Another Comic .. A Regular Dikto .. Ha ha

honestylost[4]

Well .. I tells ya, this craze had better get over soon, because it’s a time sink like nothing else. Unlike a computer game, my brain is always learning with this. Today’s comic dabbles in a little shading. It’s not really good, or even moderately good, but it’s a start.

Spot the missing object. Probably more than one, but there’s one particular thing that might snap any suspension of disbelief .. (although c’mon, this is a comic Stu).

Also, looking over it .. I forgot a lot of plans .. like shading Tom’s face and pants and hair. Hair and Face especially .. very important for adding a little more to the picture.

So yeah,

Honesty Lost : Part 1.

There are two (planned) further parts .. the third should go a little quicker .. although the second is a completely different location, so everything except Tom is new .. and even he will be mostly changed.

Just a pic now i slapped together .. found drawing Tom was a lot easier when i first broke him down into circles and spheres .. the basic shapes.

DrawingTom4

Anyway .. sleep is a-calling. Night All.

Spherical Phoke Interview :: Russ Eggen

It’s a mammoth piece of soundbytes. Even split three ways.

Welcome to the next Spherical Phoke Interview.

Russ Eggen is a Clarion Developer of great reknown. He worked for Topspeed (deader than a doornail, once Developer of Clarion) and SoftVelocity (very much alive, and current Developer of Clarion). He attends and speaks at Conferences and Galas (okay, made the Galas up) all over the world. And you know what .. to use a bit of aussie slang, he’s a top bloke.

The Interview has been split into three parts. They are quite lengthy, and I will give a quick summary now.

Instead of 3 parts, the interview is now 6.

[audio:interview_russeggen_06-06-21-1.mp3] [audio:interview_russeggen_06-06-21-2.mp3] [audio:interview_russeggen_06-06-21-3.mp3] [audio:interview_russeggen_06-06-21-4.mp3] [audio:interview_russeggen_06-06-21-5.mp3] [audio:interview_russeggen_06-06-21-6.mp3]

Part One

In which we talk about, amongst other things ..

  • Aliens, Tom Cruise and L.Ron Hubbard.
  • The good qualities of MS Visual Studio
  • The better qualities of Clarion 7 (predicted sure, but i’m voting for in the bag)
  • Thusly, Clarion 7 being KING OF THE WORLD
  • .. I realise that my headset mike wasn’t plugged in, and proceed to plug it in, resulting in a wonderful chorus of hallelujahs as the really bad quality of pops and crackles and background noise is muted instantly.

Also, I experimented with putting music at the start of Part One, and at the end of Part Three. It’s possibly way too loud.

Part Two

In which we talk about, amongst other things ..

  • Topspeed and Softvelocity, The (Some) History
  • Sticking up for Frustrated Newsgroup Posters
  • The latest Clarion Video
  • Aussie Seminars

Part Three

In which we talk about, amongst other things ..

  • Pimping Clarion as another Tool in the Skillset
  • Experiences Presenting to Big Companies
  • Clarion in Universities
  • Comparisons between Sydney and Melbourne
  • Bringing a Spycam into the SoftVelocity Offices
  • I sound like a twerp trying to talk about Rugby Leage & Union
  • Bumping into InnQuest

There you have it. Cheers, Thanks and Regards to Russ for his time. I understand it’s quite expensive :), so I’m very thankful that he was able to spare an hour and a half to chat with us.

‘Nuff Said

Spherical Phoke, The Song

Well. After a few hours last night, and less than one this morning .. it’s done.

The quality (take that as you will) is terrible. I recorded this on my laptop microphone, which is good enough for chatting, but nothing much more. The pickup in my acoustic is busted, so this is the only way i can record at the moment.

Grainy, statiky, some stumbling over chords and words, and a couple more bugs.

But it’s done.

For The First Time .. Dev Dawn brings you ..

Spherical Phoke

[audio:sphericalphoke_004.mp3]

Spherical Phoke Interview #002 :: Mark Jacquith

Tempus Fugit (http://txfx.net) is the personal blog of Mark Jacquith. It’s an eclectic mix of just about everything. Which I like. Very much.

Mark doesn’t shy away from reality in looking at what is happening in the world around us. It’s a healthy outlook, and honest too.

