The Pædantic Programmer

I was reading Lefty’s recent blog post and was reminded (by way of a certain scene) of being pissed off by Broderick’s s/egg/globe/ in the 2003 production of The Music Man. I was going to put the following in the comments, but I decided not to in order to keep the conversation on topic :)

Which reminds me of a tangential blather. Did any of you see the recent re-make of Music Man with Matthew Broderick? Do you recall how he changed the script to refer to Columbus and the *globe* instead of Columbus and the *egg*?

That really irritated me. You can’t see it in the above picture, but while I was in the pit and waiting for our cues, I was coincidently reading Larry Wall’s Camel book. I was so confused about Harold Hill’s reference to “Columbus’ conception of the egg” until I read the following:

http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/perl3/cookbook/prf2_01.htm

Anyway…

Roy,

Would you like to work with me to fix the US patent system? I sure would like it if you’d stop saying mean things about the most active and effective Free Software developers I know. If we have to fix the broken patent system in order for you to stop giving F/OSS a black eye, then let’s do it, k?

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http://bugzilla.quagga.net/show_bug.cgi?id=483

Paul Jakma
 changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|UNCONFIRMED                 |RESOLVED
                 CC|                            |paul dishone st
         Resolution|                            |FIXED

- --- Comment #2 from Paul Jakma
  2009-06-19 15:09:42 ---
I've pulled in the patch from Jeremy Jackson which, I understand, was based on
this. This adds, at least for now, a --enable-pcreposix argument to
configure.ac.

Thanks!

- --
Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.quagga.net/userprefs.cgi?tab=email
- ------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
You are on the CC list for the bug.
You are the assignee for the bug.
You reported the bug.
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But don’t take my word for it. The folks on their IRC channel have put it pretty plainly themselves. They’re not interested in offering solutions to problems, they instead seem interested in bemoaning their lot in life for fun and profit.

