Older blog entries for roguemtl (starting at number 22)

Thought of the day: If source code is not to be considered a form of speech (and thus protected as free speech), does this mean it to be exempt from slander and libel law? Could source code inciting a riot or otherwise threatening public health be treated in the same manner as speech of that nature? (as unlikely, perhaps, as that may be)

I started writing Conflux on August 30th; came up with the idea a couple days before. Was unable to find anything quite matching my idea, so I decided I had to implement it (and had the time to do so, since I have not been working a regular job :). Having sunk a lot of time into developing both the idea and the software, the first public release is now available from the Marble Horse Free Software Group site and from its primary home at SourceForge.

Primary distribution page for Conflux
Alternate distribution page for Conflux
Advogato project page

Conflux provides a number of useful features, both for the individual and for workgroups; lots of potential applications for this code. The basic notions are this: a perl backend (which may be run as a daemon, via cron or standalone), the collector, which performs searches on your behalf and posts the resulting URLs to a central database; a PHP3-based frontend which allows you to submit searches (to be performed now or later), view results and bundle together useful searches and search results. A number of more advanced features have already been implemented, including a family tree model for tracking search history.

A number of innovative (I think) features are planned for Conflux. The basic framework and core functionality is done, so I decided to release the first public version. Conflux currently works with MySQL (via perl DBI and php3 w/MySQL support); other database flavors will be supported in future versions (starting with postgres and DBM). Hopefully others will find this to be a useful tool :) Conflux 0.11 has been released under the GNU GPL v2 or above. Though there is enough documentation to get Conflux set up (and the user interface is mostly self-explanatory), I've been working for the last couple of days on a high- quality manual which I'll eventually release under the GNU FDL 1.1 or above. Full manual should be included with the next public release.

I've been working on a special project of my own since August 30th; I feel it has finally reached the point of basic maturity that I am ready to post. Several of the Marble Horse crew have had a peek at it and have found it useful; I've had a chance to incorporate their initial refinement list, so things are certainly heading in the right direction. First public release should be tomorrow; waiting for the sf project registration to go through now. (I will, of course post some detail and a project entry on advogato tomorrow :)

Since the move to Michigan, I've not been working a regular job. Definetely time to start looking, at this point. Ideally, I'd like to work from home; travel is a bit of an issue, due to family obligations. We shall see what happens.

I've also been pursuing two other ideas for the last month, one of which is a documentation/proposal project. The treatise has been maturing nicely and should be ready in the next couple of weeks. (Though clearly it is not a revenue generating idea at this point.)

Remember: regular exercise and a diet of food are important to sustaining ones self in the long term :)

"I was born yesterday" (some years ago); can only make this statement once a year, I suppose.

Certified straznp, a long-term friend (as far back as high school). I remember chatting with nate about the benefits of free software, pgp and things of the sort quite a few years ago. We both had freenet (in the original sense of the term; the BBS-esque system written at CWRU) accounts back in the very early 90's and frequented the local BBS scene. Nate is now working for SGI on their Linux Kernel testing suite (recently mentioned on LWN and KT). We chatted for a bit about copyright assignment things this morning.

I've been working quite a bit with phpWiki from an internal perspective; Wiki's are an excellent resource for developing your thoughts, creating outlines for projects and things of the like. Have thought of a couple useful features I'd like to implement in phpWiki if given the time.

Talked yesterday with snippy about one of the ideas I had; he took to it happily, so it may pan out. dexter goes back to class soon; heard he bailed out the local school when they encountered netware issues a day or so ago.

Have been hacking on Spruce a fair amount, though not for the last few days. Working on spinning off some of the code from Spruce which might otherwise be abandoned when one of the upstream libraries obtains sufficient support to meet Spruce's needs. 0.7.4 is out now; the release after 0.7.5 will probably have an additional chunk of my work. fejj is an excellent maintainer.

Have a few new projects going. Also took some time to visit the local library three times in the last month. They have an excellent CD selection and, of course, books. :)

Spent some time hacking on Spruce; added some new word wrap handling and corrected a SMTP-related bug. Lots of things have happened since last diary entry; much work, some play. Glad to see people accomplish long-term tasks and have patches absorbed into the mainstream.

Nearly settled.

At OLS:

Wednesday: Saw Miguel's talk; much made sense. Rik van Riel and bcrl's talk on Linux MM was excellent. They did a fantastic job of covering all of the MM territory, discussing throughput and latency in a member of contexts. Their talk was geared well to the audience, IMHO; I was rather suprised that both khemicals and I took quite so much away from the talk (a credit to the presentation abilities of riel and bcrl).

Yesterday: Saw talks by tytso (filesystems), willy (Linux on PA-RISC), sct (ext3) and the ARPsec talk. Enjoyed the first three; especially sct's talk (I have been using ext3 for a couple months now and it has been working out well; so well, in fact, that I gave wife root on one of the boxes and am much less concerned with her mucking the fs in the event that she does not do a proper shutdown.). I have an HP 715/100 sitting at home which I'll be delving into when I return home from OLS.

Today: Stayed up late to work on some code and discussion with snippy and khemicals after dinner with that pair and snippy's girlfriend. Ottawa is a fun place. Got up late and plan to attend the sessions after lunch (and make especially sure to be around for the pgp/gpg keysigning bit at 5pm).

Have spent some time over the last couple of days on GNU Privacy Guard things. Visited the Detroit Zoo today (including the Penguinarium).

Will probably pack a bag for OLS tomorrow so I can figure out what I am still missing (wife and I have not yet received the delivery of our stuff from the moving company). Parents were kind enough to deliver a pair of spare power cables so I could get my work machine powered on (only had enough cables to power on the server box previously, since most of my gear is packed away in boxes in storage controlled by the moving company in another state).

Received logo materials from Xar (bassist and artist); they have been scanned and are being discussed by the Marble Horse crew over the next few days.

Have been hacking on this and that for the last few weeks while attempting to complete a 800 mile move; one can only understand the true need for furniture having not had such things for some period of time.

sab39: I suspect many of us read the bit about Al Gore in a March 1999 article on the Wired news service covering the subject.

khemicals, snippy and I shall be attending OLS in ~two weeks. Definetely ready for that "vacation" :) If anyone would be interested in gpg keysigning with me while at OLS, feel free to drop me a note.

Wife graduated yesterday; has been a long, busy four years. In-laws are visiting; visit has been much more comfortable than in the past (wife's brothers are not yelling && screaming quite so frequently now that they've grown up). I was awarded an honorary 'Doctor of Patience' degree, along with all of the other husbands and wives of the graduates. (Patience in supporting and tolerating the long hours, rough life of having this type of student in the house; the certificate is somewhat humorous in a way, since it was done up as an honorary degree from the college, but welcome nonetheless).

It is my plan to spend some time today posting other Marble Horse project materials to our website. There are no less than four projects whose proceeds have not yet made it to the public pages; today is the day to remedy that situation.

To those who have graduated from school(s) this year: best of luck with the coming months; congratulations.

I sympathize with axboe.

Spent some time chatting with other MH devels in-person today. Good pizza to be had. Submitted my first patch to Spruce... more to follow tomorrow.

Yesterday, visited the FSF in Boston, as well as my sister.

Hacked on some miscellaneous code. Need sleep (finally).

Also visited the Delorme map store today (with their 3- story scale (including rotation) model of the Earth). Cool stuff. Also stopped at the visitor center down the road to ask why the State of Maine and Canadian flags were flying upside-down. Apparently they have a prankster in their midst.

Good day all around.