Advogato blog for trebinor

8 Aug 2000

Tue, 8 Aug 2000 11:26:09 GMT

Tuesday morning, 0140

Soon, soon, soon I say. Soon I will pick an open project.

// Sig
/*
"if society were bound to invent technologies which could only be used entirely within the law, then we would still be sitting in caves sucking our feet."
-------- Gene Kan, creator of Gnutella
*/

28 Jul 2000

Fri, 28 Jul 2000 01:24:05 GMT

Thursday night, 2124.

I'm beginning to think pine isn't sending my messages out. I sent out a message to the developer of xtraceroute and another to someone interested in my diary entry about secure talk, yet I received no responses from them.

So now what do I code?

// Sig
/*
Momma taught me never to use globals, but we need something the signal handlers can get at.
------beep.c
*/

25 Jul 2000

Tue, 25 Jul 2000 04:55:15 GMT

Tuesday morning, 1250.

Ok. I've given up on xtraceroute, because as someone else pointed out, it's pretty much useless and is at best more Linux eye candy. I don't want to be a part of that. I want to contribute to simple, solid programs which run well and don't blind the average user with garrish tones. On that note, I'm looking into encrypted talk. Required reading: stalk and BET. Am I the only one who cares about encrypted written communication that is faster than email?

Now all I have to do is learn C and cryptography. Hmm, I need to get busy. :) I'll keep you posted.

19 Jul 2000

Wed, 19 Jul 2000 05:21:30 GMT

Wednesday morning, 0121.

Still waiting on word concerning the current status of xtraceroute. Ho hum, la de da.

26 Jul 2000

Wed, 26 Jul 2000 01:05:14 GMT

Sunday morning, 0215.

Happy birthday to me; I'm now 19. I'm going out to eat later with my parents, and they're getting me much needed tools for my birthday (with which I'll work on my computer since my CD-ROM drive just died.

I just beat Diablo (aka Burgandy Godzilla) with the help of x-virge. He dominated through most of hell, but when all the seals (otters, ;-) ) were broken, the Lord of Terror was much too powerful for his summoned creatures. He wiped them all out with a single fire nova. All I could do was have x-virge (a necro) cast area curses while I took on the big red dog in melee. After only one town trip, Diablo was banished and x-virge and I were both sirs.

The secret cow level was another matter.

We entered the red portal only to find about 200 bovine minions and some champions walking erect and carrying polearms. They hurt us very badly, and the sounds of the programmers saying "moo" in various ways was too funny to bear. I won't go back there until I get Fist of the Heavens and befriend a very powerful sorceress.

Anyway, back to my search for a good open project. I have pretty much decided on xtraceroute. I hear it needs work badly, and it hasn't been maintained in over a year. I guess I'll email Mr. Augustsson later to get his approval.

// Sig
/*
"It appears your computer uses a 286 or lower CPU. You cannot run Linux unless you have a 386 or higher CPU in your machine. If you get this message in error, hold down the Ctrl key while booting, and I will take your word for it."
---syslinux 1.45 error message
*/

14 Jul 2000

Fri, 14 Jul 2000 04:02:42 GMT

Thursday night, 2358.

This is my first day with an account and my first diary entry. I took a look at sourceforge to see what projects look interesting and which ones need help. It seems they have too many people working on open source there on too many projects. The talent is spread way too thinly.

I still haven't decided what my first open source project is going to be. Crypto or multimedia sounds nice, although I was informed on IRC that users don't have the will and patience to use strong encryption in common internet chat and file transfer. I guess I'll probe deeper on this one. It was also suggested to me that mpg123 needs some work. No argument there.

As a side note, my level 26 paladin died today in the City of the Damned (Diablo II). I couldn't retrieve all my stuff, so I'm going be stuck in Normal difficulty for a while.

Well, time for bed. No, scratch that. I should sleep, but I won't be tired for another two hours. Oh, well. Later.

// Sig
/*
"Friends have access to private members. Any class that has friends is open to corruption by those friends. A class must choose its friends wisely."

------An Introduction to Object-Oriented Design in C++, page 437
*/