Older blog entries for whytheluckystiff (starting at number 27)

glad of the cmiller script for XML-RPC.  i always foresee
a day when all the software on my machine will be interpreted code.  
i could do it now, but suffer the loss of a decent web browser, video
player, wait i couldn't do it right now.  but i can post this entry!

i'm terribly amazed with ruby.  i use php for practical reasons on 
my sites, and have enjoyed it as an escape from asp, jsp.  this week,
i built a debugging tool for php.  the tool is written in ruby and
speaks xml over udp.  it's a gui tool using fox toolkit widgets. 
here's a current screenshot.  the code
for php looks like this:

<?
  site_debug( "Session", "Reading session data." );
  site_debug( "SQL,MySQL", "SELECT ... " );
?>

You can also set watches and use trigger_error() to send debug info.  
The latest version of FXRuby came out just in time too.  The table 
was looking pretty weak under the old version, but a new version came 
out and now it's rather stylish.  I'd really like to get some icons 
in there for severity. 

i'm also quite in love with mail reader sylpheed, which
is the only mail client i've found that does imap how i desire.  unless
you know of a way that mutt can show my imap mailbox list with the number of
new and unread messages.  thanks in advance.

kind of put out that my first few projects with Zope 
weren't as enjoyable as I'd hoped.  I think one of the main 
obstacles to that project is the lack of documentation.  I 
mean the Zope Book is good if you're doing simple stuff and 
if you're using DTML.  But I don't want to use DTML.  It 
feels like Cold Fusion.  So when using Zope Page Templates, 
I referred to ZopeLabs a lot to glean bits from their 
cookbook.  I appreciated help from #zope idlers, but I
don't think I'm going to take that route any longer.
can't wait for the freebsd native jdk to come out.  i'm 
still running a patched 1.1.8 on my server because i
couldn't ever get any of the others to patch correctly and
i didn't want to install all the linux base ports.
desktopian.org is down for a bit.  looks like the legacy
of pimpin.net is finally and completely gone.  we're going
to be back up on a new and better server soon, so it's for
the best.  we've been up and down for two months now.

truly appreciated this week's discussion (often titled open
source is dead, but covering the more general what is happening
to all of our projects and why?  this discussion is spreading
or something.  A related topic on scripting.com refers to
the discussion by the moniker "open-source-as-flop".  dave has
some valid comments that i normally choose to ignore, but this time
i choose to accept the verdict concerning customer support among the
developers in our cause.  i'm thinking RTFM is fine for interoffice
remarks but a too abrasive for real users.  if you read dave's
article that i linked up there, read the doc searls viewpoint too.
his point kind of goes along with all of our points mashed together.
personally, i'm glad of the hype and the wave swells that 
introduced me to the bazaar.  it's been very good times so
far and will assuredly continue to be.

i am so glad to be done with the most difficult year of my life. with
all of the world chaos this year, i'll bet you can relate.  i've weathered
my parent's divorce well, fought financial disturbance to victory,
and endured the toughest inner depression and insanity i have
ever faced.

i hate crying.  crying makes me feel stupid.  i wish i didn't
hate it though, so i could cry tonight and feel the full emotional
experience of letting this year go by.  ah well.  someday i think
i'll be able to have an oceanic moment that will cover the complete
catalog of experience i've had.  hopefully in such a way that i
can understand.  perhaps that will be death.

i know new year's doesn't really mean a whole lot.  it's a moment
like any other moment during a day.  but i can't help but give it
meaning, as i'd like to just allow myself the gladness of a deep
breath as the clock changes and sweeps away that long year that hurt
so bad.

not a big man on campus here, but i feel like it since rasmus
jumped in on the talk! ;D
Waldo: sure.  ska does exist.  but ska is not about listening to 
an album. it's about being there at the show with the 
clothes, the brass, the scene, having your own private 
skank.  i'm trying to emphasis what i feel is happening in 
our world here.  times change and we've got to adapt, right?
i mean i see your point, but i'm not as much a fan of the relics
of an empire.  i'd rather be in the empire itself.

