ImageMagick book
MythTV book
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Fri, 31 Dec 2004
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Bulk transfer dumping
I'm just finishing up integrating and testing the bulk transfer decode patch from Hin-Tak Leung, which will mean that the next version of usblogdump will include decoding for interrupt and bulk transfers, which will be nice. That means that it has all the decoding smarts it needs for the USB stepper motor I am playing with at the moment. I'll give more details on that later, as having a decoded dump is just a step along the way to understanding how the device works.
I've also pulled the regression test suite out of the main download, which will make that a lot smaller. I've also started compressing the regression output, which is something that I should have been doing all along.
If anyone has usblog files their having trouble decoding, now is the time to let me know while I'm on a roll...
posted at: 15:25 | path: /usblogdump | permanent link to this entry
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How to consume all your bandwidth in one easy step
When I restart Mozilla Firefox, it loads all the tabs I had loaded before (did you know you can set your homepage to a set of tabs, not just one page? How do I get Mozilla to auto-magically remember which tabs I had opened last time?). For the G'Day world pod-cast, I get:
Bandwidth Limit Exceeded
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.
So I guess the way to use up all your bandwidth is to start a pod-cast. Heh.
posted at: 08:42 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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Is Andrew hypoglycemic?
This is the question for the day, for which he is having a urine test and a blood test. The symptoms seem to point in that direction -- he's happy in the mornings when he wakes up, but some afternoon naps (perhaps half to a third of them?) he wakes us screaming irrationally, and wont settle down until we given him some sugar of some form, for example a lolly, candy, or fruit juice. I guess we'll find out the answer soon enough...
posted at: 06:41 | path: /andrew | permanent link to this entry
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Thu, 30 Dec 2004
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Hacking on usblogdump again
Well, I've spent some of the evening mostly ignoring Happy Gilmore and hacking away on usblogdump. The motivation? Well, I needed bulk and interrupt transfers to work better to help me analyze a USB stepper motor I'm playing with at the moment. Anyways, I've got that working but it has introduced some fairly significant regressions in the rest of the parsing test suite. I'll look into those hopefully tomorrow, and then have something more worth talking about here.
Anyways, just wanted y'all to know there is movement at the station.
posted at: 21:45 | path: /usblogdump | permanent link to this entry
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Fri, 24 Dec 2004
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scp oddness for the day
-C (compress data stream) and -l (limit bandwidth used) conflict with each other? How? Well, I was copying a very compressible file, in fact, I was transferring 200 k-bytes per second on a link capable of 25 k-bytes per second when I noticed this. scp is using the actual delta on disc as the metric for bandwidth used, so when I ask for it to limit the bandwidth, it gets real confused by the 200 k-byte speed, and ends up tapering to a tenth of the request bandwidth.
Interesting.
posted at: 21:56 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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Going quiet for a little while
So, with rather good timing, my RSI has started acting up again. I suspect it has something to do with spending two solid days typing XML comments into C# code -- those angle brackets are a killer. Anyways, luckily it's the holiday season, so I don't have to be back in the office until Thursday next week. That will give my anti-inflamatories (something called Mobic) time to kick in. They've previously been very good, so I have hopes for them this time too.
posted at: 21:52 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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Thu, 23 Dec 2004
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Cheap wine and a three headed goat
I am extremely disappointed to learn that I've had the lyrics wrong all this time.
posted at: 08:51 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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Wed, 22 Dec 2004
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XML documentation comments
I spent the morning hacking on XML documentation comments for the web service I have been working on for the last six months. The goal is to have user documentation for the API auto-magically generated from XML comments in the code. Remembering that this is all being done with Visual Studio 2003, I must say that I am finding the XML documentation comment support a little half baked. There's no support for C++. You can't get to the XML comments content via reflection. There doesn't seem to be a way to add a seealso to a different method in a class (just members as best as I can tell from the documentation).
I'm told a bunch of this gets better in Whidbey. Here's hoping.
posted at: 18:32 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry
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Heh
posted at: 14:05 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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Silly question for the day
If people are concerned about the amount of bandwidth that is being used by RSS feeds being downloaded every hour or whatever to check for changes, then why doesn't the next version of the RSS specification just implement a "ask me again in x minutes" field? I've read the RSS spec a while ago, and I don't remember anything like that being there, although I might just be senile (I haven't checked that it really isn't there before writing this).
