So today I found out that Javascript has no concept of block scope. That is, the following code will work fine, because 'a' is not scoped to the block:



However, today I worked out a pretty simple workaround that emulates block scope. Simply replace the block scope as follows:



This definition works fine in functions as well, so it is essentially a complete replacement for  block scope.

Version 0.6 of the IAML Modelling Platform has been released.

This release represents the "final" version of the software as described in my thesis, and includes a major refactoring of the underlying metamodel, and various improvements to the editor itself.

You can browse the completed metamodel at http://openiaml.org/model/.

My thesis is slowly getting completed. Today I had a spare hour, so I decided to have a look at the bigger picture of the thesis in terms of statistics. There is a hard limit of 100,000 words for the thesis, and unfortunately mine is currently at 116,257... it looks like I have to do some serious editing work! (A lot of those words are from images, considered to be 250 words/image.)

To understand where I could most efficiently remove content, I made some statistics about the number of pages per chapter:



And also, the number of words per chapter:



It looks like I will have to do some serious editing in the Model chapter. These statistics are from the third draft of my thesis; I have one more iteration before I submit. I plan to submit in approximately four weeks time, and I'm pretty sure I can make it.

I can now announce that I am part of the programme committee for the "Internet Computing and Web Applications" track of AINA 2012, which will be held in Fukuoka, Japan

In 2008 the Labour government at the time tried to pass an unjust File Sharing law. The resulting NZ-wide Internet Blackout, inspired by the Australian blackout, made a huge difference, and forced the bill to be reviewed.

Now in 2011, the National government is trying to pass a relaxed, but still unjust, File Sharing law. I have already blacked out my social profiles, but it's time to step it up a notch. Over this weekend I will be blacking out all my websites (http://jevon.org http://openiaml.org and others). If you have a site or online profile, I encourage you to do the same.

For more information about why the law is unjust and what you can do to protest, check out the Facebook page, the Twitter #blackout hashtag, or Creative Freedom NZ.

EDIT: You can see what my websites looked like while blacked out at http://jevon.org/blackout.html.