Older blog entries for Stevey (starting at number 11)

 Getting to sound like a one-track mind here, but, my GNU MP3 server, is taking off bigtime. Its now got its own domain, and CVS repository.

 My problem now is working out if I can build a binary RPM package under Debian GNU/Linux, or vice versa.

 I'm sure it should be possible, especially as my dependancies are minimal, (libpthreads + libc), but I've not found a good guide to this yet - I guess I'll look at the "task-sel debian-devel" tonight.

 I saw Monsters, Inc last night - not a bad film, just felt a little too simplistic, and child-orientated. (Not to mention merchandising friendly. Sigh.)

 I saw somebody else do this, just include the music you're listening to at the moment - if you are.

 If it catches on it would allow people to augment the one-dimensional view we get of random people + their diary entries with something a bit personal, and easy to understand .. or something

 Currently listening to to "Virgin State Of Mind", by "K's Choice" - from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer soundtrack albumn.

 Autoconf / Automake ... suck.

 Thats my conclusion after trying to get my streaming MP3 server to use them.

 I know how usefull, and nice, it is to be able to download foo-src, and just have to type:

./configure
make
su - make

 But actually generating all the config.in, and recoding your software to us all those "#ifdef HAVESOCKET_H" defines is a real mess.

 I hope somebody can come up with a better system, soon.

 I've just discovered the Recent Diary posts page, here at advogato.org - way cool.

 Prior to seeing this I just used to randomly click on entries down the side of the articles page, which was fun, but painfully slow.

 I'm getting into AutoConf/AutoMake stuff at the moment, as my GNU MP3 Server is receiving a lot of feedback - mostly people telling me they've got it working on a new platform. (or tried + failed).

 Up till now I've used autoconf a lot in different applications, but I've never looked at the code it used/generated, and I've certainly never written anything to use it. (Apart from a brief forray into it when I started using KDevelop.

 All I can say is Ouch!

 Freshmeat Rocks!: I added my streaming HTTP/MP3 server to the repository yesterday - already I got a patch, and a lot of nice feedback.

 Its just a shame that the feedback varies so much - I've got three projects indexed there at the moment, one gets patches after a day, the other two have high hit rates, and never get any feedback, good or bad.

 Work: We've got one of those funky card reader things on the door to our office now, if I don't remember my card I can't get into the office. I know its only a matter of time till I lose my card..

 Still, I'm half the IT department, so I don't have the paranoid thoughts that the company is timing the number of cigarette breaks I take .. unlike some other people who are working here ;).

 Non-work-ish: I managed to "acquire" a server from work yesterday, its a lovely beast, with integrated LCD display - just like a laptop!

 The only slightly galling thing was getting it home, installing Debian on it, and discovering the bogoMIPS vvalue was higher than the new machine I'd paid for only a month ago.

 Phew after a lot of effort I've finally got my streaming MP3 / HTTP server working, and released.

 I spent largish amounts of the weekend working on this, after the trip that I was due to take to Amsterdamn fell through :( .. All in all my weekend was a strange one.

 After the trip fell through I thought I'd go swimming, needless to say I managed to injure myself -- For most of Saturday I couldn't turn my head to the right!

 Anyway .. the MP3 server is working well, its been running flawlessly in the office for a good few hours, so its posted to Freshmeat, dunno if anybody will bother with it.

• My GNUMP3d page
• Freshmeat Project Page

 Wow, almost a whole year between diary entries, I must be busier than I thought!

 Lots of busy things happening at work - gonna replace the companies only CVS server with a brand new one, gotta get all the accounts moved over and the repository - shouldnt' be too tricky, but I know its gotta go right, or people will be irate

 Still this machine will be easier to update - I've taken advantage of my newfound position of power to convert all our Linux servers, (8), to Debian.

 The hardest thing about setting up a new server, for me, is choosing the name .. just recently I've named one server after my cat, two after Tolkien characters, and one very functionaly

 I forget the number - but I do remember reading an RFC about the naming policy for networks, talking about naming machines as members of a set, eg, naming each one after a dwarf, or a gemstone.

 Its a shame we can't retrofit a decent naming scheme on our internal network .. We've got two schemes running in parallel, which is a joke :(

 Non-work: Got invited to a medieval party in a couple of weeks .. gotta find something to wear - which could be challanging!

 Things have been a bit rushed at the moment - I'm settling into my new role as a Toolsmith/Network Admin.

 My past experience has given me a couple of amusing problems .. like the first day I was working in the company alone. The external webserver was dead - and the machine was spewing lots of error messages to the console.

 None of the flashy lights on the router were on, and the machine, running Debian, was full of error msg's complaining about timeouts on eth0.

 So I dived in, changed the network card. Same problem.

 40 minutes later - I change the ethernet cable. Problem solved. After running flawlessly for 6+ months, and not having been touched, somehow the cable had died.

 Moral: Its always the simple things that go wrong ;)

 Well my new role at work, as a SysAdmin-type, is going well.. Its a real change from the previous role I had as a developer.

 Most of my day is spent randomly surfing, and doing preventative maintainance + setup of servers.

 Then somebody approaches, usually a little warily, with a problem for me to solve - its great, I get to relax for a while, then I have to think up creative solutions in a hurry.

 What's your favourate BO FH quote? Here's mine:

 What's your username?

 Well things are in transition here at the moment, I'm changing roles in my current job - switching from being a developer to being a SysAdmin/Toolsmith.

 I'm already well known for wanting to automate things, be it with Perl, or Emacs, or whatever - so I'm looking forward to doing that kind of thing.

 The SysAdmin stuff could be cool too ;) I'm just trying to decide whether its gonna be a huge mistake, or really cool - I suppose I'll have to wait and see.

 Work on the Linux MPIO drivers is progressing slowly, I've discovered that Wine is capable of running the transfer software - so I'm using that to log on the port input(s), and output(s)...

 I huge thank-you goes out to the Wine developers; last time I used Wine it was very poor nowadays I'm running it without windows installed, and its stunning how many apps work with the Wine "dll"s.

 Well, work on the MPIO is going well - I can now detect whether or not the mplayer is plugged into the parallel port.

 Hopefully I'll be able to put some code online next week - (I'm away this weekend; so no computer access).

 In the meantime there are some provisional pages online at Mpio.Steve.org. uk

 After reading the interesting article about the lack of OSS projects using C++ I've decided upon my implementation language..

 Actually I probably would have chosen C++ anyway, as its a neat implementation language IMHO - well from the point at which you switch from using it as "C with Classes" to a "real" OO language.