Month: 2002/02
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2002 February 28
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Partial stab at MoinMoin XML-RPC interface
Uploaded a partial stab at XmlRpcToWiki for MoinMoin. Have to figure out how to map enumerated versions to MoinMoin's style of diffs, have to update all the implementations with a few changes to the API spec in general. But, I just wanted to get some things out there, even if they're in progress. [ ... 54 words ... ]
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Still playing with templates
Tweaking around some fonts, layout, etc. Silly me, I've been looking at all of this in Mozilla and haven't touched IE in a week or two. It wasn't pretty when I checked it out there. If anyone ran screaming from this site in funky horror after looking at it in IE, I offer my apologies. Now if only I can get MT to stop doing funky things with apostrophes. Working on the site design itself more, stripped away the frames (MT's pings to weblogs.com didn't like 'em anyway), having more SSI fun, and generally trying to clean up the second level pages of the site (ie. individual story pages, etc.) Next, I should be making pages to each individual category, if I can figure out what kind of seconday sidebar &etc I want on those pages. Obviously something more understated than the major sidebar on the front page. This is fun, my first website to actually be up and doing something, even if no one's paying attention yet :) [ ... 170 words ... ]
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2002 February 27
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To Slashcode or not to SLashcode
It seems like Movable Type does pretty much everything I want it to do for a weblog, and the upcoming v2.0 looks even better. In one sense, I'm not satisfied with the fact that all it does it maintain a static set of pages rather than being a dynamic app... but then I think, do I really need anything more than that? I mean, the one dynamic thing I have on the front page is the recent wiki changes, and that's a server-side include (that almost seems retro to me). Seems to work fine. The main reason I have a tiny doubt is just having checked out Slashcode again and remembering all the neato stuff it does, including its own wiki plugin. software.tangent.org uses Slashcode, but then they're Slashcode contributors over there if I recall. I could see MT choking if I had tons of content. Say I update my site's templates again and it has to rebuild everything. Eh, that's a degenerate and least frequent case. And I've got the source, so I could pry my content out of it if I had to. As things are, the template system is dead simple, and I've started creating categories. Everything Just Works. Maybe I'll go drop a donation in their hat next week... [ ... 214 words ... ]
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More sites like this...
Hmm, looks like there's a site over here at TangentOrg that's doing a lot of what I keep thinking I want to do with 0xDECAFBAD. Looking for rolemodels. If you're out there (knocks on your screen), can you point me to any other weblog-ish sites that are kinda about software, kinda about some dude (or dudette), and kinda about the stuff that goes on out there? I'm sure there're plenty, but I'm looking for not just weblogs, but weblogs that spin off things and make stuff and other crap that sticks around and gets improved, and all that. Does this make any sense? It's time to go home. [ ... 109 words ... ]
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How to TiVOize your PC? Been there, done that.
Hmm, does something like this fit into the "format" of 0xDECAFBAD? Sure, but I'll probably want to consider setting up some categories. Like general tech rant/commentary, 0xDECAFBAD project updates, site updates, etc. From The Register: How to ?TiVO-ize your PCTiVO-like time shifting capabilities have come to the PC. At the Intel Developer Forum, Rakesh Agrawal, CEO of thirteen-man ?SnapStream, took his PVS software through its paces for The Register's pleasure. Is it just me, or are these people are slow? Maybe it's just because of the new release of the SnapStream software (which I tried a few months ago, and hated, might be worth a try again), but people all over the blog world have been mentioning this as if it's something new. "TiVO killer on your PC! Check this out!" The only reason for it I could see is if the SnapStream software has improved incredibly since the last time I played with it, and it's become so dead simple that my Mom can use it by making vague flappy gesticulations at the screen. The only semi-exciting thing I see in the SnapStream buzz is that they're planning on doing something with .NET web services, but no one's really talking about that facet of it. Maybe they've all missed the availability of these products, but I've been using my ALL-IN-WONDER? RADEON for the past year and a half, before which I used a Voodoo 3 3500TV (which sucked ass), and before that I used a plain old ATI All-In-Wonder card. That's been since I got my first real PC in 1997. I've been using these cards to record the few shows I care about, in limited fashion, until I got the Radeon card and things took off. With the AIW Radeon, I record straight to VCD format. I burn the VCD movies onto CDRW and watch them in my DVD player, just like I used to use my VCR. If I happen to like the show, I burn it to a real CD and file it away. It's not the greatest quality, but is pretty comparable to VHS, which is fine. If I want better quality, there's Super VCD which uses MPEG-2 to fit 30 minutes of DVD-quality video on a CD. Or... gasp I could get a DVD burner. And then, there's the D-Link DSB-R100 PC FM USB Radio I've been using to record and archive FM radio shows, most notably Big Sonic Heaven. Oh yeah, and the Voodoo 3500TV was good for that, too. (But mostly, it sucked.) My digital lifestyle's been kicking it for some time now. Hell, not even Apple's caught up to me yet, since I can't find Mac-OS-X-supported replacements for my cable and FM radio archival rig. If I had the money, I'd switch to 100% Apple in an eyeblink if they could seamlessly replace all the above. Anyway. I'm done now. [ ... 479 words ... ]
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2002 February 26
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Where oh where did my little httpd go?
