When a ball dreams, it dreams it's a frisbee

Grok Headline matches for When a ball dreams, it dreams it's a frisbee

Longhorn dreams

Longhorn dreams 05/24/2004 04:05 PM
CNET Asia May 24 2004 8:22PM GMT

Technicolor Dreams

Technicolor Dreams 01/18/2004 12:24 AM
There's a diner near my house that's not the best but it's not the worst and it's the only thing...

Frontier Dreams

Frontier Dreams 05/21/2004 12:50 PM
In the back of my mind I’ve been thinking about the open-s ourcing of the Frontier kernel, and like some other folks it’s made me dream of software that’s close in spirit to the early versions of Frontier, before it became the basis for a content management system.

For those who don’t know, Frontier began life as a scripting system for Macintosh. But not just another language—it included an object database and a relatively rich (for the time) library of verbs. You wrote code in an outliner, which I still think is a wonderful way to write code.

You used it do many of the same things people use Perl and Python (and so on) for today, only it was on Macintosh System 7. Instead of using pipes and Unix-y things for inter-application communication, it used Apple events. (Like AppleScript.) It was very common to use Frontier to do tasks that required scripting one or more other applications.

For instance, your script might grab data from a Filemaker database, format it as text in Frontier, then create a new email message in Eudora and send it. With Frontier’s scheduler, its cron-equivalent, you could make this happen once an hour or whatever. And you might archive the data in its object database and create weekly reports based on that data.

That’s just a for-instance, of course. The gist of it was that it made it possible to do custom things that apps like Filemaker and Eudora would never (quite rightly) have supported on their own.

Sounds like AppleScript, right? Well, yes. But Frontier brought some things that AppleScript doesn’t have. (The browse-able object database, the richer library of verbs, the code outliner, the scheduler, and so on. Frontier is an entire environment on its own, though an open one, aware of the rest of the system.)

My dream app

First thing—I don’t have plans to work on Frontier. I’d love to use the results of someone else’s work, though! As much fun as it would be for me to work on it (partly because the kernel is an old friend, but more so because I know a lot of Frontier users who are cool cats) it just isn’t on my path. However, I’d be happy to make sure my software works well with people who want to script it with Frontier.

Anyway... my dream app goes back to that earlier vision of Frontier. To bring it up-to-date, there are a few things I’d love to see:

Python

Whitespace-aware Python just begs to be written in an outliner. The language is similar in style to UserTalk (Frontier’s scripting language), but, key fact, it’s object-oriented.

The object-oriented thing is a big deal: I’ve gotten so I won’t even consider writing in a procedural language for anything but the smallest of tasks. I want objects.

And Python is just plain cool.

I wouldn’t advocate dropping UserTalk, I’d argue for making Python a first-class peer of UserTalk. There are some challenges to consider, though. Frontier internally is receptive to other languages. (Note that you can write scripts in any OSA language, including AppleScript). But you’d have to make it so Python could access the object database (to store and retrieve data and to call other scripts) and you’d want a way to freeze-dry Python objects in the database.

Cocoa front-end

Okay, obviously I don’t care about classic Mac OS or Windows. I care about OS X.

When Frontier was written, there were no system-supplied user interface controls for tables, outlines, and toolbars. And all applications polled for events (via WaitNextEvent, if I remember correctly).

The first obvious thing to do is replace a bunch of the user interface code with .nib files and standard Cocoa widgets. However, I think I’d retain the existing outliner for writing scripts. (Cocoa and Carbon can co-exist: it’s not a problem.) But all toolbars, the object-database browser, text-editing views, and so on would use Cocoa user interface.

In theory, you’d end up with less code, better performance, and a modern OS X UI.

Bonus points: custom windows

Sometimes you want to create a mini-application, a custom dialog or window backed by a script. Frontier has a long history (at least on classic Mac OS) of supporting this: you could run dialogs from resources, you could run MacBird cards.

In the year 2004, the thing to do would be to run dialogs and windows from .nib files. You’d lay out your user interface using Interface Builder, then run it in Frontier.

