29 September 2002

Oh heavens. Looks like MSPress have actually decided to call our bluff and agreed to let us write a book for them. Damn - this means we’ll actually have to write it now. I feel faint. Their author kit is two meg and consists mostly of a (very large) template for the chapters - do you really need fifty zillion paragraph styles to write a book - and a guide on how to take screenshots. It feels like the dark ages. So then, web services - that’s when you get the XML thingy and play yo-yo with it through the web-shaped window, isn’t it? Five months and counting.

Jibber.

30 September 2002

Preparation. Yes - good idea. Decide to gird loins and get right attitude for writing of book by reading the first thirty issues of Transmetropolitan again. Warren Ellis may not know anything about web services but the man is a genius. I can’t figure out the scenario needed for a bowel disruptor with a web service interface, but it’ll be fun trying to find one. Maybe I’ll just stick to a random religion generator. Bit more fun than random numbers for a start.

Still needed to shake self up - went and saw first live concert in a few months. Jerry Cantrell’s solo stuff isn’t bad at all - just like all the Alice In Chains stuff live less about 10% of the doped feeling. Left slightly mystified as to whether I was more inspired than when I went in. Probably not as the more I think about it, the more excited I am about the upcoming Queens of the Stone Age gig. It’s going to be either amazing or very disappointing. Buy Songs for the Deaf now - this is important.

1 October 2002

Found self troubleshooting patch bays and noise gates in the studio today. Not because I was suppsoed to, mind. Surprisingly, ended up mixing a 20-track catholic sing along because I had nothing else to do while it rained for the first time in a month and the police closed half the city down for a suspicious-looking-package(tm). That’ll be someone’s shopping safe-detonated by the bomb squad then.

Brum is turning into a right place for the headlines, good, bad or laughable. Not content with this bombscare (which I missed from two minutes walk away) , in the last fortnight we’ve had a full fledged earthquake (which I slept through), city fisticuffs for the first premier league Brum derby game for sixteen years (football - hmm) and now police hav broken up a people trafficking ring at addresses around here. And of course, Brum is also putting itself in the running for European City of Culture in 2008 Ah, the folly. Forget web services - I should go into social commentary, invade Aston with some dettol and cockroach shock and see if anyone has a go at me for making the place a bit cleaner.

4 October 2002

Autumn has let itself in through the back door. Suddenly noticed central reservations covered in leaves and trees in their usual rusty colours. Start of a season, start of a book - nice symmetry. Looks like Chris and I have managed to untangle the spec that actually got approved by the MSPress editorial board before anyone from the actual web services team has had a look at it in any detail. Don’t know what we were thinking to be honest. Now we turn to the hard part - chapter outlines. If we can get these to match up and agree on examples, the actual writing of the book is fairly easy.

Have discovered I think better while I’m pacing about. Doubt this means I’ll buy a cinema vendor’s tray and use that to put my laptop on for the luddites version of portable computing, but will have to bear this in mind.

If you’re going to start someplace, start at the beginning - especially if you’ve got to write about it afterwards. For the time being, am trawling through the help sections on web services in the .NET SDK and VS.NET help. That’ll be a start.

5 October 2002

Went clubbing for the first time in two years. Spent next two days preceding every reply in conversation with ’Pardon?’ until the tinnitus subsided to an acceptable level. Clubs have moved on somewhat from the Hacienda’s bare concrete walls and cold metal seating. Watched Reservoir Dogs. Wondered if the ringing would get worse if my ears were cut off. Would the echo effect lessen or the overall audible input just increas in general. Wonder how you get earplugs to stay put if there’s nothing to put them in in the first place.

Saw Red Dragon, the latest, last and least of the three Hopkins’ Hannibal Lector films. Needed cheering up after, so stuck around and watched Lilo and Stitch with about 200 under-eights. Nothing like watching a good kids movie with a lot of kids. I’ll leave it to you how you intepret that. Cinema pre-booking for new Harry Potter and Bond movies. Bond is beyond sequelitis now - hopefully Harry is as well.

6 October 2002

Argument and counter argument as to whether the geek has died at The Register. Note : why must I hate microsoft to be a geek. I use their OS, but I dig through their code, find their mistakes and get my stuff working on their machines. Am I some sub-geek simply because I choose not to use a free OS? To quote the Demotivator for this month, ’If you’re not part of the solution, there’s money to be made in prolonging in the problem.’ Only if you’re an MS consultant, which I’m not. Nor am I an MS evangelist. I like my free tools. Web Matrix is looking good for example. The argument for geeks is to shun MS, but that’s bull. Someone has to prove to MS that they should and can live in the same world, whether they like it or not. They can be happily co-existent and inter-communicative with the free OS’s of the world. Ditto to the politicists of geekdom who would rather provide a solution as a slap in the face to Billy Gates than just a solution to the problem.

There’s almost the parallel between sci-fi of the fifties and science today. The ideas of those writers in their heyday are slowly being made reality by the scientists of today, inspired to see if they can make it real. Ditto for most of what MS has achieved. The geeks and hackers fo the world have found a challenge to create the same (but not next gen) tools in cleaner, open code. But it’s still MS, IBM, Sun, etc producing the ideas for the next step. Some take, some don’t. Web services have taken, slowly, while HailStorm \ .NET My Services has not, although it won’t be a surprise to see similar ventures from everyone down the road. Likewise, MS has taken the first step to standardize more of the web service world under the guise of its GXA project, and will probably take more flak from it. Still though, the instigator always takes more risks than those who follow and refine. Such is the nature of the role. We don’t have to dislike MS to be a geek - we just have to identify its role. Even Linus Torvalds agrees with that - “If you start doing things because you hate others and want to screw them over, the end result is bad.“ How universal do you want it? Should I put it in XMl tags to amke sure it’s compatible with your system?