Brief server outage, swift support response from my friendly local host:It is always something with that wretched httpd. Afew days ago it was a php exploit, preventing the restart of apache, and now this. All the pids which run under httpd must be killed, in order for a restart to take effect. This does not happen automatically, so I must kill them all, manually and with extreme vengence. [ ... 69 words ... ]
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Almost done with another implementation of the Wiki XML-RPC API
Hacked around tonight looking into the innards of MoinMoin and discovered that things are not all that bad in there. I've got most of a MoinMoin rendition of the XmlRpcToWiki done. I just have to figure out how to map the concept of numerical versions into editlog manipulations. Whee, after this, that'll be 3 wikis I've thrown this thing at. No sweat. Next, I have to do something with it and prove that it hasn't just been TechQuaTech. [ ... 79 words ... ]
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2002 February 25
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0xDECAFBAD is trying to find itself.
I doubt that I have much of an audience yet, still, so I suppose this will be just thinking out loud... but hey, that's pretty much the express purpose of this site. The historical context is useful, nonetheless. Speaking of the purpose of this site: what about the purpose of this weblog? Should this just be for general site news and calls-to-attention, or should I start all out nerdy musing about tech and what's going on out there? I'm thinking the latter, since any glance at the wiki's RecentChanges will get you that. I have a half-thought notion that I might enfold more people into 0xDECAFBAD eventually, so I'd like to keep the place from being too centered on l.m.orchard, but seeing as I'm the only denizen here for now, it will be. So, maybe I should elucidate a bit within the site purpose up there in the corner. This is a place for exposed thought processes about developing technologies. Developing being used in a double meaning here-- both as an adjective and as verb. The purpose of 0xDECAFBAD lies in both discussing the state of and participating in the process of technology building. How's that? Great. (Suggest refinements, if you like.) Now... "technology" is a fairly broad topic. What technology, exactly? Seeing as I am the sole dictator of the site's direction so far, I will define this to be technologies that suit my fancy. This, however is no definition-- it's more of a redirection. A see also. So, what technologies, in particular? Here's a list off the cuff: Collaboration WritingOnTheWeb InformationManagement KnowledgeManagement This probably needs some fleshing out. In general, the focus is on web and internet tech with a lean toward that which enables human beings to work with information and each other. Mainly, I'm interested in PowerToThePeople rather than TechQuaTech. How's that for a start? [ ... 310 words ... ]
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Tweaking the Wiki, building APIs and bridges
Even more twiddling. Seriously thinking of moving the Wiki over to MoinMoin now that I've had a better look. It seems to support almost all of the features I use with TWiki, but looks to have a much cleaner design. Did some poking tonight, and it looks like I could have yet another implementation of the XmlRpcToWiki for MoinMoin. That would bring me up to a total of 3 supported wikis. After that, I just need to keep them all in synch with the API as it shapes up over on the JspWiki site. After I get the XmlRpcToWiki implemented for MoinMoin, I can work on the WikiWikiBridge between TWiki and MoinMoin to execute the conversion of content for migration. The side effect of moving to MoinMoin in this way is that I'll end up with 3 wiki engines speaking XML-RPC, and one bridge between engines. Sounds like fun to me. [ ... 152 words ... ]
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2002 February 24
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Trying out a new site layout
Thinking that simple is better here, so I tossed out the big vertical sidebar navigation for a much simpler nav bar at the bottom. Also playing around with putting wiki changes in the sidebar. Any thoughts? I think I'll stop twiddling with that for now and play around with getting a few more things released. Okay, maybe one more tweak. This is not exactly like out-of-box Movable Type, but hopefully not annoying. [ ... 79 words ... ]
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Testing out BlogChat:
Testing out ?BlogChat. Any suggestions on where I might put this? [ ... 12 words ... ]
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Second verse, same as the
Second verse, same as the first. Everybody sing! [ ... 77 words ... ]
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Testing my new MT template.
