Cool Tools Rules!

Did I ever mention BottomFeeder ? It’s a news aggregator client (in other words, a nice tool to read blogs, i.e. Atom & RSS feeds). And it’s written in Cincom VisualWorks Smalltalk. It runs on multiple platforms (as Cincom VisualWorks Smalltalk does !) and it can be downloaded here.

On another subject, this nice tool is written by James Robertson. Btw, James Robertson also records/produces/participates to/you-name-it really interesting, entertaining and useful podcasts about Smalltalk.

Finally, James is also involved in the creation/you-name-it/publishing of tons of videos and “Smalltalk Daily Webcasts“.

If I might add, if more people in the Smalltalk community were as dedicated and as involved as James Robertson is towards “publicizing” Smalltalk (and not exclusively Cincom’s VisualWorks or ObjectStudio but all flavors!), Java, C#, Ruby and other “modern or pseudo dynamic” languages would look (to somehow paraphrase Neil Peart) like “pale facsimiles like what others see” as compared to Smalltalk…

Nostalgia… Currently looking at some VisualWorks stuff, thinking about the good old days (Hello Vassili!) and wondering why I had so many complaints about ENVY and VAST all those years when now I have to deal with VSE (yep, VSE, back to 1995!) on a daily basis !

Cruel World!

 

MySQL and Smalltalk Ressources

Updated the 2 ressources pages :

• Smalltalk Ressources
• MySQL Ressources

I’ll add more links to those 2 pages soon..

 

Facing down the future coming fast

A quick to-do list of mine…  Don’t despair, I should start writing about Smalltalk again very soon!  This was never meant to be a “my personal life” blog!!!

1) Trip to New York to see the Yankee stadium before they tear it down (tickets bought, August, done!)

2) Fix the f*****g car (Should finally be completed by the end of the week after a nightmarish 5 weeks of repairs and problems, one after another)

3) Complete and resolve all paperwork issues related to my Mom’s death…  Let’s not be too optimistic here!  Can’t go faster than the people processing the papers…

4) Prepare my bicycle for this summer…  Wanna get back into shape… and doctor’s order!

5) Get back on that baseball software project and have a basic “something” that works!

6) Rush concert on June 12th…  Can’t wait!

7) Once those 6 items are done, make another list!

 

 

Take a walk outside myself in some exotic land…

More food for thought… In my case, it usually “sparks” from lyrics I hear. Doing a major REORG command to fix that very fragmented and inefficient life of mine… It’s been a while since the last “maintenance cycle” but already, the 40 years old “server” of yours is getting better and is not crashing every now and then… I’ve had my “severe crashes” in the last 3 years and January 15th 2008 (the day my Mom died) and March 10th (my first visit to see a doctor in 34 years!) events finally triggered an alarm that was spinning in “idle” mode and at a very low priority process… If only I had a time machine to fix the moronic things I’ve done, I’ve said and wrote (you know who you are if you’re reading this)… One thing at a time! Slowly going back to the Benoît I was and who’s been missing to a lot of people… Especially me…

Grace To Grace
Immaculate Vision
Of What Should Have Been
Place To Place
Elegant Story
Of What Could Have Been

(Grace to Grace, Geddy Lee)

Living In The Present Tense
When You Lose The Past
And The Future Makes No Sense
You’re Living In The Present Tense

(The Present Tense, Geddy Lee)

 

Sept ans…

Exceptionally today, this post will be in French. I have two good reasons for this, they’re named Maude and Audrey!

Bonjour les filles! Où que vous soyiez, quoi que vous fassiez, Benito pense très fort et très souvent à vous. Trop fort et trop souvent même. Alors je vous souhaite bonne fête mes deux belles fouines. Profitez bien de vos 7 ans parce que le temps passe vite…

Bientôt la fin de l’école, puis la fin du primaire, puis débute le secondaire, puis les chums, les iPod, les cellulaires, les danses du vendredi soir, l’inscription au cégep et les doutes quant à l’avenir, la première job, les brosses de fin de session, les chums qui deviennent de plus en plus compliqués, l’amour, le premier appartement, la première voiture, maman qui parle de prendre sa retraite, les paiements, les cartes de crédit, la maison, le prêt auto, l’hypothèque, les taxes, l’impôt, le stress au bureau, encore l’amour avec tout ce que ca amène de bon et de poche parfois, la vie de couple, planifier l’avenir, penser avoir des enfants, avoir enfin des enfants …

Un fois que t’as des enfants, le temps de le dire, le cycle recommence : bientôt la fin de l’école, puis la fin du primaire, puis le secondaire, puis les chums, les iPod, les cellulaires, les danses du vendredi soir…

Okay! J’exagère, c’est pas si démoralisant que ca la vie! C’était juste pour vous faire comprendre que le temps passe vite, très très vite!  Allez! Allez manger du gâteau!

Bonne fête les filles!

xx

 

All you need is a backup… Did I say offsite ???

When backing up the filegroup, the logs and the data files simply isn’t just enough…

To parahrase Rush:

When the waters rose in the darkness
In the wake of the endless flood

http://arjen-lentz.livejournal.com/104918.html

 

Where in the world are you Éric Zittel ?

Bad day.  Bad news.  Life sometimes sucks…  And it sucks big time!

Was sipping my coffee this morning when I learned the bad news on LCN.  One of my good friends in cégep, Éric Zittel, has been missing since September 2006.  We used to have a ton of math courses together and enjoyed discussing all sorts of things ranging from mathematics, physics, religion, music, science and women… 

We’d discuss for hours and smoke one cigarette after another…  We really enjoyed the intellectual side of discussions and each other’s perspective and ideas.  He was on of the few who loved science and philosophy just as much as me.  We even discovered we shared a common (and secret!) admiration for Jacob Bronowski’ documentary series “The Ascent of Man”.

He was a really bright guy and a hard worker.  I don’t know how many times he slept in his car at the time because he worked full-time and had tons of courses in College : didn’t have time to go sleep at home!

They interviewed his brother and his father on the news.  I’m convinced he’s out there, somewhere. 

Éric, fais juste donner signe de vie crisse!  Un p’tit coup de fil, un email, une lettre, n’importe quoi!

 

Will it be “Dad” or “Mom” ???

A pregnant man?  What?!?!  What?????? OMG!

 http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080403/ts_nm/pregnant_man_dc

 

I couldn’t have sang it better!

Food for thought…  Exactly what I’m going through these days…

If you don’t like
What you got
Why don’t you change it ?
If your world is all screwed up
Rearrange it…
Raise a little Hell!

(Trooper, Raise a Little Hell)

 

Addiction

Never realized how much I missed my internet connection…  Back on Facebook, mailing lists, forums, newsgroups, IRC, PurePlay, IMs (I use Pidgin formerly known as Gaim otherwise I’d go nuts with all the different IMs I’d need) and WordPress of course!