Damn Rain

tried to go see finding nemo today with eric, but it's a rainy day, and all the little kiddies got there first, so it sold out just as we were getting up to the ticket counter. ended up seeing bruce almighty instead, which wasn't all that bad. it's a jim carey movie, so if you like that sort of thing, you'll probably like it. there wasn't anything really earth shatteringly good about it, but in general it was amusing enough that i didn't feel bad paying for it.

Ouch.

Mass Genocide is the most exhausting activity one can engage in, next to soccer. -- Loki

should have gone with genocide...

#include <title.h>

so it looks like the people at apress are serious, and they really do want me to write a book about
subversion. i was a little skeptical at first, since i haven't written anything longer than a term paper since high school, but i just got a contract emailed to me, so i guess they're really serious ;-)

anyway, assuming i don't freak out and decide that there's no way i'll be able to write an entire book about anything, i'll be signing the contract and sending it back in the next day or so, and then i'll settle down and devote a staggering amount of my free time over the rest of the year to writing.

now, back to figuring out how to make docbook produce separate output files for each chapter in a book. i'm certain it can be done for html, but i need rtf, since apress works in word, and if i want to work in docbook i'll have to adapt a bit to what they need. if anyone has any clue on how to do this, please feel free to let me know. i spent much of the weekend struggling to make it produce rtf output at all, and i'm not looking forward to attacking the 'separate files' problem...

The 'Making Fun Of Him Stage'

jwz never ceases to amuse me.

Not Bad...

so i've been using firebird for most of today, and i must say it's pretty cool.

i'm a big fan of the mozilla project in general, if only because XUL is damn cool technology, and i very much like the idea of a lightweight cross platform browser.

i was worried at first (back when they weren't releasing os x builds of phoenix), but it looks like they're well on the way to making firebird into that browser. so far, the only real issues i've found are that startup is a little slow (faster than mozilla, but slower than safari), and there are a number of little annoyances (no hotkey for 'go back a page', open-apple-click doesn't open a link in a new tab, open-apple-h opens the history sidebar instead of hiding the app).

all of these are issues, but they're really to be expected at this point in it's development, and i'm certain that as time goes on it will mature into a fantasticly usable application, both on the mac and elsewhere.

New And Improved!

just upgraded to blosxom 2.0 RC4, so if you notice any weirdness, let me know... so far it seems to work fine...

This Is So Much Cooler Than Ours

so graydon noted that boost just announced a review period for their program_options package. asside from the fact that it seems ridiculously powerful, and i really hope it makes it in to boost because it's way cooler than the options parsing package we're using at work (note to self: update version of boost you have checked in to the tree at work), i noticed that the changelog he has posted is quite obviously output from subversion's 'svn log' command, which is always nice to see.

Wow

i am so going to be at this talk...

well, assuming i make it to oscon that is...

Ouch, My Poor Credit Card

i just registered for oscon, and damn, that's more than i like putting on my credit card all at once, but hey, work is paying for it ;-)

now i just need to figure out the corporate travel stuff so i can actually get out there, and finish the projects here that need to be finished before i can go... details, details...

anyway, if you're at all interested in this sort of thing, and if you're reading my weblog, you probably are, you should drop whatever it is you're doing and go register now, while you can get the early bird discount.

Easy As...

so i was playing around with kwiki, and yeah, it turns out to be /really/ easy to modify.

i just added support for mailto: links. it's running on my personal wiki on my powerbook, not on my public one, since i don't have any desire to let people post clickable spam-me signs all over my wiki, but if you want the module, just ask and i'll stick it somewhere.

honestly, it's like 20 lines of code, mostly whitespace.

this perl stuff, it's going to catch on, you mark my words...

Simulation

so jwz just relased the latest version of xscreensaver, and as he says, the new apple][+ mode for the bsod hack is just the coolest thing ever.

What Is Wrong With Me?

why is it that every time i feel the need to search google i actually go to their web page first? i mean it isn't like my browser of choice doesn't have a built in search tab in the toolbar that would go right to the results without me having to wait for their front page to load first.

argh!

and of course each time i do it it makes me feel like such an inadequate geek.

i mean if i can't remember to use these things, how is anyone non-technical going to?

Take Two

so the second half of my article on using the suvbersion client libraries just hit the streets.

go read it already ;-)

ps. the matrix reloaded rocked.

pps. i had forgotten how much soccer hurt. ow. my poor legs.