It just strikes me as silly that my aggregator pulls updates for every feed every 90 minutes (that's what I configured it to) when some feeds clearly change every 10 minutes, all day (think news sites), some feeds update a lot during business hours (think of those corporate bloggers out there -- even I don't tend to write much when I'm asleep), and other sites only update every couple of days. Surely the only person who knows how often they're likely to update their blog is the person writing it? Also, it would mean that people who are concerned about bandwidth usage, but do update often (like Robert Scoble) could just implement some form of tapering by telling people to not download a new copy of the XML file every 12 nanoseconds.
Then we could wait a couple of years. And then punish the aggregators who don't respect our wishes like Slashdot does now.
posted at: 13:58 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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New obsession -- collecting GPS data for Canberra roads
I've been finding recently that I've been getting a bit bored with life recently. Only some bits of it though, like my daily commute. This maps nicely with my new obsession, which is collecting GPS data for Canberra's roads. I've therefore been doing funny things like driving home in different ways, and driving down every street in my suburb.
I have data for about half of the streets in my neighborhood now, and lots of the linking roads which join the various areas of Canberra together. Now I just need to work out what to do with this data. So far I graph it, but that's not very exciting. Any suggestions? Ultimately I'll make it available online for free, although I want more data before I make that step.
Speaking of which -- do you have data you would like to donate? I'll anonymize the data for you, so that your wife doesn't know why you were driving around Turner at 4am, and at what speed you specifically were travelling (although that is easy to infer, and my graphing app uses it at the moment to help you draw congestion conclusions), but no one will know it was you, so that's ok. I currently have a parser for NMEA commands, but I can work out other formats if you do want to donate.
If you're interested, drop me a line.
posted at: 13:35 | path: /gps | permanent link to this entry
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Tue, 21 Dec 2004
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Self-referential back slapping
In the vein of the self-referential, and self-congratulatory tone that some bloggers seem to feel is the mark of status for us online diarizers, I apologize to Steven for misinterpreting the gist of his post. By the way, is anyone else rubbed the wrong way by the implication that having an online diary will somehow solve world hunger?
Sure, it's nice to know what people are doing. Sure, it's kinda cool. However, a lot of people seem to spend a lot of time just discussing the discussion with each other. Lots of people have had online diaries going back a long way after all, well before blogging was an interesting term. This diary has posts going back to 2000 after all.
The most useful thing I've found with blogging? It creates a huge database on Google available content (it's the technical stuff I care about there, but I imagine there are lots of other forms of content as well out there). Now, that's something which makes the world a better place. That's why I keep an online diary by the way -- so I can find things I learnt two years ago again when I need them.
posted at: 21:54 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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It's a bloody penguin!
Just heard that through my open front door. It seems that some people take a little while to work out what Christmas lights are all about. I didn't have enough time / inspiration to decide what to make this year, so I'm just running with last years. I'm thinking of perhaps something USB controlled next year, as I had difficulties working out how to solve some control problems until I happened upon a copy of the excellent USB Complete. If you care about how USB works (including high speed 2.0) I recommend it.
Perhaps something a little more vendor neutral is in order next year? Or perhaps not. It depends on if Microsoft has stomped on Mono by then...
posted at: 21:44 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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Ocean's 11
Well, I just finished watching the DVD of Ocean's 11 in order to study up for seeing Ocean's 12. I must say that 11 was quite good, although not the greatest film I have ever seen. Now to see 12...
posted at: 21:37 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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Mon, 20 Dec 2004
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Over analyzing music
Steve comments on Brick. He suggests that while the song is depressing, perhaps I'm over analyzing the words. Perhaps it's a personality flaw of mine or something, but I find it very hard tog get past the lyrics to songs. I don't spend hours googling to determine what each word means, but I am certainly listening to the words. To me I guess the lyrics are a specialized form of poetry.
There are certainly bands I don't like because the lyrics are boring. Even worse are the lyrics which I would describe as whiny.
Different strokes for different folks?
posted at: 10:42 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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Brick
posted at: 08:26 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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Sun, 19 Dec 2004
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Compiling SnoopyPro
Once again I had a need to compile SnoopyPro, and once again after about 45 minutes of effort I gave up. I came to the simple conclusion that because I have the log files already, and just want to step through the analysis of those, I have no real need to almost all of the code in the project... I just need the SnoopyPro bit to compile so I can run it in the debugger.
