Older blog entries for kahlage (starting at number 10)

4:32pm GMT+5 ==

Work has kept me from posting in a while. Sorry about that... Now that I've got some time to tinker with Free Software, let's look at the projects:

• OpenVRML -- The libvrml97 library has changed it's name to libopenvrml, and the applications I help to maintain need tweaking to compensate. tflynn has graciously provided a patch for gtklookat, and I'll probably crib much smarts from his contribution for xmlookat.
• viator -- I've almost finished with the testing and I'll release it into the wild over the weekend. I'm looking forward to finishing development on this one so I can move on.
• scribe -- in working on viator, I've had an epiphany WRT how scribe can be made cooler. There's also the "scribe write me a Makefile" option I want to add...
• tome -- a different help system.
• some sort of front-end for the Project Gutenberg.
• glboids -- I've got some mutations to put the boids artificial life system through. Should prove slick.

I'll be writing another entry over the weekend. Best regards to everyone, and if someone would like to help me test viator on a Macintosh system, please let me know...

Thanks for your time and attention--

8:20am GMT+7 ==

I've been working since the US Thanksgiving holiday without a day off. 10-12 hours per day. I have no time currently for Free Software, but I hope to change that soon.

I think that viator is finished, and will be releasing it when I can type
localhost:~$ tar -c viator | gzip -9 > viator.tar.gz without being interrupted at home. I suspect that will be sometime late next week...

9:17am GMT+7 ==

Wow! I was a nobody, then over the holiday (yeah, I'm in the US...) I land a "Journeyer" standing. I wonder what happened?

Work is moving forward. This set of machines will be working happily assuming our mechanics and electricians don't break something else before the customer shows up to see them. Our team realised that the two seperate gantries were designed so that the X axes (long axis) move in opposite directions. I almost lost my mind. Ken kept me from being commited by suggesting the solution: write a quick and dirty function to handle this.

double morph_xval(double victim); -- this hack negates the 'victim' value if it's on the other gantry. Nasty! This is only used for offsets to a base position, because base positions were taught by dragging the end effector over the target and teaching the coordinate. Fun.

My lovely wife's brother is in town for the holiday. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama. We live in Beaumont, Texas. He's a cool guy. Jessica, his SO, is a sweety. I wish them well.

I haven't been able to touch viator since the bughunt earlier this week. If it passes my tests, I'll package it up and release it into the wilds of the Internet. Anyone out there dual-booting a PowerPC or Macintosh between MacOS and Linux? I need someone other than me to confirm this program works... All help appreciated. Mail me here if you're willing to let a program loose on your harddrive that I wrote in a fit of sleep deprevation and caffiene overload. (I can't wait to see who responds to this!)

srl and skud:
One of the cooler things my boss does with MSProject is the assignment of tasks to individuals within our department. While peobably a common thing for Project Management software to do, I just wanted to air it out so it didn't get forgotten in the rush.

Thanks again to whomever pushed me over the top to Journeyer. It's kinda cool to think I can now put topics up on the main page... Scary! More after I figure out how LISP works. C-ya.

5:26am GMT+7 ==

srl: I agree 110%, but as someone once said "That's what we got..." I've had minimal exposure to Microsoft's Project (the management tool). Seems alright, but my frame of reference is a little off. I don't use project management software enough to have an informed opinion about their functionality.

It wouldn't suck to have something cool for the Free Unixes to attract the Administratively-minded.

Unfortunately, I have to finish alpha-testing some automation code right now. In the meantime, what would the people reading this list like to see in a project management tool? Any specific features?

Not that I'm volunteering or anything; I'm just interested in hearing the opinions. Don't let the bastards wear you down--

5:33am GMT+7 ==

Hey, snowbird:

Try these project management tools and let me know what you think:

• achievo

• tobedone

• mozart

I hope one of these can help...

I worked on viator last night. Got the relative paths bug ironed out. After a little more testing, I'll post it to the Internet at large. Should be useful to someone...

viator is a textfile convertor. It can translate between *nix, DOS, and Macintosh format. From any one to any other. It can also be used to detect the flavor of a given file. Give me a few days, and we'll see about releasing.

