Sunday 25 February 2007 at 11:19 pm
Ok, I broke a tradition of gm2.ath.cx That tradition was "never buy anything, use what you already have". What'd I buy? A domain name. It won't be for gm2.ath.cx itself though, it was for Stack Underflow.
And it's up and running.
http://stackunderflow.com/
Sunday 25 February 2007 at 8:40 pm
Not quite development, progress or code related but still interesting.
You might have noticed that Mac users tend to have something that could be termed as slang for various things.
The first one is that the codenames of machines are used to refer to them in the case of laptops, but this isn't done for desktops for some reason. This is most often used in the case of G3 laptops. Wallstreet, Wallstreet II, Lombard and Pismo are the commonly used terms.
The earlier 68k / PPC laptops had numbers, and the later ones have other names.
The first of the G4 PowerBooks are known as TiBooks because of their titanium case.
The early coloured iBooks were known as "clamshell" or "toilet seat" because of their (strange) shape.
The early Quadras were known as "pizza boxes" because they were about the right thickness.
A "Mac Tool" is a straightened out paperclip
Then there's the more recent ones:
ICBM stands for Intel Chip Based Mac. That seems to be second to "Macintel" or "Mactel"... which I don't need to explain.
A "Hackintosh" is a Mac put together with parts from more than one Mac model. Although, more recently it has come to mean a standard PC with OS X running on it.
There's also "Blackbook", which referrs to the black macbook to differentiate it from the white models. The term is never used to refer to the older black G3 laptops.
As for other hardware, the small round mouse that everyone loves to hate is known as the "hockey puck" and while some of you would like to use it as one, I don't actually mind it (but that's just a matter of personal opinion, don't flame me).
The AirPort base stations are referred to as UFOs (because they look like them), but not the new square 802.11n one.
The round power adaptors that you wind the cord onto are known as yo-yos, but don't try and use it as one - be careful not to break the cord internally. As it's molded plastic, the repair method involves a hacksaw, and a tube of araldite.
A "Road Apple" is one of the slightly less successful machines released. These often happen when Apple tries to release cheap machines for the education market. (
list of them). They aren't incredibly bad, I've actually owned a few of them. They're just... annoying. Some of them are nice examples of how Apple gets ahead of it's time - the GeoPort back then is today's WinModem. We had them first :).
Moving back to the machines - the early CRT iMacs were referred to as "boat anchors" due to their heavy weight and the handle in the top. This is not a comment on their usefulness, however. And yes, you've probably heard of that video where the guy who'se complaining about Macs says "so you can tie a chain through it and use it as a boat anchor". Funny thing is, all the PC people who see it seem to be completely incapable of understanding that it's a parody (the "I edited this on a Mac" bit at the end gives it away...). Higher order intelligence lacking?
Getting even further off topic, people tend to call the Mac mini the "Mini-Mac"... but this is generally not accepted :)
The Compact Macs (early 128k/512k/Plus/Classic/SE) etc were known as "bricks" because they were near that aspect ratio, and quite cubic, as well as heavy (CRT monitor inbuilt). Or maybe it was because MacLogic (used mac shop that used to exist here in Adelaide) had a wall of them stacked up :).
I hear a lot that people say there's an alliance between the Mac and Linux users. I'd have to say it's true. But it's not because we like each other's platforms as well in all cases (I do like both OS X and Linux though). It's more because we're not using "that other OS" and liking the process of doing so :).
And it goes without a mention that only the longtime Mac users will know of things like the happy mac, the sad mac and Clarus the Dogcow. The Happy Mac was the icon that you first saw when you booted the machine, and sat in front of a checkerboard grey background. It indicated that all was well, until it got replaced with an Apple logo. There are hacks to restore it though.
The Happy Mac's evil twin, the Sad Mac told you that all was most certainly not well when you booted the machine (the power on self test failed), and there would be one or two rows of hexadecimal characters underneath it to tell you exactly what went wrong. It sat behind a sinister black background. If you were lucky, you'd also hear sounds too. You might hear four or eight chimes, the sound of bongo drums, the screech or brakes and a car crash or glass breaking, depending on which Mac you have. Now you just get a "prohibited" symbol or a kernel panic.
Clarus the Dogcow was a mythical creature (that makes the sound of "
moof " )that lived in the page setup box, until she was replaced with the person that stands there today. It's a fairly esoteric piece of Mac lore. What happened? Various conspiracy theories have been suggested, one involving Microsoft. Yes, it's sad how an icon that appeared in the page setup dialog has a life story. It's not fan fiction though, it did actually originate within Apple. Here is the
legendary TechNote 31 that discusses the dogcow. This was snuck in amongst a stack of technotes regarding the internals of and programming for the Mac released to developers. And here's
the story of technote 31.
I think that's enough...
How many of these things have
you heard of or seen?
Friday 23 February 2007 at 3:20 pm
More pictures: (click for full size)
Nightfall on the tower...
In the morning, everyone comes back to work. Note the extra kind of office.
The features that I said I wouldn't reveal yet #1 of a number that I will also not reveal: but at the moment it's not nice. That screenshot there is 1.4MB, it's a PNG, and is reloaded every 5 seconds. Don't try this over the net :)
Yes, those are IP addresses :). No, you may not use hping. I will make the table multi-lined sooner or later. Same with the one below.
A lot of floors, eh?
Oh, and I'll start giving the code some #ifdefs to specify various settings (compile platform etc).
Tuesday 20 February 2007 at 8:24 pm
Two changes:
One obvious:
3 types of office (aiming for 4, or maybe 6).
