I wrote JMegaHal a couple of months ago, but people kept prodding me to make it available so they could put their own AI into their IRC bots or whatever. So there it is.

It's simply based on MegaHAL, but it's implemented as a Java package, so you can easily make use of it from your own Java programs.

The jar file also contains the source code and is only 6kb in size, so you can see how simple it is at the moment.

A few people have already started by making a PircBot use the JMegaHal package to read in large text documents and spout out random jibble!

I've just finished adding a few more methods to EPS Graphics2D. I don't know why I didn't make this before, it's brilliant :) I can take all my existing Java programs and obtain high quality EPS output to include in my research papers. Before, I used to just dump a high resolution PNG file and stick it into a paper. Now, with EPS output, I get unlimited resolution and smaller files! You can use it in place of a standard Graphics2D object, so it's a piece of cake to drop into any existing program. Of course, it still comes with some documentation if you want it.

Hi, I guess it's about time I made my first diary entry on Advogato.

Spending all weekend updating PircBot has made me aware of how hard it is to refactor and add new features to a reasonably-sized program without breaking backwards compatibility or making things look messy.

Still, I'm quite pleased with the results. I get a lot of feedback to suggest that it's the most popular IRC bot framework out there.

It's also nice to see the interesting things that the PircBot package gets used for. Some of the ideas I've seen are very original, ranging from bots designed to fill in peoples' timesheets, to bots that help out with online gaming. It's also nice to see the framework becoming increasingly used in research areas, and being from a graph drawing research background, I can certainly think of a few ideas of my own here.

I guess it's these kind of things that keep me working on PircBot - it's exciting - there's certainly no kind of monetary or job incentive.

Teaching people about PircBot is a rewarding experience when your students come up to you a few days later and show off their new creations.

Nothing delights me more than to hear from another person who has decided to use PircBot and become interested in the potential ideas they could implement. I suspect you may be the same - after all, you are still reading this...