(no subject)
I'm at work typing this, but you'll read it after I upload it at home.
For the most part it's been a quiet week, though there was one incident that happened at work. On Thursday morning a package came in and I signed for it, then put it where I put all the mail: on top of the mailboxes. This happened in my last hour of work. When I got off I ate and went to sleep as usual. When I got out of bed I found I had five messages on my answering machine and saw on my Caller ID that someone from work had tried to call me three times. They had wanted me to tell them where I'd put the package since it contained a tape that had some commercial spots on it, one of which had to air that day during our noon newscast. I called work and found out that they found the tape but the person they had to get it from - our news director - didn't fess up to taking it until the third time they asked him. I found out the next day that when Jobi found out about it she wanted to kick his ass. No one blamed me for the incident, but from now on I'm taking any packages we get straight to master control so that this doesn't happen again.
Vik also had his court date on Thursday, and that's why I got two calls from him also. He's been sentenced to live in a halfway house for three months and then he'll be released but he'll also be on probation for another three years. Not the best scenario but not the worst either, which would be getting sentenced to prison for two years. I don't know when he'll have to move, but I'm sure as far as I'm concerned it will feel a lot like last summer: he'll have some of his stuff in the apartment but I'll pretty much have it all to myself. That suits me fine, since last year I found out that I could live on my own just fine. He'll probably take his Wii and XBox 360, the latter of which he bought after hearing his sentence, and assuming they'll let him take them with him. That will leave me the Gamecube and the PS2, which is just fine with me. Since he has the Wii he's offered me his Gamecube for $30. I still haven't given him an answer on whether or not I'll buy it, but I'm leaning towards getting it even if it isn't the latest system.
Not a whole lot to say on the computing front except for what's in this week's Software of the Week and that I'm starting to have renewed interest in Python after a month hiatus thanks to Brian. I'm still attracted somewhat to Tcl since it's possible to build a GUI interactively using its Wish shell and I had fun doing that when I was following some tutorials, but I could definitely do more with Python, even if it doesn't show up immediately on the screen as a GUI app. I did install Jython, the Java implementation of the Python interpreter. It seemed to run pretty well inside Java, so creating dual-code Java/Python programs may be a possibility for me in the future since I'm learning Java in my Computer Science classes and Python on my own.
I may also become the maintainer of the pygopherd package in NetBSD's pkgsrc. Stay tuned for details on that one. :)
I did some thinking last night while listening to Paul's Radio PSI show last night and I found myself wishing that I was more involved with Starmen.net. I think it was more out of jealousy and wanting attention than anything else; other people seemed to be getting more attention than I was and I felt like a small fish in a big pond. I also found myself wondering what would have happened if I hadn't left the site back in 2003. I'm not really sure if I want to get involved again, though, because I have a lot of stuff that I'm doing already, especially when I have classes to go to. Besides, it seems like there isn't really anywhere I could make a contribution anyway besides donating money again; As I said in #Ridley's last night, the Mu doens't need another moderator, they have plenty of technical people, many of which know more than I do about programming (and they don't really need an administrator), and I'm just not good when it comes to writing stories or songs, or producing artwork. Maybe this feeling will just pass and I'll be back to not really caring and hanging out on the fringes of the site soon.
This week's Software of the Week is actually a NetBSD-specific piece of software, but it adds functionality that in one area allows it to equal other operating systems: nspluginwrapper. Nspluginwrapper allows anyone with a native build of Firefox, SeaMonkey, or Thunderbird to use plugins written and compiled for Linux, including the Flash and Java plugins. Before this came along, our only choice was to either use the Linux version of these browsers and email client or go without. Now we can use a native build and still use the Linux plugins. It's this piece of software that has allowed me to use the Flash plugin with my copy of SeaMonkey on Kaworu, which means among other things that I'll no longer be out of the loop when it comes to YouTube videos. Not that I go there frequently anyway, but I digress. Nspluginwrapper can also be used on FreeBSD, OpenBSD, DragonflyBSD, and Darwin (you'd probably use it on standalone Darwin since Mac OS X has plugins of its own).
That's all for now. I won't be online tonight as I'll be going over to Nate's but I'll be online Monday night if not before.
