theTechnophile

I’ve recently finished an Open University course entitled “Object-Oriented Programming with Java”. It culminated in an exam, my first for about twelve years, and now it’s over I want to actually use some of this knowledge in all that spare time.

Browsing the Internet it is apparent that there are a lot of programming languages out there from which to choose! Each has its strengths and weaknesses, so here are a few that I either use or want to waste some time on.

PHP.

I know… this is not the best OOP language. I’ve heard it said and having taken the OU course understand why, but it is also the language used by two of my favourite web applications, Wordpress and Drupal.

As you can plainly see this blog is powered by Wordpress running on my web server. Wordpress is as easy to install as it claims and the theme templating system is relatively straight forward. Oh yes, I know you wouldn’t know it to look at this standard looking blog, but I intend to do something about that with the extra time I mentioned earlier. Maybe more about this in a later post.

It is most definitely not OOP, sticking firmly to the procedural approach to which PHP is probably best suited. A fact that is also true of Drupal.

In my opinion Drupal is one of the best CMS applications for relative beginners anticipating something more than a weblog. I’ve found the installation relatively simple and the coding is reasonably clear… for a procedural application. What appeals the most is that it’s a very compact and tidy installation. The file structure is well thought out and things easy to find. But despite a good templating system it doesn’t really satisfy my craving for true separation between content and presentation.

Java.

Java is object-oriented and the basis for my course. I intend to take the follow-on courses too, so may be I should stick to what I know, but where’s the fun in that?

Well the “fun” starts with developing another web application based on Apache Cocoon or Lenya. Both of these applications are developed in Java and I suspect are capable of providing much more flexible and powerful web services than basic CMS.

I hope to couple Cocoon with XML to provide content in a range of presentation formats and for exchange with other web applications. It’s the closest you can get to handling content and presentation independently. Don’t know how well it will work, but it should be interesting.

Ruby on Rails.

Ruby is definitely an OOP language. In fact it couldn’t get much more object-oriented, there are two other things to think about here. First Ruby is an interpreted scripting language on its own and second, putting it on Rails provides a new web development framework. Add all this together and despite not knowing what I want to do with it I still have to try it out for myself.

I was reading the latest issue of PC Pro (145) when I found a news item on the development of gas turbines for powering laptops and other mobile devices. The MIT research team claim that such a turbine built up of silicon components could provide power for 10 times as long as conventional batteries for the same mass. This is an interesting use of gas turbine technology, not least because I used to design large power generation turbines.

The competing technologies are likely to be enhanced batteries and fuel cells. Based on my experience, I can’t help wondering why there is any practical advantage to the gas turbine option since all mobile devices struggle against temperature and fragility problems.

It’s hot!

Gas turbines burn fuel in order to generate mechanical power through rotation. In conventional turbines this results in a lot of radiated heat energy which, as the MIT team suggests, can be contained by controlling combustion air flow. However, this doesn’t reduce the thermal load, just redirects it. You still end up with a hot exhaust that must be vented somewhere, not comfortable if it’s your lap!

Don’t drop it.

Modern mobile devices are generally reducing the number of vulnerable moving parts. The last remnant is usually in data storage media where solid state components are gaining in popularity and I suspect may become the norm in future years. The spinning platters of a hard drive are not unlike the rotor in a gas turbine, give it a good knock and the spinning parts hit the static parts resulting in… well have you ever heard the grinding of a hard drive failure? Not pretty as components spinning at thousands of revolutions per minute carry a lot of kinetic energy.

What type of power?

As you might have noticed above, a gas turbine alone generates mechanical power not electrical power. Unfortunately, it’s electrical power that your laptop enjoys most. In conventional power generation you need to attach a generator set to the gas turbine to convert the mechanical power of the rotating parts into electrical power. None of the articles I’ve read so far mention MIT developing a tiny generator set!

Interesting it may be, but useful?

The attractions of the fuel cell lie in its ability to convert chemical fuel energy directly into electrical energy without any moving parts and at a much lower temperature than a combustion gas turbine. Whether you really want a computer full of highly flammable fuel sitting on your lap is open to debate, especially since batteries have been exploding recently. But if you do, I personally feel that a gas turbine is definitely not the way to use it. The future of power for the mobile technophile is much more likely to be small polymer based fuel cells or advanced batteries.

I’ve just returned from a trip up and down a significant length of Britain’s M6 motorway. Its over 300 miles (480 km) of driving with no more than a few hundred feet of space between you and the vehicle in front, often much less. This requires a good measure of patience and concentration, especially when the weather is bad and it often is!

During an hour of queuing near Manchester, I found myself wondering why I had to drive at all. A number of vehicle manufacturers have explored the idea of autopilots. Many have been aimed at controlling, or limiting, the speed of vehicles or preventing crashes when drivers fall asleep at the wheel by selectively applying the brakes. But I seem to remember that some were playing with the idea of enabling vehicles to collectively assume control on motorways to form a kind of highway train. Science fiction writers have presented a future where our vehicles possess the limited artificial intelligence to chauffeur us wherever we want to go for decades. However, this is not a trivial problem in traffic on standard roads. But on the motorway the traffic is hopefully going in a single direction and the junctions are much simpler than on normal roads. Many people don’t like the idea of being overruled, but this way the average speed is controlled to match the weight of traffic.

Personally I like the whole concept. Instead of sitting in a traffic jam in appalling weather concentrating hard on the brake lights in front and hoping the guy behind me is doing the same, I could be taking a nap, reading a good book, eating or just thinking about this blog. All of this strikes me as a much more interesting use of my time. I wonder whether it will ever really happen?