How would you handle wiring up actions and outlets to scripts in Interface Builder? Glad you asked. You probably wouldn’t. One way to handle this is to give each item a unique tag in IB. Then your script might have a handler like on itemDidSendAction (itemRef, actionRef). This would be called when a checkbox was clicked, a button pressed, whatever. Your script would, obviously, have to branch on which item sent the action and what the action was. Not quite as slick as wiring up actions, but it would work.

The other side of the coin is outlets. That’s where tags come in. To get a reference to an item, you might write something like itemRef = cocoaWindow.itemWithTag (tag, windowRef). Then you could do things like set the value of a text field like so: cocoaWindow.setStringValueForItem (itemRef, someString).

Double bonus points

Get PyObjC in the mix of all this, and now you’re talking about something extraordinary.

Anyway...

It’s possible that there will be an exciting burst of creativity once the kernel is made open-source. I think that’s totally cool, it it comes to be. For my part, I’d be happy to answer any questions I can for people who work on the code, since I know a little about it.

It’s entirely possible that the things I’d like to see are not the things most people would like to see, and that’s fine. (But I can dream, right?)

P.S. A glimpse into the kernel: The first thing you’ll discover is that, before Frontier was Frontier, its name was Cancoon.

Dreams of the Moon

Dreams of the Moon 01/04/2004 04:37 PM

Car Wash dreams

Car Wash dreams 01/08/2004 08:49 PM
We know what we are, but we do not know what we can be. Shakespeare I was washing my car...

Geek dreams

Geek dreams 05/04/2004 06:15 PM
Do IT workers dream of electric sheep? This hilarious site compiles the nightmares and dreams of coders.

One of the scariest nightmares I've had in the past decade or so was about me being stuck in a Nethack dungeon. Everything was green on black (I'd been playing on a Facit VT100-clone) and in 7-bit ASCII. I distinctly remember being chased by a lower-case x, scared out of my wits and at the same time feeling ashamed of being such a wimp that a mere grid bug was a threat.

Link (Thanks, Eli!)

Diesel Dreams

Diesel Dreams 08/08/2004 07:03 PM
Pepsi Blue! I mean, lots of interesting occasionally NSFW Flash video, from some-company-or-other.

Desert dreams

Desert dreams 08/30/2004 01:52 PM
USA Today Aug 30 2004 5:52PM GMT

Mac Tip: Database of Dreams

Mac Tip: Database of Dreams 08/08/2004 10:45 AM
G4 Tech TV Aug 8 2004 2:17PM GMT

The girl of my dreams

The girl of my dreams 07/19/2004 08:14 AM
I'm deeply in love but I can't tell how she feels about me.

Dreams of Longhorn

Dreams of Longhorn 05/20/2004 02:32 PM

animated dreams

animated dreams 02/11/2004 03:51 AM
I enjoy film. I guess the word "film" is starting to be an inaccurate term, since we are quickly moving...

The importance of dreams

The importance of dreams 08/22/2004 07:25 PM
I'm back home again; a day later than I was supposed to. With some very interesting tan lines, I might add.

My Thursday night was one of the strangest ever. Suffice to say that I ended up alone, in an Irish pub in Reykjavik, listening to melancholic guitar music and downing a horribly expensive beer. I also had a fever (of which I was not aware of the time), which produced some of the most vivid and strangest dreams I've seen in a long while, when I finally clambered to the youth hostel.

So I dreamed. In one dream, I was crossing a street, and as the traffic lights went green, all of the cars turned to horses and had to be herded away so I could cross the street. In a second dream, I saw myself find an internet terminal, and buying tickets to Oulu for the day that I arrive in Helsinki.

I wake up - still feverish - and recount some of the dreams to my travel companion. She looks at me, with a slightly worrying look, as I start to ponder that the idea from the last dream is not really that bad.

In our hotel, on the last night, I find a free Internet terminal that looks just like the one in my dream. So I buy tickets to Oulu, wondering who the heck gave my subconscious a free reign over my credit card.

