Not sure the 101 Dalmations montage works, but this is a great song.  My dog totally could have written this song.

YouTube - Your Adorable Beast.

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I feel out of the loop. I just now (thanks to Steve Ivy), realized that UserLand had shut down.

In reality, UserLand shut down for me years ago. UserLand Frontier was the environment that helped me learn to program. I was first drawn to it as a tool to make it possible for me to publish an E-zine by myself, and manage the hundreds and thousands of static HTML pages that went into it. It was a fun time in the late 90s building what the web would become — and I think Dave Winer’s influence, particularly through the software he made at UserLand — was a huge part of it.

Working for Macrobyte Resources, I was one of the primary programmers on Conversant, which I think I can safely say was the largest piece of software built on Frontier outside of UserLand. While building it on Frontier would ultimately be one of the failings of an otherwise very advanced web application, it also enabled us to accomplish a lot with a small team.

This blog was originally managed in UserLand’s Manila, running in Frontier on a Mac Quadra 650 sitting on my desk on a 128k DSL line — circa 1998.

There were a lot of smart, fun people in the UserLand community. Kinda sad that the punctuation mark on the end of UserLand’s story is a period and not an exclamation point.

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My friend Tim’s effort to guilt all his friends into providing him new music to listen to — otherwise known as his annual “Top Tunes” email, has finally made it online on his new blog. Of course, this is a mutual benefit society and everybody in the loop finds some great new tunes this way…soooooo, without further ado, I present my list for the year.

There are likely some glaring omissions to this list since I put it together ad-hoc, but it’s all solid music. Add a couple of “rediscovered” gems at the end as a bonus incentive for paying attention. Enjoy.

Recent Stuff….

Avett Brothers, I and You and Love

Wussy, heart-on-your-sleeve, jam-grass…and I love it. More production on this record, but it doesn’t suffer because their material just keeps maturing. Love these guys.

Monsters of Folk

I’m not typically a big fan of supergroups. They are the musical equivalent of NBA All-Star games. Enough said. However, this one is more like the first Dream Team. It works and everybody brings their A-game and top quality material. And really with Conor Oberst and M. Ward, I don’t see how you could go wrong (Somebody from My Morning Jacket, too).

Rench, Worn Down Low

Everything I’ve heard from this guy is great. Mixed hip-hop DJ’ing with classic country and a sharp political wit and well selected covers. He was also involved in the great (free for download) Rap/Country mashup, Gangstagrass.

The Dodos, Visiter

Not really anything to say about this one, other than that it’s a fine record. If you like the Animal Collective, you’ll probably dig this…

Deer Tick, Born on Flag Day

This Brooklyn band reeks great influences, but keeps it’s own voice in there….great mix of mello and hard rocking stuff. I expect we’ll here more from them in the coming years. Their first record, “War Elephant” is excellent as well. They do a lot of great covers, too. Not on the record, but if you look around YouTube.

The Gourds, Haymaker!

Ok, so it’s getting boring that the Gourds are on my list every other year, I suppose. I just never find any bands that really stack up to them in my book. They’re records have been a little spotty on the last couple outings, but this one is solid back to front in both material and performance – one of their best.

Todd Snider, The Excitement Plan

Todd Snider is a gem. He’s a performer you may never quite grasp without listening to live performances, but he is our generation’s John Prine and you can’t really go wrong with his insight, humor and storytelling ability. If you don’t know Todd, I’d start with “Near Truths and Hotel Rooms” — but this is a fine record, too.

Tinted Windows

Oh crap…this, technically, is another “supergroup” — though it doesn’t really feel like it. Cheap Trick’s drummer, some guy from Smashing Pumpkins and that MMMBop kid (Yea, Hanson)…but, f*ck, it’s a great power pop record. This is a killing upbeat driving record, good at work, too.

Rediscoveries…

Richard Buckner, Bloomed

I liked this record when it came out in the mid-90s, and it has aged really well. I didn’t have a copy for years and re-downloaded it this year, and have listened to it dozens of times this year. I’d put it up against anything from Jay Farrar or any of the other alt-country songwriting heros for song quality. It’s also a really, really awesome rainy day record.

Yo La Tengo, Fakebook

Another old favorite that I spun again this year and found it holds up well. It is actually the only Yo La Tengo record I’ve connected with, but I love it. It’s a unique blend of folk/country/indie pop with a very happy edge to it. Also probably one of the only bands that really captured some of the Velvet Underground influences in a way that reflected the lighter, more pop side of that band that I loved.

