Older blog entries for andrewsj (starting at number 4)

21 Aug 2001 (updated 21 Aug 2001 at 09:20 UTC) »

I just spent the last 5 hours working on porting Tuxtype to Mac OS 9. It is 5:30am and I have slept yet. Let me tell you, it sucks porting to Mac OS 9. I really wanted to port to Os X, but it seems like the libraries aren't ready yet, and I am not ready to work on the libraries. Plus most schools will have OS 9 before they would have OS X.

I hoped that I would have finished this, and who knows, I may not go to bed yet. But considering that classes start back Wednesday morning, I will probably try to get a few hours of sleep.

Side note: If you read this within a few days and know what:

LOADMUSIC: Trying :sounds/funkbrk.it
LOADMUSIC: Trying :/sounds/funkbrk.it
LOADMUSIC: Trying ./sounds/funkbrk.it
LOADMUSIC: Trying ../sounds/funkbrk.it
Couldn't load ../sounds/funkbrk.it: Couldn't read from 
'../sounds/funkbrk.it'
could be caused by, email me! It is when we are using Mix_MusLOAD in SDL_mixer

TuxType will launch and everything, the game even plays nice. I just have to disable the sound! Plus I had to change it so it was windowed mode, just like the windows port. Also in the course of porting it I found a few small bugs and one "feature" that I now classify as a bug. The intro screen requires about 15+ MB, while the rest of the program requires <10mb. It is because of the background image. I will work on that later.

anyway I am going to hit the sack (maybe, I really want to finish that dang port).

Nothing much as far as programming happened today. I have started on my research assistantship for the next semester. This summer I basically learned a lot of the background for cryptography, and now I am going to start my actual job of reading papers, and presenting them to my advisor, and the seminar on occassion. My first paper I have been reading is called "Weaknesses in the Key Scheduling Algorithm of RC4" by Fluhrer, Mantin, and Shamir. It is quite fitting that I am studying this paper, since right now I am typing this entry via an 802.11b network (airport for apple people). 802.11 uses a protocol called WEP, which stands for Wired Equivalent Privacy. The idea was to make the info that is flying through the air as private as wired communication. Well, I don't think wired communication is that secure and it turns out that WEP is not secure at all. These blokes show that recover of the key (which is the secret passphrase that makes the encryption work) can be done in a "negligible amount of time which grows only linearly with its size". Well, I guess I should be careful what I type! A related store was covered @ slashdot, about an intern who implimented this and was about to recover a unknown key in about 2 hours. At that the dickens. I get a wireless network, and now it is up for anyone to use, and snoop.

Well before one loses all sense of dispair, you can impliment a encryption layer over the tranportation layer... Basically you make it so all your wireless stations encrypt via something like SSH all traffic (TCP/IP) going out. Then you have a router (like a linux box) that decrypts and passes it on like a good proxy. I am not doing any of this as I don't think it is an issue as of now, but I know I am not going to be typing account numbers or anything like that on my wireless connection... That is what my roommate's desktop is for ;)

well my airport is working great on the iBook. I took a walk outside to see how good the range was. I got a good 100+ feet. I am sitting outside across the way and listening to some mp3's streaming from mp3.com and typing this. I am heading over to a friends tonight to help them get there wedding pics.

on a tech note I tried hooking my digital camera (Agfa Ephoto cl18) to the iBook, but no go. I am thinking about maybe porting gPhoto to Os X, but I also downloaded debian for ppc, and will install it maybe soon.

School wise, just 4 days until classes. I am taking some neat classes next semester and am looking forward to returning. Well my friend is here, have to head out...

I had written my diary entry already, but unfortunately I have learned that Internet Explorer can crash at the worst times.

I want very much to be programming in SDL again, but haven't got sdl_image and sdl_mixer to work under Mac OS X, so I am spinning my wheels. Anyone with any info, contact me!!!

While cooking dinner (more later on it), I listened forf a while to TechNetCast, and most interesting was a stream about .net. It gave a lot of talk about what exactly CLR is and what it means. The speaker gave a lot of interesting remarks about java, and open source. He said that Sun is doing the same stuff as .net and that both teams (M$ & Sun) have been working off of each others work. Interestingly he gave a very nice compliment to open source, calling us the artists. He compared VB programmers and the sort to liquor salesmen (ok, to really get this listen to the stream).

My last thing of the day has been cooking. I have tried once again to make risotto, and it came out much better this time. Cooking is my third love (after my fiance Emily Janovyak, whom I will marry next summer, and open source programming). I really wish I could attend some cooking classes or lessons. Maybe I can get an internship at a nice eatery, and learn on weekends (although I don't think my resume which is all technical and greenhouse work would really impress them at all). Maybe someday....

17 Aug 2001 (updated 17 Aug 2001 at 18:00 UTC) »

Well, I am posting this on my new iBook. I finally made the decision to simplify my computer life and finalize on one computer. So after much research I decided on getting this. As far as the hardware goes, it can not be beat by any other company out there. The screen rocks, and the detail that apple put into the iBook is amazing. The titanium was interesting, but I ultimately decided on this because it offered almost the same performance at a lower cost and it is more portable. So far I have a few things happen inside of Mac Os X that shouldn't have happened, but they are small. Hopefully the update will help. By the way this is my first mac. I will change it to be dual booting with linuxppc, but I don't want to do anything until I get the update to os x, since I want dvd support in os x before I get rid of os 9. So eventually I will have a day or two of struggle getting linuxppc working ;) Anyway I am impressed with the software since it is the power of unix with the user functionality of apple. Dang, it is 2 am and my neighbors have friends over creating a lot of noise. I hate noise. (Which is another reason for the apple since they are quiet as a mouse, while the sony vio sounds like a jet taking off).

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