In fact, I’ll just copy his own little blurb, it very excellently summises what the website is about ..

Tempus Fugit is Mark Jaquith’s weblog: current events, humor, politics, religion, technology, entertainment, and personal topics delivered with a healthy neo-libertarian slant.

Introduction

Mark. Welcome to Spherical Phoke.

It’s a great pleasure to have you on the show. Or on the blog. Your site is a little ray of light in my mostly techo reading of blogs. It’s got bits of everything, and I like that you keep a close honest brain looking at what happens today.

Thanks for taking the time to be Interviewed. I realise it’s quite a large amount of questions, but .. thankyou.

As you do, I’m going to open with a closing statement. May your days (for you and yours) be long and joyous.

And congrats on your latest (as far as I know) Public Kudos .. For your work with the 2.02 upgrade of WordPress. Not just a hatrack :).

    Web/Development

  1. What are the three most exciting developments in your brain at this very moment?

    I just got turned on to CoComment, which is something that I’ve been wanting for a long time. It’s basically a bookmarklet and web service that keeps track of the comments you make on other blogs. I’ve always felt that blog comments were missing that special "something" that draws you back into the conversation, which is why I got involved in the Subscribe to Comments plugin for WordPress. CoComment takes it to the next level because it can be implemented by commenters instead of the blog operator.

    I’m still very much excited about WordPress and some of the ideas that are being discussed by that community. I recently got officially acknowledged as a contributing developer, with my name on the "about" page and everything, which was a big moment for me. It’s a great project and a great community of people.

    For several months, I’ve been toying with the idea of writing and selling a GPL-licensed PHP application of my own. I haven’t committed to anything, but I have several ideas kicking around. Part of me is just curious whether selling a GPL-licensed PHP application is even feasible. The actual business model would like revolve around support of the application and continued development of it, because there would be nothing stopping someone from buying it and then distributing it free of charge. Another possible angle is renting access to it on servers that I control.

  2. What’s going to be the next catch-phrase/idea to sweep the Web and/or Development Community?

    Video logs are about to really take off. Bandwidth is getting cheaper, high quality video cameras are getting cheaper, and now with software like Democracy, there is a viable way of getting the content to end users.

  3. What aspects of development get you excited to be alive?

    Whenever someone tells me that my code solved their problem or made their life easier, I can ride high on that feeling for days.

  4. What aspects of development give you the willies?

    I loathe web site migrations. They never go as smoothly as you plan. There are always issues with file permissions, server quirks, DNS delays, database character set incompatibilities, etc. In theory, it’s a 25 minute process, but in practice, it can take an entire afternoon or more.

  5. What’s your dream Project – I’ve already called creating the first anti-matter teleporter.

    Working with WordPress is pretty much my dream project. The only way the pot could be sweetened if I got paid to do it (paid for core development that is, I *do* get paid for private theme/plugin development).

  6. If you could own a single Domain Name, what would it be?

    http://steve.jobs/ I’d turn it over… in exchange for free Apple products for life!

  7. What are your first memories of the Internet?

    One of my earliest and most poignant memories of the Internet was during the 1992 U.S. Presidential Elections. I was sitting with my father in front of our 486, logged onto Prodigy.

    They had a map of the United States displayed with the vote tallies updating and turning the states red or blue. Until then I had largely regarded computers as entertainment and productivity devices, but as I watched those results come in I realized that they were portals to the rest of the world… and not just for static "encyclopedic" information, but for instant, current, relevant information.

    I was only 9 years old, but I distinctly remember thinking "this changes everything."

  8. What is the worst Project you’ve ever worked on? Cleaning toilets at camp doesn’t count.

    My father offered me and my brother $300 to alphabetize about 7,000 file folders stored in the attic above our garage when I was 13 or 14. It was about 110 degrees with 90% humidity up there. I couldn’t stand up straight, and the fiberglass was irritating the heck out of me.

    After about 6 or 7 hours at it over the course of a few nights I decided that enough was enough… it became obvious that the job was going to take weeks. Evil capitalist that I am, I sold my share of the project to my brother for $100… cash up front.

    He never finished the job (and never got paid). Who says quitters never win?

