dammIT

A rantbox by Michiel Scholten

Articles


Gizmo instead of Skype

After reinstalling my laptop from scratch with a Debian netinstall cd [the old harddrive died on me :(], I installed the Gizmo VOIP client. I think it's better than Skype; it uses the ALSA sound system, native GTK2 [so it actually looks good], and is based on the open standard SIP …


Yesterday

Geek's day out Sunglasses? check Cellphone? check PDA? check Wireless foldable keyboard? check Wallet? check ... University? check Sunny place with a view? check Beer? check Friends to talk with? check Ladies in summer clothes? check Computer lab course in about -6 minutes? oops, check


Xfce 4.4 beta 1

When we're talking geek, I could as well talk about the desktop environment I'm using. I've been using Xfce since their 4.0 version was in early alpha state, and recently beta one of their version 4.4 was released. Now, Xfce 4.4beta1 is being uploaded to Debian sid …

01:02:03 04-05-06 - Care to join a geek club?

Only a few moments left till that geeky moment in our little space/time bubble. Provides me some time to ponder about some things. Like setting up a Linux User Group of my own -- well, our own. But I don't want to make it a LUG, I prefer to create …

24yr 13wk

Today in #xfce at irc.freenode.net I came across a fairly good description of the upcoming windows version, Vista, which looks like it is postponed yet another quarter of a year: longhorn: A big joke from MS, now officially called under it's brand name "Windows Vista", it features WinFS …

Oldschool programming, hacking and planning

I'm currently sitting in my university's Linux lab writing some oldschool C CGI thingee for hooking up a server serving papers to a website using SunRPC so you can list the files, upload and download them. Quite fun, I must say. I also finally finished the freelance project I've been …

Rumours about my dead are greatly exaggerated

As you can see, I've been fiddling around with the code for dammIT, this weblog. That's been the last few days. Before that, I've been rather busy fiddling around with about anything but personal projects. Mostly stuff for my university -- which is a good thing, as it means my study …

Comments reenabled

OK, I reenabled the comments again. If a posting gets spammed, I can now simply close comments for that posting only. Still need to find a way to block spamming in general, but it's likely there's a human behind it, so that will get difficult. BTW, yeah, I'm still alive …

Miracles still exist

Yay. Just yay. Got an email a few moments ago from my universities administration, stating I have a 6 out of 10 for my Calculus exam, while I got the impression I had done quite badly when I reviewed it with some friends. Right freaking awesome, so to speak :D …

Comment spam

OK... I get quite a lot of comment spam on a single posting I did more than a month ago; until I figure out how to stop it [I want to implement "Comments closed for this posting", but I'm looking for a way of preventing it], comments are disabled :( If …

Having fun with cross-server image linking

I know lots of people don't have some webspace of their own. However, if they start posting on forums etc, they tend to want a nice picture with it. So they do a quick Google image search on it, paste the uri of the picture in their profile, and done …

Sick bed

(Hushed voices) 'Hi, I just heared from his condition. How is he?' 'He's sleeping now, but it's not good...' (Sad stares) 'Sounds like he's waking up,' 'Doesn't sound good at all, does it?' 'Indeed, occasionally the sounds he makes gives me the creeps. His functions slowly start to fail; I …

aquamorph v0.3: almost there :)

I know I've said it before, but the new version of my livecd is almost done. I'm now playing with the package configuration to keep the size down a bit; it turned out to be an .iso of about 420MiB, which I thought was a tad large. I left out …

overload and IM conversations

And when on the topic of morphing the overload feedreader into an information center, why not give it capabilities of storing your Instant Messaging [IM] conversations too? I'll go looking into writing a Python plugin for Gaim that in real time updates the logs in overload. Maybe auto-tagging on base …

Ideas and projects

Currently testing a new version of my aquamorph livecd, which is close to being done. In my last post of yesterday I forgot to tell I had been working on it that day too, so it wasn't a completely wasted Thursday ;) Besides the idea bmsleight has for our Open Source …


Blocking your mind by having to do certain tasks

OK, the title may sound weird, but picture the following: you have a certain task which involves doing things you don't really like [say, booting windows, messing around with a Visual Basic script]; it is for your work, it has to be done etc etc. But because you don't quite …

Michael Crichton on Human Nature

What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There's no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told -- and become upset if they are exposed to any different …