Older blog entries for dmerrill (starting at number 96)

Today was my last day at work. Now I'm officially unemployed. The market does really seem to be picking up here in DC though. I have about 3 or 4 active prospects, so hopefully one will come through. Two are very interesting. Two would pay the bills.

Certed njohnso: who posted a good summary of his Free Sofware work. Would that all Advogato newbies did that!

Announced Lampadas: in this week's LDP Weekly News.

dyork: To what do you attribute your success in getting contributed docs? Whatever you're doing, you're doing it right.

ndw: Added the DocBook Wiki to the LDP's resources list, and added my own DocBook Processor to it. I have some other stuff to add as well. It looks like it will be a great resource, thanks!

kir:
It looks like Greg Ferguson is interested in ASPSeek.

dyork:
I'm only surprised nobody asked before, and of course your speculation is pretty much spot-on. Josh holds the domain, and there's been a bit of a falling-out. Here's what happened.

He told us awhile ago that he had been contacted by many different people about buying the domain, and he had met with them about it. And had signed NDAs with them, so he couldn't tell us who they were. He said he was simply interested in the dollar value of the domain because he is a businessman.

It made all (I think all, maybe just most) of us very uncomfortable that this had gone on without any of us knowing about it. We feel that any volunteer only holds such a thing in trust for the group. At one point Joshua said that he owned the domain, which made us even more uncomfortable. So we asked him to transfer the domain to iBiblio, our sponsor, a project of UNC's Library Sciences and Computer Science departments.

He said he doesn't intend to sell it, but he refuses to release the domain, despite the rest of the staff asking him to do it. So we are concerned about the situation, and figure it is better to move to a new domain now rather than have the domain pulled out from beneath us if he decides to make a few bucks off of it.

If nothing happens with the linuxdoc.org domain, it will continue to work forever. I don't know where you got the 5 years from. Our other services, such as mailing lists and cvs, are off the linuxdoc.org domain already, and we hope others will use www.tldp.org from now on.

The whole situation sucks rocks. Big craggy boulders, in fact, along with the proverbially corresponding hard place. And us in between.

Lampadas:
I've a demo up at www.lampadas.org. It is development code. No bug reports, please, I probably know about it already. Comments and suggestions are most welcome, however. Oh, and don't expect too much yet.

Some guys from the French LDP are working on a Python port, which I'm all for. What's online now is the Perl code I did myself. Current work is primarily in i18n, cvs integration, and loading of meta-data into the database from source files that provide it (DocBook, and LinuxDoc to a lesser degree).

It has also been suggested to use Zope, but I am not convinced of the benefit.

Lampadas:
Plug, plug, plugging away at Perl module-ization. The LDP Database was client-server -- simple scripts that read from the database and generated HTML. The current design is much, much more modular. There's an underlying library that implements an object hierarchy, then an HTML module that writes HTML primitives or "widgets" (combo boxes, etc.), then a layer that generates tables (such as a table listing the users, a table listing the documents, a table for editing a document, etc.), and finally a topmost module that generates complete pages from the lower level elements. It sounds like overkill, but I am loving the flexibility it gives me.

And the library module should be useful in doing other things with the data in the future (like writing out XML).

I'm being very careful to keep the system working at all times, as I gradually push bit by bit of the code down deeper into the library structure. This is a very good exercise, and is much better than doing a complete rewrite from scratch.

I'm making lots of progress. I'm perhaps half way through with this part of the project, after 3 weeks. There is much more left to do. But once I have the code in a more modular state, implementing the additional features should be much easier. It was starting to feel like a house of cards. Now it feels much more solid, and the web interface itself is hugely better. Big wins all around.

Debian:
Meeting a few Debian developers here in DC tonight for a mini-keysigning. (I just started the process of becoming a Debian developer officially). It will be nice to meet some more local hackers.

jcv:
I understood. I was just ranting along with you!

Lampadas:
Finished merging user/editor/maintainer tables into a single username table, and updating the web interface and other scripts. Next: dropping mod_auth and using cookies instead.

jcv:
Microsoft can kiss my *. It's sure strange how I manage to plow some fairly sizeable Free Software work on my own time, unpaid. Doesn't sound very lazy to me.