To get SnoopyPro itself to compile, all I needed to do was edit the resource file so that there were no references to the .sys files which the driver builds. You can put anything here really, so long as it is a real file on disc... I used readme.txt.
Magically, now I have a Visual Studio 2003 solution with just SnoopyPro, which compiles nicely for me. I've made it available for download here in case I need it again.
(You'll still need the device driver kit from MSDN installed, as you need usbioctl.h. For Windows Server 2003, this is in the c:\winddk\3790\inc\wnet directory, and needs to be added to the list of directories found at Tools / Options / Projects / VC++ Directories / Include files.)
posted at: 08:19 | path: /snoopypro | permanent link to this entry
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Sat, 18 Dec 2004
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TOWER Kid's Christmas party
The TOWER kid's Christmas party was this afternoon. Basically, Rohan took the profit from the drinks fridge that he and Anthony have kindly run for a while and spent it on an afternoon at the movies for all the corporate kids (and some ring ins), including ice cream, popcorn, coke, and lollies. It was a good time, and the boys survived a lot better than I expected a two year old and a one year old to manage. Andrew got bored about 15 minutes from the end, and needed to go to the toilet three times -- but he didn't wet his nappy!
The underlying premise of the movie was a little weird though... Do Americans really take Christmas so seriously? I didn't think cancelling Christmas cause your kid had moved away and going on a holiday instead was that weird at all -- I kinda like the idea.
posted at: 17:30 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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Fri, 17 Dec 2004
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Sick Twinkle Tux
Herm. Twinkle Tux just had one of it's transformers fail. I'm not sure if it was because of temperature (it was a warm day and I had left Twinkle Tux on all day as I got slack), or if it was just due to fail. Luckily I had a hot spare, so Twinkle Tux is back online once more.
posted at: 20:46 | path: /christmas | permanent link to this entry
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Thu, 16 Dec 2004
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Partial classes are really useful
Alex Hoffman comments that as best as he can determine partial classes are only useful for tool developers. That's not quite true.
Consider my current project. We have a COM SDK to our product which has something in the order of 80 first class objects, many (over a hundred?) enumerations, and a lot of methods. To get around the fairly massive amount of leg work which needed to be done to expose the relevant bits of that, I wrote a generator. The generator can take a enum (for example), and expose the values in the right way for a web service, with the right names, and arrange the casting back to the original COM data type when needed. Now, with Everett (Visual Studio 2003) I need to copy that code into the class which uses it using cut and paste. With partial classes it can sit in a file of generated bits, and the hand tooled parts of the class are elsewhere.
Now that I've done it for real, I've fallen in love with code generation. It meant that I could take a death march project and turn it into something much more relaxing in this instance, whilst knowing with greater certainty than before that everything really is exposed right and that I haven't missed an argument to a function or a enumeration entry. My boss wonders how come I am so efficient now I suspect.
I'll be using code generation techniques more in the future, and I'll therefore love partial classes when they come along.
posted at: 07:22 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry
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Wed, 15 Dec 2004
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Doh!
I think I'm going to have the flu tomorrow. I have a headache, a sore throat, and I've just started coughing. Did I mention that I feel a little out of it? Hurrah for illness!
On other news, I'm battling the .NET XML serializer. Oh, and Catherine's dad is in town.
posted at: 18:57 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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Mon, 13 Dec 2004
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SnoopyPro vs Sniff 2000
I've been playing with SnoopyPro again, after having put it on the shelf for about six months. Anyways, I needed to compile it again to make usblogdump work with some URBs I hadn't implemented the first time around. I can't get it to compile with the latest version of the Windows Device Driver toolkit. Now I'm playing with Sniff 2000, which seems to be the next iteration of the code base. I'll let you know how things go...
posted at: 20:26 | path: /phd | permanent link to this entry
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Started writing up my compression stuff
Well, I finally started writing up my compression stuff the other day. It's a little bit exciting, as there are a bunch of tools to learn on the way. I've conquered gnu plot, resizing eps (try hacking the postscript with a sed script is my advice), and now I'm onto an extended battle with latex. My newfound ACM membership helps here though -- there are a bunch of latex tutorial articles from Linux Journal in the ACM archive.
posted at: 20:24 | path: /phd | permanent link to this entry
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Microsoft Natural Keyboard vs Logitech Cordless Desktop Pro
I love natural keyboards (those ones with the funny split in the middle). I've been using a Microsoft natural keyboard for the last two years or so (after a bout of RSI or whatever it's called this week forced me to relearn how to type). They're ok, although there doesn't seem to be a wireless option, or one which does USB, which have been annoying factors recently. Especially when my new machine didn't have any PS2 shaped holes in the case.