6:35pm GMT+7 ==

It's true! I needed an updated version of depmod. Now that the kernel is running correctly again, I'm going to see if I can get a Debian install to use the serial port on the laptop as a PPP connection to my LAN. I'm excited, but concerned. I don't know if Debian supports the kind of networking I need to do "from the Rescue disk"...

Work is proceeding nicely... I didn't get as much done today as I would have liked, but I was too worn out to continue intelligently. I feel more people should worry about this aspect of their lives. Don't be stupid. Don't underestimate your own ability to start doing stupid things. Some of the smartest people I know are the ones who merely know their own limitations.

Debian install is underway. I'll let the Advogato crowd know how it goes. Thanks for all the reassurances that these words actually do get read. It's cool to be a part of a community, even though that word has been over-used lately.

Pax Omnium Veritas--

7:11am GMT+7 --

Well, here I am at work on a Saturday. With any luck this new machine will be bugfree(tm) by the end of the day. It's an agressive schedule, but if I can pull it off I get the Thanksgiving holiday weekend off. (Go team!)

I've read the Laplink-HOWTO and started working on getting my new-to-me laptop on my home network. If I can do that, I'll install the rest of Debian off the Internet and have a shweet dev environment for my business trips.

I've noticed a problem: Recompiling my kernel to use modules (I had a monolithic kernel before -- ask and I'll tell you why), the make modules_install step didn't work. It looks like there's a command line switch being passed to depmod that it doesn't understand.

Details:
• depmod -V tells me depmod 2.1.121
• kernel rev is 2.4.0-test10
• suspicious commandline option: -F System.map

Where can I find a later version of depmod? This kernel boots, but I get all kinds of errors during startup about /lib/modules/2.4.0- test10/modules.dep being empty...

I guess this is when I figure out if anyone but me reads these diary entries. Feel free to mail me about this one. I'm stumped.

9:11pm GMT+7 --

Work is done, and I've had the chance to hack on the ANSI C binding of libvrml97. This will be a straight-C interface for the original library. We shall see if it pans out. The original lib is in C++, and that's not my strongest suit...

I've got another application that's waiting in the wings for some attention, but I've got to get the development tools on my laptop so I can work on it. I just don't have the time to sit at home and code anymore.

Sleep now. Eyes closing. Warm bed. Too many 12-hour days teaching epileptic robots how to pick up boxes...

More later--

5:34am GMT+7 --

Well, I got called out to work this morning and here I am. I'm glad the Advogato interface is an HTML form instead of something I'd have to run from a Linux box. I'm in Win98 right now... I'd rather be sleeping. I'm waiting for our customer to call back and tell me what's wrong with his robot.

For some reason, one of their user screens went away (probably minimized), and they decided to reboot the system. We use QNX for realtime control, so they didn't need to do that... Like I said, now I wait for the callback. This sucks.

I haven't had any chance to look at my open sourced / free software projects since my last entry. Hell, I haven't been able to check my email at home, much less devote time to programming. I need a different job. Automation is cool; dealing with the customers of an automation company is not. They expect not to have to think after getting a piece of automation. This is terribly backwards. Robots do physical labor. THEY DON'T THINK!

8:47pm GMT+7 --

Well, after reading the Apache dox I've got a good idea howthe system will work. The new mime parser will break out into several functions, the first of which (already written) is:

parseNetscapeMimeTypes(mime_list *list, char *victim)

And the insanity will continue with functions like:

parseApacheMimeTypes(mime_list *list, char *victim)

parseXSwallowMimeTypes(mime_list *list, char *victim)

Does anyone know where the Plugger config files live? I don't use Plugger all that much, but it would be nice to get all these different types of programs' behavior bound to 3dfile...

My Brother-in-Reality's-Clutches Kevin came to town this weekend for a visit. It was great, except for the fact that I had to work over the weekend. I got Debian put on the new-to-me loaner laptop from Chris. (Thanks, dude!) I'm still waiting for a CDRom drive to fall out of the sky into it's case, though. All the Debian base install can do is boot and write files. In 'vi'.

There is no greater waste of time than vi. I'm sorry to dissapoint, but I'm definitely an GNU Emacs Man... None of that sissy XEmacs stuff, either. I run GNU Emacs from within an xterm while I'm graphically empowered.

Questions? Comments? Flames? Just send me email...