For the rest of the trip, I worry about whether I'm going to make the connection, or the inevitable gaping hole that will be left on my bank account, or whether this was such a good idea at all, since I have been doing nothing but travel, and I shall be doing some heavy travel in the near future as well. (Bleargh.)

But Outi meets me on the airport, and one hug removes all doubt and weariness.

Later in the evening, the air is charged with a magical feeling that cannot be described in my crude words. It's as if one touch could set the world on fire; as if the thunder outside came from your mind; as if one look made your heart explode; as if tears and laughter and pain and pleasure were all the same thing. No masks, no hiding behind them. No buts, no ifs. Just...

*sighs deeply* This belongs to poets and songwriters and philosophers; not simple engineers like me. Shutting up now.

Home dreams.

Home dreams. 07/22/2004 09:47 PM
Straw House Blog. Coolhouse. Colorado house. When summer comes, I invariably start dreaming of places to live that are utterly unlike the standard Korean Concrete Beehive Box.

Moustache dreams

Moustache dreams 03/31/2005 12:42 PM
David Pescovitz: After seeing my post yesterday about the World Beard and Moustache Championships, reader Rohit Gupta of Bombay points us to this short video by Soumyadeep Paul documenting a moustache competition in Rajasthan, India. I especially like when this entrant plays two nose flutes simultaneously. Link

Vanilla sky dreams

Vanilla sky dreams 12/02/2003 01:19 AM
Watching Vanilla Sky before going to bed is probably not advisable when you are prone to weird dreams as I...

Dreams of big media

Dreams of big media 02/12/2004 09:54 AM
CNET News.com's Charles Cooper says the proposed Comcast-Disney combo is just another in a line of big power grabs that rob consumers of alternatives.

i am the man of dooce's dreams

i am the man of dooce's dreams 06/04/2004 03:40 PM
unfortunately, i am sharing the title with david hasselhoff

Sweet Dreams Are Made By This

Sweet Dreams Are Made By This 01/17/2004 10:47 PM

black and white dreams

black and white dreams 03/13/2003 02:12 PM
Just a quickie (huh huh) before I am off to take my Photo History final (eep!)... I've created a new...

InterActiveCorp's Local Dreams

InterActiveCorp's Local Dreams 11/12/2003 08:02 PM
InterActiveCorp (Quote, Chart) CEO Barry Diller told investors that his company's CitySearch unit is being courted by Google, Yahoo! and MSN. ...

Anesthetics spur sex dreams

Anesthetics spur sex dreams 06/22/2005 01:49 AM
David Pescovitz: The American Society of Anesthesiologists is warning physicians and nurses that patients might experience intensely vivid sex dreams while under anesthesia. From the Arizona Daily Star:

"Most physicians are not aware of this potential aspect of sedating drugs and anesthetics," said Dr. Robert Strickland, anesthesiologist at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. "In the patient's mind, such hallucinations can seem very real upon waking from sedation. In several recent, well-documented cases, physicians have been accused by patients of sexual misconduct, even though witnesses were present throughout the entire procedure."

Although it is almost impossible to verify how often sexual hallucinations occur, some studies indicate it happens in 1 percent to 3 percent of anesthetized patients, Strickland said. With some anesthetic drugs - such as ketamine or propofol - the incidence is up to 5 percent...

(Steven Barker, head of anesthesiology at the University of Arizona Medical Center,) was not alone the day he put a female patient under moderate anesthesia for a minor surgical procedure. He wanted her deeply sedated, but not completely out, so he could maintain verbal contact to check her breathing and other signs.

"At one point, I asked her if there was anything I could get for her, and she said, 'Yeah, a man,'" Barker said. "She then proceeded to describe the sexual characteristics of what she wanted, in a pretty direct way.

"I knew it was the drug, so I just sort of tried to change the subject. We all know these things can happen."

Link

When Predictions Become Pipe Dreams

When Predictions Become Pipe Dreams 01/22/2004 02:26 AM

Web Content Management: 10 Predictions for 2004: As much as I respect Gerry McGovern, this is more of a pipe dream list than a set of predictions. I predict we'll end 2004 roughly at the same place we ended 2003.

