The live demo for MXMLiszt is no more.

I decided to save money and stop paying monthly rates for a VPS on KickAssVPS.com that was originally purchased because I needed to have a live demo for my research while in graduate school. I've been out of school for a while and now it's time to move on.

Here’s some killer news for fans of Hammer Horror. Yesterday Hammer announced that they would be partnering with several film outlets to bring over 30 of their classic horror flicks to Blu-ray in the coming months and years … What makes this a notable project is that Hammer is investing heavily in the restoration of these films, as opposed to taking the lazy man’s road and creating basic upconverted dumps.

source: Hammer Films to Launch Monumental Restoration Project | Brutal As Hell. Retrieved January 20, 2012, from http://www.brutalashell.com/2012/01/hammer-films-to-launch-monumental-restoration-project/

You can read more at Hammer's official WordPress blog here.

I don't have a Blu-ray player, but this should eventually be good news for streaming, too. Gawd, I wish I was in the film restoration business.

Unfortunately, the true horror is that there just aren't that many titles that are available to "Watch Instantly". In fact, in the time I launched the project I've only become aware of one new title that I was able to watch online that I hadn't already seen …

"Evil of Frankenstein" features Peter Cushing once again as the good Doctor Frankenstein. Unlike as in "Frankenstein Must be Destroyed", Cushing casts a sympathetic figure in this one, with the local authorities and a hypnotist named Zoltan as the true monsters. Frankenstein is kind to his loyal assistant (not his servant) Hans and even displays dashes of modesty about his scientific breakthroughs. It's not as grand a film as some of the other Cushing/Frankenstein Hammer films, but it's still fun.

When I checked HammerFlicks today, both "Evil of Frankenstein" and "Frankenstein Must be Destroyed" are no longer available to stream on Netflix. In fact, 'Evil' is not available in any format from Netflix as of this writing. That's just, well, shocking!

By the way, I just stumbled on this cool write-up on 'Evil'. Makes me want to watch it again. Oh wait, I can't.

It sucks.

I can barely read the page. I can barely discern what constitutes a row per each email. And the color scheme truly hurts my eyes.

Add to that: none of the other themes were better for me than the default. Forget the fact that I find most of them too playful (read: unprofessional), but I just can't look at the page long enough to read anything. The good old "classic" theme appears to be gone.

I guess it's too much for me to remember that image is everything these days. I thought email was about content, but apparently it's about inducing seizures and catering to a world in which ideas come in 140-character, bite size pieces posing as entrees.

Anyway, I was able to revert to the old-school HTML view by using Firefox's VIEW>PAGE STYLE>NO PAGE STYLE menu option. That forced Gmail to ask me if I wanted to use the HTML view because it couldn't show off its fancy pants to me anymore. After I set HTML as the default, I went back to Firefox's menu bar and chose VIEW>PAGE STYLE>BASIC PAGE STYLE.

Now, I've got the HTML view as my default. It's not as nice as the missing "classic" view but it's way better than the hideous monstrosity I was being subjected to against my will.

Does no one learn from Facebook's follies of forcing unnecessary UI changes on their users?

Update, January 4, 2012: Silly me. Under the settings there's the "Revert to the old look temporarily" option that I couldn't find anymore as of yesterday. So I just am using that … for now.

Here's the citation:

Nitin Arora, (2011) "MXMLiszt: a preliminary MusicXML digital library platform built on available open-source technologies", OCLC Systems & Services, Vol. 27 Iss: 4, pp.298 – 316.

I need to give a huge shout-out to Dr. Steven MacCall at the University of Alabama under whom I did the research for MXMLiszt which included delivering the software and a paper – that's much longer than the published one! – about libraries and digital sheet music. It was cool to finish up my library degree with stuff that meant more to me than just a means to, well, finishing up the degree.

…

Update, November 26, 2011: I should have mentioned that this article is not openly available. If you want to read the article but can't access it through your institution or local library, please email me at "nitaro74 AT gmail DOT com". Under the publication rules, I am allowed to distribute the version of the article I submitted to the publisher. I don't have any problem doing so if someone is genuinely interested provided you agree not to openly distribute copies and provided you check with your local library first. Most libraries have access to more resources than most of their patrons know!

Under the terms of the agreement, MakeMusic is purchasing the MusicXML™ open format and Dolet® software technology, including copyrights, source code, and trademarks. MakeMusic also announced that the founder of Recordare and inventor of MusicXML, Michael Good, will be joining MakeMusic as the Director of Digital Sheet Music.

A few people, myself included, were both excited for Recordare/Good but were also wondering what this means for the future of MusicXML in terms of remaining open so here's the scoop – posted on November 2, 2011 – from Michael Good himself on the MusicXML discussion list:

 … MusicXML will remain an open format. MusicXML will continue to be licensed under the same open, royalty-free terms it has today. MusicXML's value comes from being an open format that anybody can freely use in their products and services. That will not change. Community development of future versions of the MusicXML format will not change. What will change is that MusicXML will now be supported with a larger company with more resources. There are exciting possibilities ahead!

