Older blog entries for abg (starting at number 62)

Dukes Site Relaunches. Also: Timezone Hatred

oops.

This shouldn't have been here.

Syndicated 2007-04-24 22:43:44 from Gurno.com - advogato

I updated the webpages for PyGS, my Gopher server.

Of course, I haven't worked on it in years, but I got a few emails recently from people wanting access to it. The page had disappeared, but links to it still hung around on places like Freshmeat.

So I brought it back up again. I still want to improve it... but I dunno. Maybe it would be a good project to learn Ruby with? That's an idea right there...

Two small things to note:

I wrote an SSH presentation for NORLUG. LaTeX again, just like my old Vi presentation. You can download the SSH presentation here and get the 'source' for the presentation here.

I've been doing some Civicspace hacking, for Northfield.org. We're going to roll out a CS site within about a month or so, and I've been doing some extensive theme modifications. There's only a few changes left and things we be much better for us. :) I also blogged the process that I went through to install the Drupal banner module into Civicspace for various sponsors. The documentation that comes with it is a little behind the times, so this is a nugget out there for the searchers to hit upon.

I'm currently knee-deep in trying to find out if there exists a Redbrick DB client/ODBC-hoohaw for Linux. This is all complicated by the fact that while some people claim that Redbrick == Informix compatibility, others say Redbrick != Informix compat.

The Python InformixDB client hasn't been updated this millenium, which either means it's perfect or dead.

Willing to pay $$$ for Redbrick connectivity, contact redbrick@gurno.com!

gregors: OS X is flirting with the idea of 'everything as a database' for many of it's apps. The most popular of this is iTunes, which fits your bill exactly. Smart playlists, quick filtering, etc.

It's the wave of the future - file your patents now. ;)

It doesn't have file system integration, but from what Jobs was hinting at during the last WWDC, something like that is on the table, FWIW.

There was a KDE-based metadata filesystem thing that got some play on /. some time ago. Don't recall what the name of it was - I followed it for a while until the author decided to call it quits. Good stuff, tho.

On a different note, Opera's mail-client-formerly-known-as-M2 operates on a database-like interface. It's a real love-hate thing, but I like it quite a bit.

Ack. FOSS content of post: 03%.

Bug Tracking

So, there came a need for a bit of bug-tracking to be done at work. I wanted small and easy - I found 'What Bugs?', which worked well, but still had a number of bugs itself. I contacted the author, who told me that he wasn't maintaining it anymore. He pointed to someone else who had contacted him about it. Ex-maintainer had sent Other Guy an unreleased tarball of what would have been 0.5. After talking with Other Guy and getting 0.5 (lots of unfinished changes - didn't work), we decided to pick up with 0.3 and add features to that. We're this close to being able to ship 0.4, but you can play with it now, if you want (user/pass advogato/advogato if you want to log in). It's got some nice features with just a few more on the way. KISS is the guiding principle for this one - there are some big fish out there that there's no need to replicate. The 0.4_pre1 was 21k, compressed. ;^)

Life

Good. Thinking about buying my first computer in nearly five years. It just might be a dual G5.

Finally updated some of my (very old) Python modules for to use distutils. Took me long enough...

Using a combination of Christmas and birthday money, I bought myself a Lesche and a GPS for this summers metal detecting expeditions. They didn't tell me that they came with a bad case of Sudden Cabin Fever.

I tossed a few improvements into EZGallery - you can see an online demo right here. It's not perfect yet, but I can crank out baby picture galleries like never before... 8^)

SPAMMERS MUST DIE

Gurno.com has been joe-jobbed and rendered pretty much unusable for the last three weeks or so. Chaos has ensued. There is a burning nugget of hatred inside of me for spammers. I'm about to start banging the 'email is broken' drum.

OSS

I've got a few things queued up to update once gurno.com returns to functional.

CVS

Let's just say that lots of people don't realize the power of simple tools and Free licenses.

Microsoft Wants You!

I received a message from Mike Surkan from Microsoft yesterday wondering if he could send a post to the NORLUG list and ask people about why they like Linux, what they'd like to see in Windows, yadda yadda.

I turned him down. Here's the page that I created about it, including my reasoning for turning him down.

Update: He sent the exact same message to the TCLUG list.

It's dead, Jim

My Linux box (K6-2 400) died two weeks ago. This gave me a great excuse to build my silent VIA EPIA Eden box. It's great and much faster than I expected.

EZGallery

Found a bug in the thumbnail routine. Haven't fixed it yet. 8^P