We’ve had a chance to play around with the Ingres/Alfresco bundle a bit more. One of the first things we did was install the WCM extension, which was easier than I imagined. Here are the steps:

1. Download the WCM extension (zip or tarball) for Alfresco Community 2.1.0.
2. Extract the archive into the installation directory for the bundle.
3. Move wcm-bootstrap-context.xml to <install directory>/apache-tomcat/shared/classes/alfresco/extension.
4. Edit virtual_alf.sh to set APPSERVER to the virtual-tomcat directory.
5. If it isn’t already set, set JAVA_HOME.
6. Start the bundle, and then the virtual Tomcat (using virtual_alf.sh).

In summary, installing WCM for the Ingres/Alfresco bundle is basically the same as installing it for any other installation of Alfresco. The only issue we’ve run into so far is that deployment won’t work. We’re investigating this.

By the way, I’m not actually typing this entry — I’m dictating it to a co-worker. I got into a bike accident and sprained my right wrist. It could have been worse; I was wearing my helmet. The moral of the story? Always practice bike safety. =)

Update (June 12, 2008): We managed to figure out what was causing the deployment problems. The RMI calls were failing due to a mis-configured hosts file. The final message in this thread on RMI in the Spring Framework ended up being the answer to the problem. A lot of time spent, but now we now that WCM can be installed to the bundle and that the major features work — we had a chance to try the virtualization features as well and they seemed to be working.

Special thanks to David Maier from Ingres for all of his help! =)

Alfresco and Ingres recently announced a partnership, the first product of which is an all-in-one installer with GUI that installs Apache Tomcat, Java, Ingres, and Alfresco. This gives developers and end users a very easy way to get started with the two technologies, which together form a fully enterprise-ready open source content management solution.

We got a chance to try the installer on a Linux VM here. There were a few hiccups at the beginning; it turns out that the package won’t work if it is installed as root (this seems to be an Ingres thing). Once we re-tried the installation as a non-root user, it worked like a charm. Actually, this is one of the easiest installs I’ve ever seen for enterprise Linux software. We’ll keep you posted with our impressions as we further explore the bundle.

Our blog now supports OpenID for leaving comments.  OpenID is a “decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity.”  You choose an OpenID provider and sign up for an account.  This gives you a URL, like mine: http://enricob.myopenid.com/.  Provide this URL to any OpenID-compatible site (like this one!) and you will be transferred to your provider to log in.  When the provider has successfully authenticated you, it will tell the site you’re using that you are indeed the owner of the OpenID URL that you provided.  Your OpenID URL becomes your one identity for use with many sites.

If you have an OpenID — you may already have one and just don’t know about it — try using it to leave a comment on this post.  Just enter your OpenID URL in the “Website” field and the rest will be handled for you.

When I was teaching myself HTML and CSS, I used to refer to Webmonkey, a site filled with tutorials, references, and resources on just about everything to do with web design and development. This was back in the late nineties or so, before the web standards movement gained the traction that it has today. Over time, the site’s content became outdated and I was forced to find other resources. Webmonkey had seemingly died out.

I was browsing Programming Reddit today and noticed a banner advertisement for Webmonkey (2.0 beta). Yep, it’s back, and it has a brand-spanking-new look and feel. The content and techniques seem to be up to date as well. I can’t make a final judgment on the new site because I haven’t had enough time to browse it yet but I’ll find some time to take a closer look soon.

EDIT: I’ve seen numerous database errors on the site as I’ve been browsing. I guess that’s beta software for you. Too bad; I really wanted to check out their article on Python for beginners. Not that I don’t love Ruby but I’d like to keep abreast of all programming languages that are currently used. And I’ve always been interested in Django.

You might remember my post about JSR-666 from April, where I asked whether the funny proposals to extend Java (for example, by adding a yoda keyword) were just a joke or a thinly veiled statement about the dangers of trying to shoehorn features into Java. So imagine my surprise when I saw another horrific JSR; but this time it isn’t a joke.

JSR-308 is a proposal to add annotations for types. It sounds harmless enough, right? But take a look at this sample code of the proposal in action: Read the rest of this entry »

TOJam was great fun, though I felt a little like a fish out of water. I haven’t used C++ in a while, and the last time I did anything serious with Visual Studio I had not yet gone to university.

As a result I spent most of my time writing game logic, the things which are more or less the same in any language, and didn’t touch much on things like SDL at all, leaving it in the hands of teammates more experienced. That was good for the team, but not for my learning. So when I got home, I took all the media files and the knowledge I had gathered, and re-wrote the game (with some gameplay changes that I wanted to try).