  9. If there were Oscar’s for Development, what is the piece of functionality you’ve created that should/would/could win?

    I’m extremely proud of the Auto Pingback feature that I put into the Kramer plugin whose development I took over last year. It basically fills in the gaps left by Pingback and Technorati by scanning incoming HTTP referrers, filtering them, validating them, and registering them as incoming pingbacks. This allows people with Blogger or Movable Type or even people posting entries on message boards to generate pingbacks to the entries that they link, without them even knowing it.

  10. How would you begin your Oscar speech?

    With me kissing Kiera Knightly (who would be presenting my award) on the cheek, and lingering maybe a split second too long.

  11. It’s tough to work in a hot little office. What’s your favourite work environment?

    Curled up on a sofa, without a doubt. Laptops make us free.

  12. What do you see as the purpose of Blogging?

    I think blogging serves an important informational purpose, but even more than that, I think it has personal benefits. It’s quite therapeutic. Millions of people blog extensively even though they might remain obscure. Getting your thoughts down on permanent record helps develop your opinions and strengthen your character.

  13. If you blog, what purpose(s) do you regularly work towards?

    Personal enjoyment, really. My topics change with my mood.

  14. What are your top work tools? Dr. Who’s Sonic Screwdriver doesn’t count … although man it would be cool.

    Apple PowerBook.TextMate.Transmit.SSH.Subversion.

  15. What the first piece of coding you ever worked on?

    I dabbled with JavaScript when I was young, but my first solid piece of code was a PHP/MySQL movie database that I wrote to keep track of all my movies. It was crude, and horribly insecure. I didn’t know much about input sanitization and was pretty much just sticking GET parameters directly into MySQL queries. It’s a wonder no one exploited it.

    Entertainment/Brain-FreeTime

  16. What are your favourite fictional characters? Picking Wolvie is worth 5 extra Phoke Points.

    Leonard Shelby from "Memento".The Wolf from "Pulp Fiction".Michael Bluth from "Arrested Development".Dr. Cox from "Scrubs".

  17. What is your favourite current game?

    Half-Life 2

  18. What is your favourite all-time game?

    Mario 64. Ten years later, and Nintendo still can’t best that piece of magic.

  19. How do you spend your relaxing time?

    Watching TV, sleeping. Anything that doesn’t require too much thought.

    Growing Up

  20. What experiences growing up helped shape your direction in life now?

    I don’t know that I can point to one thing. I had a very stable home life… loving, supportive parents, and lots of brothers and sisters to help keep me grounded.

  21. Are we products of our nature or nurture, our makeup or our experience?

    Both play a part, but it is probably better to stress the influence that one’s experiences can have. I sometimes cringe when characters in the movies say "but this is who I am!" because they are often just admitting that they lack the motivation to better themselves. They’ve done a poor job at nurturing themselves, so they try to pass it off as their nature.

  22. Going to school can be like putting ore into the blazing forge.What’s the best analogy you can think of for your school experience?

    Three years on the interstate, and then two in a construction zone with a broken GPS unit.

  23. How long have you known you wanted to be where you are now?

    I’m not sure that I know it now. I’ve always considered this to be my fallback career… not because I don’t love it, but because I feel that it’s better to reach for the rung of the ladder that is out of your reach rather than just settle on what you know you can do. That way, you can be absolutely sure that you didn’t sell yourself short.

  24. You get the chance to go back in time to high school as you are now. Would you take the hand of the Time-Genie? Why?

    Absolutely. I got a late start in the whole web development scene. If I’d started at 14 or 15 and actually studied the stuff instead of just dabbling, I’d probably have dropped out of college early on to go work for some web startup.

    The Infinite

  25. I like to think the Loch Ness Monster is alive and laughing. What myth would you like to bust/prove, if given the chance?

    I’d like to prove that AIDS isn’t caused by HIV and global warming isn’t caused by human activity. No, Chuck Norris is the cause behind both.

  26. If you get to die in your sleep old and full of years, what would be your greatest achievement?

    I’d like to have raised children, and taught them to be independent, rational individuals.

    Finis

  27. Thankyou for your time and effort. It’s been a blast treading this short road with you. What are you doing after finishing this interview?

    Taking a nap, without an alarm set.

Epilogue

Go and visit Mark’s blog at http://txfx.net. It’s the real deal.

Spherical Phoke Interview #001 :: Paul Stamatiou

It was only days into my life as a blogger that I stumbled across Paul Stamatiou (and his blog). He had written the excellent "How To: Boost Your Blog Traffic" article. This was a keystone point for myself as a blogger. Even though, months afterwards, I have settled into a slightly less-travelled path, it still remains as a turning point.

Paul continues to write wonderful articles on his blog. He shows you how to customize K2 (absolute kicker of a WordPress Theme, and this is the first of three articles), how to do cool things with your Header Graphic, and a bunch of other useful information articles. When I say useful, I mean it. Paul doesn’t wax long and boring with inane anecdotes. He provides one of the better tutorial sites (small at the moment in number though it is) that exist on the web.

Quite apart from his helpful articles, Paul is also a first-tier news provider. His focus is noticably Mac & Web oriented. Even with a thumb-screw, he wouldn’t divulge his sources, so suffice to say –  they are pretty good. Good enough to lose digits over.

I made that last bit up.

So I asked him to be the first Spherical Phoke Interviewee, understanding that he was one of the more high profile candidates on my first phase list. However, thankfully, he accepted.

Introduction

Paul, welcome. You have the joy of being the first participant in the latest project from Dev Dawn.

The purpose of Spherical Phoke is to look beyond the content of what we do, and reveal the creators of that content. We are drawing into an Age where the hallowed web halls will resound with life. So it is that people need to know who we are. Not our content, but Us. That’s right – it’s time we stood up to embrace our purpose. To stop fighting destiny, and become the inner Bats/Supes/Wolvie that sparks within us. As the great poet Derek once said  "Who Am I?" and that’s what Spherical Phoke is all about.

We at Dev Dawn are extremely honored that you agreed to be interviewed. The web is a strange and sometimes scary world, and there are people out there who .. shhh .. they talk about stuff like Desktop Applications being beaten down into a quivering mass by this "Ajax" fellow. Seems to me, if memory serves, Ajax fell on his own sword.

Ahem.

Truly, thankyou for answering our questions.

    Web/Development

  1. What are the three most exciting developments in your brain at this very moment?

    I’m really impressed with what is possible with PHP. Now that PHP6 is being developed (no one even uses PHP5 yet, heh) we are really going to start seeing some monumental web apps powered by the next generation of PHP and MySQL. AJAX has always been an interesting field to watch but I’m more interested in AHAH, asynchronous HTML and HTTP for dynamically updating web pages. I’m also interested in where successful web services like Technorati, 30 Boxes and RoundCube Webmail are headed.

  2. What’s going to be the next catch-phrase/idea/… to sweep the Web and/or Development Community?

    g-Everything Beta. Google will buy out the internet and prepend the letter “g” to everything they have acquired as well as appending their almost trademark “Beta”.

  3. What aspects of development get you excited to be alive?

    I’m not as much a developer as a blogger, but I have to say I love it when things just work. I have an idea, open up a text editor and type some code. When it runs flawlessly on the first execution, that’s a great feeling.

  4. What aspects of development give you the willies?

    Debugging takes the life out of me. It’s tedious and is the largest part of developing anything from web sites to a game for the GameBoy Advance (which I’m learning to do in my computer science course now).

  5. What’s your dream Project – I’ve already called creating the first anti-matter teleporter.

    Working for Apple in Cupertino on some top-secret piece of next-gen hardware/software. However, building the ultimate computer and reviewing it for a publication like Tom’s Hardware would be just as great.

  6. If you could own a single Domain Name, what would it be?

    Paul.com! I would love to own paul.com. Currently some guy only uses it for email, which is extremely obnoxious. If I had this domain, people would actually be able to spell my domain and not have to rely on bookmarks and referral links to find my site.

  7. What are your first memories of the Internet?

    I believe my first experience with the internet was sometime in 1994 after my father had purchased a new Compaq computer. Unfortunately, we were using AOL to dialup and AOL is a horrible piece of software and the company has become extremely annoying with their attempts to sell overpriced bloatware. I remember seeing an auction on eBay with someone selling 5,000 AOL cds; crazy.

  8. What is the worst Project you’ve ever worked on? Cleaning toilets at camp doesn’t count.

    I can’t say I’ve ever really worked on a bad project.

  9. What’s the toughest Project you’ve ever worked on? Ditto for the toilets.

    My Java OOP class last year was quite the challenging course. The weekly homeworks were vague and demanded perfection, which wasn’t possible with the teachers that had been recruited. However, I was able to make it out alive.

  10. If there were Oscar’s for Development, what is the piece of functionality you’ve created that should/would/could win?

    I would have created the perfect web design creator. Just write a paragraph about what you want your website to look and feel like and a professional, Rundle-quality website will be created within the minute. Elements of the page would be AJAX’d so you could move them where you wanted. The program would need to be open source as well, there are a lot of great minds out there that could really advance the project.

  11. How would you begin your Oscar speech?

    After my family, I would first thank everyone in the 9rules network, they’ve taught me a lot about web development. Oh and definitely Paul Scrivens, the CEO of the 9rules Network, for recognizing my talent and accepting me into the network, as well as teaching me that you can be cool and do techy stuff by day, haha.

  12. It’s tough to work in a hot little office. What’s your favourite work environment?

    Haha, I don’t have a hot little office right now .. just a hot little dorm. I’ll often open up iTunes internet radio or dip into my archives and play some techno, that really gets my thinking. I’m fine with working in my room, but if I’m really under stress from too much work or my noisy roommates, I often escape to the library or the Computational Media Lab. The CM lab is for students of my major and is a room of dozens of high-end computers, such as Dual G5’s with massive Apple Cinema Displays. It’s a great work environment, everything in that room is high-end, even the Herman Milleresque chairs.

  13. What do you see as the purpose of Blogging?

    I blog to break the news first and let people know how to do those things they’ve only wished they could do themselves. I take pride in my step by step tutorials and they will always have a home at my blog.

  14. If you blog, what purpose(s) do you regularly work towards?

    Perfection is my motivation. When I’m writing a how to or some other lengthy article, I hope for it to be the best tutorial for that specific thing available, the go-to guide, etc. More importantly, however, Is that at least one person has learned something from everything I write. That’s when I know I’ve been doing a good thing.

  15. What are your top work tools? Dr. Who’s Sonic Screwdriver doesn’t count – although man it would be cool.

    Most of my ideas start to take place in Photoshop CS2. If I have an idea of a new design, the first thing I will always do is make the header image. It just sets the tone for the rest of the site and how I will design everything around the header. As for coding, pretty much everything I do is hand coded in the OS X SubEthaEdit text editor. It’s more powerful than text editor but still fairly lightweight and doesn’t require loading all the massive libraries that Adobe GoLive or Macromedia Dreamweaver do. Much of the time I will get stuck on a particular coding problem, but I usually find a quick solution by asking the web gurus in the 9rules member forums.

  16. What the first piece of coding you ever worked on?

    As far as real coding is concerned, I took an advanced Java course in high school and that’s when I really started getting dirty with code. Java hasn’t left me either, I’ve had to take a few courses here at Georgia Tech that required Java skills as well. Before that, it was just me tinkering around with HTML, CSS and Javascript.

    Entertainment/Brain-FreeTime

  17. What are your favourite fictional characters? Picking Wolvie is worth 5 extra Phoke Points.

    Buzz (Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets Mascot) is my favorite fictional character by far. Superman and King Kong can’t touch him, but Colin Devroe might argue about the King Kong part.

  18. What is your favourite current game?

    Battlefield 2 is by far my favorite game right now. I’ve been addicted to ranking up and becoming commander. I also have a knack for flying the attack helicopter.

  19. What is your favourite all-time game?

    I was brought up on Counter-Strike, so that is naturally my favorite game for all-time. It was also the first really immersive multiplayer game I picked up on.

  20. If you were a movie star, what genre would be your forte?

    If I was a movie star, I would put Chuck Norris to shame. But realistically I would probably play the role of the guy in the Transporter: excellent driving skills and better fighting skills.

  21. When you get the chance to create a character in a game, what is their name? And do you have a history for them?

    In the game I created for a class last week, the character was named MainCharacter, very original as you can see.

  22. How do you spend your relaxing time?

    If it’s time spent in the room, I usually just browse around online while playing some music. I’m a bit of an audiophile and have about 210GB of music at the moment. The mainstay of my relaxation is done driving around Atlanta or Houston in my car. I’m a huge car guy as well and the deafening sound of my Mustang lets me temporarily ignore all of my problems. Another form of relaxation is going to the campus recreation center on campus. There’s always something fun to do there. It’s a huge place that was actually featured in a Sports Illustrated magazine a while ago. It has 3 pools, a climbing wall, racquetball courts, a suspended track, treadmills with TV’s built into the displays .. typical of a tech school I suppose.

    Growing Up

  23. What experiences growing up helped shape your direction in life now?

    Tinkering. When I was younger I would always take apart things to see how they worked and attempt to put them back together again. That sparked my interest in electronics and computers in general. I would take apart my dad’s new IBM pc, our old Mac Centris 650, the stereo system, just about everything.

  24. Are we products of our nature or nurture, our makeup or our experience?

    I feel that it’s all about how you were brought up and what you’ve experienced.

  25. Going to school can be like putting ore into the blazing forge. What’s the best analogy you can think of for your school experience?

    I’m still trying to find out myself, but it’s something like a turbo-charger spooling up. I’m just waiting for the blow off valve to kick in (graduation).

  26. How long have you known you wanted to be where you are now?

    I’ve always known that I wanted to work with computers when I grew up, even when I was an infant, as referenced by pictures of me holding circuit boards before I was able to walk.

  27. You get the chance to go back in time to high school as you are now. Would you take the hand of the Time-Genie? Why?

    I’m pleased with how my high school experience went, so I don’t need to change any of that.

    The Infinite

  28. If you get to die in your sleep old and full of years, what would be your greatest achievement?

    Working for Apple and pioneering OS XV. Apple OS 15 would be the operating system. Microsoft’s Windows would only be a vague memory in everyone’s mind. Operating systems technology would have reached its absolute peak and OS 15 could do everything. However, it would need a high-end 23.7TeraHertz computer to run, but even that would be fairly cheap.

  29. You have the chance to interview one historical character (lived before you were alive). Who would you choose? What would be your first three questions / format of the interview?

    I would choose someone like Thomas Edison. Instead of an interview, I’d take him around some of the most advanced cities and show him the latest technology and the what the lightbulb has evolved into.

    Finis

  30. Thank you for your time and effort. It’s been a blast treading this short road with you. What are you doing after finishing this interview?

    I have to finish an analysis on how Wikipedia changes the notion of human knowledge by midnight and then I will hopefully make it to a showing of the movie Firewall.

Epilogue

We thank Paul very much for participating in this interview. If you haven’t visited http://www.paulstamatiou.com, then do it.

I’m not sure about how much breaking down of the interview to do. No doubt, over time, this end section will evolve. For now, I’ll let the interview itself do the talking. That, and the comments. Yeah.

It’s Aliiiiiive!

Spherical Phoke is a project that has been mulling about in my mind for quite some time. While it’s still very much in it’s infancy, we have a beginning.

Spherical Phoke is about the people behind the stuff. Looking beyond content (blogs, development, most other things) and to the author of that content.

Our first Interview is with Paul Stamatiou. That’s right. Pretty sweet.

One of the main purposes behind collating Interviews of "Spherical Phoke" is for others to come and be inspired, be convicted, to see others doing what they dream, or to find that there are people experiencing the same thing.

Of course, an Interview can only show so much, and a lot depends on the skill of the Interviewer and their questioning acumen. Of course, I’m a total newb … but with great experience comes great power … or something like that. Anyway, that’s not going to stop me. I get better every time I write out some questions, read other people’s interviews, listen to the news, and so on.

Thanks for coming, and stay tuned for the first of the Spherical Phoke.

Spherical Phoke

I’m finally putting into place the beginnings of an idea, that I call … Spherical Phoke. Some kind of clever play with words, maybe not so clever. Developers are supposed to think outside of the square … so, we are Spherical Phoke. Aww, c’mon, that makes perfect sense.

Anyway, it’s going to begin with Interviews of Developers/Techo-Bloggers/… from across the globe.

One interesting thing is that I’m trying to implement the initial part of the funcitonality using Jalenack’s Wordspew, for the interview. I like the idea of having a bit of flexibility in the interviewing, rather than a form to fill out, or an email to respond to. Of course, if this doesn’t work, I’ll most probably be doing something like that :).

I have a report to code now, but hopefully I’ll be done in time to get Wordspew running the way I want.

Till Later We Meet