— Log opened Wed Sep 03 23:06:26 2008
23:06 -!- Irssi: #boycottnovell: Total of 17 nicks [3 ops, 0 halfops, 0 voices, 14 normal]
23:06 -!- Irssi: Join to #boycottnovell was synced in 0 secs
23:06 < cj> yay!
23:06 <@schestowitz> I need you to show me where they do this.
23:06 < seller_liar> and now globo depends from money governement
23:07 < seller_liar> what?
23:07 <@schestowitz> I mean, if you find examples or just articles (even in Protuguese) then it can be shown to Brazilian people what Globo does to them.
23:07 <@schestowitz> Hi, cj.
23:08 < cj> hi there, schestowitz! for the record, I am close with a bunch of folks at Novell and I am on contract at MS
23:08 < seller_liar> At moment , I find only that article above
23:08 < cj> also, I’m one of the first 20 or so users of this network :)
23:08 < cj> (freenode/openprojects/linpeople)
23:08 < seller_liar> linpeople?
23:08 < cj> seller_liar: check archive.org
23:09 < tessier__> cj: So you gonna dish up the scoop on those sleezeballs over at Novell? :)
23:09 <@schestowitz> :-)
23:09 < cj> seller_liar: it was rob levin’s first channel on the “linux internet support cooperative”
23:09 < seller_liar> cj:ok
23:09 < cj> tessier__: heh, none of them are sleezeballs afaict. they’re on the level.
23:11 <@schestowitz> What contract at Microsoft?
23:11 < cj> schestowitz: testing a feature in the next release of forefront
23:14 < cj> schestowitz: implementation of the GAPA stuff documented here: http://research.microsoft.com/research/shield/
23:15 <@schestowitz> Which company for?
23:15 < cj> schestowitz: saxon & taylor
23:16 <@schestowitz> Got homepage? http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&c2coff=1&q=saxon+taylor&btnG=Search
23:16 < seller_liar> schestowitz: sorry , I don t have any real proof ,but i believe this contracts exists
23:16 < cj> https://www.sakson.com/
23:16 < seller_liar> schestowitz: oops, a mistake ,forget about it
23:16 < cj> sorry, sakson :)
23:18 <@schestowitz> :)
23:19 <@schestowitz> Are you in contract with Microsoft?
23:19 < cj> as for miguel’s motives, I think he’s really quite interested in helping the f/oss folks out. every time I’ve spoken with him, he has come across as a well-meaning individual.
23:19 < cj> schestowitz: my contract is with S&T. They have a direct relationship with MSFT
23:20 <@schestowitz> Yes, I know. A friend of him told me (mutual friend)
23:20 <@schestowitz> But he’s tied to more than just F/OSS.
23:21 < cj> He and RMS have a long history together. They both mean well, but see the problem from a different perspective. Richard is more ideological. Miguel is more pragmatic.
23:21 <@schestowitz> I see it differently.
23:21 < cj> I can’t say that I agree with either of them fully, but their end goal is positive and not self-serving.
23:21 <@schestowitz> People like Gates really believe and convince themselves that they do good. But they do fraud.
23:22 <@schestowitz> Likewise, although it’s a bad analogy, Miguel looks to elev ate a company like Novell, please his mates from Microsoft (which he cannot realise is quite the criminal entity) and F/OSS is just somewhere among his priorities.
23:22 < cj> schestowitz: nothing is black and white. he heads the largest do-gooder institute ever seen in the world. he also ran a company that has been convicted of antitrust… many times.
23:23 < cj> (I was referring to gates)
23:23 <@schestowitz> Gates Foundation is not a do-gooder.
23:23 < cj> oh?
23:23 <@schestowitz> The charity is a ‘side effect’ that’s embellished via lots of grassroots/astroturf
23:24 <@schestowitz> You can see if as it happens in big magazine he owns.
23:24 < cj> they’ve invested heavily in my daughters’ hospital for one…
23:24 <@schestowitz> The Gates FOundation is a vehicle for him (and Warren) to escape tax and get some more benefit and a feelgood sensation.
23:24 <@schestowitz> cj: some thieves give some of the loot away.
23:25 <@schestowitz> The classic robber baron is one that’s also glorified.
23:25 <@schestowitz> I ask you kindly to watch the following video: http://boycottnovell.com/2008/01/02/the-money-question-influence/
23:25 <@schestowitz> (It’s embedded in the page)
23:27 < cj> I’ll take a look when I get home. thanks.
23:27 <@schestowitz> It’s a lot of work to undo damage of brainwash. Such as the glorification of the Novell/Microsoft deal, where journalists totally neglect the view of programmer who actually built the system.
23:27 < cj> schestowitz: what is a way to improve the situation? how can either or both of the companies be improved so that you don’t see it as such a catastrophe?
23:28 <@schestowitz> BTW, Oracle seems to be a big fraud as well (just been in the news)
23:28 < cj> heh, I thought everybody knew about Larry…
23:28 <@schestowitz> Securities fraud… Ellison shredded E-mails that serve as evidence; as did Intel.
23:29 <@schestowitz> Larry is crazy. I knew he was a snake when I read about him breaking the law with his fancy yacht/plane fetish. He even joked about breaking the law in a video interview I watched.
23:30 <@schestowitz> There’s that book about ‘God’ and ‘Ellison’. What’s the difference between God and Ellison? God doesn’t think he’s Ellison. To Larry, it’s all about being richer and bigger than Gates. He too ‘donates’ (invests) in hospitals.
23:34 < cj> so what’s a proactive solution?