Editorial Comment:
DV Rocks.

texi2db:
I found out last night that the latest version of Texinfo adds DocBook v3.1 output (in makeinfo, of course). So maybe I wasted some weeks of my time writing texi2db. On the other hand, having texi2db gives me the ability to control my own destiny, as it were, the logical argument in favor of not-invented-here syndrome. Even if the time was "wasted", I sure learned a lot doing it.

Lampadas:
Work is progressing very well. I have to make some big database structure changes though, to change the way user accounts and permissions are handled. It's very kludgy right now.

I found out last night that one of my friends in Florida has gone blind from CMV (Cytomegalovirus). It makes your retina deteriorate and eventually separate. CMV is one of the nastier opportunistic infections you get free with AIDS. "Act Now, and we'll throw in CMV! And for a limited time only, you can try Kaposi's Sarcoma at no extra charge!"

No, it's not funny. He's also down to 90 pounds now due to HIV-Related Wasting Syndrome. He hasn't much longer, I'm afraid. I actually hope he goes soon. He is suffering horribly.

I officially resigned as Editor of the LDP to work full time on Lampadas. Working on getting the mailing list, etc. set up so I can announce it publicly.

I've been flooded with mail from people asking why I was leaving the LDP and saying they appreciated my work there. Thanks for the sentiment, but I'm not leaving the LDP. I'm just doing different things now. And I expect my successor will actually do a better job as Editor than I did.

Lampadas
I've posted some more information about Lampadas on my home page. I'm gradually refining the plan, with the goal being to get it to the point I can realistically get additional developers to start work on the various components independently.

I really want other people to use my code, so I hope that I can get Gnome and KDE to look at it too. I know there are a few of the doc people from those projects (and other projects too) on here, so if you're one of them, go ahead and take a look and see if it looks interesting. I am intentionally separating out the functionality that is LDP specific and the functionality that has more general appeal. For example, importing Texinfo is probably something Gnome and KDE won't care about -- they're interested in producing native DocBook XML.

For the Gnome people, Lampadas does the same things that DocTable does, or at least pretty much, although it also does a lot more. Let me know where it falls short and I'll be very glad to incorporate whatever changes are needed. One I can think of off the top of my head is the need for selectable stylesheets, since each project uses their own customizations, but I'm sure there are some others.

12 Mar 2002 (updated 12 Mar 2002 at 17:55 UTC) »
Will Hack for Food
I'm starting to get seriously worried about finding a new job. I've been looking for 6 weeks and found nothing yet, but my current job ends in 2 weeks. Will I have to live off the savings I've made towards a down payment on a house? Or pull from my 401K? I sure hope not.

It seems just insane that a programmer with 20 years of experience in Unix and Windows, and some of the most common programming languages, cannot find a job.

The must frustrating thing, due to the level of stupidity it demonstrates, are employers who look at my resume and say "no, we're looking for a Windows guy" just because Linux is on my resume, despite having programmed for Windows since version 1.0. And vice versa from Unix shops. Does nobody value broad experience anymore?

If something doesn't turn up soon, I shall resort to begging.

LDP
I've finally decided on a name for the LDP development I'm doing, after thinking about it for weeks: Lampadas. That was the name of the Bene Gesserit teaching planet in Chapterhouse: Dune, which Herbert apparently took from from the name of an ancient city, which was a center of learning and scholarship. And the name of the city probably came from the ancient Greek word for "torch".

What I really like about it, though, is the story of the planet. When threatened by the Honored Matres, the students "shared" Other Memory with each other progressively, until the knowledge and memory of all was carried by every woman. It seems an appropriate analogy to the goals of the LDP and particularly the Lampadas project: to gather information from widely distributed sources, organize it, and disseminate it to the world.

Now all I have to do is turn it into a recursive acronym. :-)

Thank the Goddess the linuxdoc.org domain was renewed successfully and didn't get snatched by some pr0nmeister.

Texi2db is nearing completion. I will put out a public 0.9 release this weekend to see if I can get some wider testing. Still a couple of known bugs I have to fix first, though.

Still no job, and time is running out on my current one.

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