I took a quick break from working on Boxcar stuff today and, after a bit of hacking and a RubyURL API update (generously provided by Robby), we now have a working Ubiquity command for RubyURL. How easy is it to use? Well, take a look:

Companies like DreamHost have really redefined what one-click installations are all about, but I’m looking to take that further. Not just one-click hosting, but one-click virtual servers. Imagine filling out a form, submitting some billing info, and having a full-blown, ready to go virtual server available for your use (with root access to boot) within a few minutes.

With technologies like Xen allowing lightweight virtual machines, I’m hoping that we’ll soon be able to make this a reality. No more being confined to your $HOME, and trying to install software that isn’t supported by the hosting service within those confines. You’ll now be able to install software as it was MEANT to be installed, and just have it work.

With more and more Web 2.0 (is that cliché yet?) applications coming up, and with more and more developers designing said applications, it’ll be even more important to have an easy and reliable platform for hosting these applications. It’s obviously going to take some hard work and time to get it done, but I think it’ll really be a very positive step for the industry as a whole. Stay tuned for more about this.

Obviously, these are just my opinions and not the policy of Planet Argon, yadda, yadda. Same goes for any future work-related posts. But it’s a very exciting opportunity, and a very exciting time to be getting involved into this portion of the business.

You can grab it from the Software link above, or if you’re just too lazy, here’s a direct link for version 0.5. If anyone finds it useful, or if you have any questions, comments, etc, feel free to leave a comment here to contact me via the About page.

At this point it’s only about 30% complete per the full RFC 4622 spec, but it was enough to add the necessary functionality to Gajim. I will be working on it as time permits to try to support as much of the spec as possible, but the current functionality is enough for most of the standard uses of the spec.

This module is intended to be used along with either a module or an application that conforms pretty well to XEP-0147. My initial reason for writing it was, after all, to improve the XEP-0147 support in Gajim. I believe that the module will make it into the Gajim subversion tree soon, so it will be a bit easier to contribute to. Until then, just use the link above for a static copy of the file. I’ve tried to document what I have so far pretty well. Running epydoc on it should give you more than enough information to start using it.

Then, a few years ago, we had the big push to 64-bit machines. Using Linux, it didn’t take very long to get a full 64-bit native system up and running, but many of us were relegated to using a 32-bit browser in a chroot due to a lack of plugins. Since Sun can’t be bothered with giving us a 64-bit plugin, someone else had to do it. Enter Blackdown. To the best of my knowledge, this is (or was, at least) still the only 64-bit Java browser plugin available anywhere. It’s only Java 1.4 unfortunately, but most Java plugins aren’t all that new anyway. And now, this great project is no more.

Sorry to see you go Blackdown, but you all made using Java under Linux possible (and even easy !) for so many for so long.

Note: If you’d like to thank the Blackdown folks directly for their contribution to the Java world, they do have a Contact page still up on the site with contact info for most of the contributors.

The only problem I’ve had with it comes from the built-in WP notifications. I want to know when people comment on my blog. I also want to know when they leave a trackback. Unfortunately, the trackback notification seems to get sent out before the validator plugin has a chance to work its magic. This means that for every single blocked spam trackback, I still get an email telling me about it. In essence, I’m sending myself spam!

So today I figured I’d do something about it. After digging through the WP source, I came up with the following.

In <wp root dir>/wp-includes/comment.php:

Starting around line #405, you’ll find the following:

if ( get_option('comments_notify') && $commentdata['comment_approved'] && $post->post_author != $commentdata['user_ID'])
wp_notify_postauthor($comment_ID, $commentdata['comment_type']);


Change that to:

if ( get_option('comments_notify') && $commentdata['comment_approved'] && $post->post_author != $commentdata['user_ID'] && $commentdata['comment_type'] != 'trackback')
wp_notify_postauthor($comment_ID, $commentdata['comment_type']);


So basically just add && $commentdata['comment_type'] != 'trackback') to the if. This serves to prevent WP from notifying me about trackbacks. But I still want to know about them. So I then edited the TBValidator plugin.

In <wp root dir>/wp-content/plugins/TBValidator/trackback_validator.php:

Starting around line #140, you’ll find the following:

if($tb_options['auto_approve'])
$wpdb->query("UPDATE $wpdb->comments SET comment_approved = '1' WHERE comment_ID = '$comment_ID'");


Immediately after that, add a line that reads:
wp_notify_postauthor($comment_ID, 'trackback');

This is basically offloading the job of notifying me about trackbacks into the TBValidator plugin.

So this is not elegant. It’s probably not a good idea either. You definitely shouldn’t do this to your blog unless you know what you’re doing. And if you DO know what you’re doing, you still shouldn’t do it because it’s a dirty hack. I’m sure there’s a much better way to handle this. But, it works for me and it took less time to make the change than it has to write this post about.

