Matt Croydon::Postneo

Busy making things: @mc, notes, tinycast, github, links, photos.

  • Flagpoleware

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    Russ:

    Releasing your code as open source is a pain in the ass. I never realized this before, but after six months or so of having code out there, I’m realizing the truth of this. You’re always responsible for your code and it suuucks. The whole idea of OSS sounds great, “build it and they will come” and all that… but in reality it’s just a headache.

    Most of the projects (or prototypes) that I have released are pretty much Flagpoleware: run them up the flagpole and see if it is useful to anyone else.  I’d highly suggest reading the rest of Russ’ rantlet on small open source projects and support if you’re into that kind of thing.

  • 1 Year of OpenMosix

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    Newsforge points out that OpenMosix is one year old today.

    Happy birthday, OpenMosix!

  • Printing a Weblog

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    Brad Wilson:

    There’s something I’d like to see more bloggers do: print stylesheets.

    Read on for how to easily add this to your weblog with CSS.  Thanks for pointing out the erroneous link, Wesley.

  • How to Solve Your Computer Problems

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    nf0:

    I solved my computer problem today. I bought a 12″ PowerBook :).

    Nice.  Congrats!

  • New Nikon Digital Camera

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    Steve’s Digicams:

    The secret is already out. Several forums and web sites have posted the URL where you can see the last Coolpix SQ shockwave teaser. We can’t tell you anymore at this time, Nikon has us under NDA. All will be told (and seen) in a little over a week — we’ll also be posting a First Look of this radically styled digicam.

    A special thanks goes out to my friend Tony who pointed me to the link (on the phone no less!)

  • Eclipse 2.1 M5 Released!

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    Dave Johnson:

    Joey Gibson explains how easy it is to upgrade from 2.1 M4 and points out the new and noteworthy features list. Don Park says “Eclipse will become the second most popular IDE behind Microsoft’s Visual Studio.” I said something similar a couple of months ago.

  • Sam Ruby Fights Spam

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    Thankfully Sam Ruby is filtering spam out of his comments.  I subscribe to his comments feed but was getting ready to unsubscribe after having to scroll past several spam messages while skimming my news aggregator.

    I get enough spam in my inbox.

    Sam is also tackling trackback spam on his weblog by verifying that there is indeed a link to his site.  He is also looking at upgrading the backend to intertwingly:

    However, that part will have to wait as I’m in the midst of evaluating a wholesale upgrade of the software running my weblog, and in the process evaluating Blosxom 1.2, Blojsom, PyBlosxom, and Vellum.

  • TSA Contraband

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    BoingBoing:

    Oh ho, he said, this is different — it has a smaller flame than your lighter.

    So I flipped off the wind-shield, and cranked the little valve-control lever around counterclockwise, and then lit the lighter. A foot-long jet of flame shot out of it.

  • Testing Trackbacks with tblib

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    Matthew Langham:

    Frank is looking for someone to test whether his Trackback works. Radio doesn’t support Trackback – so perhaps some kind person will help. Thanks!

    I use Radio, and therefore don’t have trackback support, but I did ping his weblog manually with a python trackback library that I wrote.  His trackbacks seem to be working fine.

    [user @ box tb]$ ./tbclient.py -tburl http://www.koehntopp.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/204 -title "Testing Trackback" -excerpt "I use Radio, which doesn't support trackback either, so I'm pinging gadgetguy.de with a command line client using tblib." -blogname "Matt Croydon::postneo" -url http://postneo.com/2003/02/07.html#a1992
    Trackback command line client here.  Preparing TrackBack...
    TrackBack URL: http://www.koehntopp.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/204
    TrackBack Title: Testing Trackback
    TrackBack Excerpt: I use Radio, which doesn't support trackback either, so I'm pinging gadgetguy.de with a command line client using tblib.
    Your Weblog Name: Matt Croydon::postneo
    Your URL: http://postneo.com/2003/02/07.html#a1992
    Pinging http://www.koehntopp.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/204...
    HTTP Response: 200 OK
    TrackBack Error Code is: 0 (zero is okay)
    Done!

  • Dict, Python clients, and Gophers, Oh My!

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    I don’t use a spell checker for this weblog, and I’m truly sorry for that.  Sucks to be you, my reader.  Most of the time if I’m not sure of the spelling of a word, I’ll either look it up at dict.org or find a similar, easier to spell word.

    I was curious about DICT protocol clients, so I went to the links page.  This led me to John Goerzen’s Python client class.  I’m taking a look at it now, it looks simple yet powerful.  John hosts his content with a gopher.  I miss gopher.  Gopher used to be the coolest thing on the planet.

