James Purser [INSERT WITTY CATCHPHRASE HERE]

The latest article about the ongoing train wreck that is the NSW Labor Government only highlights the alternate reality that the so called "Ruling Class" seems to be living in.

The government is now pretty much too broken to be saved I think. It's like watching the final days of the roman empire. Emperor after emperor being deposed with very little done to prevent the barbarians from knocking the door down. I'm pretty sure that unless a miracle happens, the Goths (Lib/Nats) are going to be ransacking Macquarie Street at the next election.

Okay I've added a new section to the FedOne book. This time we're concentrating on the FedOne Agent framework, which provides the same sort of functionality to FedOne that the Robots API does for Googles own Wave servers.

FedOne Agent Framework

In other FedOne news, by this time next week, we may be able to talk to Google Accounts from FedOne servers. From what I've heard they're going to be opening up the Sandbox Federation port, which will allow them to test how it all goes before opening up the Preview port, and will allow people like me to test how well our Agents translate across :)

Exciting times.

Oh and I've heard of movement on two different non Google Wave implementations. I'm going to grab the source and have a play soon, will blog about the results.

I know I haven't blogged for a little while, and I promise a fuller post later on, however for now there's a couple of conf things I want to promote:

OSDC:

The Open Source Developers Conference is going to be held in Brisbane at the Bardon Conference Centre from the 25th November to the 27th.

Early Bird prices are just about to close so if you want to get in early and book your place at one of the best developer Confs in the Southern Hemisphere, then register now

linux.conf.au (Yes I know the country domain is .nz but our constitution says they can be Australians so it doesn't matter ;))

Once again linux.conf.au is rolling around. The programme has been announced and early bird pricing is NOW. I wish I could go, the Wave miniconf and the Open Govt. miniconf are both reason enough for me (le sigh).

Anyhoo, will blog more later.

I haven't blogged for a little while, and my only excuse is that I've been concentrating on doing rather than writing about it.

Anyway I thought I would put down some notes about the stuff I've been doing with Google's Wave and the avalanch that has been the launch of the new Beta Preview.

Firstly I should mention the new area I've setup for the work I am doing with Wave. http://wavingtheshiny.collaborynth.com.au/ is basically my Wave workspace, where I'm going to work on a range of different projects, from an embryonic book about the FedOne Wave Reference Server to a wiki that will contain information about the different Wave related projects I'm going to be working on.

Okay, next up, I am so sick and tired of seeing the "We have 000's of invites" spam awash on twitter and other places. Please people if you are looking for an invite, hit up wave.google.com this is the only legitimate place to sign up. Do not randomly beg people for an invite, do not believe the people who claim that if you just fill out a form and sign up for this free offer you're in like Flynn.

Right now for the hype. More has been written about Google Wave over the last week than since the IO Conference. This is understandable, all of a sudden a whole lot more people are getting a real look at the Googles system and seeing what it can do for them. I would like to make a couple of points though:

I'm sitting here listening to the kids playing out in the backyard, some tunes bopping out of the myth box and working on a couple of projects and things just feel good.

Later on we're going to be heading over to wish my niece a happy birthday for yesterday (yep she was born on September 11 2001).

And of course in the middle of writing this an argument breaks out over who's cheating at backyard cricket. Le sigh.

Anyway, apart from work work, here's what I'm working on at the moment:

http://apps4gov.planetgov20.com/content/about-apps4gov

and

http://wavingtheshiny.collaborynth.com.au/content/fedone-book

If you're running the Wave Reference Server I would suggest that now is the time to update and rebuild it. In the latest release of the code, the guys at Google have added "Agent" support and an echoeyagent to demonstrate how to write your own Agents.

Agents fulfil the same roles as Robots in the Wavesandbox, being programmatic participants in the wave which respond to other users.

So let's see who can write the first third party agent.

I'm a parent to three wonderful and sometimes wonderfully frustrating children. Each of them has gone through that stage where they see something they like and believe they need to cram as much as they can in their mouth at once. You parents out there know this bit, their eyes bug out as they realise that they can't move their jaws because they're crammed to overflowing. What usually results is a huge mess and tears.

