Saturday, February 1, 2003
The Macintosh Programming Special Interest Group (MPSIG) had a lively meeting this last Saturday February 1st, 20003, from 10am to noon. We expected 6 or 8 people, about 13 people had showed up by meeting's end. The official meeting went from 10 to a bit after noon. Some of us stayed to talk about follow-on projects and the like for a while -- I think Deivy and I didn't leave till about 1.
I polled people on what they were interested in: a large majority had a strong interest in Applescript, but there was a wide range: C, Java, perl, databases and especially the Cocoa environment. Other topics suggested were Web design, Cold Fusion, RealBasic, Hypertalk, Supercard, and graphics in general.
Since it was the first meeting, we had nothing specifically planned. Deivy Petrescu and Sam Leidy filled in the gap with presentations on Applescript. A lot of good information was presented: what Applescript is good for, how to use it, benefits of using AppleScript Studio as compared to Script editor, and so on.
Deivy's demo on controlling Tex-Edit Plus with Applescript was particularly impressive. Sam had some useful advice on how to build and debug small applescripts, using syntax coloring to catch bugs and so on. Sam suggested googling for useful applescripts, e.g. if you want to know how to open an URL in Applescript google for: `Applescript "Open URL"'. (I tried this just now: it works well!) Sam also recommends the article (This is the first in a very interesting series of articles: Sam has collected the links for this and we will be posting as soon as we have some web space going: Ed Stevens has very kindly volunteered to help with that!)
Deivy and Sam received well-earned applause and the grateful thanks of the group for grace under pressure (doing a talk with no warning is not the easiest thing in the world!). The space from McMobile was a big help: just the right size and with a very good video projector system. Thanks Yukio and McMobile! We would like to encourage people to consider McMobile for Mac services and purchases.
We have agreed to meet 1st Saturday of the month on a regular basis, with meetings from 10 to noon. At the next meeting we have tentatively scheduled Q and A, an elementary presentation on Applescript, and then a more advanced topic: probably something on Cocoa or else a very interesting biomedical control project Yukio has come up with.
John Ashmead
Saturday, March 1, 2003
The Macintosh Programming Special Interest Group (MPSIG) had another lively meeting this last Saturday March 1st, 2003, running from 10am to about 12:40pm. We had eleven people; three or four more couldn't make because of other commitments (such as judging the Philadelphia Flower Show: hard to reschedule that!).
Again, many thanks for MacMobile and Yukio for hosting us. McMobile doesn't officially open till 11am Saturday's, but Yukio came at 10am to let us in and help us get started. Thanks! We started with Q and A: we talked about Carbon 1.6, use of Powerpoint versus HTML versus Appleworks for presentations, what Javascript and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are good for, Quark Express, and even bitmaps.
Then Sam Leidy did a presentation on Applescript: doing a number of short demo programs and talking about good programming practices including: commenting -- how and why, how to run a debugging trace, and other good stuff. Then I polled users on what projects they might be interested in: these included: controlling MP3 playback remotely, drawing Mandelbrot figures on the screen, interfacing Quark Express and databases, and lots of scripting applications.
Then I did a presentation on what the Unix shell is and what it is good for. I don't know how much others got out of it, but even tho I have been doing shell scripting for 23 years, I still learned a lot about the shell on the Macintosh just from putting the talk together. In fact, I shifted the default on my own machine from "tcsh" the default shell to "zsh" as as a result of the research I did.
Sam, I, and the rest discussed the relationship between Applescript and the various unix shells. Basically, Applescript is friendly and can give you very fine-tuned control of an application (if the application is properly scriptable), but the shells are faster and can do some batch processing things that are hard in Applescript. Good to know both.
Deivy, Sam, and I will be posting the two talks on the web over the next few weeks: I'll announce the URL when we are ready. At April meeting (April 5th), Deivy Petrescu will do the first part of a two part presentation he is putting together on Applescript, Yukio and some friends of his will present a very interesting biofeedback application they are starting (this with real commercial possibilities!), and we will have Q and A and possibly some other stuff as well.
