Wednesday, July 6th, 2005
WindowMaker v0.92.0 was released a couple of days ago. The last release (0.91.0) was made nine months ago.
I’ve been using WindowMaker as my window manager ever since I started using GNU/Linux. I’ve tried out just about every window manager out there, but none are as good as WindowMaker. It does, however, still contain some annoying bugs; some of which have been fixed in this release:
– fixed bug with windows shrinking to very small sizes when Unmaximize was used on them, after they were closed in a maximized state.
The full list of changes lists all the changes for this release.
I wonder when they’ll fix the bug where all windows on a virtual desktop lose focus when you change to a desktop that doesn’t have any open windows. This’ll probably take a while since most WindowMaker users seem to be using the Dock and Clip which might just cause this bug not to show up.
I’ve been thinking about doing some development on WindowMaker myself. Particularly, I’d like to see these things implemented:
- Bugfix for the bug mentioned above
- Horizontally growing ‘Windows’ menu. Right now window titles are cut off way too short.
- Some of the features available in wmakerconf aren’t available in WPrefs
But since I haven’t the time for even the most basic maintenance of certain things, I guess I’ll never get round to it.
Monday, June 27th, 2005
You know.. a language that has two different, non-interchangable, types for integers is a language I’ll never trust to do anything right.
Especially when I try to compare two numeric values (an int and Integer) with eachother and it starts spouting errors like this:
*** Semantic Error: The type of this expression, "java.lang.Integer", is not numeric.
Brilliant! A non-numeric integer! How does that work? (Yeah, yeah, I know there’s reasons for it; don’t get technical on me. It’s FUBAR, that’s what it is).
This is the first language I ever worked with that doesn’t allow me to compare two numeric values without casting an integer to a different type of integer.
Java is such a waste of time. It’s supposed to be such a big convenience to program in, but I’m wasting about 50% of my programming time converting one type of thing to another. The API is horribly inconsistent; one date manipulating function requires a Date object, the other requires a SimpleDateFormat object, etc. It’s tiring
It’s not even that I wish Java was weakly typed or anything. It just seems the language API was designed by twelve different people who never even communicated with eachother while doing so. Java’s API is even worse than PHP’s when it comes to inconsistancy, and that’s saying a lot.
Monday, June 27th, 2005
Mail and websites are working correctly again.
Some people that have a mail account on this machine might notice that spam/virusses are being sent to their accounts. These claim to come fron e-mail addresses like info@electricmonk.nl and support@electricmonk.nl. This is, of course, not true. Please ignore/delete any mail claiming to be from the maintainers of this machine.
Sunday, June 26th, 2005
This server is currently being upgraded to the newest version of Debian GNU/Linux. Since this server isn’t overly important and I’m lazy, I haven’t take the time to create a staging environment to prepare the roll-out of the upgrade. Therefor, certain services may not be available until I get around to modifying the configuration. Most notably, the following things may not work properly:
Mail
Both receiving and sending of e-mail may not work correctly. The web-based email wont work for a small period of time. The mail server’s configuration has to be updated and perhaps the web-based email’s code will have to be adapted to the new version of PHP.
FTP
FTP services have not been suspended but may not work properly.
Websites
Due to the new version of the webserver (Apache 2.x) and the upgrade to PHP v5.x, certain websites or parts of websites may not work correctly. If you spot any non-working parts of websites, please notify me.
I’ll spend the rest of the day configuring and upgrading various programs and services. I hope to have at least the above mentioned services up by the end of the day.
Thank you for your patience.
Friday, June 24th, 2005
Smoke looks cool.
Via J-walk blog
Thursday, June 23rd, 2005
It’s time to make it official: The Hyperion Cantos are my favorite series of books ever. I just finished the last part, Rise Of Endymion, which was absolutely brilliant. Just like the others:
- Hyperion
- The Fall of Hyperion
- Endymion
- Rise of Endymion
Here’s the current list of my favorite books (or series of books, if applicable), in no particular order because otherwise they’d all share the first place:
There are a couple more on my list, but these are the most important ones. And the Hyperion Cantos is on top. I finished the last two parts in about 4 days, averaging about 300 pages per day. It’s not often that I’m thrilled at the end of my workday just because I want to continue reading a book.