For the most part it's been a quiet week, though there was one incident that happened at work. On Thursday morning a package came in and I signed for it, then put it where I put all the mail: on top of the mailboxes. This happened in my last hour of work. When I got off I ate and went to sleep as usual. When I got out of bed I found I had five messages on my answering machine and saw on my Caller ID that someone from work had tried to call me three times. They had wanted me to tell them where I'd put the package since it contained a tape that had some commercial spots on it, one of which had to air that day during our noon newscast. I called work and found out that they found the tape but the person they had to get it from - our news director - didn't fess up to taking it until the third time they asked him. I found out the next day that when Jobi found out about it she wanted to kick his ass. No one blamed me for the incident, but from now on I'm taking any packages we get straight to master control so that this doesn't happen again.
Vik also had his court date on Thursday, and that's why I got two calls from him also. He's been sentenced to live in a halfway house for three months and then he'll be released but he'll also be on probation for another three years. Not the best scenario but not the worst either, which would be getting sentenced to prison for two years. I don't know when he'll have to move, but I'm sure as far as I'm concerned it will feel a lot like last summer: he'll have some of his stuff in the apartment but I'll pretty much have it all to myself. That suits me fine, since last year I found out that I could live on my own just fine. He'll probably take his Wii and XBox 360, the latter of which he bought after hearing his sentence, and assuming they'll let him take them with him. That will leave me the Gamecube and the PS2, which is just fine with me. Since he has the Wii he's offered me his Gamecube for $30. I still haven't given him an answer on whether or not I'll buy it, but I'm leaning towards getting it even if it isn't the latest system.
Not a whole lot to say on the computing front except for what's in this week's Software of the Week and that I'm starting to have renewed interest in Python after a month hiatus thanks to Brian. I'm still attracted somewhat to Tcl since it's possible to build a GUI interactively using its Wish shell and I had fun doing that when I was following some tutorials, but I could definitely do more with Python, even if it doesn't show up immediately on the screen as a GUI app. I did install Jython, the Java implementation of the Python interpreter. It seemed to run pretty well inside Java, so creating dual-code Java/Python programs may be a possibility for me in the future since I'm learning Java in my Computer Science classes and Python on my own.
I may also become the maintainer of the pygopherd package in NetBSD's pkgsrc. Stay tuned for details on that one. :)
I did some thinking last night while listening to Paul's Radio PSI show last night and I found myself wishing that I was more involved with Starmen.net. I think it was more out of jealousy and wanting attention than anything else; other people seemed to be getting more attention than I was and I felt like a small fish in a big pond. I also found myself wondering what would have happened if I hadn't left the site back in 2003. I'm not really sure if I want to get involved again, though, because I have a lot of stuff that I'm doing already, especially when I have classes to go to. Besides, it seems like there isn't really anywhere I could make a contribution anyway besides donating money again; As I said in #Ridley's last night, the Mu doens't need another moderator, they have plenty of technical people, many of which know more than I do about programming (and they don't really need an administrator), and I'm just not good when it comes to writing stories or songs, or producing artwork. Maybe this feeling will just pass and I'll be back to not really caring and hanging out on the fringes of the site soon.
This week's Software of the Week is actually a NetBSD-specific piece of software, but it adds functionality that in one area allows it to equal other operating systems: nspluginwrapper. Nspluginwrapper allows anyone with a native build of Firefox, SeaMonkey, or Thunderbird to use plugins written and compiled for Linux, including the Flash and Java plugins. Before this came along, our only choice was to either use the Linux version of these browsers and email client or go without. Now we can use a native build and still use the Linux plugins. It's this piece of software that has allowed me to use the Flash plugin with my copy of SeaMonkey on Kaworu, which means among other things that I'll no longer be out of the loop when it comes to YouTube videos. Not that I go there frequently anyway, but I digress. Nspluginwrapper can also be used on FreeBSD, OpenBSD, DragonflyBSD, and Darwin (you'd probably use it on standalone Darwin since Mac OS X has plugins of its own).
That's all for now. I won't be online tonight as I'll be going over to Nate's but I'll be online Monday night if not before.