Recent blog entries for mr

9 May 2005 (updated 9 May 2005 at 20:14 UTC) »

WOW - Well Mikael sprung the question to me on Sunday - would I like to co-maintain Gossip with him and I could hardly resist. There have been a lot of crazy things going on in the code repository over the last few months and we are starting to see things stable out a bit.

It was good to see Davyd Madeley show off a cool shot of Gossip in action.

Some of the cool stuff going into Gossip at the moment includes drag and drop support (being added back and more), basic functionality for group/user renaming, creating, etc has been put right. One of the most important implementations is the subscription handling (which was borked along the way) bug has been worked out and the result is this.

Overall we are looking good for a new release soon hopefully.

Next thing to sort out is the generic interface for the transport code I wrote a few months back, anyone interested, this (couldn't think of a better way to document it than through dia) is the API that needs condensing - comments welcome

Loudmouth on Windows - I have been thinking about this for a month or two now and people have been commenting at various times about it working on Windows on the mailing list. I think when I next find time, I will look into getting loudmouth working out of gnu's auto tools under MSYS/MinGW. Shouldn't take long, I had a butchers at it this morning - what this space [ ] :)

New Blogggger - I think it is time to sort out a proper blogging system on my newly aquired server. Advogato is good but I just set up Blam! and realised the title never comes out - plus I can't post images :/

26 Apr 2005 (updated 26 Apr 2005 at 21:46 UTC) »

Images: Ah... the memories, I had a chance to put my New Zealand images up tonight: http://bytejunky.net/photos/

I agree with Glynn, New Zealand is a comfortable place to be. If I had to move anywhere, NZ would be my first choice.

GUADEC: Well I am a GUADEC virgin and this year will be my debut visit. Flights are booked and I believe there is a botanical garden that might be worth a visit in Stuttgart too.

Signed up with Servelocity and now have a new domain (http://bytejunky.net). They provide a really good service compared to the last hosted solution used.

Took the opportunity to look into original which has been used in many places already for some of the 450 odd images I took in New Zealand. They will be there soon ;)

Spent the day in Cambridge botanic gardens recently for Sue's Birthday. Took the digital camera along for the ride :) and using the power of original I can now bring to you some of the superb scenery that I was able to capture.

Well, I just returned from New Zealand after backpacking the best part of a fantastic four weeks there.

I have over 400 digital images to sort through and some video. These include a bungy DVD, skydive images, jet boat images and the Auckland sky tower jump images. :D

Highlights include the Singapore botanic gardens (which I saw on transit out there - 24hrs stop over) and the bungy/skydive.

Whilst in Singapore I had to try the Singapore Slinger (famous cocktail) and whilst in the courtyard at Raffles Hotel drinking it, Bill Clinton happened to pass through :O

The only shitty parts were the flights. Coming home was about 3hrs from Auckland to Sydney, 9hrs from Sydney to Bangkok and 12hrs from Bangkok to Heathrow - that much plane food can't be good for you :(

All in all it rocked and I definitely recommend New Zealand!

12 Jan 2005 (updated 12 Jan 2005 at 21:47 UTC) »

Another Birthday

25 years old!

I think it will be a nice night in with the family and and some good food.

My brothers asked what I wanted, and I couldn't resist :D

Gnome Blog 0.8

Saw Seth's announcement for gnome-blog 0.8 and thought I would try it, so this post is my first post with it. Very simple to use, needs a little more in the formatting department perhaps, but great none the less.

Tried out www.blogger.com too, it seems very comprehensive.

Half Life 2 with Cedega

A friend of mine recently bought Half Life 2 and I have been meaning to try it out but have been busy with Gossip. Now that I have set up my new GeForce 6600 GT, I thought I would try and get it running under Cedega. Transgaming's site boasts it working fully out of the box and I got it going on my Fedora Core 3 distribution with no problems - oh and the game is superb too ;)

Also - as I didn't have the DVD to install it, I used Steam's installer to download it all which works well.