One of the downsides of having finished reading a series is the, how shall I describe it, sense of loss you get because there are no more books in the series. You’d wish they just kept going on and on. Hell, some series actually seem to do so.
So.. Now I’m left wondering what to read next. One thing’s for sure; it’s bound to be a let-down compared to Rise of Endymion.
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2005
For the last couple of years I’ve worked almost exclusively with the Debian GNU/Linux Operating System. The last version of the dreaded Windows Operating System I really used was Windows 98. I’d heard some good things about Windows 2000 and Windows XP, and have even installed Windows 2000 for a while on my desktop machine at home, even though I hardly ever used it.
So when I got my new workstation at work, I decided to put Windows 2000 on it, just like my previous workstation (which I also almost never used.. I preferred my Debian laptop), with the full intention of really using it to do some useful things.
After working on the machine for ten minutes after the installation was complete, I was already fed up with it. This is one bad OS. Incredible. Even the most basic things capabilities every OS should have, for instance multi-user, are buggy and unworkable.
I wanted to install an application on the machine, but I wasn’t Administrator. Apparently, one can only install applications as Administrator. So I held the Shift key down and right-clicked on Run as... in order to install the application as Administrator. The application installed itself. So far so good. But I didn’t like the application, so I decided to uninstall it. I went to the Configuration panel and Shift + Right-clicked the Add / Remove Programs icon and ran it as Administrator. But it wouldn’t let me uninstall applications?! The button was there, sure, but it didn’t do anything?!. First off all, if I can’t uninstall applications (even though I supposedly was Administrator) it shouldn’t show me a button to uninstall applications. Second, it should show an error message when ever it doesn’t do what I think it’s gonna do. So much for multi-user, a feature that has been in real Operating Systems (Unix) since day one.
Next I tried to.. oh, wait! Windows crashed again. That’s the second time in the first day I’m running Windows. Score so far: Debian GNU/Linux: 6 times in 9 years; Windows 2000: 2 times in 1 day. Nice.
Okay, so I wanted to open an FTP site in this Explodrer thingy. So I entered the URL: ftp://todsah@electricmonk.nl and waited… and waited… and waited.. and finally fell asleep. I killed Explorer and tried again. This time, after about 3 minutes of waiting, it showed me a dialog in which I could enter my password. Having done so, I waited another couple of minutes which I spent by connecting to the same FTP server with FTP on my Debian Laptop, downloading some files and closing the connection again. Finally Windows decided to log me in and I could get to work. But wait.. The fine programmers at Microsoft completely forgot to add an option to browse the parent directory of the FTP site. Pressing the little tiny Up Arrow button simply landed me on my default internet explorer page (MSN commercial crap). I searched and searched, but all to no avail. I couldn’t leave my home directory on the FTP server. Great FTP client implementation guys! Not!
I gave it one more try by adding the FTP site as a Network Place, but Windows decided to crash the entire OS instead of connecting to the FTP server. The entire OS CRASHED when I tried to connect to an FTP server.
Windows is, what, ten to fifteen years old by now? One would expect a little stability by this time. One would at least expect the features present in the OS to work half of the time. Alas, tis of no use!
I’m sure some people will mail me or tell me that everything’s become much better as of Windows XP. Yeah, right.. That’s what they said about 98, ME and 2000 too.
You know those warnings they put on packs of cigarette’s in the Netherlands?
WINDOWS CAUSES HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE AND MAY DRIVE YOU INSANE
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2005
(Sorry, dutch)
Injeholland.nl moet naam wijzigen.
DEN HAAG – De maker van protestsite Injeholland.nl moet de domeinnaam inleveren en hij mag de naam Injeholland niet meer gebruiken. Gebruik van de naam schaadt de reputatie van Hogeschool Inholland en vormt een inbreuk op het merkrecht, oordeelde de voorzieningenrechtbank in Den Haag dinsdag in een kort geding dat de onderwijsinstelling had aangespannen.
