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Nine Frickin Months For This?
Date: 27/4/2006
Yes Oh Yes, Nine long bloody months, a bout of RSI, periods of despair and madness, and not but least; completely crap documentation.



It doesn't DO anything yet, but omg I'm so proud! *gloating parent*

Update: Getting more things working:

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Known Feature Requests
Date: 19/4/2006
I've been getting a bunch of similar feature requests for Scribe that I have already planned to implement for v1.89-test2 so I thought I'd just mention that bugzilla is the right place to check for existing feature requests and track their progress.

So the main points for the next release(s) are:
  • #91: Mail will be passed from the connection thread to the GUI thread during receive not at the end.
  • #92: Account preview will list new mail first, and may cache old headers as well.
  • #93: There will be a function to replicate Scribe folders to another mail2 file. This most likely will allow either a subset of folders to be replicated or all the folders, similar to the Outlook replication tool.
These seem to the functions people are missing the most.
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Linux Builds
Date: 14/4/2006
I've just spent most of the night checking out the codebase and building Lgi, LgiIde and i.File on linux. The xml project files are still very platform dependant so I'm making version for Linux and Cygwin and their associated Makefiles for the upcoming Lgi release. I'm also fixing various things that broke in the latest round of changes I'm doing for Scribe v1.89 test2. My aim is to do the next release of Scribe on Win32 and Linux at the same time. There are a bunch of Linux builds that need doing for other apps, i.Ftp, i.Hex and so on.

Currently I have Fedora 4 on my machine. And after booting between Windows and Fedora several times tonight it does highlight just how slow Linux's GUI is and also the boot/shutdown times. I guess you get what you pay for. All the classic Linux pain was still there. I had to learn how to use Yum... yet another annoying command line package utility (however it did, surprisingly, do what I asked of it). I couldn't play xvid movies out of the box. Mounting my windows drives was still all command line voodoo instead of some nice GUI tool. Ntfs drivers weren't installed by default. And the screen was shifted 16px off the right edge of the LCD. *sigh* Linux still sucks. I'm glad I have a Mac now. It makes me happy.

I will however make some small token attempt to intergrate with Gnome for font settings and mime->application lookup. No promises though. (The current Lgi codebase looks for KDE settings)
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Dump Server
Date: 13/4/2006
When you write client/server network software like an email client it's inevitable that some user, somewhere, is going to try and connect to a server that your app doesn't work with. And so it's normal to include logging in your app to capture the conversation between the client and server to a file. Scribe has an option to dump all the bytes to a log file in hex format, e.g.:
Read = 18
00000000	2B 4F 4B 20 48 65 6C 6C 6F 20 74 68 65 72 65 2E  +OK Hello there.
00000010	0D 0A                                            ..
Write = 11
00000000	55 53 45 52 20 74 65 73 74 0D 0A                 USER test..
Read = 24
00000000	2B 4F 4B 20 50 61 73 73 77 6F 72 64 20 72 65 71  +OK Password req
00000010	75 69 72 65 64 2E 0D 0A                          uired...
Write = 11
00000000	50 41 53 53 20 74 65 73 74 0D 0A                 PASS test..
Read = 16
00000000	2B 4F 4B 20 6C 6F 67 67 65 64 20 69 6E 2E 0D 0A  +OK logged in...
Write = 6
00000000	53 54 41 54 0D 0A                                STAT..
Read = 18
00000000	2B 4F 4B 20 39 33 32 20 32 35 30 34 39 31 31 39  +OK 932 25049119
00000010	0D 0A                                            ..
Write = 6
00000000	55 49 44 4C 0D 0A                                UIDL..
Read = 1024
00000000	2B 4F 4B 0D 0A 31 20 55 49 44 39 36 30 34 2D 31  +OK..1 UID9604-1
00000010	30 36 37 36 31 30 34 33 35 0D 0A 32 20 55 49 44  067610435..2 UID
00000020	39 36 30 36 2D 31 30 36 37 36 31 30 34 33 35 0D  9606-1067610435.
00000030	0A 33 20 55 49 44 39 36 31 30 2D 31 30 36 37 36  .3 UID9610-10676
00000040	31 30 34 33 35 0D 0A 34 20 55 49 44 39 36 31 31  10435..4 UID9611
...etc etc


