Clickwheel website goes live

The Clickwheel comic website has now gone public, although the public part is little basic just now. More features and of course more content will be coming later in the month.

The most important things missing are RSS feeds for the features, which should make it a lot easier to keep track of comic content, and a forum. I did the programming and web layout for the site, using Ruby on Rails.

Search, don't sort

Usually I allow my email to build up for a week or so in my Inbox, and then throw it all hurredly into folders when the Inbox becomes too cluttered to find things at a glance. If I want to see it again after that, I have to do a search over all the mail or try to remember which folder I chose for it.

Categories

Wouldn’t it be nice if our email clients could decide where to put mail automatically, based on where we’d put them before? This kind of auto-classification can only work if we assign categories to email, but we do that anyway when we assign it to folders.

Lessons from Gmail

Jon Udell, talking about his experiences with gmail, notes that it has a better and more responsive interface than many desktop clients.

This is very geeky stuff, I admit, but here are two important points to take away. First, as I’ve often said, intelligent use of browser-based technology can accomplish more than most people realize. You can’t do everything – not by a long shot – but for many of the things that information workers routinely do, even ordinary Web UI is good enough. And now Gmail is proving that we don’t have to settle for ordinary.

Jon Udell

A thought provoking article on how we use email clients at Boxes and Arrows, and the ensuing discussion was also triggered by a first use of gmail, but raises other questions about why email clients (and Operating Systems) still ask us to file everything in folders (one folder per object), rather than assigning them meta-data and allowing searches on that.

Email is hard to sort into a strict taxonomy because:

1. Most messages could live in more than one category.
2. Personal and business priorities may shift several times a year, rendering email taxonomies obsolete.

In related news, I’m almost finished a new email client for OS X called Balzac, which is now undergoing testing. It doesn’t have folders : )

Universal Medium

If convergence is coming between the different media we consume every day, it’s difficult to see it except online, where as Jon Udell mentioned recently, all sorts of journalism and mediums are mixing, and being mixed up by enthusiastic amateurs. The problem with this explosion is that many of us have little to say which hasn’t been said before, and still less of an idea about how to say it. Udell’s recent foray into Pumpkin journals indicates the potential pitfalls with this approach – while it’s fun to have amateurs creating video reports, the video is really, really long and doesn’t have enough meat to it to be really gripping. To be fair it’s his first attempt, however it makes it clear that there will always be a place for professional broadcasts, though they might have to make room for more amateur work as well in the future.

Podcasts might seem like another lowest-common-denominator medium, but I’ve recently become addicted to a few, including the fascinating and surprisingly varied In Our Time hosted by Melvyn Bragg; the episode last week dealt with Johnson and the making of his dictionary.

“There is no arguing with Johnson, for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt of it.” The poet Oliver Goldsmith was not alone in falling victim to the bludgeoning wit of Samuel Johnson. The greatest luminaries of eighteenth century England, including the painter Joshua Reynolds, the philosopher Edmund Burke and the politician Charles James Fox, all deferred to him … happily or otherwise.

If the BBC does release their archives for free as planned, it will have a huge effect on the Internet and the collision of video, audio and writing. I just hope they provide the content with something like podcasts too, so that you don’t have to visit their website to see the old shows.

Wallace & Gromit & Were-Rabbits

Although it was quite entertaining, the latest Wallace and Gromit was a let-down after the previous cartoons, like A Grand Day Out, which were so pithy and understated. The descent into a whirlwind of references to films like King Kong and Frankenstein at the end just underlined the lack of direction. ✮ ✮ ✩ ✩ ✩

La Bête humaine

I started La bête Humaine the other week, which starts to the scream of train whistles in clouds of steam on the train line between Paris and Le Havre, as a background to anti-heroes who can’t escape their inherited predisposition for violence. All very dramatic, and almost cinematic in some of the opening scenes.

From the first Chapter

Sous la marquise des grandes lignes, l’arrivée d’un train de Mantes avait animé les quais; et il suivit des yeux la machine de manoeuvre, une petite machine-tender, aux trois roues basses et couplées, qui commençait le débranchement du train, alerte besogneuse, emmenant, refoulant les wagons sur les voies de remisage. Une autre machine, puissante celle-là, une machine d’express, aux deux grandes roues dévorantes, stationnait seule, lâchait par sa cheminée une grosse fumée noire, montant droit, très lente dans l’air calme. Mais toute son attention fut prise par le train de trois heures vingt-cinq, à destination de Caen, empli déjà de ses voyageurs, et qui attendait sa machine. Il n’apercevait pas celle-ci, arrêtée au-delà du pont de l’Europe; il l’entendait seulement demander la voie, à légers coups de sifflet pressés, en personne que l’impatience gagne. Un ordre fut crié, elle répondit par un coup bref qu’elle avait compris. Puis, avant la mise en marche, il y eut un silence, les purgeurs furent ouverts, la vapeur siffla au ras du sol, en un jet assourdissant. Et il vit alors déborder du pont cette blancheur qui foisonnait, tourbillonnante comme un duvet de neige, envolée à travers les charpentes de fer. Tout un coin de l’espace en était blanchi, tandis que les fumées accrues de l’autre machine élargissaient leur voile noir. Derrière, s’étouffaient des sons prolongés de trompe, des cris de commandement, des secousses de plaques tournantes. Une déchirure se produisit, il distingua, au fond, un train de Versailles et un train d’Auteuil, l’un montant, l’autre descendant, qui se croisaient.

