Older blog entries for nixnut (starting at number 10)

work:
...what?...where?
Oh, nothing, must have been imagining things.
I'll go back to sleep now

home:
House Arteides. Good reading, but it doesn't...well, fit in quite with the Dune series. Stuff like the mess up with Duncan's sister<->mother. Techno stuff brought forward a millenium or two (three?). Somehow the book is just not "realistic" (convincing/credible).

blah:
Tried to post an entry yesterday, but no advogato

A new system should come in tomorrow to play around with (we call it testing of course).

Weekend come and gone. Done the much needed sanitizing of tjakah (the junkyard also known as home).

Read the data definition guide and the operations guide from the interbase docs. Got interbase up and running. Gives out an error on start-up, but connections are made ok. Probably some access-rights problem. I think I saw the same error with mysql if it coulnd't get hold of a socket.
Can get data out of Interbase in Zope. Next step is to not use Zope, only the needed modules in python scripts.
The php-app is going to phase 2 now. Initial cleaning up is now done. More cleaning later. First check for logical errors and missing functionality. Looks like the data-model will have to be revised. Must not forget to write all that stuff down!

Work seems to be picking up slowly. Hope so.

11:56
just read an interesting article about c#.

14:31
pcburns: good set of quotes. I should run in to such lists more often (but not more often then once every two weeks :-))

Slooooow day, might as well stayed in bed. Been reading a lot. Printed out some docs for the weekend. Read a good article about groupware and a horrible interview with someone I won't even bother mentioning.

More php-scribbling yesterday evening, progress is good. Seeing more and more things I don't like the way they are now or things that are just plain wrong. App doesn't check now if an invoice already exists for order, it just makes one regardless. Must change, lots of things like this. Not hard, just more work.

Looked around for a work-flow app for linux. Can't find much so-far. Not too much message-queing stuff either. Did find something for python. So maybe I'll just put something together. Central database, pickle stuff locally to add some fall-back mech. if networking is temp. not avail.
Saw some nice stuff a couple a months ago with workflow and xml. Describing all processes in xml etc. Lot's of fascinating posibilities. Might be fun to try to get something like that together.

cdent: look at http://www.thevisionweb.com
Looks like a company that operates in a way you would like to work. Ok, so it's dutch, but the concept exists irl.

Work still somewhat boring. So, I've been reading a load of diary-entries. Did some php-stuff in the evening. It's quite a mess yet, but it's not too complicated, just a lot of work. Also taken a look at DrGenius. Well, you've got to be one bloody determined schoolboy if you want to do something useful with that app. That UI is pretty horrible. Did translate the included .po, but I reaaally need to look up some of the math-terms. That stuff has sunk very very deep.

Lot's of comments everywhere on dancer's certification-scheme. Can't stay behind of course! Actually I can. I do. You get certified by me, go figure it out!

tetron: I don't know how well you know XML so maybe I'm stating the obvious. Anyway, in xml you can separate structure, content and presentation. Using dtd's or xml-schema's you can define the structure of a document. Documents can then be validated against the dtd (or schema). If the document does not contain all the data the dtd requires it will not validate against the dtd. So you can force people to include information in the document.
Take a look at SMIL. I think you'll find it interesting.

BTW, like your poem.

Saw another nice bit of near poetry somewhere. Oh yeah I remember: Iain's yesterday entry

Better then all these bloody haiku's! Courtesy of Neal S. no doubt.

Two and three makes muck
Bloody Haiku's really suck
But who gives a f..k

Finished the sykaos papers yesterday. Was nice reading that again. Makes you look at the world a bit different. Very strong ending (considering the appendices as appendices and not the end of the book). Must have given me harmonious vibes: went out for a stroll later and met some cats who really really needed my attention. Still, I like dogs better though.

tetron: If HTML were a stronger metalanguage, meaning it described the MEANING of the data it wrapped tags around, then we'd be able to analyze so much more from the average HTML document
That's what we've got xml for.
Check out this article on xml.com as a solution for your cry for an include tag.

jschauma: nixnut suggests xlink and xpointer - but that's more XML than HTML, right?
Right! HTML is quite limited. You'll need XML for the really fun stuff.

Weekend come and gone. Mostly spend reading the sykaos papers. Read some diary entries on saturday, otherwise haven't touched a keyboard. Also fixed my racing-bike (well...fixed...I can ride it, but it makes some funny noises, needs checking) and went for a ride. Felt gooood!! Bit of sun, not too hot, brisk wind. Actually, pretty good weather for sailing too.
Sunday pretty much the same. Lots of reading, some playing outside. All in all a pretty relaxed weekend.
Well, back to work now (if I can find any....).

tetron: What the web could have really used would be an <include> tag, .....
I think tetron should take a look at xlink and xpointer.

Hah! Finally got that php-apache crap to compile properly with imap last night. The php-app I've got to clean up works, but needs quite an overhaul. Not too much functionality, some things missing, some things definitely not the way I want them. And it looks horrible, which absolutely doesn't do, since it is supposed to be used by silly lots of silly users.

