libmu_cpp hacking

Today I added the FilterStream class that derives from the Stream and provides filtering mechanism, i.e. quoted-printable, base64, etc. Now I am able to run the exemplary iconv.cc. Moreover, I extended the Stream class and successfully ran new murun.cc.

I think the project work is slowly going in the right direction, but there is still a lot of work to be done. I definitely must put more effort into this. I wish I had more free time...

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View from my apartment.

A reflection upon...

It's almost a rule that every music band releases an album of singles, often calling it "The best of ...", etc. This !@#$#*. First of all, because it is (I believe) only about money. Second of all, if you're a fan of any group, then you usually have all the albums and you don't need the stuff like this. It's even more annoying when, as an addition, the singles collection contains a bonus material, like one or two new songs never released before. Sigh.

This time it is Placebo. The band announced that on 25 October they will release a collection of their singles-to-date, entitled Once More With Feeling: Singles 1996-2004. I have all their four albums (each absolutely great) and normally I wouldn't do that, but this time I'm going to make an exception and buy it (but of course only if I will like the two new songs).

Anyway, I don't like the idea of releasing the singles collection when a band or artist is still active.

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As every week this summer, I spent the Saturday outside the city. This time I took fifty new photos. I'll put some of them here in a future.

libmu_cpp hacking

I added overloaded [] operator to Mailbox and Header. This small hack allows to replace the code like this:

Message msg = mbox.GetMessage (1);
Header hdr = msg.GetHeader ();
cout << hdr.GetValue ("From") << " "
     << hdr.GetValue ("Subject") << endl;
with this: 
Message msg = mbox[1];
Header hdr = msg.GetHeader ();
cout << hdr["From"] << " "
     << hdr["Subject"] << endl;

I think it's quite nice :). I will also use this scheme in other parts of the library.

blogRight!

Sergey hacked the code for generating the calendar. Good work, man! I just adjusted it to generate the layout I use here.

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Software

Anubis: A lot of new stuff. First of all, we finally have a long-awaited Dixie's testsuite. Second of all, it's now possible to omit the `account' field. Now we need more Dixie's specific tests. We have also a plan to rewrite and improve the error handling subsystem, because the current doesn't suit our needs anymore (and it's awful). BTW, thanks Sergey for the great work!

libmu_cpp: Added the Mailcap class alongside with the exemplary program.
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I spent the evening with Paulina and Robert and we went to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. This film is original, twisted, it has a great cast, but finally it's too sad. I've got mixed feelings about it. Worth watching for me, but not everyone will like it.

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Software

Anubis: The XELO extension is now fully implemented. Alongside with the recent MD5 improvement and Sergey's today fix to the code, it looks like it's just perfect. Now waiting for the Dixie's new testsuite, which will be a huge help on testing the program.

libmu_cpp: Added the Address class, and the exemplary addr.cc now compiles fine.

The Compiler: Finished V5, yay!

Hardware

PS3 will probably use the Blu-ray Disc technology! 25GB on a single-layer and 50GB on the dual-layer discs... Wow, that's impressive! Read more...

Working on libmu_cpp... Today I added, among other things, the overloaded << operator for the streams. It is now possible to write a simple code like stream << buf;.

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The GoneME project seems to be a good idea. I use GNOME 1.4 at home and 2.2 at work (unfortunately I haven't used 2.4 or newer) and I must honestly say that I prefer 1.4 over 2.2. Yes, the 2.x is modern and uses an advanced architecture, much better than 1.4, but it sucks in many other areas, mostly those user-visible. It looks like it has been designed for some computer newcomer. Anyway, I agree with GoneME on some issues, like the button order for example (it's really annoying in 2.x). People, the button order should be easily changeable in the control panel (is it too hard to achieve this?), but unfortunately the whole control panel is very poor.

Back to libmu_cpp hacking after more than 20 days. Uhm, it's so hard to find enough spare time these days. Anyway, I added the streams support today and now I am able to compile the http.cc (and sfrom.cc already) -- yupie!

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I have also some new ideas about GNU Anubis. One of them is the XELO extension, which will improve the remote database access. Another issue is to fix the database plain text format and use the colon separator instead of white spaces. Otherwise it is impossible to omit the 'account' field and it's often necessary to do that. This has a high priority.

I recently watched a TV programme on Discovery Channel about traveling around the World using the human power only. The Expedition 360 (formerly known as Pedal for the Planet) launched by Steve Smith and Jason Lewis in 1994 still goes on... It's all very impressive. As far as I know, Jason is currently preparing for the Indonesian leg, and Steve is no more participating in this event. He abandoned the expedition after the Hawaii Hike. Anyway, I watched the episode where they crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a small pedal boat (they are the first to pedal the Atlantic Ocean from East to West). This took them "only" 111 days.

By day 55 we had reached the mid-Atlantic Ridge and were suffering badly from salt sores, chronic tiredness and the mental stresses which build under confinement made worse by constant motion. Imagine a funfair ride which becomes irritating and ultimately nightmarish as it refuses to stop to let you off in order to maintain a positive outlook we opted to avoid depressing fatigues by both sleeping for 8-10 hours every 10 days and leave the boat to drift...

More at www.expedition360.com
and www.goals.com/Expedition360/

I bought a new camera yesterday, Sony DSC-P100 (info). It's very fast and the image quality is excellent.

Unfortunately, the camera is currently not supported by the Linux kernel, so I had to hack the drivers/usb/storage/unusual_devs.h file (v2.4.24) and add the following code:

UNUSUAL_DEV(  0x054c, 0x0010, 0x0500, 0x0500,
		"Sony",
		"DSC-P100",
		US_SC_8070, US_PR_DEVICE, NULL,
		US_FL_SINGLE_LUN | US_FL_MODE_XLATE ),

Now it works fine.

Hacking

I released IMM 0.3 today.

Roadmap to GNU Anubis 4.0

v3.9.95
the maintenance release.
release target: July, 2004.
v3.9.96
will introduce Dixie's new testsuite.
release target: September, 2004.
v3.9.97
after this release, no considerable changes will be added to the CVS repository.
release target: October, 2004.
v3.9.98
after this release, we will focus mainly on removing all critical bugs first.
release target: October, 2004.
v3.9.99
the final test!
release target: November, 2004.
v4.0 is out!
release target: December 15th, 2004.
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blogRight! is ready, Sir.

I'm moving my blog to my home page, here, but for a while I will still be doing some updates on advogato.org. This blog uses the blogRight! engine, the code I wrote.

A long time ago I mentioned about writing my simple educational compiler. Well, this is still true and the work is in progress, but very slow progress. I hope to finish it by the end of this year. In the meantime I wrote a tiny, mini intro-example to a few basic compiler techniques, uhm. Send me the feedback if you like it ;).

There is one missing feature on Advogato.org site; it is when you read some old people's diary entries and you want to go forward in time. There is no a convenient way to do that (there is only an X older entries... link :/). Sigh.