Back in June I blogged about Steve Yegge’s port of Ruby on Rails to Rhino (the JavaScript engine for the JVM) and his claim that JavaScript was the Next Big Language (NBL). In related news, Dion Almaer has just posted a new video interview (in the Google Code Blog series) of Steve Yegge himself talking about the Ruby on Rhino project, server-side and client side JavaScript. Its always nice to be able to put faces and voices to the names of people who have interesting ideas, and whose Blogs I am following.

While visiting InfoQ to read the article on Project Zero that prompted my last blog entry, I noticed that there was a video on Fortress (the new scientific programming language for the Java Virtual Machine that I first blogged about some time ago). In the video, recorded at the JAOO 2006 Conference, Guy Steele’s keynote The Soul of a New Programming Language gives a nice overview to the language and its philosophy.

While going through my feed-reader today, I came across another potential framework, which I can add to the list mentioned earlier. This is Project Zero, an incubator project being developed by IBM. It uses the Java platform and the scripting languages Groovy and/or PHP and seems to be directly targetted at RESTful services development but with support for traditional web applications, AJAX and mashups. I guess that I am going to have to I develop a data model and evaluate the choices that I have before I get even more confused!

For a web application that I am developing as part of a research project I have decided on using [Python](http://python.org/) for the business logic. The reasons being that the application will use fixed-point binary arithmetic, units, and data output as line-graphs. Python seems to have the libraries that I’ll need for this and is better suited for rapid development than Java. Part of the requirements that I have been researching this last week have been concerned with the identification of a suitable web application framework for Python.

Some new features (blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, podcasting) were added to my institution’s Blackboard in the last upgrade. It’s very early days but I managed to try some of these out and blog about my first impressions. Here’s my [blog entry](http://blackboard.swan.ac.uk/webapps/lobj-journal-bb_bb60/blog/LOTOOLS/_332089_1/20080115_2). It’s hosted on Blackboard so I’m not sure if it will be publicly visible. My apologies if it isn’t! Some of my views are probably influenced by [this Slideshare presentation](http://www.

Today my wife and I took a walk in Singleton Park and the botanical gardens and I snapped one or two interesting views with my new camera. I love the dramatic silhouettes that large deciduous trees make in the winter! This image has been converted to Black and White. There are more pictures on Flickr. [](http://picasa.google.com/blogger/)

jing-test-cmd Originally uploaded by Chris P Jobling I am grateful to OUseful.info for the post that lead me to try out a new Screencasting tool from TechSmith called Jing. Made by the same company that makes SnagIt (an indispensable screen caspture tool) and Camtasia Studio (a screencasting tool that I covet but can’t afford), Jing is a “couldn’t be simpler” tool for making screencasts that you can share. The results can be shared with others as videos via (charged for service) Screencast.

André Roberge has created three screencasts on the use of Crunchy. Crunchy is an interactive Python interpretor that runs inside the Firefox browser and can be used to create interactive Python tutorials, library documentation, demos and tests. The principle is similar to “docucentric design” which was explored by one of my PhD students. The key benefit of the Crunchy approach is that documents are just web pages with embedded tasks. It is worth investigating whether Crunchy can be combined with a wiki to add some value to my current research project.

It’s been a while since I blogged, but the reason is that I’ve been on holdiday with the in-laws in Regensburg (Bavaria: see picture) and am undergoing the always time consuming task of catching up with RSS feeds and email. Nearly three weeks worth this time! I’ve spotted a few interesting things in the feeds that deserve further investigation and commentary, for now just check out the links that are tickling my fancy.

A useful survey of the top 10 programming languages used in web development by Stephen Ward of dailybits.com has been published on ReadWriteWeb. In addition to HTML and CSS, my students have some experience of Java, JavaScript, PHP, ASP.NET/C# and SQL and they see Ruby on Rails in action. So we’re doing a good job of building up a good portfolio of marketable skills at Swansea University.

The [Swansea Learning Lab](http://learninglab.swan.ac.uk) had planned that tomorrow there would be a “lunch and learn” [E-Learning Showcase](http://swansea-learninglab.blogspot.com/2007/10/e-learning-showcase-come-and-find-out.html) at which I was going to present the “Blackboard Quest”. Unfortunately, due to lack of interest, this session has been postponed. However, as I already had the slides ready, I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone and share what I was going to say anyway and test-drive a nifty new Web 2.

Harvard College Extension School’s “Introduction to Computer Science” is running again. This course, run by David J. Malan, is an excellent example of the use of multimedia for distance learning. The 12 week programme (which recommenced on 17th September) is designed for adult learners and distance learning and goes from bits and bytes through algorithms, programming and the web. David invites the world to follow along by making audio and video recordings of his lectures, his notes and additional golden nuggets of content that are provided by his teaching assistants, all available through an RSS feed.