The internet has survived the great SOPA blackout, and we’re still talking about the fallout. Apple made a major announcement of plans to support textbooks on iPads, but there are concerns about the implementation. But the first story this week is about a free service geared towards teaching people how to program with weekly lessons throughout 2012.
Tag Archives: programming
Thursday Threads: Pro-Library Protest Song, How Google Improves it Search, Learning Programming Skills
After a longer than intended hiatus, DLTJ Thursday Threads is back.
Feel free to send this to others you think might be interested in the topics. If you find these threads interesting and useful, you might want to add the Thursday Threads RSS Feed to your feed reader or subscribe to e-mail delivery using the form to the right. If you would like a more raw and immediate version of these types of stories, watch my FriendFeed stream (or subscribe to its feed in your feed reader). Comments and tips, as always, are welcome.
JPEG2000 to Zoomify Code4Lib Lightning Talk Video Now Available
Thanks, Noel, and everyone else who made the video editions of Code4Lib 2008 presentations possible. I just had a chance to notice that the video from my JPEG2000 to Zoomify Shim lightning talk was online:
Some updates since the post and the presentation were first done. The code that exists in the source code repository now was refactored to use JJ2000 as part of the Sun ImageIO package. We were seeing non-threadsafe problems with Kakadu and thought that using the multithreaded ImageIO package would help. Unfortunately, even with extensive caching, it did not. My next task is to bring Kakadu back into the picture using the threadsafe JNI implementation that is part of the ImageIO-ext project to see if that helps.
PocketModMac: MacOSX PocketMod Generator Via Print Dialog
This one goes out to all of the MacOS X users out there. (For the rest of you, why aren’t you switching?) Perhaps you have seen PocketMod — the origami-like manipulation of an 8 1/2″ by 11″ piece of paper into an 8-page booklet.
Example PocketMod, courtesy of the Boston Globe.Touted as a way to “get back to the basics” using analog media over digital media, it is a scheme by which you can transform pages of text into a pocket-sized form for carrying around. Many use it as a way to synchronize their digital to-do lists with the analog world, while others use it document shortcuts and cheat-sheets in a convenient form.
OhioLINK Position available: Systems Developer
The Ohio Library and Information Network (OhioLINK) is seeking an energetic, creative individual to participate in the creation and maintenance of our internationally recognized set of digital library and electronic information services. OhioLINK serves the higher education population in the State of Ohio with service to over 85 colleges and universities.
The position requires a four-year degree in Computer Science, or a graduate degree in Information or Library Science, or equivalent technical experience. The candidate should have strong programming skills including experience with Perl and Java, and should be comfortable working in a Unix/Linux environment with open source development tools. Experience with the following is highly desired: Apache Tomcat, JSP, XML, XSLT, SQL, Eclipse IDE. Experience with the following is desirable: Cocoon, DSpace, Fedora Digital Repository, aspect-oriented programming.
“Show Me The Code!!!” -or- It Isn’t Open Source Until We Can See the Source
There are days that I feel like Tom Cruise. No, I have no idea what it is like to be married to Nicole Kidman or Katie Holmes and I don’t have the secrets of Scientology. Let me rephrase: there are days that I feel like Jerry Macguire, the character Tom Cruise played in the movie by the same name. Have you seen it? Very early in the movie there is a scene where Jerry’s life as a top-tier sports agent is crumbling. He is on the phone with what turns out to be his last client — desperately trying to keep his business. The athlete (Cuba Gooding Jr. — I have no idea what it is like to be him either) gets Jerry to scream “Show Me The Money!” into the phone as a precondition for remaining his agent. In that vein, here is what I’m screaming into this PowerBook. (Imagine now that I am dancing around the room and standing on top of desks — not really a stretch for those that have seen my presentation style, I’ll admit.)
Introducing “Planet Library SOA”
cforms contact form by delicious:days
Resources tagged with ‘librarysoa‘ in del.icio.us will also appear in the aggregator.
Mechanics
Planet Library SOA is created using the Planet software — a tool for aggregating and republishing RSS feeds. In the case where the contributor runs the WordPress software, Planet Library SOA subscribes to the RSS feed of a category or tag from that blog. In the case where the contributor runs the Movable Type software, a Yahoo! Pipe is used to extract SOA-related postings from the blog’s general feed. (For example, see this Yahoo! Pipe for Lorcan Dempsey’s blog. My gratitude goes out to Stephen Anthony for his example on how to get Yahoo! Pipes to extract content from feeds and Ryan Gallagher for a workaround to a bug in Pipes.)
Presentation Summary: “MPTStore: Implementing a fast, scalable, and stable RDBMS-backed triplestore for Fedora and the NSDL”
Chris Wilper gave this presentation on behalf of the work that he and Aaron Birkland did to improve the performance of the Fedora Resource Index.
Version 2.0 of the Fedora digital object repository software added a feature called the Resource Index (RI). Based on Resource Description Framework (RDF) triples, the RI provided quick access to relationships between objects as well as to the descriptive elements of the object itself. After about two years of use using the Kowari software, the RI has pointed to a number of challenges for “triplestores”: scalability (few triplestores are designed for greater than 100 million triples); performance; and stability (frequent “rebuilds”).
Scripted Searches for Java Code in Popular Source Code Search Engines
Sometimes the best way to solve a programming problem is to see how others have done the same thing. When that happens, having immediate access to the various search engines helps get you back on track quickly. Here are OpenSearch plug-ins (suitable for Firefox and MSIE7) that will search the Java code in five of the more popular source code search engines.
Getting Around Drupal’s Prohibition of @ Characters in User Ids
A while back we created an LDAP directory to consolidate account information for various back-room services, and when we created it we decided to use the individual’s e-mail address as the account identifier (uid in LDAP-speak). It seemed like the logical thing to do — it is something that the user knows and it is a cheap and easy way to assume that the account identifiers will be unique. This is not uncommon for many internet services, of course.