Testing my new MT template. [ ... 6 words ... ]
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It's quiet. Too quiet. Actually,
Actually, I have been doing quite a bit. here's a quick update: I had a go at doing something cool with CommentsInRadioUserland, but I don't think very many people noticed my hacky iframe tricks before a more elegant solution was baked into Radio. Well, I thought it was cool. :) I released the XmlRpcToWiki for two Wikis, TWiki and ?UseModWiki. I'm aiming for MoinMoin next, and I might even be nutty and convert from TWiki to MoinMoin for usage here. Started doing the dogfood thing and have been using MailToRSS (based on Caffinate) on a daily basis in my Radio UserLand feed. Seems pretty useful. Going to clean a few things up, upload some files, and bump those two projects up into the "Available" category and make a release. I ripped the Wiki's style-sheet off and went back to plain old, unadulterated default style. I might try again with a few tweaks, but best to let wikis be. Thinking I'm going to set aim on the WeblogMulticaster next. I'll have more to write soon. [ ... 175 words ... ]
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2002 February 18
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And another thing: on UNIX-y development
It's worth noting that I'm trying a change in approach now to get my hacking morale up. I'm adopting a more UNIX-y approach and planning to write and release a number of smaller, interoperating utilities at first. They should be really easy to pipe together, like cat | grep | more. They should, at first, run just fine on my laptop Apache installation or out on the 0xDECAFBAD servers. Eventually I might write the overarching DesktopWebAppServer that provides another shell within which they can reside, but I have to get away from my year-long hermitage arcs of development where I make really cool things and get 75% of the way done and then abandon them. Okay. Nevermind work, it's time to go home. Wheee! (Grr, and ?TextRouter keeps "helpfully" escaping all my HTML tags with entities. Have to do more digging to work out how to stop that.) [ ... 149 words ... ]
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Wanted: A non-ugly stylesheet
Oh yeah, and though I'm pretty sure I'm blogging into the void right now, would anyone out there happen to have some tips on how to make my site less ass ugly? :) I've just co-opted the Movable Type out-of-box style, but I think I'll need to move on from that eventually... [ ... 53 words ... ]
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The game is afoot. Or something. Not really.