i guess that's why i joined the ruby-talk list.
its activity is inspiring.  that project is definitely thriving.  it's
nice to even have new CVS commits almost daily.  it's a candy
language and very tasty at that!  and although i can do no more
than reminisce on some of the old (now smoldering) projects I once
loved, a certain vein flows into a newer project with life.
rasmus: your individual thoughts concerning community
expectations and project size are wonderful.  it's the tortoise and
the hare, right? :D  slow and steady wins the race.  so when is
the race over?  when is the child fully grown into a man and
later buried?  an actor is lucky because he knows when the play 
is over so he can bow and let the curtain close.  we go until
the curtain closes while we are performing!  applause is stifled
when the act has not closed yet.  but it will, it will.

i think of litestep.  and how its later revisions
slowed as new dev teams came in.  the dev teams have slowed to the
point where they don't even have time to appoint new devs! and they've
got thousands of active users clamouring.  they've been stuck on a
24.6 release for two years.  at one point we got close, but the devs
withdrew.  capable people will not always pull through even on a small project.
there's something about having the father of a project around.

i don't think free software will die, but i don't have qualms
entertaining the idea.  it is a possibility that supporters would
shrink to the head of a pin.  i have heard some recent speak that
goes something like this: come on!  where is everyone?!  get
coding!  i would say that demand (and criticism more so!)
will not encourage developers.  seems like that would worry
other people too?

okay, so i hear from recentlog that nothing's happening in the free
software world.  i'm thinking this has been the case since the end of
last year.  most of the projects i was following released a stable
version and put a stopper on the innovation at about that time.  you
know what else?  one of my friends runs a ska radio show and he says that
ska is dead.  on the inside i laugh, oh yeah ska is dead.  and
he's sort of crushed about it.  broken-hearted too. i think he
thinks it's going to come back again soon.  the beos people
think beos is going to come back too.

gap tried to bring back the 80s this year.  they had those
shirts with just one sleeve.  and square sequins.  problem
is you need the spritz-- the bangs to go with it.  these
days we need clothes that go nicely with spikey hair. ;D

i'm sorry if i'm wrong on this.  you have to admit that free
software has ridden a wave of hype.  be honest on this.  people
read linux.  they say linux.  they read xml.  they say xml. 
they like the way they say xml.  they say it again.  rolls
off the tongue.  rolls into the ear.  thank you, money in
the hand.  and thank you, golden goose.

you know why i might think free software will die?  because
the authors are crushed by its thankless obligations.
if it's not fun, it's a horrible fix.  like feeding the
addicts: give us our code to smoke on.  we're all
sensing complacency and apathy in the Land of Read Between
the Braces.  i just hope the weak projects will die.  i had
to kill some projects.  join a synergistic team to have a
ball of wax / monkeys.

again, sorry for coppin an attitude.

I'm having a great run of Kong-Keui.  For the first
time, I'm able to run the board for awhile.  My friend
just got back from Korea and handed me my own set.
It's going to be hard not to eat them though.  So colorful.

I've been really enjoying the ruby-talk mailing
list.  I guess it's had a bit of babble, but it's worth
reading for the challenges posed.  Plus, I really respect
the personas leading the community.

I am having fun with 802.11b.  I hope you are too.
Finally some hype that materializes into me being able to 
walk two blocks up the street and write my diary entry at 
the park.
I'm pretty liberal with my certifications.  When I 
certify someone as a Master, I'm generally thinking they've 
written something that's of real value to me.  Or they're in 
a project that I respect.  I'd suspect many people certify 
Master only if the candidate is notorious.  Also, I honestly 
haven't certified anyone as an Apprentice in a long long 
time.  I think most of the people who bother to post and 
provide information are generally involved.  I don't like to 
make people climb ladders.  Especially since certification 
here at advogato is generally an expression of appreciation 
and esteem.  I never take it as a hit against me when my 
certification is lower than some other well-groomed, well-
trained advogate.
I have been actually really involved in a number of 
projects lately.  I find that I need to be more vocal.  I 
have the Sneak Attack Syndrome, where I never post to a 
mailing list because I'm too busy hording everyone else's 
posts for the day when I will make mine.  I say to myself, 
"Oh I don't want to clutter the list."  Come to find that 
I'm reading the same participants' messages over and over 
again.  Not to mention that if I send a message to a list 
with some advice, that message is archived and eventually 
applied to search engines.  I am going to outline my recent 
wireless adventures so that when the next person enters the 
search "NETGEAR MA301 FREEBSD", there will actually be a 
useful guide, loving prepared with style sheets and 
reasonably-sized paragraphs.  Scented?  If only.
I have been contributing fixes to the Ruby/X11 library 
(which is a fine implementation of the X11 protocol).  I've 
also been getting involved in linux-wlan, bsd-airtools, 
dbtcp, and sylpheed.  I'm also rejuvenating DX0.  This next 
week I'll be digging into NoCatAuth alot more and building a 
wireless network for me and my neighbors.  I just know I'll 
burn out sometime, but I hope not.

