Guy's Blog

Final Post

2010-03-26T11:03:00.001+01:00

I decided that blogging isn't really my thing.
I'm just going to maintain a static webpage from now on. You can find it at http://www.guyvdb.eu/.

DaisyDiff 1.0 released

2008-10-26T00:14:00.004+02:00

I decided to switch the bits on DaisyDiff today and do a 1.0 release.
It's been a year now since the first 0.1 release and I've frequently received bug reports and questions. They all boil down to the same 2 bugfixes that were comitted to trunk over 6 moths ago. I finally decided to package the cleaned up code. There are no feature enhancements (any requests?).

This release is b.t.w. completely equivalent to the PHP port I wrote for MediaWiki as my GSoC. I decided not to include that code because it depends on existing MediaWiki functions in some places. Nothing that would stop an interested third party from taking the code and integrating it with their own CMS.

CSPoker@JavaOne08 revisited

2008-06-08T14:59:00.006+02:00

CSPoker got some very nice exposure at JavaOne this year. We were told that over 600 people attended the JMX session.

Jean-François and Eamonn presented a very funny and exciting demo. Eamonn was hacking the poker server and giving himself great cards. Thanks to JMX, Jean-François managed to detect his cheating and ban him from the game.

Some people are blogging about it. You can read about the JMX Technology Update session and our demo here, here and (in French) here. The presentation is available as a PDF on the Sun website.

In the sessions about JavaFX we learned that the new compiled version of Java FX Script will be a mayor redesign. That's bad news for the CSPoker client which is written entirely in interpreted JavaFX. I guess that's what you get for being an early adopter.

JavaOne was definitely a succes for CSPoker. We got to meet very inspiring people and it was a great learning experience.

CSPoker@JavaOne08

2008-05-01T18:32:00.005+02:00

One of my pet projects, CSPoker, will be featured at JavaOne08 in San Francisco.

Jean-François Denise of Sun Microsystems is giving a talk on JMX where CSPoker will be the demo application. The conference is next week and I'll be flying in together with the other developers and some researchers from my university.

See you there ;-)

Accepted!

2008-04-28T23:52:00.013+02:00

My proposal for the Google Summer of Code has been accepted.

Last summer I worked on the improved HTML diffing library for Daisy CMS. Unfortunatly (and to my amazement), Daisy CMS chose not to participate this year.

I decided to write up a proposal similar to the HTML diffing one but this time for the Wikimedia Foundation. It's called "Visual Diff" and the result should look like this:

The screenshot is actually generated using Daisy Diff, my stand-alone spinoff from last Summer of Code. The main challenges this year are porting the code to PHP and C++, improving the algorithm with ideas that sprung up during the year and optimizing for speed. Especially the latter is important if we ever want the code to run on Wikipedia servers.

My mentor this year is the illustrious Brion Vibber, CTO of Wikipedia. It promises to be an interesting summer!

CSPoker 0.1 beta is out!

2008-03-16T22:05:00.016+01:00

After months of development in between school work we're very happy to announce the release of CSPoker 0.1 beta.

You can download it here.

The most notable change is the addition of a Java FX Script client.

It is possible to connect to the server through different communication modules.
RMI, HTTP and XML over sockets are supported in this release.
After you logged in you can create or join different tables.
Once there are 2 players, the game can start. At this point the JavaFX language starts to pay off. The game table looks pretty slick on these Leopard screenshots.
I can't say JavaFX is stable yet but the technology is very promising.

At the server side a lot of work went into fixing bugs with the game logic and adding some functionality such as auto-folding when players are inactive.
I hope the new graphical interface will attract new users or developers. The final 0.1 release will happen when we feel like the software has been adequately tested. For the next release, focus is on an A.I. bot.

Feeding the inner functional programmer

2007-12-15T00:49:00.001+01:00

Some of the more interesting talks at JavaPolis this week:

Google collections
Extending the Java collections framework with new types, functions, predicates and constraints.
Scala
Fixing Java to be both object-oriented and functional at the same time.

Daisy Diff 0.1 released!

2007-09-21T21:04:00.002+02:00

I'm very happy to announce the release of Daisy Diff 0.1.

Daisy Diff is a Java library that diffs (compares) HTML files. It's basically the same diffing algorithm that's being used in DaisyCMS 2.1 but now in a stand-alone form. I believe there is a need for the stand-alone library because all existing solutions to HTML diffing are substandard.

The most notable features are:

Works with badly formed HTML that can be found "in the wild".
The diffing is more specialized in HTML than XML tree differs.
Changing part of a text node will not cause the entire node to be changed.
In addition to the default visual diff, HTML source can be diffed coherently.
Provides easy to understand descriptions of the changes.
Allow easy browsing of the modifications through keyboard shortcuts.

Many thanks to Outerthought and Google!

What the .. am I talking about? Examples here.

All things Daisy.

2007-09-06T12:39:00.000+02:00

First let me announce that Outerthought has released Daisy 2.1. I'm very proud that my DaisyDiff code made it into the release. It's even listed as one of the most notable aditions!

This ends my Google Summer of Code participation. It was a wonderful experience and I would like to encourage anyone to submit an application next year. Especially the people at Outerthought were extremely helpful. Many thanks go out to them. If you're a Belgian student, make sure you apply for DaisyCMS! It's very lucrative by the way. ;) Just contact the mailing list with your ideas.

My code is uploaded to the Google Code project, I went to the bank, and had a final meeting with Outerthought. This about wraps it up. Now I patiently await my T-shirt.

Ok I caved in.

2007-09-02T19:34:00.000+02:00

I never liked blogs. Everybody does it and it's seldom worth reading.

But then I joined project Y, started project X and read about project Z on a blog. Suddenly everybody participating in the Google Summer of Code started blogging about their experience, getting attention from resume hunters and the like.
It seems like you can't do without a blog in this industry. That's why from now on I'll document my adventures in the world of computer science here.

I promise I'll try to keep it newsworthy and interesting and if I don't, please bring me to my senses!