Personally, I'm not worried.

In terms of XML approaches to music encoding, there's MusicXML and then there's everything else. Mr. Good's known all along that building relationships that ensure software support is a key to success for the format. He's even been kind to the little guys: emailing me and commenting on this blog in regard to some of my work with MusicXML for digital libraries.

So congratulations to Michael Good and MusicXML. I'm looking forward to hearing the next movement.

Update, November 3, 2011: Thanks to Eileen of Amazon for removing the charge upon learning that I'm an idiot who doesn't read carefully!

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Yesterday I stumbled upon the news that Amazon is offering one year free of use – for new users – of it's Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2):

Free Tier*

As part of AWS’s Free Usage Tier, new AWS customers can get started with Amazon EC2 for free. Upon sign-up, new AWS customers receive the following EC2 services each month for one year:

• 750 hours of EC2 running Linux/Unix Micro instance usage
• 750 hours of Elastic Load Balancing plus 15 GB data processing
• 10 GB of Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS) plus 1 million IOs and 1 GB snapshot storage
• 15 GB of bandwidth out aggregated across all AWS services
• 1 GB of Regional Data Transfer

That's pretty cool because I could really use something that allowed me to demo stuff that my five-bucks-a-month GoDaddy hosting account won't allow me to do.

Truth be told, I already have a Windows VPS with KickAssVPS.com but at $20.00 per month I always remind myself that in the course of a year I could have paid for a small laptop/netbook and used that as a server for special projects, but I really don't want to do that because I don't want to be thinking along the lines of "Man, this storm is really bad. I should unplug everything even if it kills the server" or "Man, this day is really beautiful. I think I'll take the netbook to the local coffee shop", etc. I just don't want to have to think about that kind of stuff.

Anyway, KickAssVPS has totally lived up to their name over the last year and half I've used them. Their service and response time is great but I need it for so very little that I can't justify the expense. Especially not for a year now that I've got a Windows Server 2003 and Ubuntu AMI (Amazon Machine Image) up and running through Amazon.

I'm not hosting anything live at the moment through AWS/EC2 but I will be. I'll be moving the MXMLiszt demo over to the Windows AMI though I think I can get it successfully ported over to Ubuntu. But what this also allows me to do is offer web services, applications, and demos that I simply can't run on the Godaddy account but that I've been playing around with lately – things like pOAIndexter. Also, the Ubuntu AMI I installed has Python 2.6 and I can install my favorite Python modules like libxml. In fact, I've got root access so I can install whatever I need to. Can't do that with my current GoDaddy plan.

So why am I writing this other than to be an unpaid fanboy?

Well, I wanted to share a few things that made the process easier for me such as:

• this YouTube video on the basic, first-time stuff with EC2. It's a little out-of-date but it's still useful. Ignore the stuff about a FireFox plugin because AWS now has a web-based management panel.
• this post on using WinSCP for connecting, via SSH, to an AMI.
  • see this related post, too.
• and these particular 32-bit AMI identifiers that are working for me:
  • ami-f11ff098 (Windows 2003)
  • ami-1a837773 (Ubuntu 10.10)

I had trouble getting some of the other AMIs to work and those two are working just fine it seems. Note that as reported per the Ubuntu AMI link, a reboot does seem necessary before connecting via SSH is possible. For the Windows one, I just use Remote Desktop.

By the way, if you don't need or want Ubuntu, Amazon offers their own Amazon Linux, Suse, and Red Hat AMIs. I found the AMIs made by Amazon seem to work without any hassle.

I should also point out a few things with using WinSCP with that particular Ubuntu AMI. The easiest way for me to do this is show a screen shot of my WinSCP login settings:

Note the user name of "ubuntu". The default user for AMI accounts is "root" but not for this one.

Also, I manually seemed to have to set the File Protocol to "SCP" otherwise I was running into error messages like "Received too large … SFTP packet. Max supported packet size is 102400 B" and "Error skipping startup message. Your shell is probably incompatible with the application (BASH is recommended)".

I should mention I just like WinSCP for the GUI file/folder viewer and the drag-and-drop stuff. I don't like the terminal that's built into WinSCP at all so I use Putty for the terminal. Luckily, WinSCP let's you select "Open in Putty" from the "Commands" menu.

Well, that's it for now. I guess I really wrote this as a note-to-self but I also thought that it might be useful news for any of my librarian-programmer friends who might also benefit from a having a free year to host more advanced applications and demos.

I'm only going to jot down the major takeaways I had from the sessions I attended (listed in alphabetical order). Undoubtedly, the link to the session information might be irrelevant when the 2012 event nears. But videos of each can be seen for free (I think) at NC State's College of Textiles' page here.

AngluarJS – What HTML Would Have Been If It Had Been Designed For Building Web Applications (Tim Cunningham)

The AngularJS session was a great and the speaker also makes great (and strong!) beer than he shared with attendees after the sessions.

There's not too much to say here except this is something for me to keep an eye on.