And in May (May 3rd) we have the 2nd part of Deivy's presentation and also a presentation by Anomaly Software (by our own Kevin and Jeremy) about their system administration, utility, and MP3 software tools (written in C). See their sitewww.anomalyindustries.net for more on that. And Q and A, without which no meeting is complete.
We encourage all interested to come. Please email me if you are interested, but come in any case.
John Ashmead
Saturday, April 5, 2003
The Macintosh Programming Special Interest Group (MPSIG) had a slightly disorganized but very lively meeting this last Saturday, running from 10am to a bit after noon, with fourteen attendees. Again, many thanks for MacMobile and Yukio for hosting us. And a special thanks this time to Marvin Berwin for speaking on biofeedback!
We got off to a slightly confused start and held part of the Q and A outside, in conditions of light drizzle but high spirits. (I'd list the questions but the ink from my notes ran.) We then moved inside, did a bit more Q and A, and then Deivy started his talk on Applescript. About 11 our biofeedback speaker -- Marvin Berman -- arrived. (He had been delayed by a speeding ticket while rushing to get to our meeting!) Since Marvin had to leave early, Deivy graciously ceded the floor (Deivy's talk will resume next time) and Marvin proceeded to fascinate all for the next hour.
Marvin asked for a volunteer from the audience and one incautious individual failed to step back with sufficient speed. We will refer to this individual as "V". Marvin attached several electrodes to V's head and then projected a display of V's brain waves: alpha, beta, theta, and delta on the screen. Very interesting. Much intrigued speculation about V's brain waves followed. (I can say no more.)
And you could see V's brain waves shift when V was studying V's own brainwaves. Talk about self-referentiality! In fact, this was much of the point: Marvin's Quiet Mind Foundation is using biofeedback technologies to help people get control of their own brain waves. As his web site (www.quietmindfdn.org) puts it:
"Clinicians and therapists have found EEG biofeedback very effective in helping with: Cognitive-Behavioral and Emotional Disorders, Developmental Disorders, Movement and Pain Disorders, Addictive Disorders, Neurological Disorders, [and] Other Disorders" including ADHD or attention deficit disorder. In fact, Marvin said it may be able to help with slowing down the progress of Alzheimer's, which would be really good news for the planet.
The basic idea is simple: you analyze the current state of the person's brain waves and look for differences that seem to be characteristic of the syndrome the person is complaining of. Then you work up a program in which when the person's brain waves go away from those characteristic of the syndrome and closer to normal, the person gets a pleasant stimulus: a picture or a musical tone or the like. (No aversive stimuli are used!) Sometimes an animation is used to help give the person an idea of what their brain is doing right now. Even tho people can't directly control their own brain waves, they can still indirectly control them by thinking in ways that cause the pleasant stimulus to show up. And if they learn to do this well enough, after enough sessions clinical improvement may be seen. Cool! we all agreed. Plus, unlike drugs, biofeedback has no negative side-effects. Even better!
What, you ask, has all this to do with the Mac? Sad to say, the morning's display was done with a PC. But the software and hardware are expensive and not fully developed. With the Mac's excellent graphics capabilities, it might well be able to make a first rate contribution to this work. And Yukio has located a $99 analog to digital USB converter called LabJack (www.labjack.com) which could be used to let a Mac see the electrodes. There was much eager discussion of the possibilities here and the meeting broke up on rather a high note. (Rumors that IPO-related brain wave patterns showed up on the display are completely false. Completely.)
John Ashmead
Saturday, May 3, 2003
The Macintosh Programming Special Interest Group (MPSIG) had a lively meeting this last Saturday, running from 10am to about 12:30, with 14 attendees. Again, many thanks for MacMobile and Yukio for hosting us.
Q and A: Sam spoke on how to script the (apparently) unscriptable finder and some related questions; we discussed elements of programming style, i.e. comments, and the reference "Elements of Programming Style" by Kernighan and Plauger was cited as *the* place to start for this.
Deivy did a high level view of Applescript: using every transition known to Keynote, he talked about using Applescript for automating applications, integrating disparate applications, customizing bulky and recalcitrant applications, and creating new applications. He talked about messages, handlers, flexible syntax, script objects, inheritance, dictionaries, and where to get more documentation--apple.com/applescript is a good beginning.
