Advogato blog for gstein

9 Feb 2005

Wed, 9 Feb 2005 18:37:48 GMT

Note: I don't post to this diary any more, and much of the information above may be a bit out of date. I've made it current now, but it will go eventually go stale...

15 Jun 2003

Sun, 15 Jun 2003 21:15:36 GMT

Foo... over a year. I realized at some point a while back that I wasn't big into posting. As blogs came into their own, it very much clarified my thoughts: "who the hell might be interested in me?" It seems rather egocentric to believe that you're an interesting person, and that people want to know what you're doing, what you think about things, etc. I spoke for a while about it with Scott Johnson while at OSCOM. I'm still not sure that I entirely "get it", but he did have a valid point that a blog can be a discussion/communication tool. It doesn't just have to be "all about me". Technical pointers, assistance, etc are all possible, and are even better if readers can interact in some way. The blog can really be about what you want to make of it. Want to draw attention to some new technology? Want to help the community with some particular piece of information? All doable... I think what it really means is to look at a blog from an altruistic point, rather than a "me" point. That might result in a successful blog, and (for me) I wouldn't be as uncomfortable producing a me-me-me thing. Eeek.

That said, I was drinking last night (as usual :-). After finishing a number of margaritas, I wanted something else that wouldn't take so much preparation. Wine it is! So I got down to the wine closet to pick something. Well, we've got it organized into groups of "not yet ready", "close to ready", "ready to drink", and "dang. too late." The latter category contains stuff that we wouldn't serve to guests, but might still be okay. So that's where I looked. I pulled out a 1995 Kendall Jackson Chardonnay, Vintner's Reserve. Anni got this thing years ago for probably about $8. Inexpensive wine, and way past its time. White wines don't normally last eight years -- you want to drink them pretty much as you buy them. Even worse, the tag for this sucker had the little marker for "it was on the rack in the garage [at our old Washington house]." We are leery about any of the wines marked that way because the garage sometimes got up over 70 degrees (Fahrenheit). Not good for wine at all.

So... I crack this sucker open, expecting it to be near vinegar. Obviously, you know the answer -- it was great! It had lost most of the finish on the end, but the wine was smooth, honeyed, and flavorful. Dang! For an eight year old white, for under ten bucks, it is simply amazing how well the thing held together. Gotta drink it at room temp, though, to ensure to get the remaining flavors, but I just wanna say... I'm impressed with the longevity of KJ chardonnays. If you happen to see a 1995 KJ Chard -- go for it. (of course, you'll never see one nowadays tho...)

8 Apr 2002

Mon, 8 Apr 2002 22:00:13 GMT

We released Apache 2.0.35 as "gold" last Friday. Woot!

2 Apr 2002

Tue, 2 Apr 2002 11:55:51 GMT

jcv: thanks for the pointer. (and thanks to cmiller) this entry was posted using advodiary.

Shifted a milestone for Subversion today, and spent a bunch o' time rebuilding everything (httpd, apr, svn, etc).

Woof... spent even more time catching up on Apache and Python email. So much email... so little time...

1 Apr 2002

Mon, 1 Apr 2002 19:30:53 GMT

Heh. Standard delay here...

Subversion has now been self-hosting for over six months and we're approaching Alpha (woo!). I started working for CollabNet, and get to spend much more time with it. Besides coding, I also have the opportunity to get its milestones set properly.

Since my last diary entry, ViewCVS is now completely using EZT and is fully internationalizable. Neat stuff

mod_dav was released, but Expat and edna weren't. And I never really found the time to get the HTTP stuff for Python completed. It may go into Python 2.3 instead.

Dang. A day ago or so, I saw a little Python script to use $EDITOR to craft a diary entry and post to Advogato via XML-RPC, but now I can't recall who wrote it. Grr...

Not a lot coming up dev-wise. More work on Subversion and some new hiliting/cross-ref stuff in ViewCVS. And maybe call edna 1.0 finally and release a new version (way low priority). Bigger priority is Expat. It has been a long time since a release, and people keep running into some of the same problems... Need to talk to Fred.

8 Oct 2001

Mon, 8 Oct 2001 19:02:11 GMT

All right. Been four months since my previous diary entry.

I got married in July. Went on the honeymoon. In August, helped Subversion go self-hosting. Usual hang out stuff. In September, travelled to Seattle and NYC. Cancelled a trip to Vegas after the WTC tragedy. And now we're in October.

Details are left as an exercise to the reader :-)

Currently, I've got a number of things on my plate which I'm trying to deal with in the short term:

Subversion (generally, but specifically M4)
Python HTTP code: extensions for authentication, proxying, and WebDAV; all to go into the std library
ViewCVS: integrating the ezt templating from edna
Expat: wrap up config/build stuff and make a new release
mod_dav: make a new release, particularly with feedback from this week's WebDAV Interop event
edna: needs a maintenance release

I think that is about it. Way too much stuff, and way too little time. Sigh...