    Of course John has also written a gopher server in Python.  It’s called PyGopherd (duh!).  I so have to set one up.

  • New Weblogging Features

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    Phillip Pearson seems to be begging for another project:

    What features are people looking for in blogging packages? What’s left to do? Suggestions please 🙂

  • pylibini 0.1.2 Released!

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    Another gem this evening from freshmeat, pylibini 0.1.2 is out.  It’s a bugfix/tweak release.  It is also now released under the LGPL (previously GPL).  Here’s a quick description:

    pylibini is a Python module which provides powerful access and easy manipulation of .ini files in Python applications.

    Another useful tool for the toolbox.  Most of my work in Python has been fairly lightweight, probably not requiring .inis, but it’s good to know about.

  • Struts-wml 1.1b3 Released!

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    I’ve been keeping an eye on struts-wml.  I wanted to use it on a project, but it was a little too alpha for me at the time.  I wasn’t able to easily use the version of Struts that the release was mapped to.  I gave up after a little .jar hell.

    It is now sync’d with Struts 1.1b3, which might make it more usable for some.  I’ll do my best to take a look at it in the near future.

  • PyObjC

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    OSNews:

    Some programmers see the advantage of combining Python and Objective-C in the same environment, believing that a bridge between the two languages provides tremendous power and advantages to either language. For the Objective-C developer, access to Python provides a rapid application-development solution that’s far more efficient than one requiring a compiler. For the Python developer, transparent access to Objective-C would allow the developer’s scripts to leverage the full power and elegance of the MacOSX environment. In this article, Bill Bumgarner shows you how to bring these worlds together.

    Python just screams out to be integrated into other languages and environments, doesn’t it?

    I don’t currently have an OSX testbed, but I have an old G3 coming in that I have to troubleshoot and buy a few parts for.  We’ll see how that goes.

  • Ingo on Matt on Documentation

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    It looks like we have a conversation going here.  Here’s Ingo’s latest:

    Break the cycle. Write your next documentation the same way – and with the same quality – as if you’d write an article or book. Your readers will love it. And don’t forget: documentation is marketing your code to a peer.

    I will definately do this the next time that I put together documentation.  In the past, I have found that good documentation or a good example of usage brings a smile to my face.

    I’m not in the same corporate/professional situation as Ingo and others, where documentation is just a check mark next to a step in The Process.  I am definately guilty of putting together ‘good enough’ documentation just before a release or before showing someone my code.

    I will follow Ingo’s advice and suggest that others do also.  I think that the open source community in particular should pay attention.  Sometimes the documentation is good, but more often than not it’s missing, incomplete, or poorly written.

    If these notes on documentation don’t apply to you, if you already write good docs, thank you.

  • Technical Writing

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    Ingo on documentation:

    Technical writing is a form of communication which takes a certain degree of sophistication. Especially when you actually expect someone to read it.

    Good technical documentation is hard to produce.  By the same token, good technical documentation is hard to come by.

  • Decoding Base64 in Linux

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    I found myself with a base64 encoded JPEG this afternoon that I needed to turn into a real live JPEG.  Don’t ask how, I think it was a miscommunication between mail clients.  I ended up turning to John Walker’s base64 utility for Linux.

    That’s right, I downloaded the text attachment from my web-based client, trimmed the text to the raw base64 encoded portion, ftp’d it to a server, grabbed it from an SSH session on my Linux box at home, ran base64 -d attachment.txt outfile.jpg, ftp’d it up and down, and now everything is well.

  • The Art of Unix Programming

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    LWN:

    Eric Raymond informs us that a draft version of his book The Art of Unix Programming is now available for review. It can be found, along with the rest of Eric’s writings, at his new “catb.org” domain.

    From a section of the book:

    Though the term “open source” and the Open Source Definition were not invented until 1998, peer-review-intensive development of freely shared source code was a key feature of the Unix culture from its beginnings.

    For its first ten years AT&T’s original Unix was normally distributed with source code. This enabled most of the other good things that follow here.

    This work in progress looks quite promising.

  • Patching The Server

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    Phil Windley:

    Bruce Schneier, well known security expert and CTO of Counterpane Security, has a letter in the New York Times about the dilemma faced by CIO who run large numbers of Microsoft machines: there are too many patches and they can’t be installed automatically because they often break, and yet if you don’t, you’re vulnerable to worms like Slammer.

    It’s the server side equivalent to Critical Update Hell.

  • Abandonware as Open Source Staring Points

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    Looking for a project?  Scott Johnson suggests looking towards open source abandonware.

    That’s right, abandonware — the vast treasure trove of open source projects that have been started, some code has been released and then …. nothing.