After about a month of prototype tools (September-ish), Jeff and Nolan introduced me to a vision they had for developing desktop applications. The idea was a bit rough in the beginning, but it easily caught my imagination, and I grew very enthusiastic about the project. It was soon decided that I should shift to quickly coding an OSX based WebView wrapper, to get a feel for the effort needed to develop an early prototype/preview release. As it turns out, with only a few weeks of work, I was able to get a standalone WebView, Google Gears, some additional filesystem APIs, and a command line SDK worked out. This was the very first working version of Titanium, and it was the basis for the early work done for OSX in Titanium PR1. After prototyping OSX, I moved on to Windows to do a chrome-based wrapper, and Jeff and I teamed up to spec out the initial PR1 API, SDK, and other aspects of the platform.

Within literally 6 weeks, we had pushed PR1 out the door! It was December now, and at this time in Titanium’s development, things were moving so fast that neither Jeff or I got any kind of respectable sleep. Four AM and later were (and to some extent still are, as you see from this post) perfectly normal unplugging hours. As soon as we got PR1 out the door, we decided to drop Gears from the stack, and do a complete rewrite of the internal architecture. With Jeff’s lead, and our newest member, Martin Robinson a GTK and Linux God, we architected a modular microkernel and binding layer that freed us from the limitations of one platform or language. PR2, and all releases after it would use this architecture to deliver seamless integration of Python, Ruby, and Javascript with WebKit and the DOM. The binding layer also allowed us to bind our API directly into any language we support. Not only had we become a desktop platform for Javascript developers, but we were starting to address long standing limitations of Ruby and Python: A truly cross platform desktop framework, that lets you reuse the web technologies you already know. PR2 also included a major reworking of the Windows platform code, as we switched away from Chrome/V8 because of it’s slight behavioral inconsistencies with official WebKit. We were able to utilize the great work done by Brent Fulgham to realize a native redistributable WebKit for Windows using Cairo and cURL.

Around the time of PR3, we hired 2 more kickass developers: Dallas based Don Thorp, and Mac guru Blain Hamon. The next part of the Titanium vision involved the same basic ideas, but applied them to the disparate mobile landscape. It was natural then, since our technology was so young and cutting edge, to adopt platforms with our tried and true friend: Webkit. Quickly ramping up, Don and Blain put out an amazing product for iPhone and Android in just 2 months, just in time for Beta. At this point, we were ready to tell the world about our mobile aspirations, and to declare a public launch for the newly expanded Titanium platform.

Since then, we’ve made several minor and one major mobile release that includes native controls and views, and other niceties. A new version of desktop and mobile should be landing soon, and this should hopefully be the last release before our 1.0 production release coming soon. Stay tuned, I’m sure the next few years will be just as exciting, if not even more so than the one that’s passed.viagra patent levitra Viagra Price Comparison viagra anxiety;
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CSS 3D in Titanium Desktop from Marshall Culpepper on Vimeo.

CPython, full clean build:
real    4m39.058s
user    5m55.781s
sys     1m17.358s

Unladen Swallow, full clean build:
real    4m28.640s
user    5m58.416s
sys     1m13.523s

CPython, updated build:
real    0m8.421s
user    0m5.554s
sys     0m1.115s

Unladen swallow, updated build:
real    0m11.049s
user    0m7.709s
sys     0m1.136s

Most of our build is filesystem / disk impaired, so these numbers probably don’t do Google’s latest build any justice, but it was something fun to try while debugging the new Titanium Process APIviagra anxiety; Viagra Store In Canada taking viagra woman
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The problem then, is executing the right interpreter. It quickly becomes tiring to manually type

cmd /c C:\\Python25\\python.exe myscript.py arg1 arg2 arg3

.. for every time you want to invoke a script. Furthermore, it becomes very tedious when you start using bash tab completion for paths, only to discover windows python doesn’t understand cygwin paths. So you start having to use cygpath, or worse hard-coding all your paths:

cmd /c C:\\Python25\\python.exe myscript.py  `cygpath -w ~/some_relevant_file.txt`
#or
cmd /c C:\\Python25\\python.exe myscript.py C:\\Users\\marshall\\some_relevant_file.txt

To solve this problem, I’ve written a small shell wrapper that auto-converts any unix style paths, and calls into python.exe directly. Feel free to use this for your own environment (download here):

