Year: 2006

Subversioning

 

I’ve been hearing great things about source control for awhile so I dug in and installed Subversion using this new tutorial. While you can interact with the svn server from the command-line, the TortoiseSVN Windows shell extension makes managing imports, updates and commits as simple as a right click.

My first project contains all the files in http://mrclay.org/js/, future home of all my Javascript projects: standalone scripts, bookmarklets and user scripts. I’ve already committed several revisions of click2zap into SVN so I can track changes and rollback to previous versions if need be. SVN is gonna be great for bigger projects.

Build what you see

 

I’m really digging this agile software development idea, which boils down to:

  1. Create the user interface.
  2. Build the code to power it.

Without a UI, you just have a bunch of developers and stakeholders, each having a vague notion of what the app will do and look like, and who it will serve. This leads to:

  • frustration for all parties when the finished product doesn’t match the stakeholders’ vision
  • wasted time on features that no-one will use
  • missed opportunities for features that would’ve been obvious with a UI in hand

Freenet overview

 

I was telling a friend about the Free Network Project the other day, which I’d read about a few years ago. I still haven’t tried it, but after refreshing my knowledge on it, here’s a little overview.

A primer

“Freenet” is basically a completely decentralized and anonymous peer-to-peer internet. It has files, websites, hyperlinks, etc. but all content is published and requested truly anonymously; the design of the system puts this above all other issues like delivery speed and latency, so while Freenet is a p2p app, it’s much more effective at disseminating censored information under “evil” governments than, say, getting you “warez”. All Freenet users run a small server (“node”) on the network that helps push data and requests around and holds a cache of data on disk called the “data store”.
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Malmö Gearlust

 

I’m totally spoiled having a big back room dedicated to making and recording music, but sometimes you can still dream.

Check out this amazing pic of the “Mothership”[1] in Sweden’s Gula Studion. Gula was built as a sister studio to the perhaps more famous Tambourine Studios, birthplace of most Cardigans and Eggstone albums. More than the gear; the space, atmosphere, and natural lighting is wonderful. Two more pics of the great room from the Gula site.

Eggstone update! A bit of googling around just unearthed a copy of the ridiculously OOP last Eggstone album on Amazon UK for £7. The order is in, I hope this works out. At least one other seller out there is holding out for $70. I wonder what Josh paid…

[1] pic from an excellent article on the recording of the first Franz Ferdinand album.

Alachua County Library Bookmarklet

 

Whenever you’re on a page with an ISBN in the URL, like Amazon or some other bookish site, activate ACL to pop-up a search for that book within the Alachua County Library Catalog.

This was generated with the LibraryLookup Project‘s Bookmarklet builder, which can build a similar bookmarklet for any library using one of 16 popular web catalog systems. Very nice. People are also turning these into Greasemonkey/UserJS scripts so you don’t even have to click; when the page loads, your browser queries the library and adds a link to the page like “This book is available now at the library!”. Some even report back how many copies at which branches, etc..

The great thing about bookmarklets and userscripts is that with a tiny bit of code you can force independent systems to work together for your benefit. Um..also because I can save these crazy YouTube videos the kids seem to love.

Feeling better, thanks

 

Wednesday morning I came down with a cold/virus/something and for three days my temperature bounced between 97 and over 100. Wed evening I had terrible abdominal pain and was paranoid it was some sort of appendicitis or something so we spent two hours at the Shands emergency clinic until I just couldn’t stand to sit there anymore (we heard some people had been waiting 5 hours). I took a triple dose of Advil and went to bed. Thursday was dull, I don’t remember much other than being supremely frustrated not being able to sleep from coughing. I came to the conclusion that I’d just have to sleep sitting up somehow. I tried this in bed, on the living room sofa and finally made it to sleep out of pure exhaustion, but only after Kathleen gave up trying to get any sleep next to me and she slept in the guest bedroom. Fed up from my 3 hrs of sleep, Friday I went to a walk-in clinic, where they tested for the flu (negative) and sent me home with antibiotics and cough medicine with codeine. I’ve been able to sleep, but I have to admit regular old Nyquil knocked me out better than the codeine has.

And now it’s a cool Sunday night. Kathleen and her mom are doing something in the craft room, Evey is roaming trying to figure out who to hang out with. Laundry’s spinning, The Last Beautiful Day is sounding great as ever. I rearranged my office desk a bit and I don’t know if it’s more attractive or comfortable, but it’s at least different and a step away from the standard level of mess. Over the weekend Kathleen finished painting the office and we finished watching season 1 of the sci-fi series Farscape. I upgraded to WordPress 2.0 and finally took my Jazzmaster to a friend to have the new bridge and tailpiece installed. We’ve loaded up the van with a bunch of equipment that we’re glad to see out of the house. Today’s been a nice time of checking off todos after a mostly wasted week.