Older blog entries for jmason (starting at number 8)

I'm writing this entry using Netscape 6 PR1; it actually works-ish (ie. I've been using it for the last hour or so intermittently, opening/closing new windows, and it or X haven't crashed yet). woohoo! The Sullivan skin is a beaut too, I'll use it once the right-mouse button works. And Moz/NS6 still needs some work with the ugly ugly fonts in Linux... and cutting and pasting... and.. and..

Spent today dealing with Webnote support issues. ah well... at least they were nothing serious.

Anyone know of a good, stable, working HTML4/CSS1/CSS2 browser for Linux? One that isn't gigantic in disk/mem requirements? Open sores license if possible of course.

Overdue thumbs up message: the HelixCode GNOME distribution rocks. Good work on that one. After reading the MDI interview on slashdot I'm really considering pitching in on the Nautilus/Evolution projects where possible; I'm rediscovering the joys of GUIs to a certain extent. However the old tendonitis problem is flaring up a little so I think it'll have to be a read-only relationship for a while.

Advogato comment: where did this Dimwit rating thing come from? I'm more of the opinion that there's another category required between Journeyman and Apprentice meself.

Hmm... the perils of following links from weblogs. Y'day, on a visit to Hack The Planet I followed a link to a mail to the e-lang list about a possible new open source config mgmt system (ie. something better than CVS -- fingers crossed). So I pitched in with a mail hyping Perforce, a great CMS we use here, and topped it off with some anti-Java ranting -- I spent quite a lot of time writing big things in Java in a previous job, including a quite hefty test support framework, and my experience was that it just wasn't up to it, IMHO.

Turns out the E system (ERights at least) seems to be quite hooked in to Java, so I may not have been talking to the right audience there ;)

Ah well... however, got a positive reply from the poster, so all's well.

I wonder if Bonobo will let me use Vim as an embedded textbox editor?

wassup here, myself and Caolan seem to be synced diary-wise. hmm.

New software installed: Junkbuster, courtesy of Stefan Waldherr's neat RPM & scripts; very nice. slashdot loads like a rocket now (in flat mode at least), ditto for The Onion. Now to add the weblog ads to the blocklist (only joking!)

Evolution sounds like just what I need. Let's hope it will allow me to colorise mails in the index view; I (used to) use color as a filter mechanism, it works very well, and I haven't found a mailer that did it. (I hacked it into ExMH using some my VERY dodgy tcl skills, but then forgot to submit the patch and couldn't work out how to hack it into the next version, duh).

ha! I notice Caolan (who I know from the Irish LUG list) has updated his diary (yes, I just checked the Advogato front page). Let's see if he reads this -- BTW Caolan thanks for the Proxis.be shopping tip ;)

I hadn't noticed that Alec Muffet had joined up. I'll have to wander over and give him my certification thumbs-up seeing as I accidentally trampled his namespace when I started work on sitescooper -- it was originally called "snarfnews", which a simple web-search would have told me was already in use for a USENET pull-feed thingy he'd written previously. Oops.

And to carry on with the crack-related reminscencing, I once ported it to DOS with the help of djgpp, all the better to use those tempting 386's instead of attracting the attention of watchful/paranoid college sysadmins. Misspent youth! ;)

still problems with PRC installation on UNIX. :(

regarding sawmill -- looks like corner.jl does the trick nicely! I definitely like this wm.

Got Final Fantasy VIII on Saturday, so that's going to take some spare time from sitescooper I guess ;) Really should fix the PRC install problems first though!

Still no sign of a replacement Palm V; I had to ship the previous one back to the US due to a faulty touchscreen. I am scoopless as a result, and left reading dead-tree-based news. I'm sure the site files are suffering regexp rot (tm) as a result.

released 2.2.6 (didn't note 2.2.5 in the diary). Mostly bugfixes for RPM/DEB/Make install -style installation, and a fix for Mac users. With any luck this will nobble all the bugs I introduced when I split sitescooper.pl into multiple modules in a "lib" directory...

sawmill rocks. Still haven't learnt enough lisp to hack up that window-throwing code though.

I'm considering including all the required modules in the sitescooper-2.2.5 .rpm, similarly to what Mike is doing with the .deb. It'd certainly make it easier to install, and more independent of other tools' use of those modules.

Checking out freeciv... it's really looking good. Now if I can only get my Windows-using friends to set it up...

2.2.4 released and .debs updated appropriately. This one fixes the bugs noted in 8 March.

Playing with sawmill -- much faster than enlightenment. If I can only learn enough lisp to do my throw-window-around-screen function now, as seen here...

Forgot to mention the comics ;) but a message to the list sorted that out after the fact.

some bugs in 2.2.3, it wasn't reading the configuration properly. Fixed with patch from Robb Canfield. This'll probably mean a new release will happen quite soon.

Also integrated some nice support for "image-only" sites, which works very well for comics; the patch from Kevin Dupree included sites for Dilbert and User Friendly. It's v cool!

Just released 2.2.3 of sitescooper. Nothing really new in the release -- just better integration with Linux distro packaging mechanisms, with the RPM split into sitescooper-*.rpm and sitescooper-modules-*.rpm; the latter contains the required LWP, HTTP, HTML etc. modules.

Michael Ivey is now the official .deb maintainer. Thanks again Mike!

My new Palm V just arrived today, replacing the AWOL Palm Professional I had previously. Time to get fixing the broken site files again...

Hmm... this diary looks handy. I might just start using this.