Notes:

• Client-side scripting is like the "Wild Wild West".
• AngularJS is MVC: JSON is the model, HTML the view.
• Built for testing.
• jQuery is good for DOM manipulation; AngularJS increases the level of abstraction.
• Not yet at 1.0, so maybe don't rely on it just yet.
• Look up "dependency injection".

HTML5 vs Flash Video: Choose Wisely (Ben Farrell)

This was a basic intro to HTML5/Flash video. I think it's too soon for people to get on either side of the fence, not to mention there's too much money to be lost if Adobe doesn't figure out how to play well with certain devices (i.e. Apple). And it looks like they are doing just that.

Notes:

• Use Modernizr to test for codec support.
• Apple's HTTP Live Streaming is a "bait and switch" as the Quicktime plug-in is required.

Introduction to jQuery Mobile (Ray Camden)

This was really helpful to me since I wouldn't mind doing something mobile compatible but I hesitate to write mobile apps and have to compile them for particular devices even with a cross-compiler like PhoneGap.

I'll definitely have a look-see at jQuery Mobile as it has a lot of out-of-box features that can ease the task of writing effective, easy-to-navigate pages.

Notes:

• Takes advantage of HTML5's "data" attribute from <div> tags.
  • Lists: <data-role="listview">
  • Filtering support: <data-filter="true">
    • The filter only works on the data on the current page, not the entire set of data.
• Check out: Search, Slider, Collapsable Blocks, swipeable events, etc.

Geolocation 101 (Andrew Powell)

This tied in well with the jQuery Mobile class. We talked about the HTML5 Geolocation API, the history of geolocation technology and presidential executive orders, and its role in "Tomorrow Never Dies".

Notes:

• You must always ask for user permission; some browsers make sure the user agrees.
• Don't write geolocation intensive apps; they drain batteries.
• Cell phone tower location is the least accurate but fastest, followed by Wi-Fi, then GPS (slowest, most accurate).
  • Cellular network location works like a Venn diagram.
• Not all devices/OS' support altitude reporting.
• Look up "GeoFencing".

Tame Your CSS3 With Sass (Les James)

This was a really helpful class as I'd never heard of Sass, which the presenter described as a "CSS metalanguage". There really aren't any notes that need writing, I simply need to use it.

BTW: there was one fellow there who worked for the government and had a CSS file over 2k lines long that he inherited from his predecessor. He will definitely be using Sass in the future!

QR Code Crazy (Shawn Dunning)

This was a great overview of the history and uses of Quick Response, or QR codes. In addition to seeing some examples, we talked about how the smartphone/QR code bit presents accessibility issues (more Digital Divide, if you believe in that). And a week or so later, I also heard this on NPR which asked if by the time QR codes could become more widely adopted they might already be obsolete.

Notes:

• Uses position boxes and, per the standard, white/black should be switchable.
  • I wondered about putting QR codes on archival scans to verify the image's orientation and color balance, i.e with some metadata embedded in the code itself.
• Smartphones use regular expressions to determine that a URL string exists and subsequently points a browser to the site. The code itself is simply a string.

What Is NodeJS And Why You Should Care (Garrett Johnson)

A little over my head, but that's why I went right?

Notes:

• Research node.js; possibly use to serve up a website.

Writing JavaScript That Doesn't Suck (Bucky Schwarz)

If you watch only one video online, watch this one. Useful and highly, highly entertaining.

Notes:

• Consider using strict equality in JavaScript (===).
• jQuery "leads to one-off scripting … ".
• Selector speed (fastest to slowest): id, element, class.
  • Don't search for a single class unless you have to.
• Don't declare new variables inside a loop (doh! I do this all the time).
• Look up "dirty bit".

This was the last session I attended and afterward I talked to the speaker. He recommended "JavaScript: The Good Parts" as a quick, no-nonsense read to help improve my JavaScript.

Tonight I noticed some problems with Syntax Highlighter Evolved, the plugin I was using for code and XML snippets, etc.

I was trying to load a page with an XML snippet and my browser was reporting that it couldn't find the XML brush. Reinstalling the plugin probably would have fixed it but, all the same, I switched to Syntax Highlighter Compress which, true to its claims, does seem to work faster than other syntax highlighters I've tried.

So, I've spent far too much time playing around with themes tonight. I hate most WordPress themes because a lot of them, at least the free ones, don't seem to place a high value on readability. Too much razzle-dazzle.

For now I've switched to something else and, using the Journalist CSS file, I replaced some values in the current CSS to make the text look better to my eyes.

I guess at some point I should document the changes I made, huh?

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Update, September 20, 2011: Aha! It seems that turning off the WordPress feature that automatically disables comments on old posts was the problem for the Journalist theme. In other words, Journalist – as well as many other themes it seems – won't show comments even if they exist if commenting is turned off for a given post. This includes commenting that's turned off manually or because WordPress was automatically disabling the ability to add new comments to posts that were over a year or so old.

I don't like that so I might tweak the Journalist behavior at some point. I think it's valid to turn off commenting for really old posts or because there are too many spammy comments appearing on a given post. But I don't think that means current users shouldn't be able to view older comments – those are often more valuable than the post itself!