Adding ls and ll to Windows

When I set up a new windows machine, one of the first things I do is setup a simple alias for Unix ls command and the ll alias I usually have setup for ls -l. You don't have to install any special software. Just create two very simple batch files.

Here are the two files I typically create in the Windows directory. If running Windows 7, you will need to run your editor or command prompt as administrator to create the files.

ls.bat
dir %1 %2 %3 %4 %5

ll.bat
dir /w %1 %2 %3 %4 %5

The extra variables allow you to add extra command line parameters or pass a directory path. Not fancy, but it gets the job done. And, I don't have to think when I need a directory listing.

Apache, MySQL and PHP for Windows 7 Starter

Windows 7 starter edition is pretty bare bones. So when I decided I wanted to look into doing some limited web development on my netbook, I needed to install something very small.  After Googling around a bit I found this server: http://www.uniformserver.com/

The Uniform Server is a Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP bundle for Windows designed to work off flash drives. The whole package zips into a file that is only 10 megs. In addition, all the software runs from the directory the software is unzipped into. No registry changes needed. Just run the start.exe program and everything runs. Very cool.

Chrome OS

After launching the Go programming language, Google followed up with the announcement of their Chrome operating system. I know I am a week or two late on this post, but I have been busy. :) Basically, Chrome OS is a Linux distro optimized to be Net connected. The early target hardware appears to be Netbooks. Here are some links to details.

• GeekSmack has a nice detailed review of the OS
• Googles original announcement
• Chrome Blog Announcement and Videos
• Download from GDGT

An OS that is basically just a browser is an interesting idea. With the way things are moving to the Net, I suppose you will be able to find everything you need online. And of course, Google wants to promote their online office apps. But I think I would still want a full featured OS. The computer biz will be interesting the next 5 years.

Wicked is a Wickedly Good Show

And now for something completely different. Last night I took my niece and nephew to see Wicked at the Buell Theater in Denver. Wow!  What an amazing experience. All three of us came out raving about how wonderful it was.

If you have been living in a cave like me (well artistically speaking), here is the story. The musical covers the friendship of the wicked witch of the west, Elphaba, and Glinda the good witch of the north. The witches meet in school and become friends. After their schooling, they go off to see the wizard. But the wizard of Oz turns out to be not so wonderful after all. The choices made by the young witches sends their lives in different paths and provides a background for the events in the Wizard of Oz.

The sets and lighting are amazing, like nothing I have ever seen. And the singing ... wow. A special shout out to Chandra Lee Schwartz who played Glinda. Great acting and flawless singing. My niece was particularly impressed with Merideth Kay Clark who is the stand in for Elphaba and performed last night. Finally, I also wanted to say I like how the songs are such a key part of the story. In older musicals like Oklahoma, for example, the songs are just musical interludes. In Wicked, much of the story is told through song which I found very enjoyable.

Here are some links to give you a taste of what the show is like.

• Defying Gravity - Performed at 2003 Tony Awards
• Donna Vivino gets made up to play Elphaba
• Wicked Tour Trailer 
• Wicked Tickets and Tour Info
  

If you haven't yet seen Wicked, go!!! You will be glad you did. Watch for it in a city near you and get tickets.

Google Go: Video Games in the Browser?

Google has announced a new programming language they are calling Go. Think of it as an update to the C language with some bits borrowed from Java, C++, and Python. The compiled language is designed to compile and run very fast. The idea being that the language will be used to build applications that run in Google's Native Client software within the Chrome browser.

What apps need native access to a machines hardware?  Well let's see, maybe CAD software, Photoshop type stuff and video games. Since just about all machines are now x86 based, this sort of thing could really make which operating system you run kind of irrelevant. Interesting stuff.

CNET - Google Go
Go Website

It lives!!! SeaMonkey 2.0 Available

If you were a big fan of the old Netscape browser, its successor SeaMonkey, has released a 2.0 version. SeaMonkey has updated is core rendering engine to the same that is being used in Firefox 3.5.4. A short review can be found here on The Register.

The browser seems a lot snapper. However, not many of the cooler themes have been updated to 2.0 yet. So you may be stuck with some of the uglier skins for a while.

This Week in Google and Authority

I listened to the Leo La Porte's most excellent This Week in Google Podcast this weekend. One of the things discussed was some of the new social search engine tools announced by Bing and Google (Google Social Search Announcement). The goal of these tools is to index and search your social net tools. Things like Twitter feeds and Facebook walls would be indexed in near real time. As you might imagine this could be some pretty cool stuff.

The discussion also goes into ranking the authority of posters. Would you rank someone's tweets based on followers for example? Something similar to the Google page ranking algorithms. Thus, the person with the most links would be the most authoritative. In my opinion, the problem is a little more complex than that. Because in the Net world, there really isn't a single authority for everyone. Who Leo considers authorative, or Gina, or I, could be completely different. This makes the problem a little more interesting. Anyway, cool stuff. If you have a chance, check out the episode.

JQuery json with .get and .post

I have been testing JQuery's Ajax features a bit late. I noticed that the $.get and $.post Ajax functions didn't seem to support json has a return type. Heck, it is not clear what kind of data the function is expecting.

So I did a little searching around. It turns out that both $.get and $.post have an optional 4th parameter. This allows you to set the data return type to: "xml", "html", "script", "json", "jsonp", or "text". The Code Central Blog has the explanation why the parameter is missing (and it explains why it was not included in some of my reference books). Details of the methods options can be found in the JQuery documentation.