SOAP vs CORBA
I've worked both with CORBA and SOAP. Things went round in my head, and I needed a comparison backed by the opinions and experience of others. So I posted a message on comp.object.corba, and collected the resulting discussion into a paper:
Web Services/SOAP and CORBA: HTML
version - PDF version - OpenOffice version . (I no longer provide a MS-Word version).
Update: the OMG itself was also interested
in this article and they have put it online on their site, in the Whitepaper
section.
Current Software projects
In my spare time I sometimes spend a lot of time on my own 'hobby' or 'pet' programming projects. Some of them are quite successful or interesting, so feel free to take a look:
 |
PYthon Remote Objects. Ever wanted to build Python software using Distributed Object Technology? Here's the opportunity. If you know something about RMI or CORBA, you will be happy with Pyro! License: MIT software license, hosted by Sourceforge. This is actually a very successful project, I've been busy with it for over a year now and many people are happily using it! |
 |
Snakelets. A simple web services toolkit for Python to create web services and dynamic web pages. Mainly for educational purposes. I'm using it among other things for indexing and streaming my MP3 collection. License: MIT software license, hosted by Sourceforge. Snakelets is currently powering my other hobby project: the web site of ProMozilla (Dutch only for now). I have created a rather spiffy Blog server for Snakelets: Frog. I use it for my own blog too ofcourse. |
Old Software
In the past I've been busy programming many different things. Some of the more interesting things are still available here, but I don't work on them anymore.
AmigaPython - The AmigaDOS port of the very nice OO script language "Python". I've stopped working on this project, because I don't have an Amiga computer anymore and there weren't any requests for new versions, but in the past, this was a highly succesful project. I've been workin on this for several years and for Python versions 1.2 up to and including 2.0. The best Amiga version, 1.5.2, worked very well indeed. 2.0 was still a bit unstable. Tim Ocock has resurrected AmigaPython on his site and is continuing the development and web pages.
Miscellaneous
Standard compliant web sites: The Web Site Black List
I've become a fan of the Mozilla web browser and think that a lot of websites need a lesson in standard compliance. Together with a friend we started ProMozilla - a movement to promote the use of alternative browsers (mainly Mozilla/Gecko based) and web-standards. Currently it is in Dutch only.
Distributed computing challenges
One of th distributed computing effort is SETI@home. But I think SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is pretty much useless (that argument is an interesting thought!), and I strongly doubt we will ever detect alien intelligence by listening to the sky. You'd probably be better off spending your spare CPU cycles on one of the other projects that look for new medicine for instance.
"Oldskool computing"
I was rather fond of my first computer, a Commodore-64. I hacked it nearly to death and we used to have a great time playing games, watching demos and programming our own demo effects. I thought it would be fun to recreate some of the famous demo effects of those days in a Java applet so they're available for everbody to enjoy, and the memory doesn't die. Note: some of the more advanced effects made their debut on my next computer, a Commodore Amiga. That was even more fun to program, the 680x0+blitter+copper totally rocked. Well, here are the oldskool demo effects!
For those that remember the old days of the Amiga demo scene, there were these demo groups (Lemon. , Lego and so on) that actually made very funny demos. The Amiga had a bit-plane display where up to 5 independent bit-planes could be displayed simultaneously (later Amigas could do 8). There was this intro that claimed to display 42 planes at the same time!!
Cellular Automatons
I've implemented a 1-dimensional Cellular Automaton simulator (applet, needs Java plugin to work).
Browser torturing
Another problem that concerns almost all XML parsers, including those in IE and Mozilla, is the billionlaughs XML document. To get a taste of what it is, have a look at the hundred laughs version (safe). The billion laughs version, although being only about 1.5 kilobyte, locks up pretty much all XML parsers out there (including your browser if it is parsing XML documents automatically). To get a taste of the amount of processing time and memory it consumes, you may want to try the million laughs version. It should still load in your browser if you have some patience :-)
