Odd Technology

This is how the world has changed in the last five years or so.

Used to be, you could find book stores, clearance centres, sometimes random piles of books in supermarkets, and there would be dozens, sometimes hundreds, of tech books. Often they were books listed at $70 or $80, but the software they were describing was a generation or two old, so they could be had for anywhere from $5 to $25.

And so I picked up books, tech books. I got books about Visual Basic, Java, Visual Interdev, even Dbase.

One of the books I got was called Network Programming With Visual J++. And I happen to be reading it these evenings. Now my son happened to see it, and he was just a bit incredulous. Visual J++, he asked, mockingly. Does anyone still use that? Did anyone ever use it?

Good question. Microsoft came out with Visual J++ around 1997. It was part of Visual Studio 97, which also included versions of Visual Basic and Visual C++. It was Microsoft’s implementation of Java. It was updated in 1999, as Visual J++ 6.0, part of Visual Studio 6.0

Now the idea behind Java was to create a programming language that would be platform independent. It was developed by Sun Microsystems and licensed to various companies, including Microsoft. To nobody’s surprise, right away Microsoft developed Windows specific object library called WFC, Windows Foundation Classes, which enabled developers to create applications that would only run on Windows. And to nobody’s surprise, Sun sued Microsoft for violations of the agreement.

I saw that agreement. Microsoft put it up on its web site. I thought they were smart doing that. It seemed to me that Microsoft was on solid ground. In due course they settled their litigation. But VJ++ was frozen at Java 1.1. None of the new features that came out in Java 2.0 made it to VJ++.

Amazingly, Visual J++ has been ported to the .NET platform, and renamed J#. And it is less popular than ever.

And so the question remains: what is/was it good for. The marketing seemed to be aimed at Java programmers, in an undoubtedly hopeless attempt to wean them over to Windows.

Well I found a use for it. I did. But it didn’t even work out. A few years ago I found myself with a Java API supplied by a trading partner. So I thought that rather than write a whole Java application, I would create a COM object in VJ++, then use the COM object in my own application. Great idea, but for some strange reason, a COM object written in VJ++ can’t access the API from a class file; it needs the actual source code. I imagine that’s a bug – it can’t possibly be by design because it surely makes no sense at all. And I couldn’t convince the tech department at my counterpart to give me its source code. So I wrote the Java app, not in VJ++ either.

But the book. I read books like this. Not every book I read is useful. In fact many aren’t. But this book, somewhat surprisingly given that it was published by Microsoft Press, is more about Java itself than anything else. Very little about anything specific to Visual J++. And because TCP/IP hasn’t changed much, the Java networking classes haven’t changed much. So the book is surprisingly relevant, if you do any Java programming, which I don’t, but knowledge never hurts.

All those cheap tech books have pretty much disappeared. I guess that’s a sign of the times. From now on I guess I’ll have to rely on the library for my supply of hopelessly outdated and irrelevant books…

My 13 year old daughter is learning to play the penny whistle.

She is only the latest member of my very unmusical family to pick up a musical instrument.

My son, who is now 20, got the ball rolling five years ago when my then-unmarried brother-in-law decided to divest himself of all his material possessions, and so he (my son) found himself the proud owner of, not one, but two guitars - one electric, one acoustic. And so he set out to learn to play - by himself, no lessons. I knew he succeeded a while later when he played a note-perfect rendition of Blackbird.

Now he sits in his room and works out Jimmy Page riffs (Like Over The Hills And Far Away) and tries to do Hendrix, but without the 60 ft stack of Marshall amps it just isn't the same.

Anyway my daughter was next - she is now 10, and about 2 years ago she took up the violin. She diligently went to her lessons, and practices at home, with only a bit of parental nagging involved, and actually figured out how to make music out of it Imagine the proud parents at the recital at École de Musique Vincent D'Indy, hearing her perform the second movement of Haydn's Symphony No 94 in G (which is essentially Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in a minor key).

Then in November of 2006, my wife took up the flute. It's something she wanted to do for years and years, but when she finally took the plunge, it was totally unplanned. We were out for dinner, and at the mall where the restaurant is we stopped in at a music store, and she started asking about flutes, and when we left, she had a rented flute in hand, and a six month contract for music lessons.

