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| Elements of the Web |
| Australia's IT Consultancy for Science & Engineering |
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18 May 2009 |
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You have received this invitational newsletter because you are known professionally to Dr Darren Kelly - the proprietor of Webel IT Australia - and because of your interest in applications of advanced information technologies to science and engineering. To unsubscribe please use the link below this newsletter.
It is my pleasure to introduce the new quarterly newsletter for Webel IT, Australia, the specialists in IT for science and engineering. Each month I'll be bringing you the latest news on Webel service offerings, and educational examples and tips for advanced IT topics such as model-driven development, graphical software-engineering and architecture with UML, systems-engineering with SysML, service orientation and port-based engineering, object-oriented programming, UML-driven enterprise Java, XML data modelling, XSL, XML Schema engineering, active simulation, and symbolic algebra - with a unique focus on applications of IT to real science and engineering tasks. There will also be updates on dynamic web sites technologies like the Drupal Content Management System (CMS), as well as tips on web engineering with Java web technologies, XML, PHP, and CSS.
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I hope you enjoy this inaugural issue, and please forward this newsletter to friends and colleagues.
Yours Symbolically, Graphically, Associatively, Systematically, Developmentally, and Programatically,
Dr Darren Kelly BSc PhD (Bondi, Sydney, Australia) |
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Database-driven Content Management System (CMS) web sites are great for managing and presenting technical content, documents with metadata, and rich media such as images and video online; you can contribute your own content to a powerful, keyword-aware, searchable, web container, and you can have your own online user community with user blogs, forum, and moderated user comments. The PHP-based Drupal CMS technology (in combination with a MySQL database) is the ideal choice for your CMS web site engine.
Using Drupal technology, Webel can quickly develop a fantastic new CMS web site for you using the same well-tested modules and code-base as the Webel site, and on the same Drupal-friendly host Lunarpages, so you know it will work well straight away. Webel can help you choose from hundreds of pre-installed core and contributed Drupal modules.
Webel is now offering a complete Drupal CMS web site startup package. For only $AUD 1100 (incl. GST) + Lunarpages Basic Hosting you get:
- A Drupal site running on the same very popular and reliable Lunarpages* hosting service as the Webel site.
- Your own MySQL database(s) and unlimited media content storage area, with easy backups and CPanel.
- An initial consultation to discuss your content needs and to choose from the Webel kit of well-tested Drupal modules.
- Initial Drupal site installation, setup, and administration of your site and user community by Webel.
- An initial theme chosen from the basic Drupal themes, including your logo (or add-on custom theme and logo design by Webel).
- Assistance with delegation from a new or existing domain to your Drupal site on the Lunarpages host.
- Instruction on uploading and editing content on your Drupal site as an 'author' user, and how to assign searchable keywords.
(*) Installation on other Drupal-friendly hosts may be subject to additional fees.
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Additional Drupal CMS web site services (billed at an hourly rate) include:
- Ongoing administration and management of your site, content, users, forum, and user comment moderation.
- Development of a custom newsletter with modular content editing for distribution to your customers and clients.
- Development of custom Drupal modules and PHP programming services.
- Media preparation and submission of audio, video, and screencasts as MP3/MP4, Quicktime, and Flash.
- Maintenance, administration, extension, upgrades, and re-styling of existing Drupal sites.
Proprietor Dr Darren has years of international experience in scientific and technical publishing, so you can also have your documents, source content, and media professionally prepared and styled for online presentation on your site. |
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Webel promotes OMG technology standards like the Unified Modeling Language (UML) through participation in OMG events and through educational online examples of OMG technologies used in Webel R & D projects.
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Dr Darren actively follows emerging UML-based technologies such as the SysML systems engineering language, the MARTE profile for Modeling and Analysis of Real-time and Embedded systems, the ManTIS Manufacturing Technology & Industrial Systems Task Force, the OMG Robotics domain task force, and the Space DTF. |
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Webel is a world leader in applications of the OMG's new Systems Modeling Language (SysML). Proprietor Dr Darren oversaw development of a popular SysML tool, and has been actively involved in the OMG's SysML Revision Task Force (RTF). He has popularised the SysML through many educational online examples of SysML models, and through international seminars and workshops. And he has applied SysML to demanding real-world projects such as modelling, simulation, and control of scientific instruments.
