Older blog entries for Iain (starting at number 143)

If a ten ton truck, kills the both of us:

• Looky Colour!
• Miguel released GNOME-Libs 1.0.60. My text patch broke it. I don't think this is a good thing. All I know is, it compiled here fine.
• Made another attempt at the canvas scrolling patch. Did it the right way (tm). Waiting for someone to tell me what to do with it.
• Played with Nautilus for the first time in ages. Wow, it's so amazingly cool now. It's such a good time waster just adding random emblems to your files, and funny backgrounds to your directories. Totally cool. Plus I made a patch for it so it checks the width and height of an image before deciding to use it for an icon (stops icons being made from huge images, that are really small in bytesize).
• Trying to learn DESS for my exam, but I'm not sure if I need it.

I left my wallet in El Segundo:

• I never want to be famous. I found a site on a Neighbours star (Here) because I was looking for information to prove that there wasn't going to be a lesbian relationship on Neighbours, and these fans are freaks. Like every time this poor girl is on screen there's about 10 stills taken of her in the same pose but her arm has moved an inch...FREAKS. I have trouble accepting that people read this diary or email I send them, to know that my every move was recorded...scary
• Revised some more.
• Hacked an ugly hack that won't go into gnome-libs, it really was hideous.
• Not going to revise anymore tonight. Well, I might do some more networking stuff, cos it's actually interesting, and easy to read (as opposed to Knowledge bases. It's boring as hell)
• Rewrote a song. Got lots of them now, ones that I'm quite pleased with.
• Need to buy/steal more Hiphop CDs

Kill the fo':

• Nietzsche: Aren't you dead?
• Went out last night. Too tired.
• Played some good songs last night ("Can I Kick It", "Groove Is In The Heart" spring to mind), but they also played loads of crap like "Billie Jean". Oh well.
• Threw some girl into a skip on the way home. Then shut the lid on her. She smelled after that :D
• Made lots of icky errors in my gnome-canvas-text patch. Duh - Can't add new fields to GnomeCanvasText.
• Did Gonzo demo today. Never have to worry about it again. They both seemed impressed, and Prof Sleeman isn't as scary as I'd imagined.
• Must revise. Tried revising "knowledge based systems" today, but fell asleep cos it's so dull. It's dull and seems pointless.
• Networks is interesting though. I'm learning how to write a TCP/IP implementation for a kernel. Pity all the kernels these days have one.
• Wrote the encryption for my ciphersabre. Was only an extra 6 lines. Going to write on for the ZX Spectrum later on after I finish revision.

Take a left, a sharp left, then another left, meet me at the corner, and we'll start again:

• Gah, I really really want to get Jon Katz' book and make it freely available on the web, just to see how much he wants the information to be free. I'm so close to writing an article about how hypocritical the whole "We want our MP3s" buisness is
• Lots of silly commits to gnome-libs, fixed a bug thats been around since 1.0.10 too. Had tried to do it before, but I had no clue what I was doing then...Everything starts being clear eventually.
• Put my first poster up in the room. My signed GUADEC one.
• Did other productive stuff instead of revision. I cleaned my guitar and picked all the icky green stuff off the edge of the frets.
• I also got all my notes in semi order, which I guess is sort of productive, but hey.
• beedeeboo

I'm Jimmy Dean:

• So again Metallica are trying to get the people trading the illegal files banned from Napster. Usual /. outrage at this, but really, I think it's an acceptable solution for Napster, so that it looks like they are trying to "Keep illegal files off the network". No, they'll never get rid of the illegal pirates, but hey, they're trying their best. I wonder how the /. flamers would feel if they were the musician and not the downloaders...

  More great solutions for the problem:
  

  1. Invade the Metalica chat and tell them what you think.
     Yes, Metalica are going to have an open chat session, unmoderated, and fully accessible. Some people are naive.
  2. Organise a "Send back Metalica stuff" campaign.
     That made me laugh.
  3. I've got bored reading the other insane comments.

     At least some people are pointing out the hypocriticalness of it all, but they're usually marked down as trolls. /. would be up in arms (is up in arms) when people try to steal GPL code, what's the difference here?

• Bought textbooks today. Got Natural Language Processing, and Networking and Internetworking Vol II. Textbooks are far too expensive.
• Mazeone is complaining about a CD being 17$ Damn, he's lucky. 13quid most CDs are here. Still Canada was good for CDs. Mmmmmm16C$ Second hand ones for 4C$. Come back Canada, all is forgiven.
• 1 year today I left Canada.
• Did start revision, read some of NLP.
• Punched and bound my copy of Inside Ole. Looks impressive.
• Terminally bored.
• I'm not scared, I'm outta here.