Thats nice by itself but it really only lets you look at the data. What would be really nice is to actually be able to run your software locally under debug mode with something that made the same responses as the server in the field. So thats what "DumpServer" does, it reads in the log file and pretends to be the server in the log file, sending all the bytes under each read to the client. And it has a nice GUI as well:



Now I can fire up Scribe and get it to interact with the "server" just like the user does and hopefully find the point where things go off the rails in my own code.

How cool is that?
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Review: Belkin KVM (F1DL102U)
Date: 10/4/2006
Product: Belkin 2 port KVM (F1DL102U)

Score: 1/5

Pros:
  • Cheap (paid ~$70 AUD)
  • Neat "all in one" cables.
Cons:
  • No software support for Linux or Mac.
  • Hangs regularly
  • No reset button
After buying a Mac mini I needed a way to switch between my PC and the new Mac, so I did a little research and bought the Belkin 2 port USB KVM through a local retailer. After getting it home and plugging it in it all worked as expected. The software that allows soft switching via the keyboard only works with windows so I didn't even bother with that and I've only used the hardware switch on top of the unit. The KVM has two lights on the switch that light up when one or the other computer has the "focus". The cable system is tidy and comes with the unit, no need to buy extra cables. I like how that you have a single cable that has a bunch of fly leads on the end for VGA/USB/audio. That design is just brilliant, gets rid of a bunch of cable clutter.

Thats where the good news stops I'm afraid. Because the unit's actual job of switching between 2 computers is well lacking in a number of fundamental ways. First and foremost is the "blinking lights" problem that comes in a couple of different flavours. First version is that BOTH active lights come on at "half strength" and the KVM refuses to switch to the PC, well it does switch, just for a second and then switches back to the Mac. This usually happens when the Mac is on and selected by the KVM, and the PC boots in the other channel but it's not limited to that scenario. The other flavour is just delightful, the KVM can't decide which computer is active so it switches from one to the other every second. Back and forth endlessly switching. Both machines are on and functioning normally but the KVM just keeps switching as fast as it can. For either of these maladies the only solution is to unplug it from the computers to power cycle it and then plug it back in again. As it gets power off the USB ports, you only need to plug the USB plug on each computer. And this is happening a few times a week, so it's not some rare hardware glitch that I can ignore.

Then there is the issue of screen detection that I talked about in a previous entry where it seems that when Windows can't detect what monitor is attached, i.e. when the KVM is switched to the other computer, it decides to pick a refresh rate out of thin air. Which generally causes the average LCD to give an "Input Out Of Range" type error. Sometimes windows even chooses a different screen resolution as well. Now one would think, even assume, that Windows would be able to "Just Use The Friggin Display Options I Set(TM)" but that would be far too easy and would put whole swathes of MSCE's out of work so thus it was decreed that Windows should suck and not use the right settings. However that might not be the fault of the KVM, I expect that smarter KVM engineers would be able to come up with a solution to the windows problem. Belkin should find some of these smarter engineers and employ them. If you find yourself in this ugly sitution I heartily suggest using the RefreshForce to reign in Window's taste for trying new refresh rates.

So all in all, not much to recommend it. I'd try anything else first, and only get this unit if all else fails.
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sms.ac Scam
Date: 4/4/2006
If you ever get an invite from sms.ac delete it immediately. You really don't want to get sucked in the vortex of spam that sms.ac creates. The main problem with sms.ac is that they can send you premium SMS messages that cost you money to receive, and you can get these SMS messages without ever signing up with them (e.g.). sms.ac can also spam all you IM buddies inviting them to join merely by giving them your IM user id (e.g.).

Not only does sms.ac run an incredibly dishonest spam business but they also threaten you with legal action if you expose their true nature.

So here I am exposing their true nature :D
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