That's the same sort of thing I'm seeing with the "Google Wave is to complicated to get!" type claims being tweeted and blogged about. People have rushed in, cramming as much as they can in as little time as possible, and then when the inevitable mess occures, they declare that Wave is all too complicated and won't be a success.

To them I say the same thing I say to my kids. Don't bite off more than you can chew.

The World of Wave isn't some monolithic entity that demands that you understand all before being allowed into the secret club. Take me for instance, I do not pretend to understand the intracacies of Operational Transformations, and yet I am still forging ahead with building openausbot and learning how to setup and operate the WRS. Because I can understand those areas, without the need to understand the underlying magic that allows for the WRS and Robots to work.

With every new technology there is a learning curve. For users, it's going to be getting used to the new "real time" way of communicating and collaborating. For developers it depends on the area they are interested in. Robot and Gadget writers are getting their heads around the Wave API (which is a little bit of a moving target at the moment, but that's understandable this early in the game). Server and Client writers have probably the steepest learning curve at the moment, but they are getting there.

Many moons ago, the Australian Government decided that it was in its best interests to ensure that the exiting TV Networks got the lions share of the digital spectrum, effectively killing off any thought of competition by restricting non-players to "data-casting" (which I think roughly translates to  "You've got two chance's, Buckleys and None").

Now, finally after many years of waiting to see what the commercial networks would do with their new found "Powah!" we have the launch of 9's (and subsequently, WIN Televisions), Channel Go! Yes folks, this new channel even has an exclamation mark, obviously to signal the break from the old model of running second rate programming interspersed with as... many... ads... as...

hrmm. ummm

Damn I knew there was a problem there.

Let's take tonights viewing on Channel Go!!!11WTFBBQ!!1.

First up, we had "Dog", a "reality" show about a Bounty Hunter in Hawaii. This was followed by the classic New Zealand production "Neighbours At War", a show based on the concept of finding truly petty people and then involving the local MP for some reason. It was all rounded off by a programme called "Bad Lads Army", in which 30 of Britains chaviest were treated to life in the 1950's National Service.

All through this we were treated to numerous ads showing how hip and now Channel Go!!11WTFBBQ is, telling us how they were going to be the first with such hits as the Sarah Conner Chronicles (which I'm pretty sure is available via iTunes, bittorrent and DVD purchase. That's two legal ways of getting hold of it.). This is a show that's now finished it's second season and is apparantly in some danger of being cancelled.

Sigh.

Okay so now that you've got the WRS all setup and federated, you're talking to people around the world with the console client and wondering what to do next.

Well personally I think the next thing to do is have a look at what needs to be added to the WRS to move it beyond "Reference" and into something that can be used to really explore the Wave Concept.

Below is what I think the WRS is going to need and why:

Client:

The WRS needs a web based client for a couple of reasons.

• The Wavesandbox client demonstrates many of the features that make Wave "teh awesome". The text console while good for doing very basic testing cannot replicate many of those features (inline blips anyone? picture pasting?). So in order to demonstrate the real power of hosting your own Wave Server we need a WRC (Wave Reference Client).
• The code of the WRC would need to be able to demonstrate exactly how best to use the existing (and hence defacto standard) protocols for communicating between the server and the client. This will greatly aid in the design of both the future "real standard" as well as new clients, both web and "native".

Persistance:

Currently the WRS has no way of tracking waves beyond the next restart. All information is kept in memory, rather than accessing a RDBMS or other storage method. This means that all information about the current/past waves are lost when you shutdown the server.

Being able to connect the WRS to a storage method would give a much better idea of the requirements for operating your own Wave infrastructure, particularly in terms of performance and hardware required.

User Management:

With all the Waving I've been doing lately I thought I'd break the monotony by doing a quick update about the Garden.

Over the winter we pulled out the zuchinnis and squash and for a while the beds lay unused. I turned them over occasionally but couldn't really get enthused about growing anything. Then my mum gifted us with a few packets of seeds and a few punnets of Broccoflower and I finally got back into the planting mood.

So to date we have:

BroccoFlower: 

Cauliflower:

Spinach:

Peas:

and more.

I really should revisit my Gardenator idea.