There's nothing quite so fun as tracking down a friend
who's going to the University of California San Diego
and persuing through the university site, gleaning
information, and discovering a wealth of graduate
students' homepages.  Pictures of parrots, facts about
cricket (the sport), station wagon adoration, and
continual crypto links.  But I tracked him down! I must
have spent an hour on the pictures of parrots.  That seemed
like the right way to go.

 I live in Salt Lake City.  There has been a nice fog on the
mountains of late.  And a sprig of extra green.  I have
resisted the departure of summer all year, but I suppose
winter's timing will be right.  Perhaps you live in the
mountains too and you know how it is to have the darkness of
space all around and cool, empty winter with an air
that echoes.  In those times, a tall building is a good
place to be.  Tall enough that you can't tell if snow is
going up or down.  And if you're working, you have something
to keep pace with.

 It's nice to throw away all my old JavaScript and HTML
books. I just couldn't think of anything that I'd ever want
to do with either any further.  Need shelf space.  One thing
I think JavaScript has taught me is that scripting languages
are capable of replacing most uses of compiled languages and
can be preferable.  Of course, Perl and Python and Ruby are
definitely demonstrative of that lesson, but the fact
that any of that DHTML stuff ever worked in a single
browser is amazing. I think the trap of loosely formed
HTML and the resulting DOM with the interpreter parsing
alongside the browser and I am absolutely convinced
that more can be done with the scripting languages on my
system.

 On the note of throwing stuff away:  I want to throw
everything away. My first apartment had a bed and a lamp and
Scrabble.  Didn't even have a computer.  (I said I was done
with computers.)  Yeah.  Scrabble's a great game.

Today I have strep throat.  Finally a reason to use a
sick day and write in my diary.  I won't be covering
 WTC and Jihad because I am uninformed and the issues
are too big for me to make my official public 
statement.  I did hear Bush and I did hear the Sec. of 
Defense.  Under my breath: "Tally ho."

I'm going to be diving back into open source stuff
very soon.  I've had so many ideas that I can't just shelve.
I'd really like to make a Debian distro that focuses on Python
users.  It's an idea I've had for awhile and I'd mostly
do it for myself to lug between machines.  (But I'm sure
other people could use it.)  Basically, most distros focus
on end users and I want a distro that helps me set up a nice
dev environment.  I want Vim 6, Python 2, Zope, anything
Python related.  I'd actually like to take it to the point where
the distro installer, the packaging system, perhaps even the
window manager has Python hooks or is entirely coded in Python.
 I'm not saying it would be the ultimate package for
everyone.  I'm just sick of having to pear down whatever distro
I'm using and install all the packages seperately.  And Python's
a great language, I'd love to help further it's influence.
Oh, and if there's already a distro that can do all
this.. feel free to let me know so I don't go on and do something
terribly exhaustive.

I'm also trying to work out a plan with the school
district in which I attended high school.  I've
been teaching a C programming class to high school kids and I'd
like to some part-time teaching at the school during the
day.  The kids I've been teaching are making awesome progress
and I'd really like to reach a wider subset of teenagers.
Part of me can't wait to see if one of these kids will turn
out to be the next RMS.  Or perhaps the next Dmitry Sklyarov??

Been enjoying the new Sparklehorse album It's a
Wonderful Life:

I wish i had a horse's head,
A tiger's heart,
An apple bed

Also, I've been watching old episodes of Space Ghost
Coast-to-Coast from this archive.  You've got to see the episode
Sequel (1999).  The close-ups on Birdman's face gives me
such laughter that I could be stretched beneath a horse
stampede and easily come out chuckling.  Other good episodes:
Boat Show, Girl Hair (with Hanson), Chambraigne.  Well,
until later..

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