Anyways, my reward for asking for a virus scanner update at work was a new Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse combo. It's wireless. It's natural. It's USB. It's great. I have a new favorite keyboard. the multimedia keys even work with iTunes (which isn't true of the MS keyboard).
Even better! No function lock key!
Microsoft -- USB is a spec you wrote! Get on with it!
posted at: 14:24 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry
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Dog fooding
I've spent some time over the last couple of weekends scanning documents, ripping data CDs, and entering in meta data for things to big to scan or rip, and then dumping the originals in a big box. The plan? Well, I thought it was time to get some serious dog fooding in, so I've been adding these things to TRIM. It's kinda cool -- TRIM manages what folder the bit of paper is in, in which box, in room. Hopefully I'll never wonder where on earth the documentation for the purchase of our current house is again.
It's not perfect. The next step is to write a scanning application for my scanner so that I don't have to use it's sucky TWAIN drivers any more...
posted at: 11:10 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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Thu, 09 Dec 2004
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Not waving, drowning
I can't keep up with all the email I'm getting, as well as doing my job, playing with my kids, doing a PhD, and helping organize a conference. I hereby resolve to trial reading my email only twice daily, and unsubscribing from some mailing lists.
posted at: 21:35 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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I still can't join ACM
Updated update: Ahhh, the URL on the form is wrong. https://campus.acm.org/public/QuickJoin/qj_control.cfm?form_type=Student seems to work...
Update: This still doesn't work, and no one has contacted me with a suggestion. Does ACM still exist?
So, as a part time postgraduate student I decided it was time to join the ACM. I've been trying all of this week, and I still get this error message on the sign up form:
Error Diagnostic Information
QUERY
The QUERY attribute of the tag does not specify the name of an available query
The error occurred while processing an element with a general identifier of (CFSELECT), occupying
document position (871:10) to (871:90) in the template file
F:\INETPUB\WWWROOT\PUBLIC\QUICKJOIN\QJ_PERSONAL_INFO.CFM.
Date/Time: 12/01/04 17:46:13
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041105 Firefox/1.0RC1 (Debian
package 0.99+1.0RC1-4)
Remote Address: 203.17.68.254
Query String: form_type=Student/
I tried emailing the address in the error message, with no luck. Does anyone out there know someone from the ACM who can get this fixed so I can join?
posted at: 17:10 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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Thu, 02 Dec 2004
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I can't join ACM
So, as a part time postgraduate student I decided it was time to join the ACM. I've been trying all of this week, and I still get this error message on the sign up form:
Error Diagnostic Information
QUERY
The QUERY attribute of the tag does not specify the name of an available query
The error occurred while processing an element with a general identifier of (CFSELECT), occupying
document position (871:10) to (871:90) in the template file
F:\INETPUB\WWWROOT\PUBLIC\QUICKJOIN\QJ_PERSONAL_INFO.CFM.
Date/Time: 12/01/04 17:46:13
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041105 Firefox/1.0RC1 (Debian
package 0.99+1.0RC1-4)
Remote Address: 203.17.68.254
Query String: form_type=Student/
I tried emailing the address in the error message, with no luck. Does anyone out there know someone from the ACM who can get this fixed so I can join?
posted at: 08:55 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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Wed, 01 Dec 2004
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Another thing which rocks...
These guys really deserve some linkage love. Every time I need to find a quick and dirty primer for some random technology that I am going to only care about for the next hour (until next time I need it), a Google shows up w3schools for webish stuff. For example, this second I care about xpath, but only for about two lines of code. This page meets my needs nicely.
Blogvertising over.
posted at: 08:26 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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Splitting up the archives
I know that this will break some threading in archives, and make Google searching a little harder, but given the index page for the current list archive is now 1.4 megabytes of text, and there are nearly 10,000 messages in that directory, I have split the archive off into another directory as well. I'll keep doing this (and posting something here about it) whenever this happens.
