yaleman.org

I setup a Gnome desktop machine based on Gentoo on my dad’s spare laptop a couple of months back, to see if the centrino-based pile o’ junk would work properly, and it did. (for the most part) One of the things that was included in the Gnome install was Vino, a program that helps with setting up remote desktop sharing of the desktop in use. I never knew what the program’s name was, and I couldn’t work out how to get it working on my two-year-old install of Gentoo, and I didn’t want to go to all the effort of reinstalling Gnome just to hope that the program would be installed at the same time. I was cruising newsforge as I do when I’m at work, and I found out what it’s called! Hooray!

I’ve been prodded a few times into looking at Sylpheed - and now this review of the new release on linux.com may have pushed me over to the dark side. It’s a mail client that’s designed using the GTK+ libs, which is good for me - I’m a (nearly) card-carrying Gnome Junkie. I last looked at Sylpheed about 12 months ago, and when I did, it was ugly! I think it was using the original GTK libraries, which makes for some good speed (apparrently, I’ve never seen it) and it was pretty clunky. Looking at the screenshots from the site, and the information in the review, I’ve decided to see how it goes, replacing Evolution as my mail client. I’ve been using Evolution for quite a while now, ever since converting from Windows as my main desktop OS, where I was using Thunderbird (and before that, Outlook 2000) The main reason I’m looking away from Evolution is the fact that it seems to get slower and slower every time I want to use it - and the only explanation I can come to for that is its use of the file-per-folder mbox format for mail storage - and I have folders with thousands of pieces of mail in them at any time. There’s other reasons too - I don’t need a groupware program, just a mail client, and I’m trying to find something that’s a bit lighter on the memory usage as I’ll probably change from an overpowered desktop machine with pretty good specifications to a laptop with more conservative abilities soon.

Here’s a great writeup on multithreaded game scripting using a new version of Python called “Stackless.” Stackless has a slightly different approach to normal when dealing with threads, allowing for micro-threads which have what seems to be a single-byte overhead, tiny startup time and great allocation procedures. I’m going to have to look into it further for playing with some things I want to learn about, so I’m sure I’ll probably wax poetic about it on here in future. Nicely written article that brings out some good points about how game programming works too!

Well, I’m bored at work, trolling the sites on the OSDN and found a well written review of a site called Yet Another Linux Blog. I always like to see people reviewing other sites, because it’s definitely a subjective thing. YALB’s an editorial site with content based around (funnily enough) Linux issues and Open Source software and all the different things that go with it. I couldn’t get to the site from work, and now getting home, it seems that I can’t get to it at all. What a bummer. Sounds like it could have been a really cool site, but I think I’ll have to wait until he stops hosting it from his home connection or whatever he’s doing.

Well, I just finished watching the final episode of the Full Metal Alchemist series. One of the main things I’d like to say is wow. Amazingly well thought out throughout the series, a truly high quality anime. The moral of the story (as all real Japanime’s require) is conveyed throughout the story - told straight out with no explanation to start with - but explained as the series progressed. I’d have to agree with Mitchell’s description of it - it’s like crack… well, more addictive than crack, and more giggling/crying/wow factor. Now all I have to do is find a copy of the movie and watch that 🙂

Wow, this is terribly funny - lanning on a 433mhz laptop with a 10mbit network card… boy this is slow. Download speeds max out at about 800k/s, and most things are too big for the hdd to download, but oh well… it’s something to do. Except for the fact that it’s nearly 2am and I need to start work in 13 hours 🙁

Well, the Mambo CMS was kinda good, but really clunky unless you’re a big-site developer with a lot of content from different writers and running a big portal (I guess). WordPress is designed for a smaller site or blog, so that’s what I’m running now. The management backend is seriously easy to use, and I worked out how to convert the database from Mambo to WP really quickly. Yay me!

When I’m walking around work, I build up a fair bit of static electricity. It’s something to do with my shoes or my hair or something to do with how amazing I am I guess - but I build up a LOT of charge just walking a few steps. It’s mainly to do with the makeup of the soles of my shoes, since they are doc martens which have a plastic/rubber sole that’s good at building up a charge. Sometimes when I discharge (generally on things like the metal frames of doors and the cubicles) it can make quite a cracking noise, and sometimes even make quite a twitch in the muscles of my hand. It’s quite dangerous at times, hurting people if I accidentally (or intentionally) discharge through some part of their body. Then there’s this guy - the king of static electricity. Wow, I bow down to him.

Finally picked up the engine from Bryant on friday, woo hoo! $984.30 later, I’ve got myself a bottom end ready for assembly. I’ll have to get pictures when I’ve got the camera with me at the workshop, exciting times!

Ok, so I got this webcam AGES ago, and I had it working for a while - because I had installed the drivers off the CD. It’s a stupid cheap little webcam, it looks like they bought the leftover casings from Intel for their original cheap-and-cheerful webcam (I’ve had an Intel cam that looked exactly the same)

The problem is, it seems to be some sort of limited-release product according to this page. If you search for PD1100 anywhere on the Creative web site, all you’ll find is the reference to it on the “list of webcams” page. Downloading the drivers for a similar model doesn’t work, and none of the drivers I could find (admittedly, I didn’t go through EVERY driver for webcams, because this is such a slow process) would work.