And one not so obvious: it now uses relative paths and has the resources in the .app bundle. Which means they're no longer in an absolute path, which was a hack...
There's some fun features planned... that I will not go into as of now. Yes, you'll think they are insane ideas when you hear them, but they'll be fun.
I'm not telling you what they are yet...
As for GPSTool, I should do a bit of work on that.
Saturday 10 February 2007 at 10:16 am
Runs on Ubuntu Linux, after a recompile. Simply had to change a few #include paths, and it worked. Such is the power of SDL.
I think the Win32 port may not be so incredibly easy like that though.
Friday 09 February 2007 at 11:58 pm
GPSTool
(click all thumbnails for full size)
It's beginning to work...
Hmm, that looks a bit better.
Time to give it more graphs.
XTower
Yay, SDL is behaving, and we can draw a set of floors...
... and some stairs either side
Let's put in some offices... but they're static, generated by a set of lines of code...
Yay, a title bar / menu thing. And a lobby.
Day and night.
A better lobby...
... and finally, custom building!
Thursday 08 February 2007 at 8:03 pm
I'm on the bus at about 4PM. My mobile rings. I see "anonymous" light up on the outer display of my v3x as the person who'se calling.
I might as well answer it, I'm not doing anything important. It's silent for a few seconds... then I hear another phone ringing.
I think "Has someone pulled the conference line thing on me? Am I now talking to someone else who also has no idea what's going on?"
Then someone answers. Is it a telemarketer?
Him: "Hello, my name is ..."
Hmm, no, it's not an Indian voice. Who is this?
Him: "... and I'm from Telstra. I'd like to offer you a better mobile plan."
Ok, it's a telemarketer. Might as well talk to him - let's see what Telstra say to 3's $29 cap. I'd be interested to know.
Me: "Ok, what do you have?"
Him: "How much are you spending a month on your current mobile plan?"
Me: "Twenty-nine"
Him: "Forty-nine?"
Me: "
Twenty-nine dollars"
Him: "Oh, twenty-nine. How much of calls does that include?"
Me: "About $120 worth"
Him: "Do you go over that?"
Me: "No"
He pauses for a moment.
I wonder what he's going to say next.
Him: "I'm sorry, sir, we do not have anything to offer to you. Good day"
Me (trying not to laugh): "Thanks."
I close the flip of my phone, and begin laughing. Good old Telstra, having to resort to telemarketing...
(I apologise to the non-Australian readers of this blog who may not know who Telstra is. It's a (only just recently) privately owned, but previously government-owned telephone company who owns a great chunk of the Australian telephone network, and tries to make it as hard as possible for anyone else to do anything useful...)
Monday 05 February 2007 at 8:47 pm
It's been a while.
Some updates:
The Kismet server reading code in KisMac is committed, and a build is available at
http://trac.kismac.de/.
I'm working on two projects at the moment.
One is a GPS measuring app. It has live graphs for various things. When it's done, it will calculate speeds, positions, paths, distances, delta velocities, and forces. And draw graphs for all of the above. It will also support logging to a multitude of formats. In other words, it will do a lot.
Another is a SimTower clone. Maybe not clone, as it's probably going to play quite differently. It could very well end up that the only similar thing between the two is they both have a building.
Don't ask how I got the urge to write this (one person knows, and now probably thinks I'm insane for it :) ). We'll just have to see how it turns out. It's coded against SDL, so there will be a Linux / Windows port (as well as the obligatory Mac version).
However, here's the other side of the coin. I spend a lot of time coding (possibly even too much), and it's getting me nothing.
Basically, here's the deal. When these apps are ready, I'll have some method of donating. To start off with, those that donate get a copy of the app in return. The minimum amount will only be a few dollars though.
When I've made a few dollars, it will be upgraded. There will be a paid/free version of the app. Once again, the paid version is not a large donation. Only a few dollars. If you're using the GPS app commercially, or something similar, you will need to contact me,a and we'll work something out.
After that, I'll make the app freeware, but those that donate will get something extra.
The next step is that the app will be GPL'd and set free. At this point, you're happy because it's open-source, and I'm happy becaue I've got something for it.
If you want to beta-test, contact me and we can discuss the possibility. You'll need to do the job well though.
Yes, I know how it feels to have a developer that charges for software. I know open-source is great, and I support it. And I've done a lot of work supporting the odd opensource project. KisMac being a prime example :). But it doesn't favour the developer. I don't get particularly much in return.
It seems like it doesn't cost anything to code. But it does. There's time invested into it. And time is valuable. It's even used as a currency in
this micronation. By the time both projects are finished, development "costs" in terms of time may end up being a fair amount.
Maybe I'll set hard limits on how much gets donated before the next stage. Maybe I won't. I could (and probably will) give people a link to their website and their name mentioned for donating. I could hold a competition to win something small for donating. It all depends on how these things work out.
You will see a return on your investment. It will go towards something useful that will inspire / allow future development.
If you're one of those people who doesn't want to pay anything for software, by all means, ignore these two apps. Or wait until they eventually become free/opensource. Maybe they'll become found on *that* kind of site if they become popular enough. Which would be an interesting experience.
The alternative is that I could just make it the usual expensive and horribly crippled shareware that seems to be popular. And yes, I have actually, on occasion bought the odd piece.
This also doesn't mean that my other simple projects will become closed-source or anything like that. This is just for these two.
We'll just have to see how this turns out closer to the release date.
Any questions?
