New Tab UI

I'm not sure how I feel about the changes to the tab UI in Firefox 2. On one hand, the fact that you no longer have to go all the way to the far side of the window to close a tab is nice. Or, it would be nice if I hadn't trained myself to go to the far side of the window to close a tab. On the other hand, I'm really not sure how I feel about having tabs off screen and having to use the drop down menu or arrow button to move over to where you can see them. In concept, I can see how not having the tabs get really really small when you have a lot would be a good thing, but I'm still having trouble getting used to it.

Pictures!

So, my two weeks of travel have come to an end, and after a weekend spent doing as little as possible I'm now pretty much back to normal. What do I have to show for it? Well, a bunch of pictures up on my Flickr account at the very least ;-)

Feel free to check out sets from ApacheCon US 2006, the Subversion Summit, and because I'm always amused by tech conference t-shirts, a set of all the t-shirts I got on this trip.

ApacheCon US 2006 Wrappup

So, ApacheCon US 2006 is over. It was a hell of a good time, learned some stuff, met some people, got some work done, and just barely managed to avoid visiting Buffalo Billiards every single night we were in Austin ;-)

Here's the current status of the TODO list I had going in to the week:

- APR bugs and patches
- Got some of this done, although not as much work as I'd have liked.
- Abdera Extension API
- Basically proved that this isn't simple as long as we're using Axiom for our XML parsing, I think my next step will be to look at writing a parser back end that just depends on STaX, to see if it's possible to make something that works with arbitrary Element implementations for extension elements.
- Import the Wicket repository into SVN
- Done.
- Crazy lua project
- See https://svn.i-want-a-pony.com/repos/wombat/ for our current progress.
- Kill off the lucene4c project
- Called a vote on the list, everyone agrees, just need to pull the switch.
- Subversion 1.4.x backports
- Didn't get any of this done.
- Upgrade svn.apache.org to Subversion 1.4.x
- Didn't get this done.

Other than those, here are a few of the high points of the week:

- Wrote a pre-commit hook that verifies that changes to the asf-authorization file are valid, so you can't accidentally break svn.apache.org via a typo.
- Gave rphillips the abdera c++ code, so he could play with it. Not much progress there though.

I also went to a bunch of fantastic talks, gave a few that were reasonably well received, ate a lot of fantastic food, and generally had a great time. Now, onward to the Subversion Summit!

ActionPack style Java Web Apps

Amusingly enough, it appears that I'm not the only one who's been playing around with ActionPack style controllers in Java. Berin Loritsch appears to have many of the same ideas, and I'm willing to bet his implementation is nicer than mine. I wonder if he's going to be at ApacheCon next week...

Things To Do At The ApacheCon US Hackathon Next Week

So, I figure if I write this stuff down here, I'm more likely to actually get some of it done. So far, here's what's on my TODO list for the hackathon next week:

1) Catch up on APR bugs and patches
2) Rewrite the Abdera extension API so that extensions don't need to know about the underlying parser implementation
3) Finish the import of the Wicket Subversion repository into the ASF's repos
4) Help Paul and Brian with their crazy lua in httpd project
5) Kill off the lucene4c project for good, it's been dormant practically forever and I'm tired of writing board reports every 3 months that say "No Activity"
6) Get a whole lot of stuff backported to the Subversion 1.4.x release branch so we can cut 1.4.1.
7) Maybe upgrade svn.apache.org to Subversion 1.4.x.

Oh, and at some point in there I'll have to spend three hours giving a Subversion tutorial ;-)

I always knew it was just Karl...

I think my favorite thing about the new Google Code Search is that now I know that the only instance of the phrase "I miss Lisp" in all the freely available source code in the world is in subversion/libsvn_wc/merge.c.

Clearly, this indicates that nobody in the open source world other than Karl is all that upset that the world has moved on from Lisp ;-)

Comics, Then and Now

I've been getting back into comic books lately.

