Month: May 2004

day 2 of the SuSE experiment….

I discovered last night that Kate has good code highlighting, and I like the font smoothing and toolbars better than those in jEdit, which I had to start from the console anyway.

I’m splitting my browsing between Firefox, which works more like I’m used to both in terms of keyboard shortcuts and CSS rendering, and Konqueror, which has the pretty font smoothing. (that’s what I liked best about C’s install of WinXP, so I’m really enjoying it in SuSE/KDE.)

tweaking the desktop and toolbars is fun and easy. the media player (xmms) works quite easily — I even pointed it at all the music on my Windows partition and now it loads it as a playlist every time I open it. (Elaine’s infinite radio strikes again!)

I successfully installed the nVidia drivers for my video card, which helped with the initial display.

on the other hand…I can’t for the life of me figure out how to actually install software. I downloaded Firefox, but I’m running it by opening up the folder that I unzipped it to, and I’m just clicking on the Firefox script icon. that can’t be right. haven’t been able to figure out how to install AxY FTP at all. I mean, seriously, what’s the standard operating procedure for this sort of thing? is there something basic that I’m not understanding?

I’m not going to comment on this whole Purple Numbers (Pink Hearts?!) thing, except to say that Joe Clark added ids to every damn element of the HTML version of his book…last summer. (at the time, “unique on the Web”!) I thought it was pretty cool, and have even once sent a link to someone on a mailing list citing a specific section that way.

There’s no visual nothing to show that those ids exist, but I think that’s okay. It’s nice to have secret knowledge once in a while.

I did some cleanup of my own hard drive yesterday, backed up everything important, and installed SuSE. and you know what? I think I like it. I still don’t really understand how to install software properly, but despite that I’ve gotten jEdit and Firefox running already. (didn’t care much for Konqueror as a browser; I have too much invested in my finger-memory of Firefox/Mozilla shortcuts, etc.)

which is the same reason why I wish HTML-Kit were available for more than Windows…hmmm, maybe I should figure out an emulator — or I’d be happy to hear suggestions for text editors that are good for (X)HTML and PHP at the minimum.

there’s some other things I want to fuss with (I need to install Open Office), but I think I’m going to switch to this as my main operating system. after all, my needs are pretty simple:

* browser
* text editor
* wordprocessor/spreadsheet
* FTP client
* music player (I’m really enjoying xmms, btw)
* image editor

and that’s pretty much it. I’ll switch back to my Windows install probably for Photoshop and SimCity 4, but everything else I can do here quite happily, I think.

(this means that I’ll *never* upgrade to Win XP.)

C installed SuSE, which we got with a copy of Linux User & Developer we picked up at Fred Meyer (!), on his computer today…now I’m playing around with it; gravitating towards the browser, naturally. (it comes with Konqueror; I’d like to try installing Mozilla.)

I’m actually pretty impressed with the look and feel…not as innately gorgeous as OSX, and not as “tight” feeling as W2K (my normal computing environment), but nice. worth trying out for a bit.

(it auto-partitioned his hard drive, btw, so that his Windows XP install is still right where he left it.)

I think I’ve figured out what I want to do with the project that is rapidly turning into an actual fork of feed on feeds. this version is mostly going to focus on recreating the things that FOF already does, but more stylishly (I hope), plus adding some settings stuff to build for the future. next, I want to look at the existing bugs to see if there’s anything I can do about them. (the problem of non-ASCII characters is bugging me most right now.) then, I’ll write an authentication piece, so it doesn’t have to be hidden behind an .htaccess workaround. (mostly, so I can use the same db & code to run a revived blogroll.)

but…I really need to get working on kitchen plans. our kitchen is a pit…always has been pretty crummy, and now with no working dishwasher, and a fridge that’s just a hair too big to fit in the old one’s spot…well, we gotta do something soon.

the “panel” has I think all of the features it used to have (except view feeds: new/today/all), and a pretty design besides. I can check boxes next to each feed and click to update, clear (“mark read”) or delete that feed.

fixed, I think, the bug in the OPML with case sensitivity problems (OPML documentation sux, btw).

add feed doesn’t seem to be working; don’t know why yet. some problems with the form(s); I had to simplify it to fit it into my methodology.

starting on detail view: need to add functions for paging, date restriction. better layout, of course, and the same cleanup/commenting I’ve done before.

want to do a settings page, with options for actually deleting items for the database; don’t know what else should go there, but it’ll be a good placeholder. another thing: how many per page in a paged scenario

and then some layout work with the function links/buttons.

I just discovered that someone else wrote a fork of FOF; I might have to take a look to see if there’s anything I want to cannibalize.

I think I’m writing a fork of feed on feeds. I started playing around, broke a bunch of stuff (see “hacktastic” and “steps in technology”), and then realized that what I really want to do is rewrite it in my personal coding style, which may not be standard, but which works for me.

I’m also going to do more commenting in the code, as that’s what’s driving me nuts now.

I decided to switch my email lists over to my gmail account, which is a big step for me towards giving up the email address I’ve had for the last 3-4 years.

my hard drive at work died, and I’m thinking now is a good time to get some backup procedures in place for my home computer, too.

in futzing about with feed on feeds, I broke something, so I’m thinking about disassembling the whole thing and re-writing it.

my WP archives are broken and I don’t know how that happened. I’d like to upgrade to the final version of 1.2, but it may not happen until this weekend at the earliest, which means that brokenness will probably continue through that point as well.

only nominally technology, but I’m looking for a free-standing kitchen sink. I found this at IKEA, which is maybe close to what we’re looking fog?, but wow! that’s spendy. anybody know of such a thing?

my hd at work died, and I’ve been floating since midday yesterday — working on my assistant’s computer, except when he’s here, and on a coworker’s mac….that only has IE 5 for Mac and Netscape 4. breaks my heart.

I’ve had a good few days of hacking…this weekend I started playing around with the display of feed on feeds, just because the default display irritates me. I’m nowhere near done yet, partially because I can’t decide how I want it to work, partially because I’m a little nervous about delving too deeply.

one of my goals is also to add a login function, so that I can expose my “blogroll” without allowing everybody in creation to muck around with my aggregator.

today I spent working on a trial of Phase; I got most of the content added for the site that I’m planning on testing it with, and wrote a couple of “snippets” too. I have more ideas.

and that’s the good part: I can feel the inspiration to keep playing, rattling around in my head like a good plot, or a line for a poem that isn’t quite formed yet.

(of course, what I really *should* be doing at this point is cleaning my home office to see what lurks there. but…ew.)