Harlan Time

Update: Javascript XMPP and Data Plans Just a quick update:Over the past weeks I have been working on a new Jabber client written in Javascript. It will be a successor to JSJaC in the Soashable project. The API is designed with Smack in mind, but deviates in that it uses... [Read More]

How unit tests saved my night Last night I started working on a new XMPP library for Javascript; I'll explain later ;). Anyway, I was wrapping it up for the night, separating Javascript from the monolithic HTML file I was working in (because I'm Agile like that), when I accidentally... [Read More]

XEP-0049 - Private XML Storage I just implemented XEP-0049 - Private XML Storage for my Jabber client (source here). What it does is allow a client to store arbitrary XML data in a given namespace and retrieve it using the same.To demonstrate a creative usage of it, I added an... [Read More]

First Official PostgreSQL Benchmark Released I'm happy to hear this news and glad they waited until they were ready for their numbers to be official. Article: here. This publication shows that a properly tuned PostgreSQL is not only as fast or faster than MySQL, but almost as fast as Oracle... [Read More]

Soashable Source Code Released I packaged up the source code to Soashable, a Meebo-like Jabber client that I've been tinkering with (previous post). It's available on Google Code, here. Note that I'm not proud of the quality of the code, but it works ;)A working copy of the application is... [Read More]

Untapped Instant Messaging Features As I've read various Jabber books and specs over the past few days I have come across a few gems that have glistened "next ubiquitous feature," in so many words.Offline messages - Yahoo! and ICQ have done this for quite a while, but it never seemed... [Read More]

The Mindset of an Idea Right now I'm at one of those interesting times where I am creating a piece of software without knowing what I'm making until it's done. The code base is haphazardly organized at best--originally starting off as a single HTML file with JS objects and then... [Read More]

Meebo Clone -- as Easy as it Seems? Once again I've started kicking around the idea of creating a web based chat system. After seeing the possibilities from the folks at Meebo, I am starting to tinker with a prototype based on Jabber + HTTP Binding (XEP-0124). This standard allows... [Read More]

Hardware Scare The past few days have been loaded with heavy, intense development too time consuming to worry about piddly things like backup or version control. Just as I was preparing a sample of my app for a friend, my server shut down unexpectedly and wouldn't start back up. The... [Read More]

My First Metaprogramming I just did my first metaprogramming in Ruby and it got my heart beating fast, thinking about the possibilities.module ApplicationHelper ApplicationController.class_eval do layout "standard-layout" endendThis makes all ApplicationControllers use the layout "standard-layout", defined from a central location. The source of this string could be anything from a... [Read More]