What makes this special was that I re-wrote it using a Ruby library called Gosu.

And I did almost single-handedly in under 48 hours.

Gosu has almost everything that a programmer who wants to play with game development could want. Installing is dead simple “sudo gem install gosu” and it is the shortest path between “blank file” and “image on screen” that I’ve ever seen.

One niggle, it doesn’t play mp3 music by default — you have to recompile that flag and assert you have permission to use that codec. Oddly enough, mp3 samples work just fine. I cannot pretend to understand this.

Regardless, if you like Ruby, and you want to make 2d games, I’d recommend it giving it a look. The minimalist design philosophy is excellent, and the time investment to get reward is very small. Rapid iteration makes for a very agile development cycle, which is a great thing when you’re shifting and twisting the code around to, as Miyamoto would say, “find the fun.”

We’re back from TOJam!

It really was a crazy weekend. We worked day and night from Friday evening all the way up to the Sunday evening deadline. There were the highs and lows throughout: sometimes things were going well and on schedule and we were feeling extremely productive and sometimes we were pushing through fatigue and wondering if we hadn’t bitten off a lot more than we could chew. But we’re happy to report that, in the end, our game was ready to demo by the deadline! Actually, people seemed to really enjoyed it and some seemed quite impressed with what we were able to accomplish in three days. This event was a huge success, both for us and the guys from the Independent Games Project.

The venue was a bit cramped and our room in particular was quite a bit too warm during the day. Actually, near our table, light was shining through a skylight and causing a lot of glare on our displays. Still, despite the heat and the cramped space, everybody was intensely focused. That there were so many excellent, innovative games on display by the end of the jam definitively showed that it is very much possible to make fun games without needing hundreds of people to do years of work. We met a lot of great, talented people and had some very interesting conversations about game design and development; the exchange of feedback and ideas was actually the best part of the whole experience.

Michael and I definitely plan to participate in TOJam again next year. I did say I would post pictures but unfortunately I had misplaced my digital camera and couldn’t find it for the event. There aren’t any pictures of us in particular at the event but if you’re interested in seeing them, check out these photos. As a bonus, there’s also a photo of Levo from IGP striking a pose. Also, check out the TOJam website for more media from the event and game demos (when they get around to posting them).

The Sun Identity Management Buzz blog updated with an IDM-based game. The objective is to become an “Identity Hero” and save the enterprise money by provisioning users, implementing single-sign-on, locking out disgruntled former employees, doing battle with SarBox monsters and auditors, and federating with partners. I played it for a bit and I think it’s cute. I like the way the character sprites are designed (especially the zombie employees) and although most of the game play involves walking the hero around and touching the other characters, it still manages to be slightly amusing.

If I get some more time to play it later, I might post my high score.

Michael and I are registered for TOJam 3, an indie game development jam held annually in downtown Toronto. The jam is a mad three-day dash to create small, polished, fun games. The games need to follow a theme (this year’s theme is cheese) and must incorporate some images and sounds, such as a picture of a goat on a pole and the TTC door chime. I’m nervous because I’ve never completed a game before but I’m also excited because I think it’ll be a lot of fun to try and churn out a fully-implemented, original game idea in three days and I believe our team is more than capable.

I’d like to thank Mathew and Levo from the Independent Games Project for telling us about this event and inviting us to join their team. I look forward to working with both of them.

I will be bringing my digital camera to take some photos during the event — we might post those photos in this blog later, so stay tuned!

It’s official. Tenthline is a now an official Alfresco partner.

Overall, I’m very pleased with the software. The documentation is still the sticking point, but it seems Jeff Potts of ecmarchitect.com will be writing a book. Everything he’s put out so far has been very useful is understanding the software, so I’m looking forward to this. You can read more right here.

Internally, we’ve accomplished quite a bit with Alfresco, including re-creating our company website internally. Using Alfresco to manage our public facing site versus the current Ruby on Rails implementation is a definite possibility, which speaks a lot for the advantages Alfresco poses if we’re willing to replace a perfectly functional existing system.

That’s not to speak poorly of Ruby or Rails; there is no doubt in my mind that I -could- include versioning and workflow into the existing Rails site, but why re-invent the wheel? I’d really like it if I could get the best of both words, and use Ruby instead of JavaScript for the API. There are some motions in that direction, but very little actual code that I’ve seen so far.