#!/bin/sh

PYTHONHOME=C:\\Python25
newargs=
while [ $# -ne 0 ]; do
    arg=$1
    index=`expr index "$arg" '/' | tr -d '\n'`
    if [ "$index" -ne "0" ]; then
        # convert to windows path
        newarg=`cygpath -w "$arg" | tr -d '\n'`
        newargs="$newargs \"$newarg\""
    else
        newargs="$newargs \"$arg\""
    fi
    shift
done

command="cmd /c \"$PYTHONHOME\\python.exe\" $newargs"
eval $command

You’ll need to set PYTHONHOME to your windows python directory. Save the script as /usr/bin/python (move the current /usr/bin/python to /usr/bin/python_cyg or something similar), and you should be able to use #!/usr/bin/python in any of your python scripts, and execute them just like any other executable. For reference, now I can do:

./myscript.py ~/some_relevant_file.txt

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This effort has been a shared one… Jeff Haynie is a CEO with hacking chops that would shame most PhDs. He and I have both worked countless hours (and will continue to) on this project. Also, Nolan Wright, Martin Robinson, Paolo Fragomeni, Jorge Servin, and Tyrus Smalley have all contributed sleepless nights to this project. It’s been really an amazing experience to watch our 8 person company churn out a potentially game changing technology in such a short time.. we’re really pumped about it.

In about 5 hours I’ll be waking up to board a plane back to Dallas to recover for some much needed sleep and attention for Paige. I’ve earned a day or two of rest =)

Now on with the usual rigamaroll:

Good candidates on both sides
I’ve been known to lean left in some elections, and lean right in others.. it all depends on the candidate. I can tell you now that this election is going to be a tough one for me to decide, because there are 2 candidates on each side that I’m really pulling for. For the Democrats we have Barack Obama (my hopeful front runner) and Denis Kucinich (my maybe possibly no-shot-in-hell left candidate), and for the Republicans John McCain (the republican who I’ve always admired the most), and Ron Paul (finally a traditional conservative who isn’t hell bent on destroying our liberties at every turn). I’ve been watching each primary / caucus religiously, with the live statistics and punditry comment.. what political geek wouldn’t be in heaven? The thing that makes me laugh the most is watching the media collectively scramble to predict winners (days/weeks ahead of time) then get it all wrong and quickly find who to point the finger at, as if it wasn’t their own self-indulgent curiosity that sparked the insanity to begin with. To be fair, not just the media’s pollsters have been dead wrong, but pollsters working for the candidates themselves seem to be in the wrong at the same time. In general, I think this is just a great thing for this election.. unusable poll results will mean we probably have the best chance of an un-influenced, high-participation vote this time around. I’m looking forward to an insanely active campaigning year. Let’s let the candidates and the issues speak for themselves for once..

A new found respect for General Motors
As it’s my geeky habit to do, I’m starting to feel the car upgrade itch (had my current car just a notch over 4 years). Since Paige and I are building a new house w/ more space that’s close to a lake, and we’ll be having munchkins running around eventually.. I’ve set my sights on a mode of transportation that is more flexible. Originally I thought I might go with the new 4-door Jeep Wrangler (and I still think that thing is damn sexy). After some battle with my conscious, I’ve decided I won’t be able to buy ANY larger vehicle (Truck, SUV, CUV, whatevs) that doesn’t have at least some alternative energy source attached to it. So naturally, being the geek that I am, I started searching the landscape to see what the current offerings are, where the automakers are going, and where the promising technology lies. My basic conclusion is that E85 fuels (up to 85% ethanol, 15% gas) seem to be the most promising in the near-to-mid term. FFV (flexible fuel vehicles: cars that can take any combination of Gas and Ethanol) allow us to start using renewable energy that is lower on carbon foot print, more effecient in energy spent vs energy gained, and is beneficial to our domestic economy, all while reusing current infrastructure. And that’s all just based on the current batch of “ineffecient” corn-based ethanol. There are already companies like Coskata who are revolutionizing biofuel with forms of cellulosic ethanol that are 6-7 times as effecient as corn-based ethanol, and all we need to do to make current FFVs support this is change the mixture! So I’ve set my eyes on the current supporters of E85 (GM, Ford, Nissan) as the bearer of our energy independent future, as they are taking on not only alternative fuel sources, but they are also embracing hybrid and battery technologies that further supplement and decentralize our energy concerns. That Chevy Tahoe Hybrid with E85 engine never sounded so sexy.

anyway, the new leak today of the n83 looks even more promising than the n93 (as if that was possible). here’s a link:

http://www.newmobile.nl/eur/en/news.php?news_id=b76b16

just to summarize, this puppy comes with 5 megapixel camera w/ all the trimmings, 4gb hard drive, candy bar/slide form factor (!), wifi/bluetooth 2.0/UMTS, 3.5mm jack, quad-band gsm, 352×416/16million colors res, and i’m sure more to come.

