argent is currently certified at Master level.

Name: Peter da Silva
Member since: 2000-04-07 11:45:33
Last Login: 2008-08-20 17:15:10

FOAF RDF Share This

Homepage: http://www.taronga.com/~peter/

Notes:

  • Here's a link to another set of "diary entries" I've made... my CritLink comments. Alas, CritLink seems to have fallen off the vine.

Working for a living:

    I work at a very small division of a very big company. ABB Network Management. We build Eneregy Management Systems (control centers, hardware and software anyway) for electric utilities.

    My job title is officially "Lead Software Engineer" or "Consulting Software Engineer" or something like that. Mostly I do network administration, and then once everyone's scarpered off home I hack on hairy things that have everyone else stumped, and just about everything that has anything to do with the internet. I'm...

    Dramatic Chords

    "Network Guy".

    I like being network guy. It's pleasantly ego-building, even though the stress level sucks mostly because I'm almost the only guy in the building who bothers to keep track of this junk. Well, used to be... things got better after Nick... uh, Danger... got assimilated, though now of course they think I have all this copious free time to screw around with their petty problems. I need to delegate more stuff to him.

Projects

Articles Posted by argent

Recent blog entries by argent

Syndication: RSS 2.0
20 Aug 2008 (updated 20 Aug 2008 at 17:08 UTC) »

Long time no see.

Just want to note that I've found ALEX.

First hit was at ftp.icm.edu/pl

And someone else has archived it at www.anarres.org.

And I still want a handheld with a good scripting interface.

I still want a handheld computer with a cool scripting interface. I'm not sure a web browser is necessary, but it's something people are familiar with and it'd automatically let you integrate local and remote resources when you were online.

Personal IE comes with quite a lot of Javascript support, but it doesn't seem to have any hooks into the local databases. Oh well.

Javascript is looking better and better to me these days. Is that a bad sign? Should I take this to Badvogato?

Microsoft had the right idea, they just haven't figured out where it makes sense yet.

I'm talking about their whole web browser == the OS thing. You don't want to do that on the desktop, your applications are too heavy-duty, they break the browser metaphor, and the security issues are horrid.

But where it does make sense, is in a handheld computer. The applications you run in one of those things are, mostly, well suited to the model of filling out forms and following links.

Take an iPaq, and install a lightweight browser. No javascript or anything applety... it's a purpose-built browser, if you want special behaviour suited to the touchscreen you hardcode it in.

Then add a copy of Apache with a server-side scripting language. Maybe a bunch. I like tcl (NeoWebScript, that is), but something like REXX or Perl or even a VB clone or Javascript would be useful for people who like those.

Build in your address book applications and the like using the web server. As much as possible your user interface for EVERYTHING is through http://localhost/....

You'd want a few extensions to HTML. A mechanism to edit using rich text in entry fields (using an SGML/XML markup, of course, behind the scenes), for example, and a way to deal with large graphical objects that's better than the way things like Terraserver or Mapquest manage it. But mostly you'd do things through the browser.

It just seems like an automatic match. And with cross-database links (and look at critlink for an idea of how to synthesize them if there's not a good anchor already there... perhaps have a special tag in the URL to signify 'search the document for this string'?) you'd get some nifty epiphenomena.

It's almost worth picking up an iPaq running Linux to experiment with the idea...

What some people would consider "the ideal hacking environment" I'd consider a bare minimum. It's been a long time since I worked some place that didn't have 24 hour access, 24 hour A/C, decent lighting, and so on.

A controlled auditory environment. I can't work when the guy in the next cubicle is yelling at a vendor on the phone, and I can't work if I can't occasionally yell at a stupid vendor. Same with music. I need it sometimes, but I don't want to hear anyone else's.

Headphones are a no-go... I can't get up and move around. Maybe bluetooth headphones would solve the problem.

Lots of bookshelves. All the way to the ceiling, at least on one wall. Places to put up my posters and pictures. An expectation that *good* artwork won't get pilfered. No hassles about work-area toys.

Couch, preferably a variety of couches.

Offices have plusses and minuses. Plus: you can get away from people. Minus: people can get away from you. Cubicles really do seem more efficient, but we need get-away-from-people space. Maybe a couple of quiet rooms with couch/desktop/workstation/closed door/sound system... and a timer?

Plenty of ethernet. At least 4 ports per office VLANnable to whatever test lans you need them to be on. And as many hubs and switches as you want for in-office things.

Room for at least 3 workstations in the office, per person. Sometimes you really need to have an end-user system for end users.

A real electronic workbench you can take stuff to beat up on hardware on, including good lighting and magnifiers and soldering iron and lots of little boxes full of stuff like solder and sockets and common parts.

A full size arcade Tempest machine, in good shape.

Don't forget to keep an eye out for Alex

Lost Dog

I was looking for the ALEX global file system by Vince Cate. It was his thesis project, and it provided a really nifty way to access random FTP servers via an NFS proxy. It seems to have died a horrible death, though... the related Gecko project is rolling on, but it's really FTP land I want to get to. Anyone know whether ALEX is still alive anywhere?

9 older entries...

 

argent certified others as follows:

  • argent certified phk as Master
  • argent certified eivind as Master
  • argent certified rwatson as Master
  • argent certified gsutter as Master
  • argent certified winter as Master
  • argent certified Ward as Master

Others have certified argent as follows:

  • dan certified argent as Master
  • phaedrus certified argent as Master
  • eivind certified argent as Master
  • rwatson certified argent as Master
  • phk certified argent as Master
  • gsutter certified argent as Master
  • cynick certified argent as Master
  • asmodai certified argent as Master
  • ingvar certified argent as Master
  • cmc certified argent as Master
  • jpayne certified argent as Master
  • scromp certified argent as Master
  • hpa certified argent as Master
  • winter certified argent as Master
  • Ankh certified argent as Master
  • imp certified argent as Master
  • starshine certified argent as Master
  • sethcohn certified argent as Master
  • logic certified argent as Master
  • rkr certified argent as Master
  • plundis certified argent as Journeyer
  • nelsonrn certified argent as Master
  • gord certified argent as Master
  • cbbrowne certified argent as Master
  • couvares certified argent as Master
  • scs certified argent as Master
  • Melomel certified argent as Master
  • guardian certified argent as Journeyer
  • wichert certified argent as Master
  • stargazer certified argent as Master
  • jLoki certified argent as Master
  • careilly certified argent as Master
  • tripix certified argent as Master
  • decklin certified argent as Master
  • jrf certified argent as Master
  • pete certified argent as Master
  • kgb certified argent as Master
  • adulau certified argent as Master
  • async certified argent as Master
  • eckes certified argent as Master
  • pcburns certified argent as Master
  • mark85 certified argent as Master
  • casey certified argent as Master

[ Certification disabled because you're not logged in. ]

New Advogato Features

New HTML Parser: The long-awaited libxml2 based HTML parser code is live. It needs further work but already handles most markup better than the original parser.

Keep up with the latest Advogato features by reading the Advogato status blog.

If you're a C programmer with some spare time, take a look at the mod_virgule project page and help us with one of the tasks on the ToDo list!

X
Share this page