Author archives: Mike

I told Gentoo to update my system today, thinking I'd see if the KDE compilation failures had been fixed. I missed Python 2.4.1 in the list of dependencies to be built (there were dozens and dozens of them). So, though the KDE compile still failed, Gentoo had already updated Python to 2.4.1, which broke pretty ...

I've been working on the algorithms for scaling up Cinemon to work for large systems (half a million subscribers or so) on and off. Today I decided to work on the overall architecture, rather than the nitty-gritty details of how communications will work among the federated servers.

The actual "how" of it is something I'll ...

Did a few hours work on Cinemon this evening. Nothing spectacular, just some project management and fixing a longstanding bug with the restart-on-reboot operation.

Shane went nuts while I was away. He gave me two bottles of apple butter, 3 pounds of coffee, and a huge gift bag packed solid with high-end chocolate of various ...

I'm back from the SCTE conference. I was there to "launch" Cinemon for the greater population of Cable operators (a.k.a. MSOs). Response was almost universally positive, lots of interest in the product from everyone for whom I did the "dog and pony show".

Quite a few effusively positive comments ("Sure, we have monitoring systems, but ...

The plane leaves in less than 4 hours, so I should get moving (have to stop at the bank and the store on the way to pick up money and snacks respectively). Still haven't been able to get the camera software working again under Linux :( , some problem down at the kernel level. Oh ...

Another few hours on OpenGL-with-ctypes. Basically got it to auto-generate the wrappers for the bulk of the GL library. There's still quite a few "exceptions", but there's nothing that actually distinguishes those from the other cases, so I'm likely going to have to write the wrappers for those manually. About the only other major cases ...

Clicked on my wikipedia link this morning, thinking "oh, I'll just read a few random pages". Then I started editing little things. Then I started going through the "architecture stubs" page, looking for things that needed to be expanded...

and then I realised I still have to get out to the market and back and ...

I think I'm done for the week. Leaving for the conference Monday morning (oh, shoot, need to get the tickets and such worked out). I need to stop obsessing about this program for a few days or I'm going to be nuts at the conference. I'll have all of Monday and Tuesday to obsess.

But ...

There is a certain wonder about producing a physical thing. My thesis advisor used to rhapsodise about the wonders of physical constructions (he is a boat, aircraft and furniture-focussed architect). Today I had one of those moments where I had to agree with him.

Producing the PDF for the handout for the conference was nice, ...

Wound up getting home from the UU meeting around 3AM, having drained a whole pot of coffee at the bar (I was the only one drinking it, so she just kept coming around to unload it). Worked until well past 5AM, unfortunately, one of the visiting parents [edited] decided it would be fun to sit ...