5 Jan 2005 (updated 5 Jan 2005 at 20:11 UTC) »
New Graphics Card
After putting up with my old GeForce Ti4800 for some time now and given the advent of games like Half Life and Doom 3, I have bought myself a new Galaxy GeForce 6600 GT from Overclockers UK. The most important thing for me is the noise reduction. My current card can be heard from the next room with the doors open and is the only noisy fan in my Shuttle.

Notice Of Marriage
Tuesday my good lady and I visited the local civil registrar to declare our notice of marriage. So now we are all geared up for our big day (which should be) Saturday August 27th. Thankfully, the registrar confirmed for me that everything I have to say will be repeated after her :)

Interestingly, when you declare your intent to marry it is put up on a notice board for 15 days - this is for people to object if they have reason to.

Gossip Transports & GnomeMeeting
Gossip's HEAD branch now has the worst of Micke's and my code since we merged both our branches in on the weekend :)

The transports seem to be shaping up nicely though, hopefully now that it is on HEAD it will get tested more and we can determin problems early ready for 0.9.

Julien PUYDT has also spent a lot of time working on patches to get GnomeMeeting operational via Gossip. Bad timing with the recent merge and everything, but it should get into Gossip sooner or later.

Bryan Adams Still Rocking!
While I was in Turkey my better half suggested we go to see Bryan Adams while he is on tour in the UK this year. We decided to do it and went to see him Tuesday this week. He was much better than I thought he would be and my expectations weren't low in the first place, rock on Bryan!

80's Party
Mo (a work colleague) had her 40th birthday bash recently. It was great, the rule was 80's fashion and 80's music only. My partner and I spent the day in Felixstowe looking for some gear that I could wear (the women seem easier to sort out than the men for clothes).

I recorded the event on my digital camera.

16 Oct 2004 (updated 16 Oct 2004 at 10:14 UTC) »
New Stuff
Recently looked into Stream Tunner which I have to say is superb! Look into it if you get the chance.

Also, I thought I would try to get Windows XP going with Vmware for Linux. Again, worked flawlessly, and am quite impressed with it.

Gossip Transports
Still plodding along with this. Things are going really well at the moment actually. Mikael and I spoke about what will happen over the next few weeks and we will probably merge our branches then and get things cleaned up ready for a new Gossip release.

Fine tuning the wizard last week meant that now people no longer need to wait for a list of servers they can use. It is much more efficient now.

Ubuntu anyone?
I have been trying Ubuntu Linux this last few weeks and I love it! Previously I have used mainly Red Hat and occasionally Mandrake. The best thing about it has to be the eye candy :D

Family Visiting
My partner's (Sue) family were down from the Lake District recently and we all got together at a local restaurant for a good slap up meal. Thought I would make use of the recently aquired digital camera and record the event.

Gossip Transports
Branched Gossip (branch name: gossip-transports) to work more closely on the getting multi protocol support working.

Support for adding and removing transports is now available, just need to focus on adding contacts for the transports as currently you would have use a FULL Jabber ID (e.g. someone%hotmail.com@jabber.someserver.com) which isn't very user friendly.

Mikael has recently been hacking on the core of Gossip and changing a lot of the roster/contacts API which I depend on for the transport work so merging that is all going to be interesting.

Building a new shuttle
One of Sue's uncles wants a new machine and after looking at the prices of his last quote, I told him I would do it for him cheaper. Not long ago I bought a Shuttle system (using Mini ITX technology) and was really impressed with it and am going to use one for this new box too.

Barn Dance Anyone?
Last night I went to my third barn dance. As Sue and I are thinking of doing something with a barn dance for our Wedding (to get people really enjoying the night) we went along and had a great time. No matter how many times we go, it is still funny seeing people (that you may not even know) falling over each other trying to keep up with the caller, moves and music :)

What a weekend!

Took Friday off to recover from Thursday night out with the guys from work (best mates birthday).

Met up with another (high school) mate I hadn't seen in months, and got together Friday night.

Now, it is sunday, and I feel terrible, too much booze :S

The last few days I have been into a DVD buying frenzy, watching them has been part of my weekend recovery scheme :)

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