23:35 < cj> there needs to be a relationship between proprietary and free software vendors. how should that relationship be carried out, optimally?
23:36 <@schestowitz> Well, ego elation in big companies is an issue. They have no boundaries, so they ‘shape’ their reports and ruthlessly destroy the small competitors. The work RMS does always revolves around society, not business. He raises this point constantly because people are mistakenly educated so as to believe good business make a good society (there’s no such relationship).
23:36 < cj> is it best to have standards bodies (w3c, ieee, etc) take that roll? should vendors who sell Free software be banned from doing business with those who produce proprietary software?
23:37 < cj> s/roll/role/
23:37 < tessier__> schestowitz: How did Ellison break the law with his yacht/plane fetish?
23:37 < wasabi> And who would enforce said bans? Would we put people in prison? :)
23:37 <@schestowitz> RMS would probably say based on his experience that all business needs to evolve towards a model of sharing, _in due time_. A digital world can take advantage of this and blow the gap between poverty and affluence.
23:37 <@schestowitz> tessier: he flew under a bridge.
23:37 < cj> oh, wassabi is another infiltrat0r, fyi :)
23:37 <@schestowitz> It’s against aviation policies.
23:38 <@schestowitz> Bans?
23:40 < cj> schestowitz: should vendors who sell Free software be banned from doing business with those who produce proprietary software?
23:43 <@schestowitz> In what context and why?
23:44 < cj> schestowitz: have you been reading what I wrote above?
23:44 <@schestowitz> Yes, I have.
23:45 < cj> schestowitz: I’m asking what novell and microsoft are doing wrong, and what can be done to improve the process so that all participants are happy.
23:45 <@schestowitz> About standards.
23:45 < cj> they are complying with the GPL, BSD and MIT/X11 licenses… this doesn’t seem to be enough?
23:45 < cj> oh, LGPL as well
23:45 < cj> and Artistic
23:45 <@schestowitz> I think the answer is obvious. It didn’t cost Microsoft a dime to participate in the ISO standards for document and the W3C’s work.
23:45 < cj> and loads of others…
23:45 < cj> schestowitz: oh!?
23:45 <@schestowitz> Instead they run away form standards and demand cash for anti-standards.
23:46 < cj> schestowitz: have you seen what the cost is to be a member of the w3c? for a company Microsoft’s size, it’s huge.
23:46 < cj> more than “a dime”
23:46 <@schestowitz> That’s beside the point.
23:47 <@schestowitz> If they don’t take the lead, they can follow and participate at some level. The W3C doesn’t make use of proprietary and patent-ridden bits.
23:47 <@schestowitz> Not even GIF
23:47 < cj> schestowitz: I think you’re misinformed. do you know what ECMA-335 is, for instance?
23:47 <@schestowitz> As for Microsoft, it’s not trying to contaminate W3C (Wilson) with DRM and JS ruin.
23:47 <@schestowitz> I don’t know the code.
23:49 < cj> schestowitz: there are tons of patents on this technology, for instance:
23:49 < cj> http://www.w3.org/TR/xml/
23:50 < cj> schestowitz: I agree that the relationship between Novell and Microsoft is sub-optimal, but ranting about things which are inaccurate rather than offering proactive steps helps noone.
23:50 <@schestowitz> /whose/ patents?
23:51 <@schestowitz> See the following to meet the point that’s arrived here: http://boycottnovell.com/2008/05/27/mono-and-rand-for-gnome/
23:52 < cj> schestowitz: *shrug* lots of folks. mostly at MS, I assume.
23:52 < cj> http://usasearch.gov/search?affiliate=uspto.gov&v%3Aproject=firstgov&query=XML
23:54 <@schestowitz> I already know that they have such patents. That’s not news to anyone.
23:54 <@schestowitz> Who again are you?
23:55 < cj> The W3C doesn’t make use of proprietary and patent-ridden bits.
23:55 < cj> why did you say that if you already know that they have such patents?
23:55 < cj> did you not know that the W3C publishes TRs about XML?
23:56 <@schestowitz> The W3C acts as a form of patent pool.
23:56 <@schestowitz> Much like LiMo.
23:56 < cj> http://web.archive.org/web/19961109144913/http://www.linpeople.org/ <- I’m ‘Da_Man’ there
23:57 < cj> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Levin
23:58 < cj> I guess that makes me a founding member of freenode
— Day changed Thu Sep 04 2008
00:13 <@schestowitz> Nice one.
00:13 * schestowitz slow to reply because of multitasking
00:16 < tessier__> cj: Microsoft and Novell are trying to kill FOSS and maintain their monopoly. That’s wrong.
00:16 < tessier__> They were already convicted of having such a monopoly by Judge Jackson.
00:17 <@schestowitz> Judge Jackson called them “Criminals”.
00:18 < tessier__> All of the leaked documents about how they want to kill FOSS are pretty damning too
00:19 < tessier__> I take it personally because if they kill FOSS they kill my career. Linux paid for my house.
00:19 <@schestowitz> http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/halloween11.html “I also expect a serious effort, backed by several billion dollars in bribe money (oops, excuse me, campaign contributions), to get open-source software outlawed on some kind of theory that it aids terrorists.”
00:19 <@schestowitz> ” We can only defeat that by making sure that national governments become so attached to open-source code that their military men and bureaucrats will short-stop the bribed legislators, rather than let their vital infrastructure be outlawed.”
