Older blog entries for tnt (starting at number 11)

OK... I just got back in at about 1:30am again, because of work. I think I'll be hiring someone to work (for me). Probably part time... and full time if there's enough work.

Hopefully that will make it so I can have a somewhat normal work week -- no more 10- to 13-hour-work-days... and hopefully no more working on the weekend.. (And it will give me time to work on matterial again!)

I actually didn't expect to need to hire anyone for another 6 months... but 3 of my clients are giving me alot of work... and I can see that I need to hire someone now.

Had a VanLUG meeting today... but missed most of it. There was a presentation on ratpoison -- a mouse-less windows manager. But I only saw the last 10 minutes of it. (And missed the first hour-and-a-half or so.) Too bad... I would have liked to have seen the presentation.

I'm still really busy with work. (I worked over 13 hours on Sunday! And had 12-hour-days virtually all of last week.) So I haven't had time to do any work on matterial... except that I did a bit of work on the first draft of the Movie Preview and Thumbnail Format specification. Hopefully I'll get it done by the weekend... but we'll see.

Oh ya, I'm posting a HELP WANTED, for matterial....

The matterial Development Team is looking for someone with automake and autoconf knowledge and experience to join the team. If you have the will, desire, and skill to help, join the matterial Developer Mailing List and introduce yourself.

None of us, on the matterial Development Team, have enough knowledge or experience with automake and autoconf to use them properly (nor the free time to learn them), so having someone join the team, that knows how to use these tools, would be great! (Of course, as always, we accept new comers, to the project, to work on any area of the project (that they want to work on)!... but, right now, we're in need of someone to take care of the automake and autoconf stuff.)

sej (in reference to your diary entry) I brought up the Sketch format, as a possibile suggestion for something to use... or at least something to base things on. However, bernhard -- Bernhard Herzog -- the lead developer of Sketch, contested that that format would not be sufficent (as an e-book or PDF replacement.) (Which is what the original poster, of the thread, wanted... but I may have not been clear about this, with my previous diary post.)

The links you provided will be helpful, though. Already it seems that there is some momentum to better develop the Vector Graphics capabilities on Linux. Some people seem to agree with me, that we can find some kind of common ground, to create a standard Vector Graphics Library. Some disagree, with varing degrees. Either way, the links you provided will be helpful no matter what path is taken. Thanks.

A new version of mFlip -- the matterial Flip Book -- has been released. Version 0.3.0.

I wish I had more... ummm, I should say any time to work on matterial Junior. But, in the last 3 days, I've worked 12 hour days.

An interesting thread has been going on, on the gnome-devel-list mailing list. It started out by discussing an article that rms wrote, and talking about the need for a standard, script-less document format that free software, and open source software could use. But I kind of used it -- the thread -- as a soap-box to talk about the need of having a good vector graphics engine for free and open source software. Hopefully something will come out of it... like a common library we can all build upon. But we'll see.

Another win for Linux.... While getting acquainted with one of my new clients, I found out they had a signle Linux server running amoung all their other Windows computers. This client was impressed by the stability of Linux, and a conversation broke out about Linux. I told him about my experiences with Linux; both as a server and as a desktop.

He was very interested to hear about Linux being used as a desktop. (Something that he seemed to be unaware of.) And after hearing about all the applications your could use on Linux (as a desktop) he decided that he wanted all his computers (at all his locations) running Linux.

It seems that, in this case, the only thing (previously) holding-back the adoption of Linux, as a desktop, was ignorance. (Most normal people... that even know about Linux... seem to only know of it as a server.)

rasmus, I've been trying to fix the problem since Thursday (January 10, 2002). And (when I tried upgrading it) I did see the httpd.conf.rpmnew file; and used it (and then edited it). But the problem persisted, even after I tried various suggestions, that I got from my fellow VanLUG members.

If I were using the server for only my own personal stuff, I probably would have continued to try and fix it... until I finally got it working. (Let me say it again, I really like Red Hat Linux, and have been using it for a long time.)

The thing is that I have (commercial) projects to complete and deadlines to meet. And I need a system that works. (And Mandrake worked.)

One thing though. I really like the way Mandrake organizes its config files for Apache. I like it alot better than the way Red Hat does it.

(Advodato really needs a better way to talk to other members, and to reply to diary entries.)

OK, I've switched my main web server over to Mandrake Linux. And I'd like to say: wow! I am really impressed with Madrake. From the instillation. To the login window. To the configuration. To the software manager. And even the layout of Apache configuration files. Not to mention that it looks good!

I think I'll be switching my desktop over to Mandrake too, eventually.

(Oh... I tried Debian first, but... well... the politest way I can say it is: the instillation program needs alot of work.)

After years of great experiences with Red Hat Linux, as both a server and desktop. Red Hat Linux 7.2 has frustrated me, as a server, to the point where I am switching to another distro.

The problem I had was that after an upgrade, from Red Hat Linux 6.2, to Red Hat Linux 7.2, PHP files were having their source sent to the browser. (Instead of being interperted.) I consulted my fellow VanLUG memebers, and it seems I was not the only one having this problem. Sadly, no matter what advice I followed, from the very helpful VanLUG crowd, I could not get it to work properly.

However, I still had hope. I thought if I did a clean install, I could get things working. However, I had no success... and still had the same problem :-(

I've been using Red Hat Linux, as both my server OS and my desktop OS, for quite some time. And have been a big fan of the distro. But, this lastest version -- 7.2 -- has frustrated me to the point where I intent to switch to another Linux distro for my servers. Red Hat Linux will stay as my desktop OS, but its coming off my servers. (I'll likely give there next version a try... but if the distro I change to -- maybe Debian or Mandrake -- doesn't give me any problems, I'll likely stick to it.)

Currently, the (user) application that I am working on for matterial is matterial Junior. I have decided that the next two applications that I will write, after matterial Junior gets to version 1.0, are:

• A Classical Animation Software package, that will do both raster and vector stuff, and
• A 3D character animation package, for animating huminoid and non-humanoid characters

In other news, matterial is now officially member of SchoolForge. And although my application, matterial Junior, is what attracted SchoolForge membership for matterial, it is really due to Jason Mellen [jmellen], who is a member of both matterial and SEUL/edu, for making that happen.

Jason Mellen [jmellen] has also come up with a great slogan for creating open source (in reference to open source and schools):

Open Source... do it for the children!

I like it :-)

matterial got some publicity today. Specifically, the very user friendly Movie NLE application, that I am creating (as as sub-project of matterial), got a mention on SEUL/edu's Linux in education report #61. Here's a quote from it:

The matterial project has a subproject called matterial Junior . Matterial is a free and open source unified media processor. With it you can do non-linear editing and compositing for movies. You can use it to compose music or create sound effects. You can use it for sound synthesis. Or you can even use it to create classical animations or 3D graphics. Matterial Junior will be a simple and very user friendly movie Non-Linear Editor (NLE), suitable for use by students

So, matterial Junior is now (some what) officially part of SchoolForge's software offering.