Older blog entries for mrcsparker (starting at number 47)

I am really anticipating the new Ximian release. From the screenshots is looks absolutely beautiful and functional. This means that I will be wiping Gentoo from my harddrive and installing Red Hat 9 (I have a RHN subscription that I can use from work so I can just use that). gentoo keeps crashing on my Thinkpad and dmesg and my log files don't report anything that I can send in a bug report.

Also have been hacking a bit lately on some outside-of-work projects. Wrote a frontend to nmap in gtkmm (can be found on my site), a php-xwindows extension that I have yet to release, and a pretty cool GNOME/gnet/vfs webserver that works a whole lot like KDE's kpf. gnet documentation leaves a whole lot to be desired, but it feels wrong to write the server with portable libs like GNOME and use Unix sockets (which is what I might just end up doing anyways).

libglademm/GNOMEmm/Gtkmm

Just whipped together a project with gtkmm/libglademm that is not only fully-featured but runs under 300 lines of code. 300 lines of code.

I had read all of the crap spewed about these libraries, but just really gave them a chance and they are clean. If you know C++ and you use the STL (you do, don't you?) you should be able to pick up the libraries in no time. Now I just wish that they shipped by default on more systems.

Just spent a few hours writing two php extensions. One is a libgtop extension which is pretty boring but useful, and the other was fun but useless - I wrote a php xwindows extension. It doesn't do much more than bring up a window and a few other things - which is a whole lot of XWindow code for so little action. I modeled it as much after the XWindow libs as I could. Still have more work to do, though. I am going out of town for a few days so I will finish it and release it when I get back.

Why does PHP get so much shit?

Too easy to use? Seems that a whole lot of people are pissed that there is a language that the average joe can learn and is useful. I call that a step forward, not back.

Submitted a final patch for the spca50x drivers. Works well under gnomemeeting and camorama. yippee.

Intel CS110 USB Camera Under Linux

I have had this camera sitting in my desk for about a year and not used it. Well, looking around I found a great project out there: spca50x that has drivers that work.

If you are using Red Hat 9 and you have one of these cameras, email me @ chris.parkerNOSPAM@marinerhealtcare.com (remove the NOSPAM) and I will send you a patch I put together. I also sent in a patch to the project so that it will work with newer kernels.

Man, I love free software.

Take back what I said about C++. It rocks, and I was just pissed at myself.

A friend of mine got me into Meshuggah. Amazing. Seems like when I bring them up, either people love them or hate them. Back when I was (trying) to make a living playing I would have killed to hook up with some musicians like that.

Kind of depressing, really. Went to school initially for music, and I used to play all of the time. I would stay up all night, practicing scales, chords, sitting in with any groups that would let me. Just got fed up.

When I got out of school, I found that musicians and people involved with music are too damn flaky. Maybe I am too aggressive, but I like to get paid and I like to eat. From cancelled sessions, people not showing up at gigs, bands that are more concerned with being high than actually getting out there and playing music... I did okay, but I was unhappy. My primary focus was jazz, and NO ONE makes money playing jazz guitar.

Anyways, there is a bit of regret there. I don't play very much anymore, and I know that it is not the life for me. I have friends that are playing and are doing pretty well - well, if you consider having to play studio sessions for artists you don't respect. I was asked recently if I wanted to get back into playing with this guy who used to be semi-famous back in the 70s. I am probably going to cut a few tracks with him.

The moral is that if you really, really want to play music, don't listen to me. I have had a bad day and I am bitchy. If you are any good, there is always plenty of work out there. My heart just wasn't in it and I like programming way too much.

GTK documentation sucks. yea, I know - Open Source/Free Software - I can do it myself. gtk_tree_view_new () - no docs and I don't want to look throught code, I just want an example that is clean, simple, and works. I want to add columns - simple.

I have been writing this software and I want to just give back. just give back.

Also, is there just a small groups of GNOME developers that knows what is going on? I keep hearing about how some libraries are better than others, how libeel is the way to go - libglade renders incorrectly, etc. What is a guy, who spends most of his time doing systems development and not following mailing lists, supposed to do? I just want a simple way to write simple applications that just work and give some code back to the community, I have loads of code waiting for a gui interface, working and tested on HPUX.

C++ is too complicated. Give me an Amen.