Older blog entries for mishan (starting at number 100)

I haven't posted anything here for quite a while. GtkHx development is progressing very well and I'll probably release GtkHx 0.8.10 sometime soon...aaronl and I are still working on the WordTris game and have made great progress but it is not quite ready for release yet...Currently we're working on a multiplayer networked snake game for AP Computer Science final project. I just took the exam for AP Computer Science recently and found it extremely easy; I just hope my score will be good...Life's been really turbulent and messy lately, but I don't have much to say about it here. At the moment, my server is down because Pacific Bell sucks, although they haven't given me trouble for like a year now.

Haven't posted a diary entry in a while...I'm working on a WordTris game with aaronl right now. I finally made a release of Tiger and I am discussing future cooperation with the author of TiLP (formerly GtkTiLink) and GtkTiEmu. I've also done some work on GtkHx and adding support for some stuff that Hotline 1.5+ servers support, such as threaded news. I added IPv6 support to hx/hxd, but I still need to make the tracker work with it as it stores server address in 4 bytes -- for IPv6 it will have to be 16 bytes. I still have to add IPv6 support to GtkHx <-- it isbeing a bit weird...Currently, I am reorganizing the code. Life is pretty good now.

So I got my cat back (read previous entry for information) and I'm very glad. He's changed quite a bit in the couple of months he has been missing. He's a bit more fat (someone seems to have fed him quite well) and his fur grew longer. Also, he is not as afraid of strangers now (I guess he learned not to be as he has to depend on strangers to help him.) I'm quite relieved that I got him back.

I haven't posted a diary entry in a while. Life has been very busy. I got an IBM ThinkPad 570E for...New Year's I guess since I don't celebrate Christmas or Hannukah or any such religious holiday. I got it for a few reasons -- my organization problem mostly. I hate paper and I can't organize paper. I can now take notes in emacs heh. Second, after school I can accomplish a lot of programming work but I can't do it using a lame Java SSH client on Windoze and my school has a nice wireless network. Third, I need a laptop next year anyway =P Anyway, I put up a screenshot of my laptop in action here. I just had finals last week -- I did okay on all of them except for Chemistry, which I totally bombed on. Chemistry doesn't make much sense to me, at this point in time.

Yesterday, I was contacted regarding my cat. Apparently, someone found him 10 days ago and just gained his trust a couple of days ago and they found the report I filed a couple of months ago and brought him to the shelter and contacted me. He has been wandering around the same area he ran away for a couple of months now -- the person who brought in my cat said that he asked neighbors about the cat first and they said they have been aware of it wandering around for a while now. The description of the cat fits that of my cat's perfectly, it appeared in that area around the same time mine got lost, and they found him in an area right by the apartment complex he ran away from, so I am pretty sure that this is my cat. I will go to the animal shelter as soon as I get out of school to check if it is really my cat, and if it is, I will take him home.

I have done a lot of work on GtkHx recently. I put all functions using blocking connect() into other threads so that they wouldn't lock up my main thread while trying to connect. I am also working on implementing the new threaded news protocol. I've made quite a few other change too. I predict that I will be able to make a full 1.0 release in a 2-3 months, if all goes well and I fight my laziness.

aaronl asked me to post my article here...

Recently, I wanted to package hxd/hx/ghx for Debian. So, as I was writing the package information, I came across the copyright file. I pondered for a minute thinking what the copyright line should be and what license hxd has. To my surprise there was none.

On further investigation, I found a bunch of stuff in violation of the GNU General Public License. For example hx 0.7.x had a COPYING file but it was questionable. It mentioned GPL version 69 [ or earlier ]. Obviously, Ryan Nielsen's idea of a joke. hxd 0.1.33 does not contain any COPYING file at all. It does however, contain GPL'd code from GNU Readline and strptime.