Under the roof of the national terminus, the train from Mantes had filled the platforms with life, and he watched the shunting engine, a little one with six low coupled wheels, which began to detach the train carriages, alert and attentive, pulling out and backing the carriages on to the sidings. Another engine, this one more powerful, an express, with two huge gaping wheels, was parked alone, its stack releasing thick dark smoke, which rose straight up and very slow in the calm air. But all of his attention was taken by the 3.25 train, to Caen, already full of travellers, waiting for its engine. He didn’t see this engine, stopped past the Europe bridge, he only heard it asking to move, with busy short whistles, as someone who grows impatient. An order was called, the engine replied with a short whistle that it understood. Then, before it set off, there was a silence, the vents were opened, steam whistled along the ground in a deafening jet. He saw a white cloud boiling and overflowing the bridge, tumbling like a blanket of snow, thrown out across the iron lattice. A whole corner of the space turned pale; meanwhile the smoke from the other engine broadened its dark veil. Behind it were the lengthy sounding of a horn, shouted commands, the jolting of train turn-tables. A gap appeared in the veil, and he made out behind a train from Versailles, a train from Auteuil, one climbing, the other descending, crossing paths.

Émile Zola

Machines

The same themes which make his other books so powerful come out here as well – the machines which almost live, breathing steam and smoke; these machines which dominate the lives of the people in the books so completely, whether they work on the line or live beside it. The description of the steam engines reminds me of the pits at the start of Germinal, ‘there to swallow the world’.

Science

I like Zola best when he forgets his desire to produce medical observations of the dynasty he created and falls in love with his characters. The scenes which feel uncomfortable and unconvincing to me are the ones where he attempts to draw on the medical science of the time (eg Lantier’s first seizure by the railway). His emphasis on a kind of Lamarkian inheritance of brutality and alcoholism which runs in the blood of the Rougon-Maquart family doesn’t really convince. He is at his most exciting when picking out the details of a scene or the subtle changes in relations between his characters; when he forgets the over-arching ambitions of the series and concentrates on the concrete reality of his characters. It’ll be fun to read the rest of the series and see the characters developing, though I’m doing it all out of order :)

Looking for Spinoza

I started reading this book on the train, and it looks like a fascinating blend of philosophy and popular science.

Feelings of pain or pleasure or some quality in between are the bedrock of our minds. We often fail to notice this simple reality because the mental images of the objects and events that surround us, along with the images of the words and sentences that describe them, use up so much of our overburdened attention. But there they are, feelings of myriad emotions and related states, the continuous musical line of our minds, the unstoppable humming of the most universal of melodies that only dies down when we go to sleep, a humming that turns into all-out singing when we are occupied by joy, or a mournful requiem when sorrow takes over.

Antonio Damasio

Getting started in Rails

Listening to the Ruby on Rails podcast this week led me over to the website of Amy Hoy, who has written a few very interesting articles on Rails for UI designers and programmers coming from less OOP languages like PHP. Very few people are interested in both the code and the design so it’s refreshing to see someone spending time on both.

A few more Rails links – a nice explanation of Higher Order Messaging, and how to go from:

for claimant in claimants 
    if claimant.retired? then
        claimant.receive_benefit 50
    end
end

to

claimants.where.retired?.do.receive_benefit 50

Also on Rails, here’s an indispensable searchable reference for the rails docs – this is what should be at rubyonrails.com rather than the horrible framed version they have up there. And a short Guide to Rails deployment.

Finally if you’re learning Rails, the Agile Rails book rates ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮, like most of the pragmatic programmers’ books, and it’s even entertaining, something I can’t bring myself to say about some other references I’m reading right now.

Final Balzac Beta

The Final beta (b14), for Balzac is now out, and version 1.0 should be out, well, sometime soon. I’ve added SSL support to this version (via Pantomime of course), so it can now download gmail accounts and any other servers that require SSL. Next on the list is Contrepoint, which is almost ready for another release, but I haven’t had time to do anything on it as I’ve been busy with work.

Not so final Balzac

There are still a few bugs I’d like to quash before calling Balzac 1.0, which is why I’ve left it beta for so long. My previous very optimistic schedule was also delayed by the move from Paris to London which swallowed most of the summer this year. However I’m hoping to get started on it again soon.

The Daily Show

Talking points on CNN news, this is redolent of the film OutFoxed, but shows just how scripted and stage-managed a lot of Television news production is.

Talking points; they’re true, because they’re said a lot.

Ruby Patterns

Much to learn about Ruby. There’s a fun quiz with some examples over at Ruby Quiz.

