Managed to get OSCache and Dynamic Image Generation going with RIFE. Found a slight issue with GIF (damn you patents), but worked it out. Now I can generate, scale, cache, and serve out Images (Jpeg, Gif, Png, whatever else I want to integrate) on the fly with RIFE.

I'll try to write up an article tomorrow, after I finish my reading for class, on how to setup this system. Bevin helped me with some of the finer details. The beauty of the way RIFE handles dynamic content generation is you can feed ANYTHING directly to a client without temp files, or swapping to disk at all, everything can be fed through memory. As a matter of fact, Bevin showed me a shot of a video streaming live to a client without the need to hold much of anything in memory (gotta get some more info on that one).

Ok, I'll try to do a better job explaining this tomorrow. However, let me say the system is amazingly versitile and the ability to generate, cache, and serve out dynamic content (note: without temp files, without database backends, automatic expiration based on usage, etc.) opens the door to amazing possibilities. How many of us have worked at companies that needed dynamic document generation.

I remember one company where they pulled the values out of a COBOL database, fed it to a PDF construction system, it got stored to a temp directory on the server, then it was served out to the requester. The system worked, but whenever there was an issue a temp file was left on disk, when someone else wanted the document (same values) another one was generated, stored, etc.

Anyway, hopefully more on this tomorrow.

Cheers,
Tyler

Bombs in Bangladesh, who cares? Me. Why? Because while as I've noted I'm in law school, and a software architect for a company in China, but I haven't mentioned my fiancé is a Peace Corps volunteer serving in Bangladesh. There's going to be some background information and then I'll get on with my griping.

So back to the point, Bombs in Bangladesh, who cares? People with fiancés in the Peace Corps who live in Bangladesh, that's who. Apparently, last week an article came out about how the JMB (a militant group on Bangladesh) attempted to bomb the Peace Corps training facility and kill the 60 new volunteers when they arrived approx. 6 months ago (read: my fiancé). They wanted to ward off NGOs from assisting the governments, so they tried to gather some extra suicide bombers to hit the Peace Corps training office in Gazipur.

What has the Peace Corps done about this? Nothing, not a damn thing. What about world media? Nothing, not a damn thing. Why? Because just about no one cares about Bombs in Bangladesh, except those of us with loved ones there.

The Peace Corps has offered its volunteers what is known as "Interrupted Service", basically they're allowed to leave Bangladesh and try to find another country to work in with the Peace Corps. Sound nice, right? Well, it would be except that the 6 months of time + 3 months of training my fiancé has put in doesn't transfer to the new project. That means that she would have to spend another 27 months to get her benefits and a proper discharge from the Peace Corps.

It really ticks me off that they would take my fiancé, who just wanted to help people, send her to a country where they KNEW their was trouble, knew an election was coming up next year, figured that they'd have to close the program down and evacuate the volunteers, at some point, and offer her no other option than "start over and get nothing." She's promised them two years of her life and the best they gave her back is placing her in harms way. It is disgusting that the Peace Corps would treat their volunteers this way.

I understand that training from one country to another isn't transferable, but 1) they NEVER should have sent her to a country they didn't have full confidence for her safety and where she couldn’t finish her two year commitment or at least; 2) the time she's spent should count towards her two year commitment.

In conclusion boo the Peace Corps, boo the JMB, yay Bangladesh, and yay software development, and yay RIFE ( http://www.rifers.org )

Note: I've been to Bangladesh and the people are lovely, kind, caring, and completely against this kind of violence. The news media seems to forget to say that out of the 150 million people in Bangladesh there are probably 5,000 militant Islamists and the "average" people of Bangladesh detest them. Honestly, if you have a chance to visit Bangladesh I'd definitely suggest it. Leave Dhaka and spend some time in one of the countryside towns, it's beautiful and the people are very kind. Honestly, I've traveled all over the world and Bangladesh was one of my favorite places.

So RIFE... It's genius. Bevin has done amazing things I must say. Like I said in my first post, I'm a law student architecting a product for a company in China. I've worked with the Web, Wireless, and Java for I don't even know how many years now and it's wonderful to have a framework like RIFE.

1) It's still in development: some people don't like this, but to me it's a must. It allows new additions, improvements, etc.

2) Bevin is a great guy: another must. He's helpful, available, and cares about his product and users.

3) It doesn't follow norms about the web, instead it makes improvements on it. Things like CRUD, Continuations, CMS integration, new templating concepts, all genius, new, and exactly what all software should strive for. RIFE isn't re-inventing; it's changing the way we build a website.

4) Open source: a plus. I'm not a zealot about OS, but it has some great advantages. I can tweak the code, remove things I don't need, add little hacks here and there if needed. While RIFE doesn't need a lot of hacking, when I need to tweak I can. The code is clean and well maintained.

I'll try to compile some of the things I've noticed from digging around the docs, examples, videos, IRC, and mailing lists and post it up so if anyone runs into a similar problem it'll be in one spot.

Cheers,
Tyler

This isn't about RIFE, so much as about why the Internet and things like RIFE are good.

So, I'm a 24 year old software developer from Florida, USA. I'm currently in law school and working for a company in China as their Chief Architect. I have a fiance, who teaches English for the Peace Corps in Bangladesh.

One day, my fiance decided to send me a letter and a few pictures of her from Bangladesh. This letter travelled for 5 long months before arriving on the East coast of Florida (I live on the West coast). The letter was remailed from a previous address only to get lost in the 180 mile journey (3 hour car ride) from the East coast to the West coast. So, it crosses god knows how many date lines, borders, and security checks to arrive in the USA, only 180 miles from me, to get lost by my local post office.

You see, this is the post office who 5 days AFTER I returned home from China, decided that I had moved and closed my mailbox, because there was excessive mail in it (mind you there was NOTHING in my mailbox since I'd checked it two days before they shut it down). This is also the post office that left me a letter informing me that I needed to pickup a package at the post office and that it could not be redelivered. I get up an hour early (before a full day of law classes) to get my package, arrive at the post office when it opens, wait in line, and I'm told they don't have a package for me, it must be on the mail truck for redelivery. They continue to ask if I can come back tomorrow to get it. Luckily, I learned in law school it's a bad idea to beat people.

So, back to email. In those 5 months, I've sent literally hundereds of emails to my fiance, made hundreds of phone calls, and sent hundreds of SMS messages. The best part? almost ALL of them have been recieved without issue. Now, I think that traditional mail is a very romantic concept. Having something hand written by someone you love is a great thing. However, the ability for goober ass American post people (not all of them, I know some personally and they're great hard working people) to lose a letter that I've waited 5 months for and FINALLY thought I'd have in my hands from my loved one, seems to just enforce why we should all use email and just either fix the damn US post system or abandon it all together and go pure digital / private carriers.

In conclusion, we all need to support wonderful projects like RIFE, because they don't lose our mail, as a matter of fact I discovered they make versions of everything we edit (you can't access them yet, but Bevin is on the case).

Cheers,
Tyler

P.S. I'll let you know if I get my mail
P.P.S. I'll try to make my next post more RIFE centric.