If anyone knows of a better solution, or if you decide to write a better solution, by all means let me know. I’ll install it in a heartbeat. This hack is going to break the next time I do a WP upgrade, but at least it’ll keep me from getting spammed by myself in the meantime.

1. Ruby (and Rails, if you’re doing web stuff)
2. Ruby Interactive Reference – Currently v1.8 (ri1.8 package in Debian)
3. A good text editor. I prefer Emacs for heavy coding, vim for quick edits. Whatever works best for you.
4. The Ruby Documentation Bundle from ruby-doc.org.
5. The Rails Framework Documentation (if you’re using rails). On a Debian system, this is part of the rails package. Look under /usr/share/doc/rails/html.
6. A fast, tabbed browser. Firefox/Iceweasel are just too slow for me, so I prefer Galeon. It’s not actively maintained anymore, but I currently have 68 tabs open in two windows, and the response time is instantaneous, so I’m happy.
7. This one may or may not apply to your situation, but for me it’s essential: a good music player and good music to go with it. Currently this is Audacious playing Gipsy Kings. YMMV.

I also use a few non-essential extras to make my life a bit simpler.

1. Beryl is excellent for multiple desktops and transparent windows. Multiple desktops are easy enough, but transparent windows can really be handy when you’re trying to read things in one window while typing in another.
2. A good MySQL front-end. I personally rather like the MySQL Query Browser. It’s light, easy to use, and does all of its work through queries that I can edit, so I don’t have to keep a separate shell window open for manual tasks.
3. A tabbed terminal for multiple connections to the remote machine I’m working on. I just use gnome-terminal for this though there probably are better alternatives out there.
4. Oh, and most importantly, a Debian system to run all of this stuff on.

Get a setup like that going and you too, can be Cool Like Me ™. Well, ok, not really. Nobody can really be as cool as me. Or maybe they just don’t want to… hmm…

For those who don’t know the first thing about OpenID, openid.net and openidenabled.com are good places to start. If you’re looking to get an OpenID there are a number of options out there. If you have a LiveJournal you already have an OpenID. It’s yourljname.livejournal.com. If you don’t use LJ or would just like a different one, I’d personally recommend myopenid.com as they’re a local Portland company and open source friendly. And no, they didn’t pay me to say that… unfortunately…

<begin EXTREMELY geeky stuff> (scroll down for more non-geek stuff)
I have a nightly cron-job running on it that creates updates my local Debian mirror. Only I don’t use any of the standard tools for the job, I use a home-brew script (sidmirror.pl) that I wrote years ago. (As a side note, if I ever revive my “Geek Page” under WP, I’ll start putting up the tarballs again.) One of the things that the program does is compare every single file in the local tree against a list of current packages as extracted from the mirror’s Packages file.

The only catch is that the loop that does the check is AWFUL. I mean, REALLY REALLY REALLY awful. To the tune of:

foreach (@allLocalFiles) {
    foreach $item (@packagesFiles) {
        if ($item ne $_) {
            push(@deleteFiles, $_);
        }
    }
}

The actual code is slightly different, but not by much. The loops are really that bad.
</end EXTREMELY geeky stuff>

So, needless to say, this burns a LOT of CPU time. So much, in fact, that the normally quiet little Dell turns into a raging ball of hot-winded fury. As soon as all of the fans kick in I get the feeling that my apartment is about to be blown up by a nuclear device which is charging up as I sit there, paralyzed.

This goes on for a few minutes, and then, as suddenly as it started, the noise stops. The fans start whirring down and within a few seconds I’m in near-perfect silence again. It’s freaky, in a way… as though the Dell is saying to me, “You managed to escape this time, human… but some day… some day soon… oh yes… it’s coming…”. Lets just hope that “it” isn’t a creepy clown or some such… or, if it is, that it’s a QUIET creepy clown.

So far they’re only up to version 0.3.0, but by the looks of some of the screenshots on the site it’s already a full-fledged Windows system! Can we say WOW?! Depending on how the project gets handled in the future this could finally spell an end to Microsoft’s dominance in the desktop PC market. Even if Linux doesn’t manage to take over the desktop in the short term (though I hope it does), if ReactOS gets close enough to “real” Windows, it could become a serious competitor.

One of the interesting things to look at will be how well Windows Vista gets received by the business world. Large companies typically abhor any major updates to OS’s, so quite a few of them could very well end up evaluating ReactOS once XP starts to reach end-of-life status. The possbilities here are absolutely staggering. Now, granted, the project is still at a very early stage, and most of the above is pure wishful thinking on my part, but finally having a viable and accessible Free Software solution to Windows could be a huge deal. It could very well spell the beginning of the end for the traditional software licensing model. This will be a very interesting thing to watch.