I've been doing a fair bit of of Mac development and have come to appreciate the syntax of Objective-C. One of the more interesting aspects of Cappuccino is that it has created a new dialect of JavaScript that they call Objective-J. This blog post explains some of the motivations they had for doing this. In any event, I decided that I'd like to give Cappuccino a spin.

My "go to" language for server back ends is Python. I also like CherryPy, a Python server framework that makes it easy to attach Python code to web requests. Since Cappuccino is designed to make it easy to build an application inside a browser window, the back end mostly needs to be able to serve up JSON data for the Cappuccino application to present. CherryPy makes this fairly easy.

To get started, I downloaded the the Cappuccino "Starter Package". Inside that zip file is a "NewApplication" directory. I copied that directory as a directory called "static" in the my Application directory. If you open the supplied index.html, you are presented with a very basic "Hello World" application written in Cappuccino. In order to to build the application I have in mind though, I want that index.html to come from my CherryPy server so that the Cappuccino application can easily request information.

To do this, I configured my CherryPy application to server the contents of my Application/static directory. This is readily accomplished by creating a CherryPy configuration file cherrycappuccino.ini:

 
[global]
tools.staticdir.root = "/Users/keith/Projects/CherryCappuccino/Application"
 
[/]
tools.staticdir.on = True
tools.staticdir.dir = "static"
 

This tells CherryPy to server the contents of my "static" directory statically.

What remains is the Python code that builds the CherryPy application. At this point it's quite simple. We create one object that's mounted on the root of the CherryPy server. It's index method simply returns the contents of the index.html file in the static directory (there might be other ways to accomplish this but this was expedient. Here's the Python code from cherrycappuccino.py in my Application directory:

 
import cherrypy
 
class CherryCappuccino:
    def __init__(self):
        self.indexText = None
 
    @cherrypy.expose
    def index(self):
        if not self.indexText:
            indexFileName = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__),"static","index.html")
            indexFile = open(indexFileName)
            self.indexText = indexFile.read()
 
        return self.indexText
 
cherrypy.quickstart(CherryCappuccino(),'/',"cherrycappuccino.ini")
 

This reads the cherrycappuccino.ini file to configure the application and starts the server with our single application object. Starting the server with "python cherrycappuccino.py" sets up the server that can be browsed to at http://localhost:8080.

In a future post, I'll show how to configure the Cappuccino view based on data returned from the server.

Mr. August has the text of a speech he gave at Trinity University in San Antonio, "Professionalism and the Rise of the Amateur", posted on his site. In it, he meditates on the distinction between "amateurs" and "professionals". The core of his thesis is that a "professional" is characterized by professional behavior more than anything else. He elaborates on that quite a bit in his speech and I recommend that you read his text.

This is relevant to me in light of the sorts of things that I've been seeking out on the Interenet of late. All of the items in my last post are, in my view, "professional" as described my Mr. August. Indeed the "New Voyages" folks specfically can't make any money (often used as the measure of a professional) lest the dogs of Paramount be set on. Money or not, the "New Voyages" episodes are done with an attention to detail and affection of the source material that would be difficult to describe as anything but professionally done.

The folks at Decoder Ring Theatre went on a marathon binge of writing and producing their shows so that their producer's pending paternity leave did not interfere with their release schedule.I was willing to start listening to "Playing for Keeps" before it had been completed because Ms. Lafferty's reputation in the Podosphere was such that I was confident that I wouldn't be left "hanging" before the story was completed.

All done very professionally despite the fact that they aren't the product of the traditional sources of media in are world, and in fact come to me very nearly directly straight from the artist's brush as it were.In a recent email to a friend, I observed that in the old equation:Talent + Discipline + Luck == Success The mechanics of the Internet are diminishing the importance of the "Luck" component. What I'm coming to realize is that that comes with a corresponding rise in the importance of the "Discipline" component. Perhaps the crux of the good that the Internet does lies in the fact that the component least under an individual's control, "Luck" is being replaced in importance by the component most under and individual's control, "Discipline". "Talent" of course, remains the wildcard.

I've always been a fan of Old Time Radio shows. I'm still a bit creeped out by an episode of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater interpretation of "The Cask of Amontillado" that aired when I was a kid. When my first daughter was born, she had a confused notion of what one did during the day (sleep) and at night (play). I spent a lot of time rocking her while listening to downladed episodes of "Yours Truly, Johny Dollar". (Note to parents: downloaded episodes of "Jack Armstrong" or "The Adventures of Superman" make long car trips seem much quicker).

Which brings me to Decoder Ring Theater. Lead by Gregg Taylor, this troupe puts together two full cast original dramas "The Red Panda" -- a Canadian crime fighter in the mold of the Green Hornet and "Black Jack Justice" -- a hard boiled PI show. Both shows are written and produced by Taylor and both are excellent. Taylor's ear for snappy banter, especially between Jack Justice and his partner Trixie Dixon is terrific and I look forward to new episodes of each.

I found about this next item not through some blog or other Internet artifact but through an article in our local "pennysaver" type newspaper. About two hours north of where I live in upstate New York, there's a old car dealship that's been converted to a television sound stage. The set? Af faithful reproduction of the bridge of the Startship Enterprise, serial number NCC-1701. No -D, no -A, just NCC-1701: the original. The set was built by the folks at Star Trek: New Voyages. They're busily producing what they descirbe as the 4th and 5th seasons of the original 5 year mission. For the most part, the parts of the original crew are played by new actors. I say "for the most part" because George Takei and Walter Koenig have both reprised their original roles, as have a number of guest stars from the series' original run. The episodes are great fun to watch, though if you have no interest in original Star Trek episodes, you won't like these either.

Finally, Mur Lafferty is podcasting a novel, Playing for Keeps, that she's written. It's set in a super-hero universe of her creation (with a source for super powers marginally more "realistic" than a "strange visitor from another planet"). Her focus is on a group of characters with rather limited powers as they try to make their way safely through a crisis between more conventionally powered super-heros and super-villans. One of the pleasures of the book is watching how the characters learn to use their limited powers more effectively. You wouldn't think that super-waitress powers (can always balance a serving tray) could be much good in a fight, but then, you haven't lstened to "Playing for Keeps" yet. Lafferty's done some other interesting things with her book, including making the printed version available from LuLu and opening up her universe to other writers. It's a pretty interesting experiment and one that I'm enjoying watching.That'll do for now. Enjoy...