It feels good to have my secret laboratory finally out in the open on the web, for all that I haven't had time to do much with it yet. Maybe I'll make a few releases tonight. Over the past few days, amongst an unusual amount of social activity, I've been working on MailToRSS, and XmlRpcToWiki for TWiki and maybe UseModWiki. Of course, as I'm working on that, I'm tossing around the idea of trashing my TWiki installation for a MoinMoin installation. Why? Because I'm starting to really dig Python, because MoinMoin is written in Python, and beyond that the design of MoinMoin seems very well thought out. Whereas TWiki seems a bit "evolutionary," to be charitable. :) I'm not sure yet. One good offshoot of this is that I thought of another idea to throw on my project list: WikiWikiBridge. Granted, I might never do it, but the whole point of this site is to just get all the ideas out there and see which survive and grow, rather than sitting on them because of my perfectionist tendencies. Also, right now I'm attempting to use Simon Kittle's TextRouter app to post to my MovableType blog on decafbad.com. It seems awfully similar to what I want to do with WeblogMulticaster, and I'd even considered renaming that idea to something "Router" before I saw Simon's app. One of the big differences is that my WeblogMulticaster would be headless, assuming a semi-stupid BloggerAPI GUI program on the user's end, and taking care of all the "text routing" in a remote server or a DesktopWebAppServer installation. But, although rough around the edges right now, and not quite usable under MacOsX at the moment, it might be something I'll try hacking around with first. It's mostly a matter of where the intelligence lies: In the GUI app, or in a desktop server ala RadioUserland. Anyway, to bring this babble to a close and full circle: I'm thinking of starting my DesktopWebAppServer project as a sort of alongside companion for RadioUserland. I could implement probably all of these things within Radio in ?UserTalk & etc, but I don't like it. I'm liking Python much better lately. So, it would start out as a companion, and then maybe eventually be a full replacement and competitor for Radio. Maybe. Then again, I might be just lazy enough to decide to stick to complementing and not replacing Radio features, especially after I bought it. So Radio can post to a the WeblogMulticaster in my DesktopWebAppServer project with the BloggerAPI, and then the WeblogMulticaster can take it from there. Oh and finally, where I want to go with the WeblogMulticaster and the XmlRpcToWiki is to filter weblog entries through whatever wiki engine I'm using. For example: You see all the links in this blog entry? Done by hand. Yes I'm that nuts. Mostly, I just wanted to be thorough in connecting this entry with the wiki on the site and to see how difficult it would be. This motivates me to make a WeblogMulticaster that talks to the XmlRpcToWiki. For a current discussion on this sort of weblog/wiki integration I want, look here: MeatballWiki:WikiLog. Alright... back to work. [ ... 529 words ... ]
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2002 February 15
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Blew the dust off the BBS
It's been up for 49 days and has served about 8 people. It's running on a crappy lil 70Mhz HP Vectra PC I found in the dumpster. It's 0xDECAFBAD BBS, my telnet BBS running Synchronet BBS! Call on in, either via Java applet on the web (http://bbs.decafbad.com) or via direct telnet (telnet://bbs.decafbad.com:2323) But, it would sure be lots of useless old-school fun to get people playing on here :) I haven't done a whole lot of work on it yet, other than putz around with an ANSI logo, and a few hours' nostalgic gathering and installing of BBS Door games (Legend of the Red Dragon, anyone?) Let's see how long I can go before Comcast finds it and shuts me down, whee! [ ... 123 words ... ]
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2002 February 14
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As finished and ready as I'm inclined to make it at the moment.
I'm stalling. I'm procrastinating. I'm tweaking. I'm putzing around. It's time to commit to Release Early, Release Often for once. So, here it is. The "launch" of 0xDECAFBAD.com, my attempt at opening up the process, my process, in order to get some impetus to actually get a few of these things done. Thus far, I've been working out of my own little cathedral cloister, spinning away at projects and technologies that never see the light of day, no matter how cool they are. But damn it, I'm tired of the old pattern, over and over again: Never being satisfied to release what I'm working on, only to see someone else release their own version of the Cool Thing, while I abandon my work to a discouraged oblivion. And I do think I'm clever, and I do think I have a few cool ideas. Now it's time to put it out there and get made fun of. So... welcome. Come on in. [ ... 162 words ... ]
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How meta, blogging about getting the blog blogging
Heh, now I know I'm just blogging out into the ether right now to make sure everything's working, but it amuses me that I'm blogging about getting the blogger blogging. Maybe I should really be writing about this in my personal blog :) [ ... 44 words ... ]
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I've got coffee stains all over my blog
One customization I made to the front page blog in trying to be cute: coffee rings all over the place. Is it exceedingly annoying? [ ... 25 words ... ]
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TWiki is up and running
I just got the wiki up and running. Now I have to clean a few things up since I copied the content up from an old backup of my personal wiki from my laptop. For now, things might not make as much sense as they should. [ ... 47 words ... ]
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Yay,it all works.
Now, to remove the front page place holder, get the wiki working, and wrap it all in my sparkly nav. [ ... 21 words ... ]
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Here, I'll throw another one in
This Movable Type default template is beautiful. I might change it, then again I might not. Sure it's the out-of-box experience, but hey. And this is a useless entry to try to flesh out the skin table. [ ... 38 words ... ]
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This is a test
[ ... 5 words ... ]