Older blog entries for snim2 (starting at number 2)

COFFEE

Well, not much to report, generally. One problem kirby and I have had with COFFEE is within reach of a neat solution, all thanks to Python's neat string formatting operations. Thanks to John for pointing these out (and making the other sort of coffee).

CovLUG

Coventry, amazingly, has a LUG. I've been meaning to go to a meeting for months, but never seem to make it. I'm determined to be at the next meet on Tuesday. Someone punch me, or something, if I don't make it.

Life, etc.

The next few weeks are looking quite daunting, ATM. I might be moving house soon, but we've no idea when. Apart from work on COFFEE, and various other jobs at work, I need to make some serious progress on my PhD. The first job will be to tidy up some XML DTDs. I've been looking around for some nice tools to assist in writing DTDs, but never found anything much nicer than emacs with pgsl-mode (which doesn't seem to do syntax-highlighting for XML or XML DTDs). If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Right now, I'm not sure if everything's going to work out. Not least because my sleep cycle has been completley up-turned by the 'flu I had the other week. Grr!

Stuff...

Not much to report...I'm almost over the 'flu I had last week. COFFEE is coming on nicely and I'm hoping to press on a bit faster, now I feel vaguely human again.

SCO vs. Everyone Else

This whole thing is so hugely depressing. I wasn't going to write about it, but then I was totally boggled by ESR's open letter to Darl McBride. IMO some of ESR's writing can be very emotive, to the point of being quite irrational. This latest open letter seems to be a new archetype. I can't believe that this missive will do much good, and I'm not sure I feel comfortable that ESR claims to speak for me.

M$ in Uni's

No surprise that I'd be interested in the recent MSNBC article on using M$ products in education. The argument presented in the copy is a bit misleading, I think. The author says that the problem with using M$ products is that it breeds a generation of graduates who will create or perpetuate an M$ monopoly. That's true enough, but it's also true if Uni's only using Linux, or anything else. Heterogeneity is a Good Thing(tm), but I still feel that the real issue here is spending gigantic amounts of public money on M$ licenses, when it might well be cheaper to shell out for customer support services for Libre Software. Of course, those Uni's that get huge donations from M$ won't care, but but the point is that this is an issue that pervades the public services: education is just the tip of the iceburg.

As for the issue of research autonomy, I think I agree with Rob Pike.

Despite all that, it's the last paragraph that is the most spine-chilling:

At a question-and-answer session between the academics and Gates, one professor asked the Microsoft founder about his views about the study of information technology, a part of computer science that emphasizes on how documents, spreadsheets and other data should be handled. What kinds of technologies should students majoring in this subject be taught?

Gates replied quickly and with a smile: ``Microsoft Office.''

Certs

Thanks to everyone who's certified me!

*yawn* 2am hacking...I'm beginning to feel like an undergrad again :-)

COFFEE is coming on nicely, and Python is much, much more pleasant than I thought it would be. The lack of static typing hasn't bitten me yet and the one-module-per-file thing makes me feel a lot less guilty about writing code that doesn't feel very OO-ish. Not that OO isn't nice, but sometimes a parser should just be a cigar. Er, parser.

Gripe-of-the-day: Galeon (lovely as it is) is annoying me. When you open a new tab, as soon as it has loaded it grabs the keyboard focus. I've been bitten by this so many times today. Grrr to Galeon. I've only switched from Mozilla because I wanted something with a smaller memory footprint, but the HCI issue is slowly changing my mind. No doubt kirby will tell me to switch to konquerer or opera :-) Maybe it's fixed in an upgrade, or I should pull my finger out and write a bug report. Guess I'm just being a bit lazy.

Current-musical-obsession Polyphonic Spree.