We’ve been considering how to replace this machine, if at all. There’s several options:

• the obvious : get a new pc and stick it somewhere in the network
• forget about the pc, get an extra notebook (the HP notebook will run windows, the new Eee 1000 notebook will run eee-ubuntu linux) and either
  • get a spare 500Gb usb disk for backups (cheap solution)
  • get a NAS (network applied storage) with 2 500Gb disks (expensive) \

I’m not a big fan of the new pc option. PCs only eat up a lot of space and ard hard to move around. Besides, all pcs are ugly. A much better option in my opinion is to slowly migrate to a situation where Eva and myself have a notebook of our own (not counting the notebook that I have for work, I don’t want to put my own stuff on that one).

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s best to grow via the extra notebook with extra external usb-disk option to a situation with a NAS. That is, get one Eee + disk now, get another Eee somewhere in the future (perhaps buy one after I’ve tought the course at the HU?) and the NAS somewhere next year.

Does anyone have experience with such set-up? Am I missing something?

Update: looks like we’re going for the incremental scenario. I’m currently shopping (figuring out where Ican get things cheapeast) for these items:

• Eee pc 1000 with ssd, possibly with 2Gb of ram (if it’s not too expensive)
• Lacie portable DVD burner
• Either a cheap 500Gb external drive from MediaMarkt or a pretty Lacie external disk of the same size

There is one post that particularly drew my attention. In this post Erik presents (part one of) his perspective on Web2.0. As such he argues that the Web2.0 needs information architects who, among other things, tackle the fundamental problem of the distinction between content and presentation. Since we wrote several papers on Transformations in a Web context I would like to comment on Erik’s post here (See my publications page for some papers on transformations).

I agree with Erik that the Web2.0 could use some fundamental redesign and that one important design principle would be: decouple content from presentation. Fair enough. Simple enough. Once you think about it, things are not as easy as they might seem. From a usability perspective, one could argue that a second principle is relevant here too: (logically) store content only once. I’m referring to the situation where we (Erik and me) have several multi-modal discussions (face to face, blog, E-mail, Jabber) and I would like to store “the content” of our discussions in one logical place. For face to face communication this might be tricky to say the least, but that’s a different discussion.

These -and probably other principles as well- restrict our design freedom with respect to the technical infrastructure of the Web. In more technical terms, I would say that as a corollary from the second principle we would need a lingua franca: a common format (in terms of our search: data resource type) to store content. A second corollary of these design principles is the fact that we need Transformations which transform content from one mode to another. In terms of the theory presented in our research / my dissertation: we would need transformations that transform between the different modes of communication online. Examples (formally):

T1 such that SEM(T1) = blogpost → linguafranca
T2 such that SEM(T2) = linguafranca → blospost

T3 such that SEM(T3) = Email → linguafranca
T4 such that SEM(T4) = linguafranca → Email

In terms of software architecture some interesting observations can be made as well. Principles that apply are, for example, the princple of loose coupling. Several patterns apply also, such as the gateway pattern and the translator pattern. Consider the following example to illustrate my point: let’s say Erik and myself use blog postings and E-mail as our communication channels. Then we would need two ways to interface with our “lingua franca content store” (the store). For blog postings we’d have to tap into the Web server to wire it up with the store (and execute a transformation along the way). Similarly, for Email we’d have to tap into the mail server (i.e., postfix) and make sure it is also wired up to the store in a similar fashion. Luckily modern Web/Mail servers have hooks to achieve this more easily.

In short, I agree with Erik. The Web 2.0 could definitely use some re-design and a solid information architecture. Perhaps we should round up some students to dive into this topic?

It may be that the availability of van-gils.org suffers slightly over the next two days. That also includes mail. But then again, I have a lot of confidence in my buddies of VC so it should go well. When all ‘s done we’re definately going to have some beers in Tilburg. Stay tuned!

P.S. Either sebas (from VC) or myself will post a comment when the move is finished succesfully

•  be able to add data about vynyl, dvd’s, and cd’s
• web-based so I can share info on my website
• possibly with a client that runs on my laptop (windows) or my computer (linux) that does CDDB lookups (i.e., look up the information from cd’s online so that I don’t have to type them in manually)
• possibly also store things like cover-art and lyrics
• the back-end has to be web-based and preferably run on a LAMP (Linux – Apache – Mysql – PHP) platform

I’ve looked everywhere and haven’t found what I was lookin’ for. I’ve seen some pretty impressive tools targetted at the Windows platform but that’s out of the question. Anyway, this is sort of a last chance: does anyone know of a good tool for music management that meets my requirements? Otherwise, back to the drawingboard and try to find the time to build something myself…

 It amazes me that after spending so much money we’re unable to perform even the simplest of tasks. The idea is to make a component diagram, add a component and change its stereotype to e.g. <<subsystem>>. So far so good. However,  there is an extra stereotype (<<component>>) which presumably represents the metaclass of the current element. Therefore, the component I just added has two stereotypes which is plain ugly. And there’s no way to get rid of the metaclass stereotype. Yuk! Time to start looking for another tool if you ask me.

[ruby]
class MultiTool
def drill
puts “drilling a big hole”
end

def hammer
puts “hammering a nail in”
end
end
[/ruby]

Often while programming you need to get some input from the user to decide what to do. Something along the lines of:

[ruby]
tool = MultiToolnew
puts “created a new multitool”
puts “what do you want to do with it?”

action = gets.chomp!
case action
when “drill”
tool.drill
when “hammer”
tool.hammer
end
[/ruby]

The case-statement is ugly to say the last. Now knowing that there’s a much better way of doing this I’ve written a lot of code like that in the past. Here’s the Ruby way of doing the same:

[ruby]
tool = MultiTool.new
puts “created a new multitool”
puts “what do you want to do with it?”
action = gets.chomp!
tool.send(action)
[/ruby]

Much better if you ask me! Here’s the output:

bas@van-gils { ~ }$ ruby Tools.rb
created a new multitool
what do you want to do with it?
hammer
hammering a nail in