Mono setup
It has been an intense few days. Through the weekend I continued work on my Mono configuration for the Linux Journal article. I had to admit it finally, I was stuck. I called up Paco, and he was his usually gracious self. We walked through some issues he knew would cause problems. In the end he advised and I agreed to switch the configuration attempt to my laptop which is running SuSE Linux 9.2. We agreed to teleconference on Sunday morning. I spent most of Saturday night trying to get things going. That ended up being a waste of my time. So Sunday we went through installing Red Carpet, updating SuSE, and then diving into building Mono. When we finished I had a working Mono environment, but I was still missing MonoDevelop, XSP, and mod_mono.
I’ve finished MonoDevelop and XSP and both are working well, however, I can’t get mod_mono working. Through this entire experience I’ve been trying to share my frustration. (Editors note: But people don’t won’t to hear about sad endings. They want everything to end rosy with no loose ends.) It has been especially frustrating trying to find definitive sources of information on the web. I’ve found about 5 or 6 ways to configure mod_mono and even one article that has multiple conflicting versions.
While working on Sunday, Paco and I discussed this. It’s especially rewarding working with people who grok the bigger picture. Paco is one of these people. His response was exactly what I needed to hear. Many of the developers in the Mono community are acutely aware of the challenges and that is exactly why they continue to work thanklessly on improving the Mono experience. For him, there is no use complaining, the only thing worth focusing on is making it better.
O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference
My mind is really abuzz with what I have seen so far at this year’s conference, and I’m not even there! Well I should be clear and say really that it isn’t the content that I’m psyched about; it is what I have found trolling the site Wiki. I had heard of Technorati before, but it took Seth Godin’sblog to thump me over the head and open my eyes to what was going on over there. Then I learned about a collaboration that is emerging between Flickr, Technorati, and Delicous. This collboration is called tags: the real-time web, organized by you. I’ve already setup X-cito to participate. Thus I have added several new categories: Business, Computer, Internet, Linux, and Random. To participate in this aggregation all I have to do now is just select the appropriate categories and I’m co-lab-O-rating. Pretty awesome. But wait there’s more. While researching the Technorati web site and Tags I learned that they want other sites to better integrate with Technorati. Smells like an API or web service to me.
Tim’s vision is blossoming
Speaking of web services, they’re popping up every where I look. Another site I found was Flickr. They have a public API, and developers are starting to use it. In fact, I found that there is a WordPress plug-in for Flickr. This certainly smashes open my plans to implement photo-blogging. I’ve already downloaded the plug-in and I’ll be installing it ASAP.
All of these sites and collaboration has me just mentally punishing myself. Internet web services is exploding right now. I’ve been thinking of two ideas concerning web services. One of these ideas I’ll be submitting to the business idea competition. I’ll be getting neck deep into that when I get back from San Francisco. At the Emerging Technology Conference Wiki I discovered the Attention Stream. This is the collaboration I mentioned between Technorati, Flickr, and Delicous. It is totally fascinating. Seeing the aggregation between these three websites is very interesting. The other idea I have is a web service directory. It could list all of the web sites offering web services and sample code to access and use each. If anyone is interested, drop me a line at APIIndex at x-cito dot com.
A final note. Seeing all of the fantastic conference pictures on Flickr cetainly has got me pumped up for OSBC and OSCON.