Watching the start of social decay:

• My ear, is about to explode. There's some big lump beside the lobe, and I don't know if it's a spot, or if it's a gland thats swelling up. But it's sore and I just want rid of it.
• Fixed a redraw bug in gnome-canvas-widget
• Fixed a bug in Bonobo sample-container, then got told by mathieu it shouldn't exist as he fixed it a few days ago, then I went home and removed my changes and couldn't get it to do the bugs again. Mathieu is magic.
• Said I'd start revising tonight, but I'm not. I've printed out the notes for NLS though, so maybe I'll read through some of them.
• SFA else to do though.
• Home for Fraiser

La la laaaaaaaaaaa:

• Well, I didn't half arse up last nights diary entry did I?
• Wrote my ciphersaber (Ciphersabre?). It only does decrypt, cos, well, I couldn't be bothered to do encrypt. I'll do it tomorrow night or sometime. The source code is here Well no, it's here. Don't forget though, that using this to decrypt the gif certificate is cheating...
• Now I understand stuff a bit better, and it wasn't as hard as I had expected.

33% extra FREE!:

• Got up late, didn't do much really. I love Saturdays.
• What I did do however was:
  1. Made the E-Minicard double click work in a cool way. If you are already editting the label, and you double click, then it selects the word, however if you aren't editting and you double click, up pops the contact editor window. Neato I think.
  2. Completed my proof of concept. Here it is - Proof. What concept? Well, both
     a) That I could make such a thing.
     b) That a bonoboised desktop is a viable idea. Which it looks like it is...Hoohum.

     Concept proved...NEXT!

  3. Also notice the alpha-translucent desktop icon (the apple)...Thats what you get for using the AACanvas
  4. That and a pretty message that tells you not to use it.
  5. Yeah, thats all I did today.
  6. I got a little blister on my finger from playing along to Slow Riot For New Zer0 Kanada, I've worked it all out though :) It was quite simple.
  7. </ul>

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled, was convincing the world he did not exist:

• My faith in humanity is at an all time low.
• I'm too cynical for my own good
• My ideal house/dwelling: Log cabin, in a forest, beside a lake, in the mountains where there's going to be snow. If I could have that, I would be eternally happy.
• People Under The Stairs are very good.

Slow Riot For New Zer0 Kanada:

• FINISHED. IT IS DONE!. 9935 words, and it was handed in 10minutes early too. I RULE! Not doing anything university related until Monday nightish.
• Maybe Tuesday or Wedensday
• Definitly by Thursday I'll have started something
• Just read the Metallica anti-napster thing. Agree with most of it, because after all, it's still stealing, no matter how many different layers of sugary coating you put over the top of it. The one single thing that struck me though...in a funny way.
  

  "It is therefore sickening to know that our art is being traded like a commodity rather than the art that it is."

  
  What he really means is "It is therefore sickening to know that our art is being traded like a commodity by people other than our record company, rather than the art it is."
  All music is a commodity to record companies, to be bought and sold at will. Still glad to see Jonnyboy Katz can still write shit, and manage to stir up the /. crowd to pull their hypocritical weight around again. Yeah, 2000 /.ers flooding the Metallica chat to complain. Yeah, like the chatroom isn't going to be +m
• Still staying on the music front (hey, it means a lot to me, I think) I went CD shopping as a "Congratulations for getting your report done, Iain" treat. "So Iain", I hear you all cry, "What did you buy?". Well.
  
  1. Slow Riot For New Zer0 Kanada - Godspeed You Black Emporer
  2. Mogwai Fear Satan (remixes) - Mogwai
  3. Dirge - Death In Vegas
  Listened to Godspeed. 2 tracks - 28minutes. Mogwai is next best in song length: 4 tracks - 48minutes. Then Dirge at a more radio friendly 3 tracks 15minutes.

  Godspeed was chillingly beautiful. Alasdair described it as morbid and depressing, yet listening to it I could help but think it was so pretty and couldn't really find anything in it that was depressing, just pretty noise that fills the world. I thought it was the sounds that the whole world should hear, so I turned it up and opened the windows, to let the music soar in an incredibly pretentious sounding mannor. I really think it needs a powerful stereo for it, my little one isn't going to do it justice. Oh well, I'll have to use Alasdairs...

• Going out to see "People Under The Stairs" tonight. Dunno what they're like, I only heard a 40second clip.
• Managed to get Linux to OOPS this morning when I disconnected from da 'net. Dunno what happened, probably something with PPPD and 2.3.99-pre5
• Martin says he's got GNU Emacs to run with Gnomacs....must give this a try.