Open Source

I'm currently in the middle of a c++ hack frenzy fueled by Red Bull, Rage Against the Machine & FSF emacs 21.1. I aim to have refactored a few of the uglier bits of the LyX code before the night is thru.

Paid Work

They laid a bunch of people off. Thankfully I wasn't one of them. Though just in case I'm next I've been gently probing the job market. It's a shame I feel the need to do this. The company had such potential but incompetant management has led us down the path of no return.

Open Source

I've started poking around the GNOME frontend for LyX again. I'm unable to even compile it so I'm waiting on some gurus to clean it up for me :). The LyX website overhaul is mostly complete. I'm going to have to go through the php code at some stage and make sure that there's nothing nasty happening i.e

 if($user_is_authorised) { // // etc.} 

I went on a bugzilla binge and cleaned up a couple (about 30 I think) bugs from gnome-core. The fall into roughly 3 categorys:

1. "it doesn't work" or "fff hhh asdfasdf"
2. "Netscape 4 crashes all the time"
3. Evolution crashes

1,2 get NEEDINFO'd or NOTGNOME'd depending on the specifics. Type 3s get assigned to louie@ximian.com. I hope louie can handle them and that I'm not doing something wrong.

Paid Work

I've renegotiated my contract and for the first time in a while I'm actually an employee again. At present we're looking at HEAPS of work on the gold coast but the client won't commit to times etc. So for at least the time being I'm in NZ and can do some opensource stuff at night.

Studies

I'm teaching myself Java and Oracle. They're both cool technologies and should help me increase my 'hireability'. If anyone knows some good books on j2ee + oracle I'd appreciate the references.

Open Source

I've been doing some work on LyX's website. It's now XHTML-1.0 compliant (except for the stuff generated from some other source) and I'll be moving to CSS for the layout soon enough.

Work

Just spent a week on expenses in Australia working for Conrad Jupiter's on the Gold Coast. It was kinda surreal, I stayed inside for almost 4 whole days! I've always been a maths guy so I've never understood the appeal of casinos, but being there I saw just how many people love them!

 /me buys casino stock 

Been fixing the LyX web pages so they are valid XHTML, will start on the CSS soon. The changes needed to be made and I'm unable to find the brain time needed to do the GUI work. Converting to XHTML is nice and mechanical. Work

Things are currently "A little relaxed" (read "allowed to sleep" :)) but I feel there is a huge stress period coming up Real Soon Now. The company is currently doing the whole Capital Raising thing. We should fare better than eazel did because.... we have revenues, which are growing fast. But it's still kinda scary to think that failure in this regard could mean Unemployment.

ZOPE!!! I've started playing with zope on my home pc. it's VERY nice. I've had some ideas for a cool piece of software, built on zope (or a similar web platform). Just got some thinking to do about the finer points. There might be a business model somewhere down this road.

Work

The Vegas crew are back today. Their 3 day trip became 88 days. MAN that would suck.