Been taking a look at php_pam. Might be of some use. Definitely needs more documentation. And another parameter in one of its functions if you're using Zend and really want it to get to compile.

Surprise, suprise, somebody actually read my diary yesterday <wave to mobius, hi there!>.

Spending more time on php now then I would like. Still, first things first. Next week or so I'll start playing more with python again (and take at look a ruby and maybe look into dylan again). One problem I have is that there are too many interesting languages out there.

Mmm, just read some entries about certifications. Getting certified for apparent social skills rathter then contributions to the World of Free Software. Do I deserve to be even an apprentice? My contibutions to that community have been very small so far. Perhaps we should have more forms of certification. I.e one for being a nice person, one for skill, one for contributing. Something like that. Parallel cerification. Oh, and an extra certification-level of sourcerer (one level above master) would be cool.

Lousy day yesterday. Nothing working the way it should. Work was mostly putting things right that others put wrong. Some delivery went wrong, ended up in another building across town. First had to track the stuff down. Next the boys that shuffle around mail and stuff internally were not going to sent me the misplaced stuff, so had to call the delivery-boys to come and pick the stuff up and deliver it to the right place. That only takes a couple of hours of course. The crap should have been here two days ago and then distributed throughout the organisation. Oh well, late, late in the afternoon, we actually managed to do get it ready to go out.
Somebody else did the adressing earlier, before going away for a couple a days of course. Now we've had severe dislocations of people last couple of weeks. Lots of reshuffling of the folks al across buildings, so of course half the addresses now aren't correct. Oh what fun. Did a bit of reshuffling of the packages, so some should wind up in the right place after all. I'd be suprised if everybody gets their package before the end of the week (or next week for that matter). But then lots of people are on holiday right now, so they won't mind. Fortunately people won't complain to me if they haven't recieved something while the guy on the next desk has. I just get told to take care of it and make people happy.

Wanted to post yesterday, but advogato was not available. Probably a good thing too. Wasn't in too good a mood. Got a good laugh out of 102 ways to kill your computer though. Just what I felt like doing.<evil grins all over the place>

The evening was rather frustrating. Apache+php4+imap is not happening yet. Going to try again tonight, building imap from sources first this time. One plus for the evening: the cdrw-drive I got as replacement actually seems to be working, in contrast to it's predecessor. I'm going to put that baby under some stress to make sure though. So my system is now complete. Actually I will replace the current vga-card when I get a replacement for the dead mga-200 that was in there originally.

Today's pretty good sofar. Wheather's nice, hope it doesn't get warmer, but no rain is a nice change.
Housekeeping-chores done for today (except cooking dinner tonight, but chili is easy, only one pan too, which makes it my favorite dish). So just surfing around a bit now.

Looked at the FreeNet article.
Well, what can I say. The way things are going now, I'd like to be able to use something like FreeNet. I'm getting the feeling I need the privacy it offers. Too much funny organisations out their doing stuff, knowing stuff about me, without me knowing and/or able to influence that. Ideally everything would be out in the open. People would be smart. Everybody could be trusted. Privacy would be a non-issue. Alas, things I've said somewhere someplace might ruin say a job-interview, because of data gathered somewhere and ripped out of context. There will be people taking advantage of others. A human being is basically egoistic. In some it is worse than in others. Greed is so basically inbred, it's an illusion to count on good sense and a suposed inherent good nature. And thus we need goverment. To protect society from it's members. To set out guidelines, this is acceptable, this is not. And goverment must be able to enforce. The people itself should not do this (at least I'm not for pogroms and witch-burnings).
The internet-community making rules? Does that community exist? If it does, can it ever agree on any rules? Can it ever enforce them? A fourfold no I think.

I am reminded of a song: "When will there be a harvest for the world"

And now something completely different! LUNCHTIME!!!
And then go and play outside. It's a nice day, so stop getting depressed about humanity. That's a case lost anyway. Still, I've got this feeling I understand the problems (at least some) and that makes me responsible. I should try to solve them. At least try. Knowledge is heavy, truth will hurt.
But first I must still my egoistic body's need for food! Lunch, lunch, lunch, hum hum hum, here I come.

UPDATE:
The colour of my movements has just changed to 17:24 and two cents.

Hi mettw! You're soooo right.

Later:
So much for the rain being gone, must have just gotten up late this morning. Cats and dogs right now.
The rainsuit is standard equipment these days (or rather this year).

Pretty slow day sofar. Yesterday too. Except for one disk that didn't agree with it's position in the system and tried to dislodge itself, which is not a good idea at 7200rpm and several inches above case-bottom. So much for SMART-technology.

Gotta try out a small php-app. See if it works, what needs to be changed, bugs, security issues. If all checks out....roll-out. Might try to hook up something to spit out invoices in pdf-format later. Well, first get the show on the road. Doesn't look to complicated sofar.