Older blog entries for MJ (starting at number 16)

2 May 2003 (updated 2 May 2003 at 14:39 UTC) »
RA2 exports

Woot! Found text versions of .gmf files (*_txt.gmf). Now I have names for the extension nodes. I knew using a unittest that tries to import *all* .gmf files in the RA2 tree were a good idea.

Meta

I cleared the 'people I certed' list; it was way outdated and maintaining it was a pain. Can we have an XML-RPC interface to the account fields please?

Yeah, I am still alive.

For the record, in my spare time I am hacking out a community website to exchange Robot designs for Robot Arena 2; their exchange just doesn't cut it.

So far, I have analysed the .bot and .gmf file formats, and have done some rudimentary exports of both formats to VRML. The .bot file format was easy, it's mostly newline-separated (albeit unlabelled) data with some bitmaps thrown in for good measure; .gmf was a bit harder to crack, until I realised it is essentially a binary version of the 3D Studio Max .ase export format.

Using this we can have 3D previews of uploaded bots. In the process, I learned more about linear algebra than I care; decomposing a 3D Studio Max tranformation matrix into rotation, transformation and scale components was, hmm, 'interesting'. I'll see about releasing the Python version of the Graphics Gems IV algorithms someday.

When did I earn the level 'Master'? *Shrug* Don't count on me adding anything here on a regular basis, BTW.

Urg. No posts since April. Shame! Shame!

One more fan bernhard; I have a bookshelf with all the PTerry paperbacks to date. If you like your antropomorphic entities to be as up-to- date with reality[1] as can be be, hop over to The L-Space web for some introductions.

And if you are wondering about why PTerry's works are so special, maybe this dissertation on Postmodern Parody may go some way in explaining why so many of us like his work.

[1] However thin. Don't play with the fire of imagination, children. Reality is easily set alight!

Hey, this is kewl. If anyone mistypes my nick as mj (lowercase) you automatically get redirected to the proper (upper case) link. This is at the server level, I didn't create an account for the lowercase spelling with nothing but a JS redirect or something. Thanks raph.

As it turns out, this works with any nick with upper case characters; when you create an account, an all lowercase alias is created to avoid name collisions. Apparently some parts of Advogato are case-sensitive while others are not. Lucky for me =).

One down, two more to go. Bloody hell, I really needed the full 3 hours for that exam.

And while I should be revising for the next one, I added descriptions of everyone I certified... very productive indeed.

Last but not least, I proposed interfaces for an XPCOM XML-RPC client on the netscape.public.mozilla.xml newsgroup, and have started implementation. So far people are only listening intently (I get notified if someone adds themselves to the CC list of the Bugzilla bug I filed for tracking this), noone has offered any feedback so far. Thanks go to everyone on #mozilla that helped me out with my Q's though.

Heh. This is getting fascinating. I wonder who cheated this poor sod out of $29. He wrote another email (obviously ignoring our friendly reply to his previous email) on the subject of wanting a refund. Again, I obscured the identity for obvious reasons:

To Whom It May Concern:

Today, online I placed an order for the search engine, however upon further considerations I have decided that the package, is not useful for my project. I would greatly appreciate it if you would refund my $29.00. Please be assured, that I have not used and have no future plans of using zope.com. If you have any further questions, please e-mail me at jxxxxxx@hotmail.com

Jxxxxxx Rxxxxxx

Again, to clarify, Zope (usually reached via zope.org, but zope.com works as well), is OSS, and is not a search engine either. Did someone cheat him, or does he really think we're stupid enough to believe we should 'refund' him? What to do with this guy? I guess the Debian webmasters get these all the time, eh?

I am sorry, jgg, I can't say if Microsoft ever gets emails like you guys do. I do know that we at webmaster@zope.org get similar mindboggelingly stupid stuff, although arguably in smaller volume.

(For those of you not familiar with Zope, it's an OSS Web Application Server, and both the default footer template and the default error message both contain a button linking to http://www.zope.org/. We get forwarded error reports from the oddest sites).

Just now however, I openened my webmaster@zope.org mailbox to find a real topper of weirdball email. The sender's identity has been obscured to protect the terminally "Dimwitted", spelling mistakes were not corrected:

Hi, my name is Jxxxxx Rxxxxx, and I just became a member of zope.org. I went to download the search ingine, and I did not receive anything! When I downloaded it, I went to open the compressed files, and nothing happened! I kept getting a red light on winzip. Now, my login does not work, so therefore, I would like to get credit back on my credit card.

Thank you,

Jxxxxx

I just know that Microsoft gets those. Does Debian?

I better get on with studying, if I ever want to make it across the atlantic by the end of this year...

Did I mention I don't like writing Use Cases?

Well, I don't. And for Zope Studio I am far behind. I was supposed to have them finished weeks ago, but they haunt me still.

With all the new architecture in Moz landed in the past two weeks, development has been somewhat hampered, and only in the last few days have I managed to get Zope Studio in a somewhat working condition again. This took a lot of time, and with me going into hiding for the coming week-and-a-half, this was somewhat of a priority. I now can dissapear for a while without having to worry that any contributions will have to rewritten, or won't be contributed at all because ZS isn't working. I am ready for M15.

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