I mean I used to read them back when I was a kid, but I lost interest for a long time. Then a few years ago I went through a Sandman phase, but never really got into anything else. That was, of course, helped along by the fact that Sandman is finished, so once you're caught up you're pretty much done until they release something new, which is on the order of every few years instead of every month. Since then I've picked up the occasional trade paperback reprint of something that looked good (Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, Sin City, etc), but nothing on a regular basis.

Then, I made a mistake, I started reading the trade paperbacks of Fables, by Bill Willingham. In addition to being a fantastic story with great art Fables has the additional feature that it's actually still coming out monthly, and is showing no signs of stopping. And since I burned through the trade paperbacks in like a week I was pretty much stuck. Either wait for the next one to come out in a few months, or start picking up the monthly issues. I hate waiting, so option B was really the only choice.

So, I filled in the gap between the last trade paperback and the current issue, and that's the point where a rational person would have stopped... But hey, if I've started collecting the new issues and they're only up to issue fifty-something I might as well try to fill in the back issues...

After a few weeks of stopping by random comic book stores I happen to be near and trolling ebay for the stuff I can't find I'm now approaching completeness. Assuming everything I ordered on ebay comes through I'll now have completed the series, so I can stop looking for back issues and just content myself with picking up my subscription from the local comic shop every few weeks.

Some things struck me though about the difference between reading comics as a kid and reading them now. First off, actually having disposable income makes a big difference. I never had the ability to buy back issues like this when I was doing this back in the day. Second, ebay makes a huge difference. Having access to basically whatever you want is really seductive, it makes it way easier to fill in the gaps in a collection, since you're not depending on what your local comic shop happens to have in stock. Third, the authors of these things actually interact with the fans these days, thanks to the internet it's actually possible to ask questions and get answers, at least for some books. Finally, the quality of the books coming out today is far greater than it used to be. I mean the super hero stuff is still generally crap, but the more mature stuff actually has great writing, it's the kind of thing you can follow for the story and actually enjoy as literature if you're looking for that sort of thing.

So if you need me I'll be hanging out from time to time over in the fabletown forums, and I'll be stopping by The Outer Limits every few weeks to pick up my (inevitably growing) subscriptions.

New Roomates

So one thing that comes along with living with new roomates (even ones that you've lived with before) is that you learn new things about each other. For example, I've now learned that Rob and Jess are religious followers of "Politically Incorrect" on HBO. No argument there, it's turns out to be a pretty decent show, but I didn't know that before.

On the other side of things, Jessica is now in the process of organizing my DVD collection (apparently it's some deep rooted biological need, she just can't live with them shelved in the order I pulled them out of the box) and is becoming more and more shocked at my horrible taste. Yes, my "Bad Baseball Movies" section includes both "Summer Catch" and "Fever Pitch", and I'm not ashamed to admit it!

It also came out that apparently I'm not the only person who thought "Kicking and Screaming" (not the truly tragic soccer movie of the same title damn it!) was among the greatest movies ever. It seems that Bill Simmons, the ESPN sports writer that Rob and Jess are apparently obsessed with is also a big fan. You learn something new every day.

A Good Ending

So, it seems that in The Baroque Cycle Stephenson has finally managed to write a good ending.

Of course, in order to do it he had to write a book that, in aggregate, is about 3000 pages long, and has such an incredible density that it took me multiple years after the last third of it was published to actually get around to finishing it.

All that considered though, I did enjoy the endiing very much, and I would highly recommend that anyone who gave up after the first volume should fight their way through, as the second really does pick up the pace quite a bit, and the third does manage to tie the whole thing together quite well.

Chicago 8, Coco Crisp 1

Man, did that game SUCK! Aside from Coco Crisp's hitting the Red Sox just didn't even bother to show up tonight. What a disappointment, especially after the last two games against Chicago went so well.

Anyway, it was still a good time, Rob and I took advantage of everyone leaving early and watched the last inning and a half from some great seats right on the first base line, and we all got to enjoy the new shorter T ride in to the game now that we're living in Newton Centre.

Some people are less than thrilled with the traffic consequences of the move, but I still think it's a net win, especially since I'm not one of the people trying to get here during rush hour in order to make it to the game on time ;-)