Fresh Tracks!

Wow. After the snowiest month on record, what a beautiful day for Blackcomb's opening. Much of the mountain was ice after yesterday's rain but that first run down untouched powder in 7th Heaven made the whole trip worthwhile. And the second run. And the third (ok, no longer untouched by this point). I'd almost forgotten how beautiful snowboarding can be on a sunny day.

Boston, NY, Raleigh

I've confirmed a December trip to the US East Coast. In Boston, I'm attending a product management seminar put on by Pragmatic Marketing, meeting up with a few Smalltalkers from the area, and planning to pop in on the Boston Ruby group's monthly meeting if I can squeeze it in.

On Thursday, December 10, it looks like I'll be giving a presentation at the NYC Smalltalk users group—Charles was kind enough to try to schedule something around my timetable. Details are not quite confirmed; I'll try to remember to post an update here but keep an eye on their site if you're interested. I'm planning to talk a bit about the techniques and tools we use to ensure Seaside portability across the various Smalltalk dialects but we'll see where the conversation wanders. I'm also planning to visit with friends, enjoy the pre-Christmas season in New York, and maybe do some shopping.

Finally, I'm making my way down to visit the VA Smalltalk team in Raleigh, North Carolina. John and I are planning to put our heads together on a couple of issues and I think I'll be doing a Seaside tutorial for some of the engineers while I'm there.

I'm looking forward to a productive, if exhausting, trip. Drop me a line if you're in one of these areas and want to meet up.

SIXX port for VASt

I just published an initial port of SIXX to VAStGoodies. Most of the tests are passing and I'll push the minimal changes I made back upstream for integration. Just like the Pier and Magritte ports I recently finished, this one was requested and released back to the community by Nationaal Spaarfonds.

The plan is to see if I can use SIXX for Pier persistency... that'll be the next step.

Pier for VASt

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had uploaded an initial port of Magritte for VA Smalltalk. I've spent a couple of days since then (again courtesy of Nationaal Spaarfonds) getting the Pier port cleaned up and posted. Currently none of the add-ons have been uploaded but I have the security package mostly done and it will follow shortly.

Consider these alpha releases: they are being heavily updated to work with the newest Seaside (3.0a5 currently) and to sort out compatibility with different platforms. With that said, though, all of the Pier tests and all but four of the Magritte tests pass, so give them a try. You'll need the B130 development build of VA Smalltalk.

The original Pharo sources for these Seaside 3.0-compatible versions are available: pier repository magritte repository. Again, these packages are still in flux. They're now built on top of the same Grease portability layer as Seaside 3.0a5; I'd encourage interested platforms to give them a try and see how easily portable they are.

Magritte for VASt

Over the past month or so I have been doing some work for National Spaarfonds, including porting Magritte to VA Smalltalk. They are generously offering this work back to the community and I am happy to announce that I have just uploaded the first version of the VASt Magritte port to VAStGoodies.

You'll want to start with the VASt 8.0.1 [128] developer preview image and then load the configuration map from VAStGoodies. There are currently four failing tests: three caused (I think) by method inlining and one by differences in error handling behaviour. I haven't yet determined what (if anything) can be done about these.

A version of Pier ported to Seaside 3.0 and VASt won't be far behind but I have some more cleanup to do first in order to make sure it loads into a clean image.

Vienna or bust

I've been wanting to visit Vienna at least since my arrival in Germany last year —particularly after trying to learn the Viennese Waltz in my ballroom dancing class—but could never convince anyone to come along. Thanks largely to an invitation from Bernhard Pieber, I finally made the trip.
And I've been busy: as well as trying to take in Viennese culture and some of the sights, I also presented an introduction to Seaside at mobilkom austria and had the chance to meet some local Smalltalk and Seaside developers over dinner and beer. It seems to take the arrival of a foreigner to prompt the locals to get together (no surprise: the same is true in my home town!).
Vienna is much as I imagined: a real "European" city with beautiful old architecture everywhere you look. A visit to the Kunsthistorisches Museum would have been worth it just to see the building itself, but I was also struck by a couple of sculptures and by several paintings by Pieter Bruegel and Lucas I. van Valckenborch. It's interesting that I liked both artists since it turns out that van Valckenborch studied under Bruegel and Bruegel's Tower of Babel, which was displayed in the museum, was the model for van Valckenborch's version, which hangs in the Louvre.

First thing one morning, I walked to the Spanish Riding School to watch the exercises of the Lipizzaner Stallions. I thought Lipizzans were all grays but apparently that is simply the dominant and selected gene and it is tradition to keep at least one bay at the school at all times. The horses and their riders are impressively controlled and the Winter Riding School itself is astounding too: is there anywhere else in the world where you can ride a horse on a bed of sawdust, surrounded by two levels of marble balconies and lit by enormous chandeliers?

We saw a big band concert at a local jazz club and got standing-room tickets to a sold-out orchestral performance with Lang Lang (郎朗) on the piano and Zubin Mehta conducting. I would have gladly paid the extra for a seat if one was available, but these €6 standing tickets are a wonderful idea to make the symphony more accessible. The only disappointment was the sound in the concert hall, which seemed somewhat flat, probably due to our location under the balcony.

Schloss Schönbrunn (the former imperial palace) is also worth a visit. The expansive gardens are enjoyed in the mornings by walkers and runners and, despite the tourist hoards, the Gloriette perched on its hilltop behind the palace, creates a striking image. The palace museum was interesting too: among other things, I discovered that Marie Antoinette was Austrian (she, like most of her 10 sisters, were married to foreign royalty for political reasons).

Like I said, I've been busy.

Seaside 3.0a5

The fifth alpha release of Seaside 3.0 is out. Check out the release announcement. It's looking like Cincom, Instantiations, and GemStone will all include this version in their next upcoming releases; Pharo users can use the Seaside Builder to generate a load script. Squeak users will probably have success using the Builder as well, but we are looking for one or more people to actively test and maintain a Squeak port. Get in touch if you're interested.

We're expecting this to be the final alpha release, so now is the time to actually send in any bug reports you've been sitting on.