David Davies' Radio Weblog

Yeuch! I was just about to stop for a spot of lunch when I came across this news item: 'Dinosaur' vomit discovered in quarry. My question is, did the dinosaur think to itself, "I don't remember eating that?".

Yay! After nearly 3 days I'm now back online and upstreaming. Seems the problem was with a file in my www folder that wasn't being handled properly by Radio. I've not spent enough time looking to see how upstreaming works so maybe now I will. Anyway, thanks to André in particular who helped me get back online.

Released v0.92 of the assetmanager tool. This version copes with the Windows 2000 'thumbs.db' file that's created when you view a folder by thumbnail icon.

You must take a look at Greg Smith's latest project. He's working in an area that interests me greatly, Filemaker <-> Manila via RSS. He's done some terrific work on this latest site combining multiple FMP database search results using RSS as a common output format. What's particularly nice is the thought he's put into this demo web site with a well thought-out interface with explanatory notes. One tip, try searching fro 'smith' to get started. Check it out!

www.scripting.com: We're going to get bruised for sure, remember when you were a kid and learned how to ride a bicycle.

Dave's right. I got up out of my rut and am gearing up for a busy weekend!

Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya?

[Macro error: Can't convert name because TCP/IP error code -3170 - Host not found (DNS error).]

Chris Double's new web service lists the current horse racing meetings being handled by the New Zealand TAB. Maybe I'll make my fortune yet!

The jury's still out on this web services timeout problem. Those splendid fellows at Userland are looking into it so hopefully there will be an official word over the next few days.

David Davies is not down, not yet. More services and interoperability over the weekend! Web services have a big future. The trick will be to find the killer applications.

An admission. I've been bitten by Radio's web services and am licking my wounds somewhat. All was going so well until I ran up against a wall, the wall being Radio's handling of TCP connections on the Mac. If a connection is broken for some reason, there's a chance it'll permanently tie up a connection in Radio. This connection won't be freed up until radio restarts. There are only a finite number of connections Radio will accept at any one time, 10 as it happens. If/when all 10 are tied up, that's it, Radio will refuse any further incoming connections. The only way around this is to restart. If you don't happen to be watching your copy of Radio when this happens then you'll have a dead duck on your desktop and anyone trying to connect to you via, say, a web service will get a timeout error. This will likely result in a very publicly visible error message on a weblog page. Not good.

This has been happening to my copy of Radio since about Tuesday. Consequently just about everyone who used one of my services have now removed them from their weblog. The excitement of Tuesday now seems a long time ago. I don't blame you, I'd do the same. I've even been linked, albeit indirectly, to one user's unrecoverable root corruption. This hurts. There are no bugs in my code, my server hardware is rock solid, my services work just fine. I'm feeling a bit let down by circumstances outside of my control.

I'm concentrating on using web services in Manila now. I've been using XML-RPC for a long time in Manila and so far so good. I'll stick with what I know and can control. Thanks for listening.

I couldn't resist Jonathon's challenge to help settle the small matter of the offside rule in football. Not being a big footie player myself I felt I had to ask the experts. So, courtesy of the Football Association, here they are, the official rules of football. Jonathon, I think you want page 24...!

Any similarity between the Executive Director of the FA and myself is purely coincidental.

Kudos to Greg Smith for setting up a Radio8 Manila community server to discuss and tryout Radio <-> Manila interop. Stop by and make your own Manila web site. I did. Thanks, Greg!

Of course you'll most likely want a more open web service than just entering a Manila message number. Manila site name, membership info, etc. That's no problem. I just wanted you to see my quick proof-of-concept first. I'll put out some scripts tomorrow. Now, it's after 3am so that's enough for one night.

PS All the info and scripts you need to accomplish a full Radio <-> Manila interface are already in radio at system.verbs.apps.manila.

This will really bake your noodle. This is a message in Manila. Hello to Radio Userland users!

You can see me on the web at this web site

Interested? Then join this Manila site and post a new discussion message. Get the number of your new message (it's in the URL) and paste that number into the following web services macro in Radio 8.0.4:

<%["xmlrpc://147.188.66.137:5335/RPC2"].radio.getManilaMessage ("3")%>

The macro is already set up to include this message (number 3). Just copy it and paste it into a new Radio weblog post.

Regular readers of my posts will know I don't particularly like having to read through loads of RSS feed data. There's just too much to read and life's too short. Sometimes I want to get some specific information fast. And maybe another time I want a standing filter of all my feeds so that I can quickly see the latest news on a particular topic.

Well now thanks to radio's web services I can filter all my RSS feeds and only look at those items that match a keyword.

<%params = {"cancer"}; xml.rpc ("147.188.64.44", 5335, "radio.rssSearch", @params)%>

The params = {"cancer"} tells the service to only display those feed items that contain the keyword "cancer". Try this service for yourself on your own site. Try other health-related keywords. All my feeds are health and health education related.