6 Jun 2001

Wed, 6 Jun 2001 06:59:45 GMT

Woah. Just read about geocaching. Very cool stuff. Sent off an email to some friends to think about some camping/geocaching. Even without that, there are a number of caches nearby that I can go track down. Of course, there is a small matter of buying a GPS receiver... :-)

Did some SWIG work for SVN over the past couple days. Gotta get the bindings up to snuff to be able to do the cvs2svn tool.

Been integrating some patches from Mo DeJong to fix SVN's vpath builds. Seems like that has been fixed.

Not much else going on right now...

2 Jun 2001

Sat, 2 Jun 2001 05:43:14 GMT

More work on the SVN build. I think that everything is licked except for vpath builds, plus a tiny smidgin of work for building the docs (from texinfo files).

After that, I'll be going back to work on the cvs2svn tool. The precursor for that will be the Python bindings to the FS library. That should be fun, and a learning experience for SWIG.

And yes, more PS2 action. A friend was in town Wednesday. We went and rented Crazy Taxi (CT) and Zone of Enders (ZoE). CT was fun, but only for a short while. There isn't really any advancement, opening of new levels, new cars to open up, etc. It is pretty much "here is the game. keep playing until you're better and can get a higher score." Same thing over and over. Ah well. Good thing that I rented it :-)

ZoE was actually quite cool. On the "easy" setting, I went through the whole thing in seven hours. I actually felt a bit short-changed. I had thought that I'd be going to Mars (the action takes place in an orbital station around Jupiter). But it actually ends before leaving. Too bad. The game was actually quite decent, but some of the fighting is actually a bit too easy. A Burst sword attack takes down the enemy in just a few hits. And being so close, they usually can't use their heavy weapons on you. I think it would have been harder if there was a meter on the use of the Burst. The graphics and the motion and the screens were quite awesome. Some of the gameplay (go here, get that, go there, use it) was a bit slow, but I actually don't mind games where there is a lot of mindless hack and slash (on the way to recovering things).

And in an embarassing moment, I trashed the edna repository at SF by doing a partial change to the CVSROOT to add checkin emails. I forgot to "cvs add" some things first, so the new files didn't go into CVSROOT, but my changes required them to be there. Bam! I couldn't check anything more in, so I couldn't even fix the darned problem. Sigh. Should be cleared up Monday when the SF admins reset the CVSROOT.

30 May 2001

Wed, 30 May 2001 11:51:58 GMT

Released ViewCVS 0.7 tonite. Lots of little bug fixes (mostly dealing with oddities of CVS branches and other edge cases). Some performance improvements. Some new features, such as persistent URLs to the "head" revision and tarball generation.

Also spent some time cleaning up odds and ends with the new Subversion build system.

Weekend was pretty much a no-op. Spent a lot of time playing Summoner on my PS2. Excellent game. Although, I didn't get my summoning ring until I was level 19. To throw skill points into my Summon skill, I've got to gain levels. Feh... up to 19, it isn't too difficult. But you pretty much have to double your total experience to get to 20, and double again for 21. etc. Given that I've been playing for something like 17 hours of real time, that means that 21 is going to be pretty much impossible to reach in any respectable time. Hopefully, I'll find some badass monsters worth 10k experience or something. At the moment, the monsters that I'm fighting are all less than 1k. I chew threw them like a rabid dog with a sack full of kittens, but it will still take a long time at this rate. Not a big deal at this point, though, as my guy is a tough mo-fo; who needs to summon creatures? :-)

Ah well... it just means that I'm now concentrating more on completing the quests and the game rather than busting heads. Summoner is also kind of neat in that you have multiple party members. Their levels are jumping as we teach those monsters who's their daddy.

It is kind of funny actually... I was zooming through this crypt. "Oh, there are three monsters." I wontonly run my guy into the center of them and call down a Meteor Shower. Anybody that survives takes maybe a hit or two before they're dust. Of course, with two other people and a summoned elemental, we made quick work of the monsters. Then I get to the end of the crypt and meet the "boss", named Carados. I start bitchslapping him, and "oh. somebody is casting spells at me. gee, that tickles. hey! elemental! go smack up that Bone Mage." Carados went down with nary a scratch to the party. Heh.

Me thinks I might be screwed towards the end of the game, though, where I'd truly need that Summon skill way up. Just have to see. For now, I'll just keep crushing things. :-)

25 May 2001

Fri, 25 May 2001 07:20:04 GMT

Completed and installed the new build system for Subversion. It is quite sweet. Fast, simple, and flexible. Sure beats automake for our particular use-scenario.

I could see that automake is good for FSF/GNU projects where they have a particular set of requirements, but it isn't very flexible when you have different policies. It also creates some performance issues (as I mentioned in my previous diary entry).