De overige eisen van Hogeschool Inholland wees de rechter af. Kritiek op de site valt onder de vrijheid van meningsuiting, bedreigingen, beledigingen en beschuldigingen in het gastenboek moeten met een korrel zout worden genomen, staat in de uitspraak.
Voor hetzelfde ‘vergrijp’ ben ik een keer van het Technisch College Ede afgeschopt. Stonden ze toch niet helemaal in hun recht, blijkt maar weer. Maar ja, als kleine scholier opboksen tegen een onderwijsinstelling als het A12 regime is, zelfs als je in je recht staat, natuurlijk onbegonnen werk. Het gewicht een beetje rondgooien, wat druk uitoefenen en wat dreigementen maken en je staat als arme student al snel tegen de muur.
Dat ik van die school afgeschopt ben vind ik nog niet eens het ergste. Het feit dat er met de klachten van mij en vele, vele medescholieren gewoon nooit iets gedaan is vind ik echter wel kwalijk. Maar ja, we hebben het dan ook over het Technisch College Ede, het grootste stuurloze schip van de nederlandse onderwijsinstellingen. Het TCE, waar woorden als bestuur, kwaliteit en zelfs hygiene niet lijken voor te komen in het woordenboek . Het TCE, waar men kritiek liever de kop indrukt in plaats van dit op te nemen als indicatie dat er misschien wat verkeerd zit in de organisatie. Het TCE, waar het de normaalste zaak van de wereld is om 18-jarige te intimideren tijdens gesprekken die nog het meeste weghebben van de Spaanse Inquisitie.
Leuk is dan wel weer dat, zelfs jaren later, mensen je werk nog steeds kennen en eren. “Oh, was jij dat van die site joh?! Goed werk!“.
Na aan het Technisch College Ede gestudeerd te hebben vallen alle andere onderwijsinstellingen mee. Waar andere klaagden over de organisatie van de HAN was het enige wat ik kon denken “Ach, vergeleken met het TCE is het hier best okay geregeld”. Een redelijke indicatie van de kwaliteit van TCE lijkt mij.
Het heeft ook even geduurd voordat ik begreep waarom het TCE zo hoog aangeschreven stond, volgens het TCE zelf althans, door andere opleidingen. Studenten van het TCE begrijpen dat je ten alle tijden alles zelf moet regelen, zelf in de gaten moet houden, zelf actie moet ondernemen wanneer het niet goed geregeld is, zelf je zaken op een rijtje moet houden, kortom alles zelf moet doen. Studenten van het TCE gaan niet zitten wachten totdat een docent een verhaaltje afsteekt want de kans was op het TCE nogal groot dat er niet eens een docent aanwezig was. Met andere woorden, studenten van het TCE zijn zelfstandig.
Toch nog iets positiefs aan het TCE. Een beetje mager is het wel, gezien de hoeveelheid geld die je er aan moet betalen.
Mocht deze post binnenkort op mysterieuze wijze verdwijnen, dan kan je wel raden wie er een brief met dure advocaten-taal heeft verstuurd naar mijn adres…
Tuesday, June 21st, 2005
A while ago, I wrote a little piece on two types of programmers. The practical programmer and the acadamic programmer. This article describes it better, eventhough it’s much more focused on the shipping end-product.
Some excerpts:
One day I went to a brown bag lunch, and a lead architect proudly proclaimed that he had used every GoF Design Pattern in a project. What he failed to mention was that the software didn’t live up to the customer’s expectations. It didn’t work.
There are two types of people in this industry. Talkers and Doers. ObjectSpace was a company of talkers. Adobe is a company of doers. Adobe took in $430 million in revenue last quarter. ObjectSpace is long bankrupt.
Friday, June 17th, 2005
I’ve been completely void of inspiration lately. I haven’t hacked up any cool projects in weeks; no new articles written; e-mail requiring replies lying in my Inbox for weeks now. All I’ve done in the last couple of days is reading, reading and reading. Almost finished the Hyperion Cantos. But no programming whatsoever. No nethack. No nice additions to the Playground, just some quick hacks.
Oh well, I can only hope it’ll pass over soon.
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