Matt Croydon::Postneo

Month: December 2002

  • Evolution 1.2.1

    Ximian Evolution 1.2.1 has been released.  The freshmeat page notes added features and bugfixes.

  • Down with Direct Attached Disks

    Phil Windley on enterprise storage:

    If someone’s going to store sensative data, they ought to use the best techniques available, not the same ones my Aunt uses to store her recipes.

  • Sam On Gump

    Sam on Gump:

    Andy Oliver: I suspect is the configuration that Sammy boy uses to run Gump on his Thinkpad… It is building all of Jakarta/XML/etc., so its understandibly a lot for my T-30 to do.   Somehow, I manage on my T-23.  Also, I think you underestimate the community.  Centipede is getting on board – by starting small.  My guess is that the JAXP stuff can all be removed.  FYI: here is a complete list of dependencies that are required for a full build.

  • Blosxom 0+6i BETA 1

    Rael releases Blosxom 0+6i BETA 1.  Looks like static rendering is in this version.

  • PHP 4.3.0

    PHP 4.30 has been released:

    This release contains a multitude of changes, bug fixes and improvements over the previous one, PHP 4.2.3. It further elevates PHP’s standing as a serious contender in the general purpose scripting language arena.

  • Semantic a Go Go

    Mark Pilgrim is on the bleeding edge of the semantic web.  See what he can do with the cite tag.

  • Java Development With Processing Power

    Matt Raible:

    I took my home-built machine into work this morning – and all was peachy until I asked the help desk to add my computer to the domain. Politics came into play and I was told that the technicians have to build the machines, not some dev-head. No biggie, just get me a faster machine I said. I argued with the guy for a bit as I tried to explain that a 700 Mhz, 128 MB RAM machine was too slow for Java Development. When he said that was one of the fastest machines they had, I almost choked. Luckily, they found a 2 Ghz machine that I get to start using tomorrow – this’ll be the 3rd machine I’ve built since I started last week. Damn. Sure is nice working from home when you have everything setup already. Do you think that tele-commuting will be the wave of the future? The clients that’ve paid me to work from home are getting a heckuva better deal than the ones that require an on-site consultant.

    One of the fastest machines they had?  Ouch.  I think I need to build a new box in the near future.  The more I use Ant and JUnit and do builds more frequently, the more free time I seem to have while things build and test.  My current win-dev box is dual PIII-733, but the quick Athlon stuff is getting really inexpensive.  Hmm…

  • Parsing with Spark

    David Mertz at IBM developerWorks goes over Spark, a Python parser:

    Spark is a powerful and general parser/compiler framework written in Python. In some respects, Spark offers more than SimpleParse or other Python parsers. Being pure Python, however, it is also slower. In this article, David discusses the Spark module, with code samples, an explanation of its usage, and suggestions for its areas of application.

    [Via RootPrompt]

  • Bloggers as ‘Open Source coders’

    Chris Gulker nails it:

    Andrew Brown offers a good comment. My thoughts: the constraints on coders are relatively obvious and straightforward: not so for ‘bloggers – in a way, bloggers have to work harder, and think through more ‘fuzzy’ undefined stuff, to offer a step forward… Harder, IMHO, than writing code with a specific input/output… you put yourself out in ‘opinion space’ where anyone can shoot you down… no code expertise required…

    Weblogs are a creative outlet for some and a semi-professional news gathering/commentary exercise for others.  The great thing about weblogs is that even if you only have a handful of readers and say something intelligent enough to be picked up, your meme might travel a long way.  It is the modern equivalent of annonymity and freedom that bbses and the early internet offered.  If you’ve got interesting stuff to say, someone will be listening.

  • Creative Commons Weblog

    Jenny points out that there is a Creative Commons weblog and RSS feed.  Cool!

    If I wasn’t so lazybusy, I’d write a spider to crawl the web, seek out content with creative commons licenses, categorize and index.  Maybe if I get a chance today, my friends S, S, and H might let me get a little devtime in.

