Older blog entries for robster (starting at number 12)

30 Dec 2001 (updated 9 Jan 2004 at 17:47 UTC) »

No luck still on the Debian Planet front the server is still down. But I spent most of last night beavering away at doing some development of the new site. Python is a really marvelous language and I try and use it for all my development, however, i'm not sure it is the most ideal thing. Having to implement sessions/cookie management etc myself feels such a bore. However I did enjoy coding a little SQL wrapper to help make replication work and writing a little templating system. Of course its nothing great as i'm not a great coder. But it does the job and certainly scratches my itch. Does anyone have any favourite Python based web development systems, Zope is nice and powerful but rather overwhelming, the guys at Twisted have amazing ideas, but maybe the solution is not mature enough.

29 Dec 2001 (updated 9 Jan 2004 at 17:47 UTC) »

Arrgh, the Debian Planet server has gone to pot, not really sure why, but from what I know, people i've talked to suspect drive failure. Hopefully not all is lost as the system has a RAID configuration. So hopefully the mirror should be able to be restored. Its been down for a while as no one has really been available to go fix it. :(

23 Dec 2001 (updated 9 Jan 2004 at 17:48 UTC) »

I've spent doing family things but also hacking on the Debian Planet code. The development language is Python and this is a complete and utter "start-from-scratch-and-prey-it-works" (tm) approach. An approach i'm famous for starting and never finishing.

4 Sep 2001 (updated 9 Jan 2004 at 17:49 UTC) »

Aww, feeling really bad today.

28 Aug 2001 (updated 8 Dec 2001 at 19:11 UTC) »

I'm now back in the empty void of the British countryside. I enjoyed my stay in London at Xinit. It has been a refreshing oppurtunity to put faces to the names of the people i have been working alongside in these past months.

Also it was great fun spending time with the various #brits crew and especially with Robert McQueen.

Lots of interesting things are happening with Debian Planet. We will soon be moving to new system which i have developed (so it will be very buggy) and a new webserver.

I've also had an idea for a new software project to hone my Python skills, a personal portal for Open Source fanatics. WIth cool features to make my life easier, and yours too.

OOh lazy day yesterday, involving hacking DP code to use externally linked CSS not style="" in tags.

Today, played with Xinit servers and php and had fun in #brits as usual, playing Banzai.

Updated anjuta packages entered sid today and also i got advocated.

Spent evening setting up new testnet for OPN and usual IRCOP style admin.

Well its been a while ;) I've now turned 16, finished my exams, been on holiday and are commencing my long summer holiday, with plenty of time for coding.

I'm proud to report that the Open Projects conversion is proceeding, albeit slowly, but we should have moved over to dancer-ircd, in the next few months. We also now have a traditional automake powered build system.

There have been many ups and downs for Debian Planet recently, the slashdotting of our article on woody freezing, led our ISP to temporarily suspend our service. That has now been resolved, however whilst i was away the server was compromised. Fortunately xinitsystems.com are donating a server for us to run the site on.

Thinkopen.co.uk is relaunching and is in desperate need of content, contact Denny.

Much interesting stuff is happening at Xinit, however muks almost got RH on the webserver, but i got my way and Debian woody will grace the box, i do hope he isnt too annoyed ;).

The linux expo in London on the 4/5th July was great, and a big hello to all those who i met, especially those at the debian.org who made me feel welcome, and it provided ,e with a signed GPG key.

New code for the DP site is progressing well and i hope it should be mostly complete by saturday ;) I'm having fun with ideas for caching and mirroring but these wont be used initially. Expect an initial release of venom my python powered webserver soon, which is like zope but easier to use ;)

I may finally get round to getting myself a website, where i can host much of my software.

I'm in the NM process for Debian and have had anjuta a gnome/gtk IDE for C/C++ uploaded.

17 Apr 2001 (updated 9 Jan 2004 at 17:50 UTC) »

Wow, the number of comments on that article has gone up to 70+!!

15 Apr 2001 (updated 9 Jan 2004 at 18:03 UTC) »

Not much new on the DP front except for the release of Progeny which is cool and the fact one article I posted to DP got 55+ comments.

As part of my new job with xinitsystems.com as "Junior web developer" i got sent a new box. With a nice 1ghz processor, 256 ram, 20gb HD (ooh all those mp3s ;) ).

But the graphics card is a noname unbranded Riva TNT 2 from nVidia. This is where the problems start. First i tried the new nvidia accellerated drivers as i'm prone to the odd spout of UT or Q3A. Ssh, dont tell my boss!

But to no avail, i just could not get the drivers to work. I read and reread all the documentation i could find. Oh well, i thought i'd try the opensource nv driver in 4.0.2.

Nope, they decided not to work, everything looked fine until the driver was expect to refresh the screen when funny horrizontal and vertical lines would appear. The mouse also became trapped (pun!!) in the top corner of the screen when changing from X --> VT --> X.

Oh well, my boss said he would sent me a Creative card so hopefully i should have more success with that. Fingers &,

Wierdly a while back i had some problems with not being able to render SGML to HTML, this kinda brought my work for the GDP (GNOME Documentation Project) to a standstill. I think there was soem problem with the packages installed on my box, because now after a 4 hour apt-get upgrade i can render my SGML into beautiful html.

Just doing bits and pieces as i work as 'Commit manager' for the OPN hybrid-dancer work.

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