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Instrumental No. 1 by Greg Pierce  
Download now or listen on posterous

Instrumental #1.mp3 (1235 KB)

Every once in a while I like to listen back to some old recordings and remind myself I was a pretty good guitar player back when I actually practiced.

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Cloudy morning. Remastered Beatles lined up.

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Agile Tortoise, my company, is now Agile Tortoise, Inc. Mixed feelings, simply because of the increased administrative burden of being incorporated, but it seemed like a necessary and important step for the long term.

I’ve got some new projects to launch soon, and want to branch out into more different areas, and having the appropriate legal infrastructure in place will become more and more important to functioning.

Now, I just need to figure out how to run a corporation. Little details, like how I go about paying myself suddenly become a bit more interesting.

Things are likely to continue to be slow around here, too. I’m blogging on the Agile Tortoise site now, and will be moving more content there.

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I’ve checked in mod_datejs v0.5 to Google Code.  This is a Servoy module that adapts the functions of the excellent Date.js library for use in Servoy, and is distributed under the same MIT-style license.

I haven’t fully adapted the test suite from the original, but I have pretty good test coverage and everything in the library is now functional, so you should be able reference the documentation at the Date.js site.

This version finally works out a little niggle I was having with the parse method, so Date.parse() now works with all the varieties of cool options for translating natural language dates.  When used in combination with “converter” field types in Servoy, you can get rid of the clunky default date control and just let users type things in your date fields.  I’ll post documentation, and probably a screencast, on this technique in the coming weeks.

Enjoy!

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Looking forward to the (free) OpenSocial Dev Garage this weekend at Cohabitat in Dallas.  I’ve been fiddling with Facebook applications, and this should give me what I need to prep my apps for both platforms.  Neat and well timed.

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Inspired by my buddy Tim’s annual email, I’ve posted some of the musical highlights of my year.  Unlike Tim, I am unable to summarize my musically year based on items released that year, so excuse the random assortment of new and old…but here’s what I’ve been listening to this year, in no particular order.

Deer Tick, War Elephant, Not at all what you would expect from the cover.  Moody pop with catchy melodies and a few rockers. 

Todd Snider, Near Truths and Hotel Rooms, My favorite songwriter at his laid back best live.

Frank Stokes, Creator of the Memphis Blues, In all my blues listening, I somehow passed over Frank until this year.  Great, Great acoustic blues.

My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges, Great band’s best record, IMHO.

Avett Brothers, Mignonette, Avetts continue to provide great new take on string band music. “Pretty Girl from Cedar Lane” is my favorite track.

Justin Townes Earle, The Good Life, Spawn of Steve puts up a fine mix of honkytonk, swing and fine songwriting.  This one was a bit of a surprise for me.  Not spectacular or life-changing, but a very solid and enjoyable record that I keep coming back to.

Chatham County Line, IV, “The Carolina” is the best new bluegrass song I’ve heard in years. The whole record captures the innocent purity of the best bluegrass, without ever falling into the schmaltzy, corny stuff that losses me on so many contemporary bluesgrass albums.

Blitzen Trapper, Furr, “Furr” and “God & Suicide” are highlights of this fine poppy, rock record. 

Laura Cantrell, Trains and Boats and Planes, She covers “The Wreck of the Edmunds Fitzgerald.”  Is any additional endorsement necessary?

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I’ve updated my Servoy module, mod_js_core, to version 0.4. This is the first version which includes not only the adapted extensions from the Prototype.js library, but also some Servoy specific convenience methods for working with forms and foundsets.

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In a Servoy solution, often you have a record and you want to access a record that is related via an n:1 relation. Say, for example, you have a relationship from contacts to companies. You are working with a contact record, and you need to fetch the related company into a variable to work with.

The proper way to do this is first to test for the presence of a record, and then fetch it through the relation you have defined. If it's something you're going to do often, you can wrap that logic in a dataprovider calculation on the contacts table, however. Try defining a "MEDIA" type calculation something like this:

Then, when you need to access the related record in code, use that calculation instead of reproducing the logic to fetch the related company....like:

I find this a very handy shortcut to have around and try to define a "get_xxx" method on all my child tables that allow me to fetch the related parent in the relation.

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