Older blog entries for neale (starting at number 23)

I got on to say something about how there was more traffic to the mod_virgule archive than I expected, and ask if I should start a mailing list, but then I saw binaryfoo's diary entry and it changed the flavor of my day. It's cloudy out, perfect weather for introspection. Today has ceased being a good day for work.

More on thunk. The spouse factor seems to be an oft-overlooked hacker-related issue, and I don't doubt that folks on Advogato would have quite a bit to say about this. Maybe there's something relevant in the linuxchix mailing list archives.

If you run a mod_virgule, you may be interested in my patch repository.

I just registered thunk.geek using the OpenNIC system. Pretty cool. I'm glad to see that something like this has finally happened, and that there's enough support behind it to make it stick. At least, it looks like it's going to stick. Hooray! The Internet is (mostly) free again.

maelstorm: yeah, same guy. Cold* was interesting, but the whole time-sucking effect of on-line chat has sort of turned me away from it. I might drop by your MOO later on today though.

I feel honored that I'm now responsible for half of all bruce's diary entries :-)

So the article on GObject renewed my interest in Objective C. The last time I used it for a project I totally loved working with it, it seemed sort of like C with objects. As opposed to C++, which is like C with objects and operator overloading and a template system and data hiding and... I suppose C++ has its place somewhere, but I'm more a fan of Python's "we're all consenting adults" object system, and it seems like ObjC is much closer to that than C++.

I think ObjC might be a relatively easy sell at work, since it allows the kind of object oriented programming we tend to do with structs, and doesn't require any additional libraries. I wish I knew more about performance impacts, and I wish I could remember what dynamic binding meant. Maybe I'll work on the grad school application tonight...

I'd like to think that if I had something interesting to say here, I'd say it. But here I am, writing this diary entry anyway.

maelstorm: is the Colin from ColdStore the same dude who did some work on Cold MUD?

I ran into the other PHPix2 developer today at the sandwich shop downstairs. Turns out he works in the building next to me. What a riot. We talked about various problems he was having with trying to get a multi-user upload capability into PHPix2, definitely got some creative juices flowing. He suggested we sit down and plan things out sometime. The package might be getting a lot more attention now that we each have a face associated with it :-)

If someone were to ask me what person active on Advogato has the most expertise with mod_virgule, I'd have to say it was lkcl. Which is why it's supremely funny that he got censored on badvogato. In a way, that's sort of like someone launching a DoS attack against transmeta from a Linux 0.99pre16 box.

Anyway. Work, life, yadda yadda. I have pixy stix. Yum.

Randakar, while it isn't a part of the language, there's no reason you couldn't implement a trust metric system in ColdC. It also provides all the networking stuff you'd need to have a distributed object system (although it might be necessary to hack the core language a bit for nicer integration). Think of ColdC as a general-purpose byte-compiled language with a built-in persistant object store.

After over six months doing self-directed research at my job, yesterday I finally got something to do with a definite deadline. It was like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders, as I finally had some incentive to get my arse in gear. I guess I work better under pressure.

randakar, mobius: also check out The Cold Project. It's more or less MOO-ish, but with a more general-purpose language. For example, db objects are just like in any other OO-language, whereas in MOO all objects have certain "physical" properties (location, description, visibility). This part of MOO leads to weird things like web servers being located in the "nowhere" room. That may be desirable for certain situations, though.

I'm supposed to write a web-based wedding registry pretty soon here. The ones I found on SourceForge didn't impress me much. I suppose I'll do it in PHP, and create a new project out of it. I don't know that there's much to salvage in the two non-functioning registry programs. Really, guys, if you have a list of 500 items, there's no need to require MySQL. How many wedding guests are you inviting, anyway? The entire state of New Hampshire? ;-)

Three quarters of starting up a new project is figuring out what approach you're going to take toward solving the problem at hand. I am in the habit of hemming and hawing about the problem for longer than I'd like, but when I finally tire of procrastinating, I tend to kick into high gear.

I don't enjoy the time spent procrastinating before the actual designing and coding, which is why I liked my high-pressure job at freei so much. But I think that somehow, I end up with better designs this way. It's strange to try to justify to myself why I put things off. I'm fortunate in that I've never had to do it to anyone else.