00:20 < cj> tessier__: I do not believe that MS or Novell are trying to kill F/OSS
00:21 < tessier__> cj: MS says it is. It’s a cancer, remember?
00:21 < cj> nor could they were they to want to
00:21 < tessier__> cj: Probably not. But they have certainly killed lots of other companies.
00:22 < cj> tessier__: perhaps someone employed by MS said that, I’ll give you that. The folks I’ve worked with don’t seem to feel that way.
00:22 < tessier__> cj: The folks you work with don’t run MS.
00:22 < tessier__> They spent a lot of money on a “Linux is a cancer” campaign which came from the top.
00:22 < cj> tessier__: if you mean they intend to bring redhat or canonical to bankruptcy, perhaps I’d buy that. but linux is not a company.
00:23 < tessier__> cj: They didn’t say RedHat or Canonical. They said Linux was a cancer.
00:23 <@schestowitz> *LOL* “they don’t say it to me” … “Microsoft really loves open source”..”they are nice people”…….*LOL* Classic.
00:23 < cj> tessier__: so you’re confused?
00:23 < tessier__> I’m not confused at all.
00:24 <@schestowitz> tessier: that’s not correct. The people at the ‘bottom’ say that too.
00:24 < cj> “they have certainly killed lots of other companies” sounds non-sequiter for someone who is not confused…
00:24 <@schestowitz> They just can’t say it in public. Let me find something.
00:25 <@schestowitz> http://boycottnovell.com/2008/03/27/microsoft-wants-money-at-osbc/
00:25 < cj> schestowitz: if you continue to lower yourself to ad homonym, you’ll hurt your credibility further.
00:26 <@schestowitz> “Open source is stealing. What open source does is copying proprietary software and giving it away for free. Open source is not about innovation or innovating, it’s about copying. It infringes on everybody’s patents. Not just Microsoft’s. But we’re just the most vocal about it. We just can not see this happening and not do anything to protect our business […] What open source and communism have in common, is that there
00:26 <@schestowitz> are both failed systems”.
00:26 <@schestowitz> cj: ad hominem? Where?
00:27 < cj> *LOL*? “they are nice people”?
00:27 < cj> schestowitz: laughing and misquoting
00:32 < cj> I’m sorry to hear that some folks feel that way. However, those that I’ve spoken with don’t hold that opinion.
00:32 < cj> and yes, tessier__, some of my friends do run parts of microsoft.
00:33 < cj> this conversation strikes me as xenophobic…
00:33 <@schestowitz> Good for them. They take order from people who break the law.
00:33 <@schestowitz> *orders
00:33 <@schestowitz> cj: sadly for them, they fail to understand who they serve and what the impact on society is. It’s call Kool-Aid.
00:34 < cj> schestowitz: you seem unfit to make that judgment… you do not know them or their intent…
00:35 < cj> schestowitz: and I’m still waiting for your recommendations on how to adjust the status quo so that it meets the needs of society in a better way.
00:35 <@schestowitz> I saw what they write. Patronisation is dangerous. A company whose employees express desire to ’tilt “X” into the death spiral’ and use ISVs as “pawns” and “one night stands”.
00:35 < cj> schestowitz: and no, “tear it down and start all over” doesn’t count, in my book.
00:36 <@schestowitz> On whose behalf are you asking?
00:36 < cj> free software developers
00:37 < cj> well, on my own as a free software developer
00:43 < cj> it would be presunmptive of me to ask on the behalf of others, without having their consent :)
00:51 <@schestowitz> Who job do you do for Microsoft?
00:52 < cj> schestowitz: did you send folks to spam #mono?
00:52 < cj> who job?
00:53 <@schestowitz> ???
00:53 < cj> I do not understand “Who job do you do”
00:53 <@schestowitz> Spam Mono? Send? What am I? Some don who ‘sends’ peple…?
00:54 < cj> schestowitz: *shrug* someone there suggested the spammers were your “lackeys”
00:55 < cj> I don’t know why he would have said that, but I thought I would ask you rather than accuse you. perhaps I can defend your reputation?
00:55 < cj> if you were asking what I do at MS, I said above. allow me to scroll back…
00:56 < cj> testing a feature in the next release of forefront; implementation of the GAPA stuff documented here: http://research.microsoft.com/research/shield/
00:58 <@schestowitz> Why doesn’t the Almighty Microsoft make security a feature of the O/S? If it came make a browser a feature you cannot even remove from the O/S, why not security?
00:59 < cj> schestowitz: they did. it’s in vista. GAPA is an additional feature.
01:00 < cj> when you buy an individual system, you don’t really need a enterprise-wide managed firewall.
01:00 < cj> but it does come with a personal firewall.
01:00 < cj> s/ a / an /
01:01 <@schestowitz> it’s a nice business model that Microsoft has got going. They should make the O/S more crashy (they already did that with LH/Vista) and then sell better stability as a product.
01:01 <@schestowitz> Vista is not secure. It’s a Big Lie.
01:01 <@schestowitz> It was proven by scientists.
01:01 < cj> *shrug* I’m not claiming that vista is a good OS. I’m just answering your question.
01:04 < cj> so, do you have any recommendations for improving the social responsibility of Novell and MS? What would you consider a worthwhile move on the part of either of the companies?
