Advogato blog for mattbradshaw

9 Apr 2001

Mon, 9 Apr 2001 16:24:49 GMT

whoah... last night was pretty fun. we got stuck in des moines during some cool tornado weather. my father-in-law's house (where we camped out) was *right* next to the tornado siren so sleeping was interesting though. our 5yo daughter, corri, was pretty spooked. but it was beautiful outside. the lightening was amazing.

lots of stuff to finish up today. should be an excellent day. :)

more to come later...

20 Mar 2001

Tue, 20 Mar 2001 20:05:47 GMT

i am nearing insanity... just really tired with everything in general. and the spring break "vacation" didn't seem to help. anyhoo. and i shouldn't pretend to not know how to fix it. *i* need to change, not my circumstances so much. just wanted to share my misery with the world ;)

have really been thinking about an electronic commerce paper written by eric hughes, cofounder of the legendary cypherpunks. eric has inspired me to dig a bit deeper into the history commerce, currency, etc.

"Dismissal of the past belies a basic disrespect for people who had passions for excellence equal to our own."

in other news, i'm planning a release of some software by the end of the week. there. i did it, i gave a deadline. :) stay tuned.

13 Mar 2001

Tue, 13 Mar 2001 18:25:34 GMT

hmmm... having a quite difficult time getting motivated today. so very much to do, and all i want to do is veg. :( must fix.

2:00pm

i *still* despise solaris. it's making my day suck. again. :)

i'm currently making a buttload of rpms for solaris and its compiler is sooooooooo bad. i swear, this is hell on earth. can't wait to be done and work on managable unices again (linux, irix).

"so matt, how do you *really* feel about solaris?"

3:00pm

my work ethic has returned! yahoo. i guess. still lots to do. i'm kinda surprised i haven't had any name suggestions from the request yesterday. oh well. :) back to admin'ng here at the uni.

12 Mar 2001

Mon, 12 Mar 2001 21:03:48 GMT

lots of realworld stuff done: cleaned house, finished taxes, finished fafsa, changed oil in car, fixed brakelights in car, fixed odor in car ;-) ...

it's spring break and i'm expecting lots of progress (and hopefully stopping points) on lots of my projects. and some extra time to enjoy being with my family.

question. what is a good name for my software project that does (dave winer's idea of) xml-rpc resource subscription/notification? i'm at a loss. if anybody's creative juices are flowing better than mine, it'd be super appreciated. thanks!

here's some quick, off the cuff ideas:

smokesignal
csana (content subscription and notification architecture)

argh! i can't think of anything i like... oh well. i'm sure something will come.

after some discussion with my father-in-law about back in the day gaming (he hadn't heard of myst), and a cool slashdot article regarding classic sierra games, i've had a great time remembering my beginings in the world of computer gaming. man oh man was it soooooo much fun back then. gaming now makes me pine for earlier days. no crappy "run and shoot" (tm) stuff because the hardware wouldn't do it. there was a lot more imagination required, a greater dependence upon the storyline. and we had to walk uphill both ways... but in all seriousness - please god - deliver us from doom-esqe gaming... i remeber a few years back i played a game i *really* liked. i guess it'd be just a prettied up incarnation of those previous sierra adventure genre games. here's a link to the game at amazon. the last express. if anybody has any recommendations on a similar game, i'd love to waste some hours on it. :)

dreaming: wouldn't it be nice to play (commercial, and high quality) games natively on linux.... :) maybe someday i'll ditch wine and all the headaches.

gotta do stuff.

9 Mar 2001

Fri, 9 Mar 2001 00:45:48 GMT

"Zoooom back to 1995, when the Internet was a blushing babe, young and supple, and full of promise. Every guy wanted her, but they didn't appreciate her for her finer qualities. The marriage ended in disaster. Well the babe is more mature now, and she wants to have some fun."

--dave winer

i always appreciate dave's state-of-the-internet thoughts. he's really right, it sucked in the dotcom era, and now we're moving to a more (corporate-)free and fun net. driven by those that love it, not those that love the cash alone.

as an example, i think i'm correct in saying that most of the people here are like me. not making that much cash doing free software. since money isn't a big issue, we survive the funding drought and push the internet to its next level. lots of 'new' coming out finally. p2p being an obvious example.

have a great night, folks

6 Mar 2001

Tue, 6 Mar 2001 21:53:53 GMT

i was commenting to Sunir a while back about how grateful i was for wiki's and advogato because they really forced me to write better. it's still hard work though! as evidenced by my posts on the money flow thread/article.

speaking of mr. shah, i need to check in with him and find out how his work is going on his jabber whiteboard project. i think i've gotten a (slight) handle on svg and how it's going to work. i need to login to my real jabber acct and see what messages i've not seen for a month, it's been so so so long, especially since i've been working on an intranet jabber implementation. i'm afraid my mom will have sent me a thousand messages (she prefers jabber to email).

i am beat... only a few more days till our spring break though. light at the end of the tunnel.

later, friends.