  • PEAR Primer

    PHP Builder goes over PEAR (PHP Extension and Application Repository) basics.

  • Something Up My Sleeve

    I’ve got something up my sleeve.  I’ve been fiddling around with the python I need (gotta love interactivity) in order to pull it off.  It should be pretty interesting.  It should be trivial but neat.  More info as I code it.

    Python’s ftplib seems really zippy, by the way.  At least over a full-duplex 100 megabit switched network anyway.

  • I’ve Fallen And I Can’t Post to My Blog!

    Ug.  My weblog isn’t updating.  Tragic.  No new content since last night.

    Can’t get into the box, though Radio is still running (but not upstreaming).  It might finally be time to do a reinstall on my server.

    Update: A little Radio restart seems to have worked.

  • XML as the Lowest Common Denominator

    Aaron Swartz waxes philosophical on the Jon Postel phrase “Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send.”

    It seems to me that a well-designed protocol would have only one saying things and require that you use it. After all, there are two types of interfaces: good interfaces and user interfaces. (There is actually a third type, as demonstrated by XML: bad interfaces, which are neither good for computers nor users. It never ceases to amaze me how XML is bad at everything.)

    I can’t say that I agree, but it is definately a point of view.  I think that there’s lots of hype around XML, but it does serve its purpose.  It may not be easily human readable, not easily computer readable (or without headaches), but it might be the lowest common denominator.

  • Sourceforge News

    Several interesting tidbits show up in today’s Sourceforge news:

    • They’re transitioning to IBM’s DB2.  That strikes me as odd for an open source shop.
    • They’ve launched DevChannel.org
    • OSDN runs on about 200 servers.
    • They’ve added IBM WebSphere to the compile farm. (Looks like they’ve earned some IBM sponsorship)

  • A Java Christmas

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    Guess what I got for Christmas?  My girlfriend’s parents snagged me Java Tools for Extreme Programming: Mastering Open Source Tools Including Ant, JUnit, and Cactus from my Amazon wishlist.  Thanks!  I’ve read the introduction and can’t wait to dive into it.  It will definately compliment Java Development With Ant.

  • OSCon 2003 Call for Participation

    Use Perl;

    “It looks as if the CFP for next year’s OSCon has been announced. The deadline for submissions is February 15, so you better get moving…”

    It’s happening in Portland, OR July 7-11 2003.  I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make it, starving student and all.  Attending the Web Services DevCon set me back significantly (even though fees were extremely reasonable).  I learned a ton though.  I’ll be attending PyConDC2003 because it’s about Python and it’s being held in my backyard.

  • Roboant

    Erik Hatcher:

    An article I wrote (last summer) has finally been published in the February 2003 issue of JavaPro. It details how to write sophisticated custom Ant tasks by demonstrating how I built a custom Ant task to control IBM alphaWorks Robocode

    The article is online at http://www.fawcette.com/javapro/2003_02/magazine/features/ehatcher/

  • Christmas Coverage

    Ed Cone:

    For a nice Jewish boy from North Carolina like myself, the whole Jersey Italian Christmas is a multicultural awareness event, and the food is really good, too.

  • Sony DSC-U10

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    While I was running around shopping yesterday, I stumbled across Sony’s DSC-U10.  I think that it is potentially a really cool subcompact digital camera.  The thing is tiny.  The only downsides to it that I can see are the lack of an optical viewfinder (not the end of the world) and no optical zoom (understandable given its size).  It’s priced right too: $199 for a tiny, sleek 1.3 megapixel camera that feels good in your hands.  Yeah, there are cheaper 1.3 megapixel cameras out there, but they tend to feel quite cheap, while this does not.  It does have a built in flash, which some of my el-cheapo toy digital cameras lack.

    I’m not quite sure if this will end up on my ‘things to wase money on’ list or not, but it’s a sweet little camera.  (There’s also a 2 megapixel version of the camera if you want a little more rez.)

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