The new archives can be found here, and cover from the morning of 1 December 2004.
posted at: 08:17 | path: /aus-dotnet | permanent link to this entry
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Synergy2 rocks my world
So, I finally got the heebies with sitting in front of two laptops at home with two keyboards and two mice. It made me very sad. Luckily, Synergy came to the rescue. Now I have a Linux and a Windows box next to each other, with one wireless keyboard and mouse, and I can control both machines as if they were two heads of a dual head machine. Check it out (insert noises of rapid mouse movement between two monitors). See? It's cool.
Anyways, I've used it for 10 minutes and am therefore and expert. Go forth and download!
posted at: 07:01 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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Tue, 30 Nov 2004
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Libusb
I had a little spare time the other day (which is relatively rare for me at the moment -- we're set to have a major release of the product I work on in the next couple of weeks and that's been taking a lot of attention recently). So I thought that I should have a play with libusb and see what the story is. Where to start? Well, as someone who has never used the library before, it was a little unfriendly.
Google reports this tutorial on the front page of the search I did, and it's a little help. The project homepage at SourceForge is extremely terse. Debian has a package for 0.1.8, so I installed that. If you look in /usr/local/share/doc/libusb-dev, you get the documentation which is on the libusb website.
If you look at the CVS repository, basically the only thing which has changed in the last nine months is a include error. Even the website for libusb says that it's early alpha.
Even better, the articles from Linux Journal that used to cover this stuff are now not available for free on the web.
I give up for now.
posted at: 17:09 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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Long time no write
Well, I've had a busy time recently. I went to an AUUG board meeting in Sydney, and a Microsoft ISV day in Sydney -- making it two day trips to Sydney in one week. To round that off, I drove down to the coast with the family on the weekend, which was kinda nice. I took some pictures, but I havne't got around to emptyin my camera yet, so you'll just have to wait for those.
posted at: 16:56 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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Thu, 18 Nov 2004
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In reply to Martin
In reply to Martin's comments on the conference paper scoring process, especially in regard to inadequate abstracts. I have to agree that I can't give a high rating to someone who can only provide two sentences about their chosen topic. Especially when they're asking for travel assistance, as well as an hour of 500 people's time.
On the other hand, I like the funny ones. When it's three hours after bed time, the best thing in the world is to read an abstract which explains that object orientated people should attend a given talk as they have been historically show to be upset easily.
It doesn't change the rating I give a paper, but it sure makes the job easier.
posted at: 07:07 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry
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Wed, 17 Nov 2004
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Help! Help! I'm being held prisoner in a systems software factory
(This post might turn into hours of distraction from the task in hand, so I will try to be brief).
Way back when I was a Macintosh user. It was about the time that Apple switched to the PowerPC CPU series (System 7 I believe, I assume all of us here remember fat binaries?). The gossip in the halls, and I recall verifying it myself, was that there was an ASCII string in the code for System 7 which said something along the lines of "help! help! we're being held prisoner in a systems software factory" and was signed the blue meanies. I always assumed that they were called that as a reference to those nice folk at IBM who provided the CPUs for the machines, but apparently that's not the reason for the name.
Anyways, I'm spending the evening attending a school play (which was really quite good, and involved some nice product placement for my employer without any input from me [1]), and reviewing the 1.4 billion paper proposals for LCA. Yes, there is a constant scaling factor applied to that number, but I am sure you can work out to an order of magnitude what I am talking about. Anyways, there's some really good stuff there. I'm impressed. I sure hope I get to actually see some of the conference, as well as panicking and being grumpy.
1: There was a hobo character in the play. Apparently these school kids decided the best way of conveying hobo hood was to ware a cap from my employer. How very flattering. :)
posted at: 21:05 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry
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Mon, 15 Nov 2004
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Bug fix!
I've only verified this with .NET languages, but it works in 1.1 and 2.0 (beta 1). Anyways, this code b0rks the .NET runtime so that things stop working properly until the next reboot (as per the previous post):
using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
class Class1
{
[STAThread]
static void Main(string[] args)
{
EventLog log = new EventLog("Application", ".", "Breaker");
log.WriteEntry("This is a string: %1%");
}
}
}
Which produces the following log message:
This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: This is a string: %1%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
And the runtime corruption. Herm. Anyone wanna write the .NET killer virus?
posted at: 10:32 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry
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Sat, 13 Nov 2004
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Visual Studio 2003 appears to be punishing me for my sins
I have a a project that I've been working on for the last several months which has about 20,000 lines of code in it. The project all just worked the other day, but when I got to work yesterday morning I was suffering from what I can only describe as pointer corruption in the .NET runtime. I'd ask for a string to be written to the event log, and an entirely different string would be written. I'd pass a variable back to the client, and it would be null by the time it got there.
