Advogato blog for avi

24 Aug 2003

Sun, 24 Aug 2003 08:30:33 GMT

long time, no write:
came here again for a look around - it has been a long time. saw sethcohn's latest entry and couldn't resist one of my own. cheers seth for inspiring me 8^).

what has changed:
have been heavily riding the work rollercoaster. am finally satisfied with where we are at and actually am excited now about going into the office every day. hmm, what else? this year is my third year of writing the PHP Weekly Summary - yikes. saw david gray in concert earlier this year - rockin'. got an x-arcade last year, bad move for my "spare time". my hair is getting slowly going grey.. i am trying to convince myself that it makes me look distinguished 8^) all up, life is super groovy.

11 Jul 2001

Wed, 11 Jul 2001 00:33:48 GMT

certification:
regretting my previous diary entry like a bad night on the town.

i appreciate that people have taken time to certify me. i'd just like to point out that i wasn't whinging about not being an Apprentice like some warez'ing IRC newbie who wants +v or +o. The fact of the matter is, i enjoy reading Advogato. Last time I made a diary entry I had a trust level that allowed me to post comments. lkcl recently wrote an article that i really wanted to participate in and couldn't - very frustrating. anyway, enough about that!

new column:
the engine2 column has been launched at zend.com, and they were nice enough to arrange a zend e-mail address for me. the first issue was heaps of fun to write. i hope the traffic on the list stays this high - but with all the talk of PHP 5 there i suspect it may mutate in that direction. ahhh - there is nothing more satisfying than the bleeding edge.

10 Jul 2001

Tue, 10 Jul 2001 00:11:51 GMT

advogato:
growing frustrated.. i now have 9 (thanks to those who added certs for me since my last post) certifications, all Apprentice. Yet I am told by the system that I am still not certified as Apprentice. Grr.

I wonder if it's broke or if it just doesn't love me 8^)

8 Jul 2001

Sun, 8 Jul 2001 03:03:15 GMT

hmmm:
after months (six?) of account innactivity on this site, it appears i no longer have a rating!

drat!

addendum: just tried certifying myself, and it didn't work. drat x 2.

16 Nov 2000

Thu, 16 Nov 2000 00:16:48 GMT

misc.:
posted a comment in the discussion about XP here on advogato. it is my first non-diary participation, i hope it is useful to someone.

looking forward to helping deekayen with thatware. i have downloaded the code and am going to make a few suggestions that will hopefully make it a much more maintainable piece of software.

netscape 6 is out, and a lot of people seem to be bitching. i hope this has no serious effects on mozilla project.

11 Nov 2000

Sat, 11 Nov 2000 00:39:33 GMT

misc.:
why do slashdot feel they must post articles that are no-where near accurate? it's almost like they go out of their way to NOT check things before they post them.

getting excited about my new project now (a web-based knowledge management application), we are starting officially on the 18th of this month. it's going to be really cool working with other people. it's been a year of working by myself, so i hope we don't argue too much.

i have been speaking to steve danic of memes.net fame regarding an XML DTD for import/export of the data between knowledge management apps. i've set up a mailing list at e-groups if anyone here is interested in joining.

10 Nov 2000

Fri, 10 Nov 2000 01:12:36 GMT

jcheek:
VC's rarely "get it". they are looking for something that will make your product "unique" (they love that word) for as long as possible. what most of them don't realise is there's no such thing anymore. one VC ceo i met with a while ago told me the idea i was pitching was no good. i asked him what prior investments he had made that he considered to be "good and unique". his answer? encryption software. (he called it "enscryption"). being less than stupid about IT security, i laughed in his face. the fact of the matter is - if they don't get it, they're not the partners you're looking for. that's probably not what you wanted to hear, but it is my experience.

raph:
kudos on your election to the gnome foundation. i feel confident that gnome will remain unspoiled by commercial interests (cough*sun*cough) with people like you to help steer the project in the right direction. 8^)

misc.:
i was watching A Current Affair last night and was disgusted by what i saw. the host was interviewing an american personality (i think his name was something ritter) regarding the elections. one of the questions the host asked was something like "and what about nader?" and the response was (i quote) "he's just an angry man who has cost gore the election".

now, for starters, people have every right to vote for who they like - regardless of whether there are two candidates who the race will likely be between. second of all, it was obvious the race would be close. imho, it is Gore who might lose Gore the election. people who voted for ralph obviously feel that he has something important to contribute to the country - and al doesn't. maybe if the vp had realised this and addressed some of the issues the nader did, he wouldn't be scrounging for votes in florida, regardless of the usability of the electoral cards. (which was pretty pathetic).

5 Nov 2000

Sun, 5 Nov 2000 11:10:43 GMT

misc.
haven't written because i have been insanely busy, and bad shit has been happening in my personal life. i am pretty excited about the PHP compiler.. i can't wait to try it out! i wonder if there will be any speed increases. also, mozilla seems to be coming along really nicely - it's certainly changed a bit since M3 8^) i'm looking forward to being able to finally develop for a single browser. HTML4 + CSS1 may not be perfect, but it's a start. btw, if you have not yet experienced the wonders of XML + XSLT, you don't know what you're missing out on. it makes life with PHP so much easier!

i got an e-mail back from Michael Hirsh (exec producer of The Dish) thanking me on behalf of Working Dog for my kind words of support. of course, it's going straight to the pool room. 8^)

if you actually bothered to read this, why not drop me an e-mail to say "hi"? i'm always interested to chat to other advogatans.

oh, and one last thing. there is nothing more aggravating than ordering the 5 disc set of redhat (2 x binary, 1 x powertools, 1 x docs) and being shipped a dud disc. now, taking good old murphy into account, which disc would be the broken one? of course, it was the first binary disc - the one you actually need to do anything remotely useful - like, say, installing the damn thing!. cough. i feel better now.

14 Oct 2000

Sat, 14 Oct 2000 12:18:18 GMT

misc.:
caught "the dish" last night at indooroopilly megaplex (in brisbane). brilliant movie, i've already sent rob, tom, santo and jane a congratulatory e-mail.

picked up a dexxa optical mouse for $50 ($25USD) and it was an absolute steal. what a beautiful peripheral. i walked back into the office, ctl+alt+f5'ed out of X, unplugged my old Logitech, plugged in the Dexxa, ctl+alt+f7 and i was in business. All 3 buttons functioning, works amazingly with Windowmaker. update: if you have a mouse pad that happens to have a holographic sith lord on it, don't use it. the hologram screws with the mouse's imaging.

work is hectic, hectic, hectic. sign off on my current project is underway, making good project on preliminary work for my next one.

staroffice is finally (l?)gpl'ed. the logical solution would be to use mozilla as the platform instead of gnome-ifying it, but i doubt that'll ever happen with Sun at the helm. They seem intent on making all the mistakes themselves.

5 Oct 2000

Thu, 5 Oct 2000 01:36:26 GMT

lkcl:
dunno what it is, (the midas touch maybe?) but the stuff you have been doing lately is super cool.

misc.:
been working hard. happy happy, my column is now being hosted by zend - who are uber professional and i'm glad to be associated with them.

Spoke to Toshio a couple of days ago after his return to his office. His wife passed away. He was very much in shock. He is only 30.

sign off on my current project begins next week. looking forward to having it out of the way. my next one is going to be tough - it'll be self financed software development (to be GPL'ed of course). it will, however, be very exciting - i know there will be lots of people who will find it really useful.