Fun With Wiki!

so i ran across a neat article on oreillynet last night about CGI::Kwiki, a perl module that lets you easily create a wiki (and when they say easy, they mean easy... it literally took me seconds to set this one up.

i think my next toy project will be figuring out how to get Kwiki to store it's pages in a Subversion repository. the author, Brian Ingerson (also one of the guys behind the yaml data serialization format), gives a quick example of how to have it store changes in RCS, but that seems so old-school that i have to show how it can be done with more modern tools.

oh, for the curious, there is also a subwiki project that's working on a more full featured wiki integrated with Subversion, but that's more than i'm looking for. i just want something simple to give my wiki a little security and history preservation.

Wow, I Almost Forgot

so i'm a day late, but i suppose i should post something mentioning the fact that i've been posting things to this weblog on a regular basis for one year now.

in that time i've used posted 233 (well 234 counting this one) entries, which is pretty impressive now that i think about it. anyway, i don't have anything really profound to say, so i'll just leave it at that.

Awwww

they are just the cutest thing ever.

personally, i think i like the common cold the best.

No Time...

ok, no time for something deep and profound, so here are a few random links:

• monotone - an interesting new version control system. good ideas, but i don't know how practical it'll end up being. the project's implemented in reasonably nice c++, which is a nice change of pace. down side: not far enough along to be self hosting, which loses big points in my book. if you can't use your version control system to develop your version control system, it's not that cool. i mean isn't the point of writing these things that we DON'T want to use CVS anymore?
• this really stands on it's own, without comment from me.
• as does this.
• martin has a blog. unfortunately he doesn't seem to have an RSS feed, which kind of sucks since it means i'll probably forget to read it.

Damn.

just for the record, db_archive -l | xargs rm is not the same as db_archive | xargs rm. the later will remove all berkeley db logfiles that are no longer in use. the former will remove all berkeley db archives, including the ones that are still being used.

at least i still had a working copy checked out, and a fairly recent dump of that subversion repository.

ARGH!

i'd just like to point out how irritating it is when a web site refuses to work correctly under one browser, but if you change that browser's user-agent to something from here, it works fine.

damn that bugs me.

it didn't bug me enough to keep me from ordering a pizza from domino's web site, and i suppose in some sense that means i don't really have any right to complain, since i've basically given up my chance to vote with my wallet, but hey, that's the great thing about the internet, anyone who has the brains to set up a website (and let's face it, that's just about anyone with a pulse these days) can bitch to their heart's content about whatever they want.

come to think of it, that's also one of the bad things about the internet.

oh well.

Something Worth Reading

so i found a link to this on ranchero.com, and by the time i was into the fourth paragraph i knew i was going to mention it here. (for the curious, the fourth paragraph contained the quote: "Computer science is a grab bag of tenuously related areas thrown together by an accident of history, like Yugoslavia", which i think is both hilarious and on target.) even better, when i got past that great quote, the whole thing just kept on hitting closer and closer to home. i've liked most of paul graham's essays, but i think this one is the one i like the best.

so what are you waiting for?

go read it!

Amusing

so i just got a note in the mail from jon and isabelle, thanking me for coming to their wedding. it's really quite thoughtful of them, with a picture and a personalized, hand-written note to me in it. i'm touched.

there's only one problem...

i wasn't at their wedding. i was invited, and intended to go, but i was sick that day so i stayed home in CT.

it's nice to see that my absence was noticed *grin*

Fun With vc-svn.el

so i've been playing with emacs this weekend (which somehow feels like going over to the dark side, since i'm normally a vi person), and i must say that the Subversion VC module is pretty cool. it definately has drawbacks, since the VC interface dates from the days of RCS and SCCS, so it doesn't deal well with a revision control system where one almost always wants to commit a few different files all at once, but other than that it's very nice. you can do many of the day to day things one wants while writing code with a version control system (view diffs, read log entries, etc), all from within emacs.

there are still a number of missing features, but even with my minimal emacs lisp knowledge, i was able to find some low hanging fruit. we now have an implementation of vc-svn-find-version and vc-svn-mode-line-string, which means you can grab some other version of the file you're editing in another buffer (via 'svn cat') and see a little more information in the modeline for a file that's under svn's control (specifically you can tell if it's added but hasn't been checked in or if it's been locally modified).