4 Mar 2001

Sun, 4 Mar 2001 06:49:59 GMT

hacker mentions bzflag... man, i love that game! i didn't know anybody else played it as i've been told the linux port is a little sub par. i can't tell you how many days my coworkers and i have lost on account of that game. we have it installed on (pretty much) all 200 sgis in our campus network and do we ever have fun. i'd love to play with you sometime - do a capture the flag thing or something. especially next week - spring break.

btw, for those new to the game... the ai sucks. get a friend or two (or five) to play with. :) but watch out, this is the most addictive game i've ever played. takes a little while and i've finally gotten myself off it but, man... great game.

i apologize for the enthusiasm. just can't contain it... :)

2 Mar 2001

Fri, 2 Mar 2001 23:12:55 GMT

criswell, want to thank you for your tux typing program... my daughter loves it! great work. btw, i think you're (slightly) confused in your last entry regarding free software vs. open source. i think what you were meaning to say was that the 'gpl' (not 'free software' ) is a subset of open source. at least in rms' vocabulary. not that it matters at all imo.

school's cooling down a bit with lots of tests done. that's really nice. this is the time to code code code.

here's something quick i'd like to do... integrate my xmlrpc subscription/notification code into advogato's engine, mod_virgule. perhaps then i could be notified when my fave diaries are updated. but don't want to clutter the beautiful code with non core features. let me know what you think. thanks! :)

going to a romanic deal tonight with my amazing wife. suppose i should shave and stuff...

20 Feb 2001

Tue, 20 Feb 2001 18:40:02 GMT

coolness! i'm green again with no more "must be a big-time free software contributor" pressure... :) i was getting worried for a bit there. note for people cert'n me - green is perty.

well, i just got off a brief computing sabbatical (sp?). i didn't touch anything (well, almost) resembling technology and it felt great. spent lots of time with my wonderful fam, and reading. i'd really recommend doing this btw. but now it's time to get back to work. lots to do... and i apologize for not checking mail very much, etc

on my plate for this week:

take some tests, do some homework (school is as ugly as ever, of course)
put some hours in at the office (pay the bills)
have some fun changing the world with software (i'm an idealist, but it *is* very fun)

re: the last todo item (software development goodness), what i'm tackling currently is:

xml-rpc based subscription/notification system (backend using c/berkeleyDb, frontend using gtk for the time being but maybe soon patch moz as it should be pretty straightforward)
jabber whiteboard stuff (trying to contribute to Sunir's excellent effort but needing to beef up on my svg/gill/ gdome stuff to make it work)
my ever present network payment protocol project

in other news, badvogatois pretty sweet. dave winer (advogato acct ) is as tech-inspirational as ever. knownow seems to have obtained the infamous wsanchez AND my next-generation (stay connected) web idea i rambled about a while back here (described here). oh yeah, and i am really looking forward to having a popular, open (source, or otherwise) whiteboard like the svg one being developed (mentioned earlier) because that will further my goal of (almost) never having to step foot in an office again. work'n from home for the rest of my life baby! but then again, whywork?

i'm good enough, i'm smart enough... :) later, interested (and otherwise) readers.

5 Feb 2001

Mon, 5 Feb 2001 19:02:11 GMT

over the weekend, i finished up installing a linux box acting as a firewall/masq-router for a family friend. and he *gives* me an awesome portable combination cdplayer/mp3oncd player. mp3trip, i believe it's called. my goodness it's cool. what a generous guy! anyway, if my diary entry sounds a little cloud9-ish, you know why.

i'm not doing terribly much w/ regards to free software at the moment. more like keeping my head above water at school and work. at a meeting today, my boss john and i had a very interesting discussion of machine groupings. what we're doing now (cluttered nis netgroup map, cluttered rdist groupings, cluttered runem groupings) should get elegant here soon.

i'm going to try to get reacquainted with my keyboard at home. it really has been quite some time since i've worked at improving my piano skills and it's begining to show in my playing. i'm looking forward to getting to the next-level. heck, i need to do this with my guitar playing as well. inch by inch...