01:05 < cj> or are you just using the boycottnovell campaign as a platform to enlarge your ego?
01:06 <@schestowitz> The SEC is advised to pay a long visit to both companies and inform the investors it was made to protect about the truth; that’ll be a good start.
01:06 < cj> what would be a positive end to this campaign? The Montgomery Bus Boycot was not held to destroy the bus system, it was held to improve the situation and gather attention to a problem which had a solution.
01:07 < cj> to me, it seems like you are complaining for the sake of complaining with a side effect of you getting attention…
01:08 < cj> schestowitz: I mean what could the companies do *themselves*? Is your recommendation really that the companies continue as they are until the authorities *make* them do something else?
01:10 < cj> you have yet to confirm or deny that spammers were sent to #mono at your behest…
01:11 < tessier> First we need to get rid of software patents.
01:11 < tessier> Then MS can’t claim (but never prove) that Linux violates hundreds of their patenst
01:11 < tessier> patents
01:12 < tessier> To say Linux violates hundreds of patents but never say which ones so they can be fixed is a pretty sleezy move.
01:12 < cj> perhaps reform would be a more feasible bet. I’m not a fan of software patents either, but they’re already part of society.
01:13 < cj> classifying software as a form of mathematics would bring the tower crumbling down… but that may be more catostrophe than can be handled…
01:13 <@schestowitz> I never ‘sent’ anyone anywhere and I didn’t know a Mono channel exists. I knew about go-oo
01:14 < cj> irc.gimp.net, #mono
01:16 -!- Irssi: #boycottnovell: Total of 16 nicks [3 ops, 0 halfops, 0 voices, 13 normal]
01:18 <@schestowitz> No, thank you, sir.
01:18 < cj> schestowitz: it seems the spammers are from the same domain as mib_e1zoms / mib_jm8dfl
01:19 <@schestowitz> Look, I won’t be spending time with some accusations that are baseless and stupid and false. Mib is mibbit.
01:21 < cj> I’m not accusing. I’m just noting that it seems to me that the regulars of this channel react to a rational conversation with network abuse.
01:21 < cj> mib_e1zoms: was that you?
01:21 < cj> mib_jm8dfl: ^^
01:22 <@schestowitz> I don’t use mibbit
01:22 < cj> schestowitz: … I didn’t claim that you did?
01:23 <@schestowitz> I find it amusing if not flattering that any form of inconvenience to Mono is now blamed on me, by default.
01:23 < cj> :)
01:24 < cj> schestowitz: have you read this?
01:24 < cj> http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3768961/Sam+Ramji+Microsofts+Man+in+Open+Source.htm
01:29 < cj> Q: Certainly you’re aware that some observers are skeptical about the concept of Microsoft having an open source strategy. How do you respond to this?
01:29 < cj> Our open source strategy, now and in the future, is to continue a journey in which we participate with others in learning how open source products and technologies, Microsoft products and technologiesand sometimes open source products and technologies from Microsoftcan coexist, combine, and comingle in ways that offer value to customers, developers and IT administrators, partners businesses, and, as a commercial company, our shareholders.
01:29 < cj> But our strategy remains unchanged. Microsoft competes with Linux and Unix servers with Windows servers; we’re going to find ways to interoperate between Linux and Windows because lots of our customers run both; and we want to grow the open-source ecosystem as it relates to Microsoft software.
01:38 < cj> should the Apache Software Foundation be boycotted as well? If not, what is the distinction?
01:40 * schestowitz catching up
01:42 <@schestowitz> ct: you come here as a person who works for Microsoft (indirectly) and you sing about the wonders of Microsoft. Do you even know what Ramji is doing? Search BN as this was covered before. The same with Apache. It’s all there.
01:42 < cj> sorry, I missed the part where I was singing about the wonders…
04:01 < tessier> Software patents are completely unworkable. Reform is not an option.
04:01 < tessier> Software is math and you can’t patent math.
04:01 < tessier> It’s not a matter of classification, it’s a matter of fact.
04:02 < tessier> You can’t count to infinity without reproducing the entire source code of Windows Vista. Count yourself lucky nobody is pushing the issue of copyright in general.
04:13 < wasabi> You can have a bunch of monkeys work forever, and eventualy they’ll write a book.
04:13 < wasabi> But that book is still copyrighted.
04:14 < wasabi> I fail to see the conclusion properly following hte premises.
04:14 < wasabi> patent law, and most law, isn’t about weird theoritical abstracts.
04:15 < wasabi> it’s about real world things, in our country, and others, in this day and time.
04:40 < tessier> But I’m not talking about monkeys typing randomly. I’m talking about math
04:41 < tessier> And math cannot be patented.
04:42 -!- cj was kicked from #boycottnovell by [H]omer [[H]omer]
— Log closed Thu Sep 04 04:42:13 2008
— Log opened Thu Sep 04 04:42:34 2008
04:42 -!- Irssi: #boycottnovell: Total of 16 nicks [3 ops, 0 halfops, 0 voices, 13 normal]
04:42 -!- mode/#boycottnovell [+b *!*@pdpc/supporter/monthlybronze/cj] by ChanServ
04:42 -!- cj was kicked from #boycottnovell by ChanServ [Banned: Goodbye Astroturfer]
— Log closed Thu Sep 04 04:42:34 2008

