Advogato blog for Acapnotic

1 Sep 2000

Fri, 1 Sep 2000 08:23:52 GMT

Today I put up a few pages (and images) documenting the color issues we're having with Adaptive Contrast Enhancement. I should probably do some Real Reading, because I'm sure "change luminosity but not chromacity" is an operation done by millions on a daily basis. Hopefully, someone will at least point me in the right direction. Thanks to Ankh, garrett, and the NOAA for providing images for me to use. I think that next, I'm going to have to do some work with a nudibranch.

30 Aug 2000

Wed, 30 Aug 2000 10:56:21 GMT

Have decision to make about the shrink. Baked chocolate zucchini bread. Need to call Abbie back before she disappears again. Got distracted by bugs in someone else's code instead of brining my code to life. Watched Farscape. Did maintenance releases for GIMP plug-ins Adaptive Contrast Enhancement and antialias. Should do one for refract too, but that will be more gruesome as it hasn't been maintained in quite some time.

25 Aug 2000

Fri, 25 Aug 2000 06:51:27 GMT

Okay, so The Spark has this thing that's kind of like the temprament-sorter meets Sixdegrees. Graph that against the certification network, whydontcha.

24 Aug 2000

Thu, 24 Aug 2000 00:41:20 GMT

Had an enjoyable time meeting friends-of-friends today. "Oh, you're that Kevin?!" Apparently she wasn't properly warned... But a good time was had by all. Except for the fact that I througoughly lost the resturant we were supposed to lunch at and took an hour to find it <blush>

After returning home, I flipped on the five o'clock news and saw this story: Cable Dispute Leads To Police Shooting. While the news team was talking to their chopper-guy, I noticed there was a chopper hovering right over my house. Turns out this happened about three hundred meters away -- just up the street a piece. Eek!

10 Aug 2000

Thu, 10 Aug 2000 00:45:40 GMT

This entry is just here to express distaste at some of the so-called articles of late which simply ask old questions without offering any research or insight into the matter. Bla, I say to you, bla. I'm not sure whether or not it's better than the rebirth of the "trust system is broken" articles. The only thing that occours to me is that we need some kind of enforced comminity memory-- before you post an article on any subject, you must read all the previous articles and follow-ups that have been posted here on that subject in the past.

Yes, I'm just a snob who's grouchy because he can't find anything to eat.

[Later] "Some technical questions" appeared after I wrote the above. While graydon's article certainly isn't in-depth, I do have to give him at least a few points for originality.

27 Jul 2000

Thu, 27 Jul 2000 01:23:39 GMT

Back from travelling adventures. The pictures are currently with the supermarket's photo shop (except for the first batch, because someone put SFW film in the camera). The bad news is, upon returning home and reassembling the computer, the monitor did a snap-crackle-pop routine and now smokes like a bong whenever I turn it on =(. So I'm using the spare monitor now, but it sucks rocks through a curly straw. This may limit the time I can spend looking at code...

15 Jul 2000

Sat, 15 Jul 2000 07:27:43 GMT

Gone to visit family for a bit. If I'm not answering e-mail, that's why. Will be back soon enough.

1 Jul 2000

Sat, 1 Jul 2000 20:46:54 GMT

So the President of the United States signed the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act into law. And the White House released a little fact sheet about it. But as this Reuters article points out, "The law itself does nothing to create federal requirements or repositories for signatures. That will be left to the marketplace, as will the issue of creating security surrounding digital transactions."

...so it could be a while before we see digital signatures catch on.

After signing it in ink, the president signed the bill with a smartcard. His password: "Buddy", the name of his dog. Aren't you glad the password the U.S. president uses to sign bills is broadcast in national media?

Also note that the white house publications server has a much better addressing system for referencing documents than congress does.

10 Jun 2000

Sat, 10 Jun 2000 22:23:42 GMT

Whee. Adaptive Contrast Enhancement release finally happened. And I put up new example pictures too.

5 Jun 2000

Mon, 5 Jun 2000 23:51:56 GMT

Yikes. Once more, Hans Reiser demonstrates he has all the social skills of an eggplant. In a message to Alan Cox titled "Re: New Linux 2.5 - 2.6 TODO (Alan Cox suggests delaying reiserfs integration)" he writes:

This is just a RedHat bureaucratic excuse to delay reiserfs. [...] The fact is, Chris Mason kicked your asses performance wise and now you want to employ some journaling standardization process to stall your competitors that you can't program as well as.

Why don't you help us with ReiserFS instead of standing in the way of people trying to program?

Aya. Naturally, Alan Cox told him to stop treating the linux-kernel list like slashdot. But the best response I've read so far is Chris Mason's:

[...] In other words, quit saying that I did a better job than ext3. We had different goals, and it will be a long time I before understand things as well as Stephen does.
Why don't you help us with ReiserFS instead of standing in the way of people trying to program?

You're right hans, at least once a week, alan comes over to my house and breaks one of my fingers. I've just been afraid all this time to talk about it.

This is not the first time that Chris has served as the Voice of Reason on the ReiserFS list. I hope we neven find out what would happen to the project without him.

As for my own doings... Well, I know I should have had that new release of adaptive contrast enhancement out by now, but the weather really has been terribly nice. In fact, it didn't even rain on the annual Rose Festival parade here, which is a serious breach in tradition. But there were a few rainy days, so when it does come out, it will be debianizable. Now anyone want to contribute an rpm spec file to gimp-plugin-template?