performing a plugged in “Sweet Child O’ Mine” as the Jack Tang Orchestra, looking a lot like G’n’R and sounding really really good. I guess everyone’s as happy to be done with the semester as we are…

Now playing

Currently playing song: “The Downtown Lights” by Blue Nile on Hats. (Hey, Esta, listening to Mr. Mister is no shame–at least they had top 40 hits!)

Wrap-up, Day 1

It’s a quiet morning. I have a few things to work on today: a few last slides for my E-Lab project, a take-home final for Finance II. And a thick fog outside that blots out the top of the tall buildings normally visible from outside my window.

No classes until February. Kind of nice, actually. I’ve spent–I think all my classmates have spent–the entire semester since 9/11 waiting for the other shoe to drop. Now it’s going to be all done in less than a week. What have I accomplished?

Well, the out of class things spring to mind first. We found some great first years to run with things for e-MIT–starting with rebranding it, to Sloan Entrepreneurs. Which just makes so more sense. And the E-52s got past a rough start to be a really cohesive group. We have our final gig of the semester tonight, and I’m just going to enjoy it.

Reaching the end of Finance II is a big deal… We wrote a really great paper for eBusiness…. I think it’s too early to decide the accomplishments for the rest yet, but somehow just getting to the end feels like an accomplishment.

Well, almost to the end. Gotta go hit those slides…

Script update

New script update today. I made a minor change to one of my supporting scripts, SOAPXMLRPCHandler, that should improve the ability of scripts calling it to return successfully when talking to slow websites. If you are using any of my *2Manila or *2Blog scripts, you’ll want to download this performance fix.

Making money from web services and other problems

Web Services: The Next IT Revolution?, which I co-wrote with three other MIT students for a course in eBusiness at Sloan, is now available on-line. We discuss the basic technical architecture of the IBM/Microsoft model of web services (as well as the current implementation practices), privacy and security impacts for individuals and organizations, the effects that web services will have on the software industry and on consumers, and how we think people will make money on web services.

If you aren’t familiar with the technology, you’ll probably be hearing more about it soon–it’s the paradigm behind Microsoft‘s .NET, Passport, and Hailstorm.

If you’re really familiar with the space already, you’ll probably find lots of places where we’ve made mistakes or consciously excluded things. One of the things that we consciously excluded was implementations that don’t follow the Microsoft and IBM model, including XML-RPC. Originally we wanted to include a balanced comparison of the different approaches, but realized we were limited on both time and space. In partial compensation, the website points to a couple of really good discussions of alternatives to the SOAP/UDDI/WSDL implementation approach.

My co-writers, Adam Brady-Myerov, Buddhika Kottahachchi, and Wenona Charles, have put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into this project and have had some really valuable things to say. It’s been a real pleasure working with them.
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