I’m intrigued by the work being done by Imendio and friends on GDK on the Quartz back end. Until recently, running gtk+ applications such as Monodevelop and The GIMP required that the optional X11 implementation be installed to an OS X machine.

Imendio has been investing time in working on the quartz implementation of gdk, the low-level drawing kit on which gtk+ relies. In addition to the work of porting just the gdk layer, there is an effort to create a framework to help gtk+ apps fit in with the distinctive look & feel of the Apple platform.

I’m in the process of building from svn using jhbuild. I’ll be participating in the forums in case anyone else is interested in helping to squash some bugs!

A previous post covered altering the install target so that it places the .exe assembly into the filesystem of the installer’s computer. In this part, we will cover creating the so-called “wrapper” script, which is the way recommended by the mono project’s application deployment guidelines to make the assembly executable on the system outside of the source distribution.

Return to the workplace

$ cd ~/src/greeting/

Create the wrapper script template

$ cat > greeting.in
#!/bin/bash
 
exec @RUNTIME@ @prefix@/lib/mono/@PACKAGE_NAME@/Greeting.exe "$@"
^D


Alter the configure.ac file to process the wrapper template

$ patch configure.ac

@@ -13,6 +13,7 @@
 
 AC_CONFIG_FILES([
 Makefile
+greeting
 ])
 AC_OUTPUT

^D^D


Alter the Makefile.am file to distribute the wrapper template

$ cat >> Makefile.am
 
bin_SCRIPTS = greeting
 
^D

Re-build the Makefile and wrapper script

$ autoconf && automake && ./configure

Test the install target

$ make && sudo make install
$ which greeting
/usr/local/bin/greeting
$ greeting ––number 8
Greetings, Neptune!