needless to say, i’m foaming at the mouth right now

1. 3.2 megapixel camera with mechanical shutter, autofocus, and 3x optical zoom
2. UMTS, EDGE, GPRS, Bluetooth 2.0 and WiFi connectivity (b&g)
3. 30fps MPEG-4 VGA (640×480) video recording with digital image stabilization & TV-out
4. Snappy software based on Symbian OS
5. 2.4″ QVGA screen (320×240 res) and262k colors

some things i’m not too sure about — for instance, there is no mention of whether or not the bluetooth a2dp profile will be supported, though the press release does mention the ability to use standard stereo headphones. for a phone this perfect it would be truely a shame to not have a2dp support. also what will the battery life be like? the best i think i can hope for is a requirement of recharging daily, which i can probably live with (since that’s what i usually end up doing anyway).

there are a few things that do turn me off about this handset but i think they are trade offs that have to be dealt with for a 1st generation attempt at this sort of convergance. the first annoyance is weight/size.. this is easily the heaviest/biggest handset i’ve seen in a very long time. luckily though, it will still be pocketable it seems . the 2nd annoyance is a personal preference, but i’ve never been a huge fan of the flip/swivel phone form-factor. who knows, maybe this phone will convert me, but i am a candy bar man… something about having all the info you need right in front of you.

i’m holding out for some actual reviews before i make a final decision, but it looks like just on raw specs alone, this phone might be my next. kind of saddens me to jump ship from sony ericsson, but i think they waited too long to upgrade their k series. here’s some relevant links for more info on the new n93:

press release on mobileburn
mobileburn’s preview of the new nokia n93

with everyone hyping up this big apple keynote day, you’d think that sony ericsson’s marketing department must have the worst timing ever, or just be completely incompetent. that being said, there is a news item today for sony ericsson cell phone fanatics (read: me) that will get you drooling at the mouth. SE has stealthily announced the successor to the k750i .. the k800/790:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/02/28/sony-ercissons-wilma-k800-k790-cyber-shot-phones-get-offici/
http://www.mobile-review.com/review/sonyericsson-wilma-2-en.shtml

there are a ton of new features, my favorite of which is a 3.2 megapixel camera with a true flash, and “SmartPic” functionality which basically takes 8 pictures and lets you choose the best one. on top of this, this handset will also include support for bluetooth 2.0, and ship with sony’s new “m2″ memory stick (yet another proprietary format, sony when will you ever learn?), rss reader (!!), and a 262k qvga screen. man, if this puppy had class 1 support, i would probably fly to japan tonight and harrass SE headquarters until i had this puppy in my mits. looks like the trusty k750i is going to ebay soon!

a lot of wild and crazy things have happened since my last posting.. namely the fact that we released jboss eclipse ide 1.5. this release represents the really hard work of about a year on behalf the entire ide team. i can’t tell you how excited.. and relieved i am that this release is finally out there. what’s more, it seems that santa has chosen to give me a late christmas present, as i just found out today that the total number of jboss eclipse ide downloads has surpassed the 1 million mark. quite an astonishing number, and i can’t wait to go for 2! we’ve got a lot of really exciting things planned for the 2.0…

with that out of the way, now i can finally get around to updating my open source software page, and posting my new cxxtest fork that i’ve been working on in my (oh so very little) spare time, aptly named Mock1. it seems the original author of cxxtest has all but disappeared from existance, leaving me to toy with it as i will. i got started by writing an eclipse plugin (naturally) that extends eclipse’s excellent cdt, and tries to mimick the junit functionality found in jdt. of course, none of this would have been possible without some way to transfer test information back and forth between the test framework and eclipse, so i implemented cxxtest’s TestListener interface that prints out a very simple xml stream. the plugin basically expects your c++ unit test application to use the xmlprinter, otherwise of course it won’t work. here’s a list of current functionality for the eclipse plugin:
- A very JUnit-esque view complete with total suite progress, failure list, overall test view, statistical information, error message, and a quick re-run latest test button.
- A cxxtest application launcher. This is basically a copy of the cdt application launcher, but hooks into the xml printed by the process
What I’d like to see happen for Mock1:
- Refactor everything to my cool name Mock1
- port cxxtestgen.pl/py to java for automated generation in Eclipse
- write a JNI test listener for native speed on win32/linux
- add the ability to run single and/or groups of tests in the framework (this will be nice to only run tests that have recently failed)

at any rate, if anyone is interested in helping out with the development of mock1 i could really use a main contributor who will stear the project more than i have time to. i am setting up a subversion repository with all of my code integrated with cxxtest sometime this weekend at which point anyone who shows me a single line of code will be given committer access .