Finally, content gets taken seriously in 2004. Management will start thinking about content in a whole new way. Content will emerge as a strategic asset. Better organizations will begin to identify processes that will ensure the creation of high-quality content and reduce the creation of poor-quality content.

Click here to comment on this entry

Takara's New Toy Controls Your Dreams

Takara's New Toy Controls Your Dreams 01/22/2004 02:37 AM
The Yumemi Koubou, Japanese for "Dream Viewing Workshop," controls your dreams... and puts Freddy Krueger out of business.

Sleep Dreams Can Come True

Sleep Dreams Can Come True 06/12/2004 09:34 AM
CBS News Jun 12 2004 1:52PM GMT

Bubble Dreams Come True

Bubble Dreams Come True 12/22/2004 01:52 AM
Grab your sock puppets, order some bags of dog food to be delivered, and start selling pots and pans to the gold miners: Broadband usage has passed dial-up in the United States! I bet all the people that Om covered in Broadbandits must be rolling over in their prison cells....

At 15, Dreaming Big Dreams: Oh, to Be a
Scholar

At 15, Dreaming Big Dreams: Oh, to Be a
Scholar 04/09/2005 03:35 AM
Alicia Álvarez, a Mexican teen with dreams of attending college, finds herself, like her country, poised with one foot in the door of opportunity and one stuck in poverty.

eBay's Global Dreams

eBay's Global Dreams 07/22/2004 04:46 PM
Plus, no stopping Starbucks, Viacom's dazzling, and what's not to like about Qualcomm?

Skype dreams for developers

Skype dreams for developers 04/01/2005 08:42 PM
Fast-growing Net phone service has developers scrambling to figure out the best ways to add on--and cash in.

eBay's Golden Dreams

eBay's Golden Dreams 07/22/2004 09:49 AM
eBay continues to make a bid for your attention.

Rainy Days and cloudy dreams

Rainy Days and cloudy dreams 01/27/2004 12:34 PM
Rain day came and I dragged myself out of bed to forever capture the cuteness. :) Bear has been...

Jumble sale for internet dreams

Jumble sale for internet dreams 06/12/2004 12:05 AM
News.bbc.co.uk - Thu Jun 10, 04:24 pm GMT

Macromedia dreams of software
subscribers

Macromedia dreams of software
subscribers 02/10/2003 12:07 PM
ZDNet Feb 10 2003 10:08AM ET

Sweet Dreams Made by Machine

Sweet Dreams Made by Machine 01/23/2004 02:23 PM
A Japanese toymaker claims its new device can help users conjure up custom-made dreams by infusing their slumber with fantasy-inspiring music, words and fragrances. By Louise Knapp.

Pixelated Dreams: Choosing the Right
Tool for the Job

Pixelated Dreams: Choosing the Right
Tool for the Job 04/18/2005 10:11 AM
With all of the alternatives out there when starting a project, every developer goes through times when they really need to pick the right tool for the job. In his latest post on Pixelated Dreams, Davey Shafik walks you through such a thought process for a PHP application he's distributing.

desires dreams wishes and hopes

desires dreams wishes and hopes 04/29/2004 10:27 AM
all the things that fuel us as humans set us apart from each other we can dress the same, talk...

Gadget May Help Sleepers Choose Dreams

Gadget May Help Sleepers Choose Dreams 06/29/2004 10:50 AM
San Jose Mercury News Jun 29 2004 1:51PM GMT

Bollywood Dreams - Apple Loops 1.0

Bollywood Dreams - Apple Loops 1.0 08/27/2004 02:16 PM
Superb collection of Bollywood inspired loops for GarageBand!

Public Pot Company's Pipe Dreams

Public Pot Company's Pipe Dreams 12/06/2003 06:07 AM
An Internet maverick plans to take a marijuana distribution company public on the Canadian and Nasdaq stock exchanges. A few things, including the law, stand in his way for now. By Charles Mandel.
Grok Description matches for When a ball dreams, it dreams it's a frisbee
GrokA matches for When a ball dreams, it dreams it's a frisbee

When a ball dreams, it dreams it's a frisbee

The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry: