mrblack.co.uk weblog

I love chatting to FRANK the anti-drugs MSN chat bot.

Andy: Open the pod bay doors FRANK
FRANK (talktofrankbot@hotmail.co.uk): I’m sorry Andy, I’m afraid I can’t do that.

Reading
FRANK
FRANK MSN Chatbot
2001: A Space Odyssey

Prelude
This post is just my head throwing ideas about. Non of which are fully formed, nor fully investigated.

Intro
Today Google labs spitted out an early “plugin” for Internet explorer and firefox to make websites viewable and interactive offline. This isn’t entirely new as Apollo offers something similar. However, this is interesting considering Google is one of the kings of webapps. With Gmail, Google Calender and Google Docs all obviously the target for this technology I doubt that it would fail spectacularly.

Very brief and rubbish Gears overview
First off, there are two main components to Gears. The webserver and the database. The webserver is pretty simple to get our heads round, it essentailly caches pages that us as developers tell it to. For me the most interesting parts is the database.

The Gears Plugin that the user installs includes a fully relational SQLite database. As developers we can interacted with it by passing SQL commands via javascript. Yes thats right… we interact with it by using javascript code such as

var rs = db.execute('select * from Demo order by Timestamp desc');

The benifits of this are pretty interesting. For example webservers technically don’t have to store information at their end, ever, just relying upon the users own store.

I feel however the most use of such an app would be for something like gmail, where when you are offline you write and send an email with gears facilitating the actual sending of the email when the internet becomes available.

So how would Rails fit into all of this?
I love writing webapps in rails. Its quick, easy and Ruby is lovely to write. So could developing a Rails app with gears functionality be a possibility without having to drop into insane javascripty-SQL-type goo every time?

The answer in my opinion is yes, but it won’t be easy.

Here are the major barriers in the way to making a my ideal acts_as_gears type plugin.

1. The plugin should be able to convert Ruby into javascript for offline controllers and model interactions. A massive undertaking (possibly recreating active record in javascript.. shudder).
2. Creating the user’s local database and linking each column with the live database columns would be essential if we wanted to do any sort of syncing.
3. The automatic creation of database syncing methods in javascript and ruby.
4. Creating a seamlessness of data origin in views. For example, a table of information should be able to be printed out on one page irrespective if data came via the live or local database.
5. The views should only have to be writen once, with of cause different javascript payloads.
6. Loading and unloading of data needs and state management.

Anyway that’s what’s on my mind right now, a half baked whirlpool of rails, javascript and gears.

Reading
Google gears
Adobe Apollo
Firefox offline info

With little time and money spare we need the help of critics or reviewers to help us in our choices. As a single male with a cynical slant and a hatred of being “sold” anything I tend to take comfort with critics who get rather angry in their specialist area. Here are a few I really quite like.

BBC Five Live - Mark Kermode film reviews
Kermode loves film and is the BBC’s film reviewer who appears on Newsnight review and The Culture show from time to time. His reviews are, I have to say, spot on for my liking. Of cause not everybody will agree but I like this chap for his balls in lambasting a film. His famous rants against Pirates of the Carabiean and Little Man have almost become legendary.

Reading
Kermode film page / podcast links
Wikipedia entry

4Later - Vids
Before channel four filled its nights with quiz channels or 24 hour CCTV footage of some wankers in a house 4later aired and was a gem of my pubescent years. It had odd animations and tv shows which ran on a shoe string. One of the best was Vids, a video review show which looked at the latest VHS releases. Starring Stef and Nigel as two Scottish video shop owners their reviews took place during comedy sketches which I have yet to see repeated. A classic which could make a fantastic come back on the net if somebody could track them down.

Reading
Vids fansite, long since dead.
IMDb information
Google cache of old 4later site.
Dog-Sized-Cat. Nigel’s new site with links to Vids episodes.
4later fansite.

Internets - Angry Nintendo Nerd (aka angry video game nerd)
This chap just makes me laugh out loud. His age is about mine, his subject matter old video games and his anger is constantly at about 10.

Reading
Angry Video Game Nerd Home page
Youtube videos

BBC Four - Screenwipe
The artsy BBC 4 hosting a program where the hosts states “an undercover camera show that filmed children in restaurants and calling them c**ts, thats a show I would watch” has to be worth a peek. I missed it up until now and have only caught up thanks to youtube and some chap pirating them. I would basically describe this show as like ITV’s TV burp, but funny. Plus any show that hires fat-pie.com and Adam Buxton has to get my vote. Classic.

Reading
BBC Four Screenwipe page
Loads of “clips” uploaded to youtube

In the morning I like to check the latest technology news. It sort of eases you into the day. To find these swell articles I tend to check all the normal nerdy hang outs, slashdot, digg, del.icio.us/popular and so on. But of late I’m getting really pissed off at the titles of these posts. I’m starting to see more and more of the obvious lets-make-a-list and buzzword loaded titles that shows us the author must have read “Top Tips on how to make your blog more popular”.

And then there are those “digg this” and “add to del.icio.us” links now placed along side articles. Occasionally useful, but when I see them multiple times on the same article or even at the top and bottom of the page it smacks a little of the authors desperation. Who on earth posts to digg as a bookmark and who uses del.icio.us without the bookmarklet anyway?

Bah.. perhaps I’m just getting old and find the cascade of social networks a little annoying at times, especially when they are all so fair and don’t weight the value of “diggs” or “saves” based upon the users actual ranking or education. Its communism gone mad I tell you.

/rants and puts down the daily mail

“Control Alt Chicken� is a new, download only, geek cookery show. The first episode is up for download over at revision3. Its rather scary how bad they are at cooking, but for a first episode which is free and pushing the boundaries of Internet tv its well worth a peek.

Bless the yeah yeah yeahs.  The new album, “Show Your Bones” sounds ace, which you can check out on myspace.  I still don’t ‘get’ myspace, its madly popular but to me it just looks like geocities in a time when websites can look so much nicer.  Surly now that its owned by news corp they could make some nicer icons and change that ugly flash music player into something a little slicker.

Ultra Right wing tosspots, the BNP, seem to be producing “The Real News�. Strangely it has ended up on google video for the masses to digest. I suppose its inevitable that a service which was made purely for sharing videos of ones cat has been turned into a tool for spreading the drivel of the far right.

The Russian music site known for selling many popular artists albums for next to nothing have released a new piece of software to help its patrons download music from their store. The people over at iTunes must be pissed off at the existence of this store which utilises a crazy Russian legal loophole meaning that it doesn’t have to pay pays a fraction of the amount to the artists for the downloads as say a full CD sale would. Now, however, Allofmp3 have named their new software “allTunesâ€?, a blatant rip on the iTunes name. Either AllofMp3 have legal balls of steel or they just know that within Russia they are virtually untouchable by any western idea of copyright and trademark law.