10 October 2002

Am writing this aware that a fly has not learnt how to swim fast enough to avoid drowning in my cup of coffee. Sigh.

Contracts arrived today in the post, and then they also arrived by courier. MSP is perhaps a little over efficient in some areas? In one package I received a standard “Who are you?“ form and in the other MS’s standard NDA. Seeing as I’ve signed that NDA, should the rest of this log read ..............?

Deadlines are split in five week periods, so first is less than our weeks away thanks to our prevarication, waiting for the contracts to arrive. With scream of frustration, turned to the laptop and promptly decided to spring clean the kitchen.

Yours truly has got the ’Here are the facts’ chapter - a great one to start with because it means you have to have the facts organised yourself - and in plain English as well. A good foundation for the rest of the book. If you ever write a chapter like this, make sure the first or second draft goes through the mother test. Send it to your mum or techno-illiterate friend and see how far they get through the chapter before they lose the plot. If you’ve written it right, the response (probably not in a SOAP envelope) should be ’the end’.

Web service site of the day - CapeScience Web Service Developer Network and in particular, their Piranha MP3 service that allows you to query the amazon database for information about your MP3 files.

13 October 2002

There are seven very large floors in the quiet and peaceful Birmingham Central Reference Library. Annoyingly, there seem to be only ten circuit breakers for laptops across those seven floors. Never have I been so happy to have a spare battery for the laptop. Actually, never before have I had to _use_ the spare.

There are about 74 A4 pages worth of notes directly linked to the phrase ’web services’ in the .NET SDK Contents and I’ve read and annotated all of them. There are only four mistakes that I noticed. Now to read the other half tucked under the index. Inkjet has, of course, run out while giving me hard copy of the seventy four. Last few pages appear as series of dots and dashes that I defy people to decode. My notes appear as scrambled as they are in my head. Standard pre-writing jitters. Will continue to get worse until outline is constructed. Added complication that there’s the pseudo-pressure of bearing in mind how long the chapter should be - i.e. long. Chapter will actually be as long as it needs to be. i.e. Long

Am seriously considering cashing in my ISA to take Developmentor’s Guerilla Web Services.NET course next month. It’s not as though shares mean much at the moment. Quite like the idea of wringing dry the heads at DMentor of knowledge and then going from there. I shall sharpen my whittling skills forthwith.

14 October 2002

Monday. One of those miserable gray days that defies you to do anything other than empathise with the weather and sit in a heap. With news of the bomb in Bali as well, it’s enough to make you consider just leaving and sending a demo in for the vacant singer position in Wes Borland’s new band, Eat The Day.

17 October 2002

Out to see Motorhead and Anthrax last night. A classic bit of old school thrash and great, traditional in-your-face rock. Both bands are now institutions in loud music and the reason of course is that the are still as good now as they were then. John Bush and Lemmy have two of the best voices in the business and if you’ve ever seen Scott Ian play live, then you know what passion and commitment to music really is. Truly inspirational.

Booked self into Developmentor Guerilla course with a gulp. Booked bank balance into rehabilitation clinic for money withdrawal symptoms.

Vera’s came back over from Italy \ Germany for a couple of days and brought chocolate covered goodies for the humble writer. All being well, new year will be at hers this coming season. All being well that is, as long as I can take my laptop with me. Quite like the idea of working in ’the Italian office’ for a little while. I’ll refrain from any Michael Caine references for the time being though. Safer that way.

21 October 2002

Disappointment. Am blacklisted by Wrox for consorting with the enemy regardless of the fact that I’m happy to work with them and told them up front. Frustrated by my comp’s decision to die quite spectacularly and noisily as well. HD is RAID but that’s what’s gone pop. Hopefully, can get a new drive and rebuild it all back.

Thank heavens for friends and housemates or Id probably be wasted by this point. Instead am soberly aiming for the nadir of emotions and working through the most nihilistic of my music to help me get there. After that, everything is up. New book has to be the best possible now. Can’t be ostracized for the sake of a crap tome, now can I?

25 October 2002

Am actually settling into a routine! Brr. Need a lie down just thinking about it. Thanks to conventional wisdom and Stephen King for this one. If you’ve never read his book, On Writing, and you’re interested in doing so, then pick up a copy. Barring the short autobiography in the front, his advice for the aspiring writer is invaluable. A thousand words a day just isn’t very much, but if you do that for six months, you’ve got war and peace on your hands. Or something which should keep your editor busy for a while once he stopped screaming anyway.

I wonder how many people appreciate how much work goes into the creation of a documentary? What do you keep in, what do you throw out, what’s the aim, where’s the train of thought running through to its conclusion? What research do you do? Who do you contact? Most importantly, where do you start? If you wrote a background piece on the evolution of web services, where would you start? If you’re anyone other than Don Box, you write what you know and presume and then backfill. I sound like a foreman. Actually, I guess I am, from a certain point of view.

29 October 2002

Bit breezy yesterday. Alton Towers theme park has never been one to close for rain but add in the 80mph winds, the trees falling down across the roads and the small matter of localized flooding here and there, it was, unsurprisingly in hindsight, shut. A small waste of five hours drive then.

V. happy to see that India has finally released a production version of the Simputer. Slashdot has been following the story for two years, but I and a few others were lucky enough to host the original launch for the project at BangLinux 2000.

Interesting new search engine. How long before they make it available as a web service for incorporation into our own sites?