In break, we announced: the next meeting of the Philadelphia Area AppleScript Users Group (PAASUG) will be held on Monday, May 19th, from 6:30 - 8:30 PM, at Springboard Media in Philadelphia. For additional information/directions, the "User Group" section of .
Kevin and Jeremy then talked about the development of their shareware site www.anomalyindustries.net. Tips: versiontracker is the place to list, pay attention to your site statistics, debug like a mad fiend, include lots of documentation, pay attention to your transfer limit (you'd be amazed how 4,000 downloads can eat up a couple of gigabytes) and RealBasic is an extremely good rapid prototyping tool but sometimes you have to go to C to get the job done. Check their site out!
John Ashmead
Saturday, June 7, 2003
The Macintosh Programming Special Interest Group (MPSIG) had a lively meeting this last Saturday, running from 10am to about 12:45, with 15 attendees. Again, many thanks for MacMobile and Yukio for hosting us.
In the Q and A, Q's and A's included: Can AppleScript be used from inside an app to control the app itself? Yes, but it is probably rare. Can you send menu choices and mouse clicks (and so on) to an event from a script? Yes, use the "System Events" application to send specific clicks, picks, and text to any program. Note you have to test this case by case to make sure it works; not every program follows all the rules!
Deivy did a low level view of AppleScript: all sorts of practical stuff: how to use the record feature to get a raw script you can then massage into place, gotchas when you do this, URL scripting, how to find out if a program is Scriptable (in Script Editor select "File->Open Dictionary"), and so on. The audience had a good time torturing Deivy: "Now why don't you try this..." and our speaker, always game, would!
And then I did "FileMaker: Tips, Tricks, and Traps". I did the presentation as a FileMaker database so the talk was about itself, as it were. Bottom line: FileMaker is basically a table at a time database with some relational extensions. If you have a small database, just a few tables, then it is a real winner on an ease of use basis. It is also good for getting a quick and dirty web site up. If your database is larger: millions of rows, twenty or more tables, you might need to look at something like MySQL.
We are skipping next month's presentation as July 5th is not a good date for a meeting and most of the alternative Saturday mornings are spoken for. John Ashmead
Saturday, August 2, 2003
The Macintosh Programming Special Interest Group (MPSIG) had a lively meeting this last Saturday, running from 10:30am (our new starting time) to about 12:30, with 21 attendees (largest attendance yet!). Again, many thanks for MacMobile and Yukio for hosting us.
Heather Dougherty spoke on "How to Design and Build a Web Site: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." She's a web designer at Vanguard and a very engaging speaker: this was -- as promised -- a lot of fun!
She gave Vanguard's 12 step program for building a web site:
1) Define the site goals and project scope. Outline the problem to be solved.
2) Do audience research to validate the goals, test assumptions, and reveal user needs.
3) Combine goals and needs to determine primary user tasks and therefore application objectives.
4) Do a "proof of concept" : sketch out a design for the site.
5) Plan out the information architecture: place the functionality in the site; check and refine requirements.
6) Do user testing of paper mockups.
7) Do wireframes of site; complete requirements.
8) Do user testing of wireframes.
9) Do primary visual design: establish initial look and feel.
10) Apply visual design to wireframes.
11) Finalize wireframes; do user testing. Have usability engineer test.
12) Using templates or other methods for maintaining consistency, produce web-ready pages, test browser compatibility, test functions. Publish to the web!
At every step, Heather emphasized, you may need to go back and iterate.
We had a lively discussion as she outlined the program. Heather emphasized the importance of "graceful degradation": making sure users still using older browsers can still use the site, while letting more current users have access to the full functionality. She liked Dreamweaver as a tool, but thinks ultimately you have to be able to get "down and dirty" with HTML. As promised, she gave examples of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The good was http://www.tweeter.com . A very disciplined and well laid out ecommerce site. The bad was http://www.citypaper.net. Very hard to find things. And the ugly was http://www.citypaper.net. This site crashed her browser twice. (And it crashed mine just now: so maybe you don't want to go there!)
Our thanks to Heather for a great talk! She is going to ship along a list of resources for web design for those interested. I will repost when it comes in. (And thanks to Ben Waldie for lending Heather his laptop for her presentation!)
John Ashmead