If you like this you can have it for your own site.

Download the web service script here.

Here's the above script in action on my copy of Radio.

Today I released my first public web service. It allows you to include some or all of your pictures in a weblog post or story. It kind of supersedes the old picture gallery script as you can now have a picture gallery wherever you want, including in a template if you so wish! This gives the user a lot more flexibility over how to display groups of images.

If you're not ready to install the web service on your own site then try it via mine! Copy and paste the following macro in a new weblog post in your site:

<%params = {"deganwy"}; xml.rpc ("147.188.64.44", 5335, "radio.picturegallery", @params)%>

The params= {"deganwy"} tells the service to display all those pictures in my site with a filename containing "deganwy". To view all pictures just leave the params field empty thus params = {""}. This is a nice example of how services allow you to both collaborate and interoperate with other weblogs. We could even build a meta picture gallery!

You can download the web service and install it on your own site by right clicking and saving the following file into your Radio:Web Services directory.

Save this link...

Replace the 147.188.64.44 in the macro above with the IP address of the machine running your copy of Radio and bingo! Your own pictures web service.

By all means open the script and look at how it works. There's a commented-out script step that shows you how to log the web service hits. You will find the script in the Radio.root database at user.betty.rpcHandlers.radio.picturegallery.

I've updated the asset manager tool to alow you delete pictures from your weblog. Use the 'Refresh code...' menu option from the tools menu within the Radio application to get the latest version. If you use this new delete feature please be careful. Once a picture's deleted it's deleted, there's no getting it back! And any posts that you made that used the picture will show a broken image icon.

I think I've crashed my remote Radio server! Darn! And I was going to do so much tonight with web services!

Hey this is getting really funky! I now have a Radio web service that returns all the pictures in my weblog where the filename either equals or contains a string I specify in the service macro call. Alternatively I can show pictures by date or indeed all pictures. Below are all the images in my weblog that I took while on holiday in Deganwy in Wales.

deganwy2.jpg	deganwy3.jpg	deganwy4.jpg

Here's a quick test of a new service for Radio. What you should see is a table containing news items pertaining to the topic 'cancer'. The service is a utility that searches all your subscribed-to RSS feeds for a keyword you enter. This is a handy service to find just those news items that interest you rather than having to read through zillions of other items.

AP Health

1. Study of Promising Cancer Drug Stopped

BBC: Health

1. Gene pattern cancer spread clue
2. Nanocell's double hit on cancer

Cool, got a link from Wireless Internet magazine. Hello fellow wireless webloggers!

I just uploaded a bunch of pictures. Check out the new gallery using the link at left. I'm really pleased that we can now get such a nice looking picture gallery with no effort, it's all built in and automatic!

I'm really chuffed with the way this new tool has turned out! I must do something about those picture file names though.

Changed the picture gallery layout so that it gets more pictures on a page and, well, just looks nicer in my opinion. Check it out.

I've repackaged my picture gallery script as a tool. I've also renamed it assetManager tool. The reason for this name change will be more apparent over the next few days. For now though it's a fully functional picture gallery tool.

You must have Dave's myPictures.root tool installed for my tool to work.

What does it do? When a picture is dropped into your Radio picture upstream folder it gets added to a picture gallery page in your weblog. This way you can share all your pictures with family and friends. It's also a convenient way for you to manage your pictures. Your picture gallery will be here:

http://127.0.0.1:5335/picturegallery

There will also be a version of this gallery on your cloud weblog called picturegallery.html

Here's mine.

Get the tool here:

http://daviddavies.name/publictools/assetmanager/assetmanager.root

Download this file and put it into your Radio tools folder. Mac users please change the file type to 'TABL' and the file creator to 'LAND'.

You will then find two menu options under the Tools -> AssetManager menu.

1. Refresh Picture Gallery...

You must select this option the first time you install this tool. Thereafter you can run it whenever you like to get a clean picture gallery.

Dropping pictures into your upstream folder will add a new picture item to the picture gallery. However, I'm still having major problems getting my callbacks to run when a picture is deleted. I still can't see how the radio.upstream.callbacks.upstreamFileWasDeleted scripts get called as the vital code for this appears to be commented out. If you delete a picture you are strongly advised to reselect the 'Refresh Picture Gallery...' menu item. I'm sure this will be fixed soon.

2. Refresh Code...

I hope Dave doesn't mind but I blatantly stole his excellent codeFreshener scripts to implement this. The action of this menu item should be self explanatory. Select it and you'll get the latest version of the tool. Watch this space for announcements!

Comments & suggestions are always welcome. Additional asset management functionality will be out RSN!

Have fun!