Welcome!
News below. You can still access the really, really long old homepage if you really, really want to. I've also recently modified my resume and the programming home page.
News
|
OpenInteract is now out and about in the world. It's even got a Sourceforge site where you can browse CVS, post bugs, get on mailing lists and the whole nine yards. It's going pretty well so far, and hopefully we'll attract some people who are interested in the design and willing to spend time with the code.
I also started the PerlMQ project. This will be a pure Perl message queue patterned after the Java Message Service API published by Sun. There's nothing on the site yet but I'm working (slowly) on some initial design ideas.
I'm finding that one of the most helpful things to do is skip about 120 steps and create a program that looks like what you'd want the final product to support. It's kind of liberating to code along without an API and think "What would I want to do next?" -- and then just type it in with the hopes that someday you'll be able to do it.
|
This article on K5 does a better job than I ever could at demonstrating how clueless so many posters are on big weblogs (like k5 and /.). I really hope I wasn't this whiny and expecting the world to owe me a job, a life or a purpose.
|
Like everyone else, I've always had headaches. But recently (last couple of years) they've started getting more severe and I've been thinking more about them, the things we eat and the things we take for granted that make our society run (relatively) smoothly.
|
First, sorry about the downtime the last couple of days. Silly hostname problem that I'll have to solve permanently sometime soon.
A few days ago I went to grab something from the grocery and on the way needed to fill up my sister's car with gas. I pulled into the BP at the corner of Murray and Forward and found that since it was past 9 PM I needed to either pay inside or at the pump with a credit card Since we're trying to get rid of the bloodsucking credit cards, I went inside.
|
A good link from the "If you needed a reason to stop eating meat department: Chicken head found in wing box.
Saw the first part of the Dune mini-series on cable. It was ok, I suppose. I have a hard time seeing how someone who hadn't read the original book (which I highly recommend) could follow along. The book is simply very complicated -- trying to summarize in two, four or even six hours is probably impossible.
How many good movies have you seen adapted from books? Of those, how many were adapted from books that were basically screenplays (see John Grisham) or were actually short stories/novellas (Blade Runner, Stand By Me)? Not too many...
|
|
A preliminary listing of people you can find in photographs is available on the people page. It's a little poky right now since each photo component is generated separately, but I'm working on that...
|
Egg on my face -- sorry for the 'template error' the last couple of days. That's what I get for building a secure environment and then not checking how things worked when I wasn't logged in. Live and learn.
|
So my new job is working out pretty well, I think. In some ways it's been pretty simple so far -- I don't have any huge deadlines bearing down on my and I'm learning an entirely new technology (Java and application server stuff). But in others it's an adjustment -- I'm getting used to little things like commuting, not being able to take a nap in the middle of the day, having people around (and talking) all the time.
It's interesting using Java full-time after having Perl running through my veins, and I suspect that my programs might have a perlish bent to them. I'm happy to see that HashMap is an included data structure, and that free regular expression libraries are readily available. Neither is as integrated as in Perl, but to a large daily usage degree that's just syntax.
Obligatory election comment: they might as well flip a coin. It would probably have as much meaning as this crap they're doing right now.
|
Finally, I've moved this website to a modern version of OpenInteract, a project I've been working on for the last seven months or so.
|
What does this mean? Well, not much for the immediate future. All the old content is still around, and the photograph archives have been moved to the new system.
However, I'm hoping to put a nifty object linking scheme in here that you'll be able to use to do some interesting photo lookups. For instance, you will be able to say "Show me all the photos with Barb in them" and get a dynamic photo album built on the fly.
I'd like to build up some additional information about each photo as well: date, location, occurrence, etc. And you'll be able to enter comments about a photo as well! (Mad libs, anyone...)
Anyway, I'll be posting more often here (rather than Advogato, where I've been posting a semi-regular diary that's focused on work stuff) and keeping this more up to date as well.
Thanks! -Chris