This is a big deal -- this has to be fixed in the next couple of days, or it's possible that we'll have to can the project, which is not an attractive solution.
Perhaps it's time for some prescription blogging.
posted at: 07:02 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry
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Fri, 12 Nov 2004
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Brilliant CVs
Heh. The Scobleizer put me onto this. It's funny that people in the office are now walking around singing someone's resume.
posted at: 09:58 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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Thu, 11 Nov 2004
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The Scobleizer asks Why can't we all just be friends?
"No one said I couldn't write about companies that use Linux, but it was implied in how they asked the question. I say hogwash. Go back to my corporate weblogger manifesto. If a competitor is doing something interesting, you might as well talk about it. My readers are smart. Smarter than I am, certainly. They all know how to use Google and Yahoo and MSN. Some even know how to use all three together." -- Robert Scoble
As a person with a foot firmly in both camps (I've been hacking on Unices of various forms since year 11 in 1994, but I write commercial Windows code for one of the most successful ISVs in Australia) I can see what he's trying to say. Having recently been in Seattle, it was interesting to note how insulated the Microsoft people are: they are all colocated on a couple of campuses; they have their own hotel near the campus I was on; their own restaurants for during lunch; their own bus system (including transit center); their own store; their own museum; the list goes on. I imagine it would be possible as a Microsoft employee to come close to never meeting someone who uses a competitors product. The only obvious exclusion to that is the various properties on the web that everyone uses -- like Google.
That attitude hurts Microsoft. A lot. I'm coming to suspect that it's why they're suffering from this us vs them image as well. Let's pick on a couple of examples to expand my point:
ADAM. ADAM is Active Directory, Application Mode. It's an instance of Active Directory that stands alone, and doesn't have a footprint on the network. Now, I can think of lots of places where an LDAP like database of user accounts and attributes is useful, but I don't have control of the network to install one. Surprisingly, people don't like having to re-engineer their entire enterprise just because they bought another enterprise product. It makes the infrastructure guys grumpy. As an ex-infrastructure guy, I can sympathize with that standpoint. Anyways, so ADAM would let me write code which does the LDAP thing, and still work on a network which doesn't do LDAP. Those people could just run ADAM on the local box which my application is using. When told about the new version of ADAM recently at an Ascend love-in, I started thinking about how we could use this thing all over the place.
And then we stopped thinking about it, and abandoned all of those plans. Why? Well, ADAM requires a SQL server instance to run. Those same customers who don't like re-engineering their world also don't like running another database. Lots of them are Oracle or DB2 shops, and don't have any SQL server skills. moreover, they don't want those skills as they're not relevant to the rest of their environment.
Another example...
Microsoft's history as a poor corporate citizen: it's nice that people think that business is war. I'm happy for them. However, business is really about value to the customer. Without customers, we're all hobos in the street. When Microsoft admitted that they had behaved in a manner which breaches anti-trust law earlier this week they should have been hi-lighting to themselves that acting in a manner which isn't aligned with what is best for the customer hurts in the long run. Sure, Microsoft made way more than half a billion from that behavior, but it's also a reputational thing. This linux thing wouldn't be so popular if people weren't so upset with Microsoft in general.
I think the turning point was about the time of the South Park movie. If a popular movie can make a joke about executing Bill Gates, and expect the world to understand, then you'd have to think that perhaps you have a PR problem. Lots of the people I know who use Linux and open source do so because of a lack of trust of Microsoft.
The corporate blogging policy of Microsoft is certainly helping with that trust restoration. At least things seem a little more open now (more on that in a second). They need to go further though. perhaps some sort of 12 step program -- the first step is to publically admit that you've made mistakes in the past. Not individually -- at a corporate level.
Another example...