Now she has her own Yamaha flute purchased on EBay, and she takes lessons from not one, but two teachers, both of whom are accomplished jazz sax players.

And she practices and the house resonates with the sweet sound of flute.

So my son, the one who plays guitar, went down to Archambault, and bought a penny whistle. Well he actually bought two, one for himself, and one for his 7 year old sister. He bought one, with a book, to teach himself to read music; thus far his adventures with guitar have been playing by ear, and using something called "tabulature," which involves diagrams, but not actual musical notation. My 14 year old, though, got the same idea, and now she takes the book, and the instrument, and she practices and practices and practices. And the other night my 17 year old got so exasperated that she took the penny whistle away, and they had a big fight, which I was unlucky enough to miss, not being home at that exact moment, but I caught the aftermath, the one kid crying her head off, the other huffing and puffing. And she said Daddy she was playing for THREE HOURS. And I said, I don't care. She can play for 300 hours. And she said. NO SHE CAN'T. and I said yes she can. And she said no she can't. and I said….

Then yesterday the subject came up with Mom. And Mommy said it doesn't matter how much it bothers you. She can play as much as she wants. And I said hey, that's what I said.

So this is a family where musical efforts are respected. You want to practice? Practice. You can play the same song 5000 times is a row, and make the same mistakes every time. No matter. So what if I go to work humming Have You Seen The Muffin Man with three flat notes. I'm just jealous that I'm not the one playing anything, that's all…

The Bus Stop

I call him the “Look Straight Ahead Guy.” I call him that because he looks straight ahead.

Every morning at 7:51 I catch the number 80 at the Longueuil bus terminal. And every morning he’s there. There are three fold-out seats, with their backs up against the wall. The door outside where the bus stops is to the left. So the bus actually comes up behind those of us who are seated. And the Look Straight Ahead Guy always shows up wearing the same winter hat and the same sunglasses, even when it’s cloudy, and he makes himself comfortable, and he, well, he looks straight ahead. He doesn’t read a book or a newspaper, he doesn’t even listen to music. He just sits there until the bus comes and he looks straight ahead. He doesn’t move. There’s not much to see either. This is at the far end of aile G, and “aile” means “wing” in French, though in this context I guess it means “aisle” – no surprise. It’s a narrow hallway and there’s a window which reflects what’s behind, and it’s a window which reveals what’s in front, so one has a kind of hybrid view of what’s there and what’s somewhere else, and I wonder whether the Look Straight Ahead Guy thinks about that.

He doesn’t get on the bus. Presumably he gets on the 185 which comes a bit later. That’s not my problem, not at all. Because I get on the bus and I leave the Look Straight Ahead Guy behind, until the next morning. I get on the number 80, and I ride to Boucherville, where I work. The ride goes along the St. Lawrence River, with the city across, and there’s a great view of La Ronde, which is big amusement park, and Olympic Park, which is the stadium, and you can even see Mt. Royal. I don’t look much out the window though. Mostly I read. These days I’m reading From Here To Eternity among others. But if I look out the window it’s nice.

On the way home I also see some regulars. But I don’t really have names for them. I should, I think, but I don’t. There’s the very nice lady, and the guy with the goatee and pony tail. They talk to each other quite a bit so I wonder whether they work together. She appears to be quite a bit older than him. He could be 20, she could be 40. So I don’t think that they’re married or anything. And funnily enough, there are two other people that I see, maybe once or twice a week, a man and a woman, though not together, and the woman reminds of the very nice lady, and the man reminds me of the guy with the goatee and pony tail, though he is older, and maybe that’s odd, and maybe it isn’t.

The place where I work is on top of a CLSC, that’s like a medical clinic – well it is a medical clinic I guess – and it’s for seniors (“seigneurs” the sign says, though the dictionary I have doesn’t use that term for “senior”, it translates “seigneur” as “lord” – maybe it’s a Canadian term) – and that’s not relevant or anything. I’m waiting for the weather to warm up just a bit more, then I can go out and explore this neighbourhood, and I can report my findings.

Thing is I wouldn’t notice any of this stuff if all I ever did was look straight ahead. So I look right and left and up and down. I look back and I look forward. And I see more than just that one view of that reflective window.

I wonder whether the Look Straight Ahead Guy has a blog. Maybe I’ll ask him – if he ever turns his head tolook at me that is…