MindlessCode.net

To quote Mike Hearn (maintainer):

Exactly 2 years and 6 months after version 0.1 was released, the first
release of the stable series is upon us.

An OSNews article will follow shortly… If you’re so inclined, please try it out, let us know how it works, and drop by #autopackage on irc.freenode.org.

Great little post by Ovid on identity theft: http://www.livejournal.com/users/publius_ovidius/111672.html

He ended up catching these folks who stole his credit cards in under 2 hours!

Ever wonder what exactly a “Split Infinitive” is? Well, here’s your chance to find out:
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~susan/cyc/s/split.htm
Interesting little factoid.

I can think of two very good reasons for not splitting an infinitive.

1. Because you feel that the rules of English ought to conform to the grammatical precepts of a language that died a thousand years ago.
2. Because you wish to cling to a pointless affectation of usage that is without the support of any recognized authority of the last 200 years, even at the cost of composing sentences that are ambiguous, inelegant, and patently contorted.

– Bill Bryson, Mother Tongue, 1990

Wikipedia Also has an article

…and you wonder why I never get anything done.

By the way, Autopackage is coming out in a few days, so if anyone is so inclined, PLEASE test it and let me know how it goes (taj at wildgardenseed dot com). Here are some autopackages to try: Supertux, GScore, Firefox, and Lincity.

From Slate: Forget Me Not: How to win the U.S. memory championship.

You have to memorize 1,000 digits in under an hour, the precise order of 10 shuffled decks of playing cards in the same amount of time, and one shuffled deck in less than two minutes…

Wow!


taj@moria:~$ /usr/games/fortune
Now, it we had this sort of thing:
yield -a for yield to all traffic
yield -t for yield to trucks
yield -f for yield to people walking (yield foot)
yield -d t* for yield on days starting with t
…you’d have a lot of dead people at intersections, and traffic jams you
wouldn’t believe…
— Discussion on the intuitiveness of commands


Hi Folks,
I’ve decided to draw up a list of what is wrong with Linux, why people avoid it, and what we can do about it (Note: This is mainly an idea-gathering post for Icewater). Here’s my list, please leave comments and add to this list!

• Hardware Driver Installation: Nooo! Not this can of worms. But seriously, hardware installation is no easy task under any distro of Linux. One of the issues (problems?) with Linux Hardware Support is that most drivers are very dependent on the version of the kernel that you are running. For example, the Linux Drivers for my SmartLink modem will compile under 2.4/2.6 kernels. However, the a module compiled for 2.6.8 won’t work on 2.6.9. Outch! This makes distributing binaries a very hard task. Solution: Provide binaries for many different versions of the kernel. Solution 2 (better): Try and patch kernel version magic.

  Installing drivers is another issue. Usually, RPMs (or native packaging tool) used on are used to install drivers. This isn’t a problem, but RPM doesn’t have a very friendly (GUI) interface (read: none at all). Sure, rpm -ihv smlink-2.9.10-i586-1ice.rpm may be easy for some, but not for Joe Average down the street. Solution: Write a GUI interface for RPM.

  The last issue (that I can think of), is automatic detection of hardware, driver installation, and device setup. Windows XP does a good job of this (in terms of printers–not sure about other hardware). HAL is an awesome hardware detection daemon, using D-BUS for notification of hardware being plugged in and unplugged. A seperate daemon would be needed for setting up hardward that require one-time configuration (e.g., printers and scaners). HAL+D-BUS take care of hardware like digital cameras, which require no configuration. Yet another daemon should be dedicated to interacting with the user through their DE. E.g., if a digital camera is plugged in, ask the user if they would like to start digiKam. A printer being plugged in would tell the user that it had been configured and was ready for use. A scanner would ask to start Kooka, etc. Solution: Write a daemons to deal with hardware configuration, and a daemon to deal with user interaction. Glue them together with D-BUS and use HAL as the back-bone.

  Take a look at this article for more ideas: http://www.ometer.com/hardware.html

• Software Installation and dependency installation. Solution: Yay Autopackage!

• Integration of programs with the users desktops. Again, D-BUS is really helping here. We’re still having problems with Gnome apps not likeing KDE and KDE apps not liking Gnome, etc. In the “perfect world”, the user wouldn’t be able to tell if a program was written using GTK or Qt, or implemented with gtkspell or KSpell. Balloons from Kopete would appear under Gnome. If you hit Ctrl+O in the Gimp, and you are running KDE, a KDE open dialogs with full KIO support would pop up, etc. But…this isn’t the perfect world. Even as KDE and Gnome are agreeing on standards, there is still a lot more that needs to be done. Recent Files for example (implemented by Gnome, but not KDE), and the system-tray protocol. This is implemented by the Giam folks, but KDE (and Gnome?) still need to implement it into their development API. Solution: Patch, patch, patch. Write patches, submit them. libdialogs is part of the solution (I don’t suggest using it now, however!). Patches need to be written for the system tray, recent files, D-BUS needs to be implemented into Gnome programs, rip out DCOP for KDE and replace it with D-BUS, etc.

Any other comments please post below!

I’ve been writing out sheet music for the folk songs that I know (mostly Texas-style fiddle):
http://www.wildgardenseed.com/Taj/Music.shtml.

Off to Taigi Shinsakai (Ki-Aikido “recital”) tomorrow :).

Yeah, yeah, everybody’s got them. I’ve got 50 invites, if you know anyone who want’s one, send me their email. (Or, if you want one, send me your email!). Leave a comment. Emails are not displayed, except to me :).

[This was susposed to be posted yesterday, but the server was busy being taken down by a runaway shell script!]

“The SDF” (Seed Drying Facility), our $40 almost greenhouse finally got an upgrade Sunday :). The old SDF was white PVC pipe and clear plastic. It lasted a while, but after a few snow stormes, it was starting to lean over.

We decided that sometime a “real” greenhouse would be nice. After sitting around for a year or two years, it was finally put together:

The Original SDF	Inside the SDF–Scary!	Carrying the supports
Inserting the supports into the pipes	After getting rid of the old SDF.	Yay Done!

We are now at WordPress 1.5 :)! It has a new template engine and a bunch of bug fixes! Sometime I’ll make this journal look like the rest of my site. Until then, enjoy!