Even if hxd did not violate the GPL, it still could not be put into Debian as it has no license. Certain rights, required by the DFSG (Debian Free Software Guidlines), are not implied unless specifically stated. For example, the right to distribute modified source is not implied.

aaronl and I confronted Ryan Nielsen, the author of hxd, and asked him what was up with this. He basically said that licenses suck and expressed his unwillingness to correct this potentially serious problem. He also inquired aaronl whether he had sex with an elephant woman during this conversation.

I just found out on Wednesday that my cat ran away from my grandma's apartment three weeks ago. I am extremely depressed and at the same time extremely pissed off. Anyway, we sent my cat to my grandma's for a vacation and it turns out one day he just got access to the balcony, jumped on a tree, and ran off. And then my mom and grandmother tried to play hero and made a few HANDWRITTEN, and I repeat HANDWRITTEN, "posters" and hung them up at the retirement home. Anyway, I made a good "Lost Cat" poster and put it into mass production, I made 30 copies of it. I posted 27 copies on various streets he might have run off to and made sure that the posters were where people could see them well. I checked the two animal shelters where he could be but did not get very positive results. The nearest one, which is the one he most likely could have been to, reports that they keep cats for 7 days and then put them up for adoption. We did not find my cat and looked through many reports. We did not find any report of a cat fitting his description in the area where he ran off -- he does not like cars/noise/people he does not know, so he could not run very far! The next animal shelter was the Santa Clara Humane Society, the largest shelter on the west coast. There were quite a few cats, even cats resembling my cat -- but no match. I can now only hope that some family took him in, like I did to another cat and see my posters. I took in a cat a long time ago. He was fearless. He just ran into our house when the door was open, and my grandmother, she lived at our house, fed him and he stayed. One day he didn't come back and I heard reports of a run over cat...Anyway, my ranting on here won't help the situation...

I accomplished a lot the day after I found out he was missing. I (mostly) fixed file xfers. There's only one bug that I know of, and it's pretty minor. I released GtkHx 0.8.4 and since then I have not coded much...

I haven't written in a while. I just released GtkHx 0.8.3 and earlier this morning I moved GtkHx to sourceforge.net since LinuxAve announced they were shutting down on Jan 1, 2001. Life has been pretty good, school exhausting. I have a screenshot of the most recent GtkHx available at http://gtkhx.sourceforge.net/gtkhx.jpg

I helped a friend setup a home network yesterday. I installed Debian on one of his spare computers and setup ip masquerading. Much easier than the time I setup mine as this time I knew exactly what to do/how to do it. I'm still working on GtkHx actively -- I want to fix a few major bugs and work on file transfers before I release 0.8.2, it is looking good.

sub GtkHx {

I have done much work on GtkHx today. I weeded out many extra files and stopped my crackhead method of developing: I had a dir in which I developed GtkHx and my CVS dir which I occasionally updated. I now just have the CVS dir which I develop in, like a normal person heh. So now CVS will always be up to date and might be broken more often ;) I redid the webpage from scratch and did a lot of cleanup and weeded out a bunch of warnings. Also discovered how I could fix this one troublesome bug -- I intend to fix it tomorrow. No new features implemented but a lot of stuff fixed. Overall, a very productive day!

}

<Rant>
I woke up today around 10:30am (pretty early for a Sunday) with a strange feeling. It felt chilly and I realized something was wrong. Suddenly, everything just turned off. A power outage...The UPS in my closet started beeping. After a few minutes, I resolved to get out of bed and check on it. The server was not on. I thought that the UPS was broken as I never really tested it in a power outage. I angrily went back to bed and lay there for a while thinking..As my brain began working after my long slumber, I began thinking that perhaps I misconfigured my UPS. I went to go check on it and realized I had plugged my server into the surge protected outlet instead of the backed up outlet. BAH! I fixed this and was able to boot up my server normally. Power went back up at 12:10pm. Right now I am pretty angry at PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric) for being so incompetent...
</Rant>

<GtkHx>
I finally released GtkHx 0.8. I had to do it as the Debian package had an important bug in it and my Debian Application Manager said I had to fix this, as a final "test" I suppose, before he would recommend me to the NM committee. There are a few bugs in it, but it is pretty functional.
</GtkHx>