July 22, 2007

Supporting Standards vs. Supporting all Testcases

So I’ve been working on a side app that connects to remote servers. While writing validation code for inputs, I came across an interesting dilemma. I’d like to validate an address input to be valid- be it a hostname, domainname, or ip address. Unfortunately it’s not as simple as it sounds. According to the domain name RFC, section 3.5 domain names must start with a letter, end with a letter or number, and can have letters, numbers or hyphens in between.

July 10, 2007

Finding a Hobby

So Jackie’s been sitting at home with Ian for 4 months now and is incredibly bored. All she every does is read. I suggested a hobby, but she doesn’t really have any (except scrapbooking, which is expensive)- So what I want to do is get some ideas from all the people who read my site. Here are the base rules: cheap- no more than $25 start up cost and that must last 3 weeks.

July 3, 2007

I hate those meeses to pieces

So some time in the middle of the night, I’m awoken by this strange, high pitch squeaking sound- almost a whistle. I could hear movement in the other room, so I figured it was the cats playing with a toy.In Truth, the cats have ADD and usually stop after about 10 seconds or so, but this kept going… 20.. 30 seconds. I finally got up and walked into the other room to see chaos playing with a live mouse.

July 1, 2007

What I Dislike About Python

Since I began working on the Luma project, I’ve been playing a lot with Python, a language that I’ve been around for years but never bothered to learn. Since Luma is written in Python and I’m not on the team, I figured it was time to jump in feet first. Coming from a perl/php/ruby/java background, it wasn’t a big leap to make. However, the more I read and write, the less I like it.

June 24, 2007

Review: Legend of the Dragon

Summary: Horrible- do not buy. Jackie was planning on being out of town this weekend, so I asked her to rent a random Wii game for me while she was gone. She came back with Legend of the Dragon- looking at the cover it appeared to be some sort of RPG, and she knew I liked those so she picked it up. Once I fired it up, I found the fatal flaw of this plan.

June 10, 2007

BusyBusy

So I just realized that I’ve become uber busy as of late. My current side projects look like this: – Warhammer Army builder for ChrisP written in Ruby (on Rails) – reviving radio.morgajel.com and rebuilding my stream (RoR, again) – SecretWord module and Logging for Ziggy (Perl + Po::Co::IRC) – ImportLDIF plugin for Luma This isn’t including the miniature painting, work, or Ian. The weird part is it feels nice to be busy- but only when it’s busy on my terms 🙂

June 8, 2007

Giving Back

I’ve been using and promoting open source for about 7 years now- it started back in 2000 when I began writing php and playing with apache. In 2003 I made the full switch to Linux. Since then I’ve produced several small little projects and put them under the GPL in hopes that it would help someone else. I’ve also written many articles and how-tos for my site to help spread what I’ve learned.

June 3, 2007

How to make Slashdot useful

Slashdot is full of random crap, cliches and trolls- but buried deep within this pile of refuse is some useful and interesting info waiting to get out. The following is my checklist to find the relevant posts: 1) only read stories that actually look interesting. It seems like a simple thing, but it’s completely overlooked. As heart-warming as it is to read about them recovering Scotty’s ashes, it’ll be a waste of half an hour reading the same old rehashed star trek jokes.

June 2, 2007

New Routine

So I’m going to attempt a new routine- waking up at 6:30 and hitting the gym for 25 minutes every morning. It’s a 5 minute walk over to the gym, so I can get that done, hit the shower, and have plenty of time to get ready in the morning. The goal is to do this every morning, and after a month or so maybe scale back on weekends. I started on a saturday so I can get in the swing of it before the work week starts.

April 14, 2007

New Grill

FINALLY, after 4 years, I’ve got a grill again. The last time I had a grill, it was charcoal and at Brook Meadow. This time we’re going with basically a potbelly gas grill- small enough to be portable, big enough to grill 2 steaks. Somewhere around here I have my old bbq grill utensils. Gotta find those then I’ll be having steak and pork for dinner.