Conclusion

In this post, I gave an example of creating a simple wrapper shell script and using the autotools infrastructure to locate and use the system C# compiler and CLI runtime. This may not seem like much of a feat, but many systems have their binaries installed in weird locations and other quirks. The autotools system is able to detect and take care of these details without having the maintainer of the software create system-specific tweaks that would undoubtedly reduce the number of platforms on which the software would work.

So… On IRC today, John, Michael and I discussed rolling Prebuild and xbuild into one product. It seems that we’re duplicating effort and competing for each others’ users. It sounds to me like we should converge the codebases, and make Prebuild.exe a wrapper around the innards of xbuild.

Thoughts?

I don’t really have anything really exciting to report, so y’all get to listen to me blather. And after all, that’s what blogs are for anyway, right?

Zelda is turning 11 months old this month. This is still my favorite picture:

18:32 <@drgone> how's being fired?
18:32 < cj_> drgone: I made money by being fired.  isn't that great?
18:32 <@drgone> rock on
18:32 <@drgone> gotta love hush money
20:13 <@btm> cj: where you working now?
20:56 < cj_> btm: cardomain.com

I went to lunch with a couple of friends from #mono today. That references earns me the right to spam the monologue folks (hi everyone!). benjoldersma, his friend [Ian] and I went to an Indian place in Fremont. I was hoping that RevFry would come, too, but he is lame.

We talked about the Seattle Mono Users’ Group (all four of us), Prebuild, the DLR, my hopes of getting a gig at Microsoft to implement Perl6 on the DLR, IKVM, GTK#, gtk+, XAML, WPF, Moonlight, Ubuntu, and other stuff, I’m sure.

I’m working at cardomain.com on contract. It’s fun. The people there seem smart and interested in what they’re doing. Their development infrastructure makes me happy. The fact that their devs do automated testing also makes me happy. The fact that I have LoS to the Westin makes me happy. The parking situation rains on my parade.

Speaking of the Westin, I let down my friends with whom I co-locate. I was unable to run to the rack when one of the servers needed love and attention. It cost the other folks quite a bit of revenue. Allow me to apologize publicly. I’m sorry folks. I’m doing what I can to reduce the risk of this happening again. I hope I can make it up to you.

Hannah got a job at Microsoft working on the Surface team.

And with that, I will select some categories… thanks for tuning in :)

My background includes experience in system administration, network operation, technical support, and development of applications on server and client side.

My primary operating system is Debian GNU/Linux.
My primary programming languages are C# and Perl.
I run a small family ISP on a not-for-profit basis: http://colliertech.org/
I am a “charter” member of a group originally know as “The Linux Internet Support Co-Operative” (LISC). The group is now known as the Open Projects Network (OPN) and is best known for its involvement with the freenode.net IRC servers.
I hold r/w access to the source code repositories of many “open source” projects including Mono, GNOME, and many projects hosted by sourceforge.
I self-identify as a Free Software developer, non-pauline christian, democratic socialist and egalitarian.
I find the work done by the free software / open source community fascinating and attempt to contribute to the project with time available to me.

Hey folks,

Robert Collins and Mark Shuttleworth were kind enough to add a Launchpad project for Mono. It will be nice to have a presence on Launchpad, as it is one of the focus points of the Ubuntu development team. We should be able to wrangle some more ubuntu devs with this exposure.

The Prebuild work is coming along well. The Autotools target in my subversion repository is now generating autogen.sh, configure.ac and Makefile.am files for the Solution-level and each Project-level entity. I just committed some code to create stubs for the files automake requires to run correctly. So now, running “sh autogen.sh” from the generated root runs configure in the Solution and all of the Projects. There are still no rules to copy, link, whatever the source .cs files to the autotools build path or create the Makefile.am targets, but we’re getting closer. I guess that’s the next step.