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Dr Darren is now offering a unique SysML workshop for scientists and engineers ! Find out how SysML adapts UML to enable modelling of flows and values in physical systems, and how SysML's Internal Block Diagram (IBD) can be used to model modes, value state, and complex structures. Find out from a real scientist how UML and SysML can really benefit real science ! |
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With all the talk about forward-engineering technologies, Model Driven Architecture (MDA), and round-trip UML engineering, it is easy to forget that there are enormous benefits to simply reverse engineering your code often, to afford a different perspective on your implemented design. Especially regarding scientists and engineers used to a strongly code-oriented approach, learning UML through progressive reverse-engineering of familiar systems provides a softer migration to graphical techniques.
Dr Darren explains:
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"It's about activating different parts of your brain with different media. The graphical UML approach - even in small doses - offers a powerful alternative understanding of systems to the purely text-based code approach. I recommend finishing off a day of heroic coding with just (and only) reverse-engineering your recent code into freestyle UML summary diagrams, so that your mind can work things through overnight. You'll be amazed how this aids a fresh attack on the code the next morning !"
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Webel offers UML training seminars and workshops for software developers & architects, managers, scientists, and engineers. You will learn:
- How to combine graphical UML engineering and code-level software design effectively, and how to manage forward, reverse, and round trip engineering.
- How to use UML's Port notation, how to use required/provided Interface notation properly, and how to use Composite Structures along with Class Diagrams.
- How to organise your UML projects, packages, and models, and how to combine your analysis and design effectively.
- Proven techniques for improving cross-project navigability and for quicker diagramming and modelling.
- How understanding the UML metamodel and metaclasses can assist your daily modelling programming tasks.
You will also learn how to drive your UML modelling with text from your own familiar domain documents using Dr Darren's powerful UML Parsing Analysis recipe.
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Dr Darren's "power diagramming" techniques can save you hundreds of precious modelling hours (and thus save lots of $$$), and can make your UML modelling time more enjoyable. Learn from one of the world's most effective, experienced, UML modelling masters, in a fun environment with props used as UML elements in team UML modelling games.
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Webel seeks sponsorship for the creation of a complete UML Parsing Analysis of every sentence of the latest UML specification into UML models, representing the whole text of the UML specification in UML itself (in at least one UML tool). The result would be an online resource with every sentence of the UML specification hyperlinked to 1 or more UML diagrams, with user comments and analysis of every sentence, and a forum, in a dedicated Drupal CMS web site managed by Dr Darren ! Interested sponsors should contact Webel.
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There is now a PureData real-time audio synthesis and PureData/GEM video synthesis version of Dr Darren's Drancing accelerometer music system for Mac OS X, which uses Nintendo Wii remotes as wireless triaxial accelerometers via Bluetooth. Wow !
Drancing (under development since 1996) was one of the world's first non-tactile ("gestural"), real-time synthesis, accelerometer music systems.
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Drancing software and systems are modelled and developed using UML, SysML, and patch-based graphical engineering. |
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Well Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) web technology can be so much fun. How hard can it be to put one thing next to another thing on a web page with {display:inline;} ?
Ever wanted to place an inline DIV next to another inline DIV and wondered why they would simply not go side-by-side, no matter how hard you tried ? Did you perhaps place a complex element inside those DIVs ? Did those !@#*#@!) DIVs keep jumping down onto separate lines ?
Maybe you had {display:block;} elements buried deep inside an outer "inline" DIV !
In this case the outer "inline" DIV will suddenly act like a "block" element, and you will be left scratching your head .. maybe for hours .. like I recently did. In such cases the CSS {float:left} is your very good friend, as demonstrated here.
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