File formats: I live in the ACT, which is the Australian equivalent of the District of Columbia (almost exactly). There the local government passed an open source preference law for government acquired software a year or so ago. I went to a couple of the public meetings about this law, and the logic behind the decision wasn't about hating Microsoft. It was much more about wanting to be able to read their own files in a few years, if not 200 years. Think about it. Governments are in the business of producing data. Just data. Another perhaps I should include roads and schools there as well. Anyways, you get the idea. They're really worried about the file format bit rot that happens at the moment. How is it acceptable to create millions of Word documents, and not even know if you'll be able to open them reliably in 20 years? Worse than that, the format isn't documented (unlike PDF for instance), so they can't even write their own data extraction tool in 20 years. 20 years is a short time. Imagine the legal history of the UK for instance -- they refer to documents which are hundreds of years old.
Stop changing the damn format just to stop open competition. How about competing on your merits for a bit? Competing on any other basis is merely an admission that you don't think that those other merits exist. They do -- trust them. People are actually capable of making a rational purchasing decision for themselves.
My final example...
(I'll never be a baptist minister -- I made four points, not three)
Coding for Windows is harder than for the competition: huh? Well, having done a lot of both, it's a lot more work coding for Windows. Even with tools like C# and .NET. Why? Well, Microsoft doesn't document the things they didn't expect you to do (probably because they didn't realize that you would want to do them). With open source I can always go and read the code to work out what is happening under the hood. Additionally, MSDN is horrible to search. I use Google in preference, and have for some time (about 4 years?!?). Having hundreds of random hackers blog about things is good, but it doesn't add value to MSDN, I still need Google to search all of that. What happens when I am coding off line, on a plane or something?
My brain is now empty.
posted at: 08:35 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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Tue, 09 Nov 2004
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Debian Unstable is punishing me for my sins
Herm. I just did a dist-upgrade, and now the clock on my machine is wrong. I've managed to repeat the process on another machine, and now that one is wrong too. The machines still both believe that they're in the right timezone (Australia/Canberra), but are running an hour late. It's kinda like the machine has forgotten that there was a daylight savings change a week or two ago.
Anyone got a hint as to how to fix that?
posted at: 16:45 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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Thu, 04 Nov 2004
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Pictures!
Here are some pictures of the little man...
And another set taken later that day...
posted at: 13:13 | path: /diary/puppy | permanent link to this entry
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The ultimate business use for a phone with a camera
I hear a lot of poeple around me say that SmartPhones are crap, but now that I own one, I thought I would reserve that judgement for now.
I can tell you about one useful feature though. I was doing the food shopping last night, and saw the following image in the display at the local butcher. I needs to be publicized I think, and the SmartPhone allows me to take a picture and email it to myself so that I remember to deal with it later.
Anyways, the picture?
posted at: 13:07 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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Wed, 03 Nov 2004
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I didn't vote today
Nobody cares what my opinion on the American election is anyways -- I'm not a citizen.
posted at: 13:28 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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A puppy!
Puppy (our new dog) arrives on a Qantas flight from Sydney to Canberra about 1pm today. I am tasked with collecting him from the airport, and bringing him home. I'll then be working from home for the afternoon, supervising him.
What!?! A Puppy? Yes. We puppy sat for Grant and Lindsay a couple of times in the last six months, and the boys liked the experience so much that we decided to acquire our own Labradoodle (Labrador, Poodle cross) in a hostile takeover. We've bought from Kate, who is the person who has sold five Labradoodles in the office so far.
Why a Labradoodle? Well, it's what we puppy sat and liked, they're hypo allergenic, small, have a good temperament, and are cute. Also, Burke's Backyard (a garden show here in Australia) recommends them for people with kids.
Anyways, I'll keep y'all informed, and of course post pictures when I have actually met him.
posted at: 08:22 | path: /diary/puppy | permanent link to this entry
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Tue, 02 Nov 2004
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Too many PocketPC devices
Herm. Work issued me a mobile phone yesterday. It's an i-mate SmartPhone 2, which is a PocketPC among other things. Interestingly, ActiveSync 3.7 doesn't support syncing more than one device at a time... This makes me sad.
There's a reference to the problem in one of the Microsoft expertzone chats, but all they say is that if you unplug one of the devices, then you can sync the other. That's correct, but a pain in the rear. I can't find anyone else offering a solution to the problem either.
I would have thought it would be a fairly common scenario -- I have a PocketPC for stuff which I want to take mobile, and now I have a PocketPC based phone, but I can only be syncing one at once. I'm disappointed. Even the Open Source equivalent SynCE suffers from the same problem.
posted at: 08:14 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry
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