Cashou Picture Research

The new design for the Cashou Picture Research website is now live, and is constructed entirely from iView templates, making it easy to change the content and construct new galleries.

Paris-Plage

I’m leaving Paris for London this weekend just as the beach opens, the BBC can’t keep itself from feeling a little jealous.

Templates versus Code

Some notes from David Heinemeier Hansson in response to a few posts asking for a template language outline why he feels templating languages cause more trouble than they’re worth.

For a database driven application, I’d probably agree with him, as eventually Template languages increase in complexity until they come to resemble embedded code anyway, particularly when they try to include variables, if statements and looping. There’s an interesting example of Template logic run amok here.

Contrepoint comes at this from a different direction however – the majority of people (not just web-designers, but anyone who wants to create a website) are not comfortable with any kind of code, but are quite happy to learn some basic rules about strings they can place in their text to get a particular result. This was a decision I faced early on in making Contrepoint, and I decided to eschew blobs of eRuby with all those nasty symbols in the text, and even the relatively simple syntax of Textile, in favour of some simple tags which can reference lists of items and item fields.

I am now considering adding Textile support as an option in a later version, because it’s built into Ruby and would not take much work, but in some ways it solves different problems (how to create simple markup which will then be turned into HTML). I can see why eRuby code would be more intuitive for someone working with database driven applications though, as at that level of complexity template languages are just as ugly and unintuitive as ruby code, possibly worse.

Public Beta of Balzac

Balzac is an email program for OS X I’ve been working on in my spare time for the last year. A public beta of Balzac is now available. If you’re running OS X 10.4-5 you can download the beta and try it out. Balzac uses the very handy Pantomime framework.

Yet another CMS

Over the holidays I started working on a new website design for my sister’s architectural practice, over at Create Design [ Note she’s now at Paper Igloo ]; although it hasn’t gone live yet, I’m hoping it will be a lot easier to make changes to the website with a templating system in place – ideally I wanted something which would allow them to change the website with no intervention from me.

Obviously there are a lot of templating systems out there, and I tried out a few before deciding I needed something a little more flexible. I had a few problems with most of them (including Bloxsom, which I used to use for this site) :

• They’re almost all server-side scripts, which I can’t use on this server, though you can try to hack them to run in static mode on a client
• Most are tailored to do one task – weblogs, or picture galleries, rather than a full site though there are plugins available
• Most have a fairly simplistic template model, and I wanted something more flexible – something which allows references to different chunks of text scattered throughout a site

I’m running a wiki on my home machine, which was another option for, however Instiki doesn’t have great support for images or export on OS X, it’s a bit of a work in progress. I do like being able to edit pages in the browser though. It’s been fun hacking together a little project in Ruby so far – it feels far more elegant than C++ or Objective-C, and I could never understand the appeal of Perl : )

Le Promeneur du Champ de Mars

Went to see Le Promeneur du Champ de Mars this weekend, and found it interesting, if a bit plodding at times. The most interesting scenes were lifted by the presence of Michel Bouquet, who captures convincingly the insecurity of a man approaching death. Unfortunately Jalil Lespert, who plays a young journalist – the idealist counterpoint to an ageing bitter Mitterand, never really inhabits the role completely, and worse the script often meanders into the private life of this journalist – obsessed with uncovering the truth about Mitterand’s behaviour under the Vichy regime. Some moments of evident pathos, like the ageing disabused president addressing workers in the shell of a factory, or a young girl asking to kiss the retired president in the park, are handled clumsily, without the distance which could have made the moments convincing and poignant.

Sadly the cinematography was as insipid and grey as the rural landscapes used as a backdrop for the ending of the film – often it felt like a fly-on-the-wall documentary rather than a film in which the decors and framing had been carefully chosen. In the middle of the film Mitterand eulogises the colour grey as the personification of France, and unfortunately the film lives up to this ambition, without bringing out enough of the nuances which could have made the portrait come alive (despite the best attempts of Bouquet). Still, the script is carefully written and the portrait of the last days of a self-absorbed president at the end of his functions at times draws blood, even if it isn’t a brilliant success.

Versailles

Cycled out of Paris and saw Versailles under a stormy sky last weekend, although it’s mobbed with tourists the scale of the grounds is still impressive. The tidy gardens are dotted with melodramatic sculptures.

La Bataille d'Alger

I saw the film The Battle of Algiers this week, which is showing in a couple of arty French cinemas. It describes the battle before independence waged from the casbah of Algiers against the colonial authorities. It was a very interesting and frank look at torture during wartime, and the difference between military victory in a conflict and political victory. The objectives of Colonel Matthieu and the aims of his political masters diverge as the film goes on, until the satisfaction of the French military at the end of the film, having crushed all armed resistance in the casbah, is an ironic contrast to the uprising and declaration of independence two years later. There was a question and answer session afterward with a writer who studies the use of torture in war, and the inevitable comparisons with the situation in Iraq just now. She was explaining how instructions tend to be left very vague, with no written orders, to encourage troops to get information by any means and avoid blame travelling up the chain of command.