Journal | Ramblings for July, 1999

>rant<

I am doing a class on C++ at a well-know online "University", which utilizes as its primary and recommended programming tool Microsoft Visual C++. However, the sample code, which is written for VC++, does not always compile well under egcs (now formally gcc), which is the tool available to me under Linux. AND the compliant code written to work under egcs fails to compile under VC++. Sigh

to quote from Bruce Eckel's site, (commentary on MS VC++)

A note about Visual C++. I periodically receive messages saying that the most recent version of Visual C++ will not compile many of the programs in the book. Let me attempt to be diplomatic here. Microsoft has stated that what they are creating is "a Windows compiler." Their interest is in creating a compiler that makes Windows programs, and not one that is compliant to the C++ Standard. As a result, the Standard C++ features in VC++ have been increasing at a relative crawl....

>/rant<

On a lighter note, the Honda died this week - the electrical system problem which caused the death is just the straw which broke the camel's back, so to speak. We have gotten a new truck (well, new to us, anyway), a Chevy Blazer, Tahoe edition, '95. It is green, so now we have Christmas cars (the Cavalier is red). We got the Blazer at Sunnyvale Toyota - RECOMMENDED: a good experience.

In from Big Sur - two days of MG on the trails, and foto's to follow next couple-a-weeks. Great FUN!!

ppp is a challenge - more so than I had suspected - having grave difficulty getting a reliable connection - I have been able to dial, and to connect, and to surf, but only with irregularity - I theenk that the steenking DNS is copulated here, somehow. I shall sikh the ferrets onto the problem and it will be solved, as soon as I can return to that point on the wheel -

On the Brian-as-time-sharing-system thingy, I have 6 projects (wage slave related), two home comp projects, the farm (pictures soon), a life, a spouse and some serious camping and fishing to be done... CLEARLY not to be regarded in the order listed... ;).

Oh, I must have lost a day's refs somewhere in the chaos that was last week -but that makes for a good segue... Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor is online (in case you weren't aware), anyway, Dr. Pournelle is one-o-them renaissance guys, astute, good writer (a fine attibute for an author), writer of science fiction of the hard variety, and power user extraordinaire... he has a macro key defined for "I do all these stupid things so you don't have to...". I strongly recommend you visit his site and spelunk for a while, lots of topics, lots computer, some social, some military, some political... Strongly recommended.

No more weather reports (at least until the next fish slapping contest)

d/l'd the latest LASG (linux admin's security guide), a decent guide, with lots of outrefs, currently in version 0.1.4. Chortle for the day - into the cup holder goes the "Contributed RPMs" disk of RH6.0 (a GOOD deal) from Linux System Labs and behold, TCD believes that I have a copy of a Phil Collins disk, Hits, in... doesn't play Phil, of course, but :)

Places I visit for info, biased and unbiased news, etc.

• freshmeat for those who like code & meat the same - raw.
• linux.com a good blend of linux news, how-to's, etc
• ZDNet for tech news of more than linux
• CNN for non-tech, reality check sh-t.
• slashdot for news, for flames, for fun !!!

Time to slap in some brian setzer and do some work...

Okay... 35C / 42% Lorena McKennitt (the book of secrets) is the disk of the day, Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (who brought us Snow Crash and The Diamond Age) is my book of the month, and I've only just cracked the hardcover... Also from Neal, and linked to from the above site is In The Beginning was the Command Line, a cogent look at the recent history, and possible near futures of computing... worth a read, if you haven't already. Methinks it is time for some coding and some fresh art... more when there's more :)

Sunday - hot, Hot.... HOT! - but that's OK, I am listening to Santana's Supernatural in the cupholder, the system is fully rebuilt and backed up, and got the Corel WP8 dl - works, including reading those MS Word docs I couldn't touch before. Seti@Home runs GREAT under Linux... 233PII/128M/RH6.0 - 12 hrs /dataset (at home) .... 200PII/128M/NTWS4.0 - 75hrs / dataset (at work)... just another in the growing list of reasons, neh?

Balance of the day devoted to programming. Next weekend is camping south of Carmel in the Ventana area... maybe more later.

I feel like Arthur's rabbit-skin bag, the immediately before picture, so to speak... An attempted upgrade left my system staggering last evening, and the best effort was a clean reinstall (leaving my separate /home partition untouched). I tried Debian, but I don't know enough yet - and I didn't want L-Cow down for the length of time I can afford right now... So a kitchen sink install of RedHat 6.0, then remove those bits I don't want using gnorpm, disable MOST services... all that by 11pm last evening...

All that's left is to re-install the tape drive modules. Everything else is in, up and running. More later.

Located, documented and reported the bug to the bluefish team... seems to be under control. Let me be more clear (save MY work, duh!!!) - but the bug is actually when you attempt to close the program using the window close button made available by the window manager... different but fatal problems in both Gnome and KDE. Behavior - closing with unsaved data brings up a dialog box - cancel from that box, then repeat [X] and ... boom - core droppings. The I found this because I don't necessarily trust the autosave on exit functions, so cancelled in order to explicitly save my data. BUT since I had multiple windows open, that wasn't the only file needing saving, which crapped all over my work. Currently I am explicitly saving and closing each document prior to exiting. Haven't dropped anything today.

Today working on the C++ #2 course from ZDU - a ZDU primer - the books are questionable, the instructors are (overall) excellent, and the student interaction holds real promise, although there is not the participation there should be - ZDU ought to send people over to slashdot, just to understand what verbosity can be.

For me, a questionable book is a useful tool, because it forces me to figure out what's wrong with the code, the book, the question, whatever, and I generally learn 17 times more than I would without that impetus. The kicker is that I also am utilizing Thinking in C++, 2nd Edition by Bruce Eckel (pdf format) and Stroustrup's The C++ Programming Language, 3rd Edition (treeware). So these additional resources (along with the web) carry me when the ZDU text doesn't. I am sure that this is a problem for other students.

Independent of ZDU, I belong to a C++ study group using the Eckel book as a text - we are currently slogging through chapter 3. The premise behind the Eckel book is that it is a work-in-progress, available free online, and Bruce is getting user feedback to tune the book. It will be published in Fall 1999, and still remain free online. I can recommend it heartily, and plan on purchasing the book when it is published, so that I can support the development model.

Learning to use the tools. Credit where it's due - The Gimp and Bluefish are doing the work, I am just along for the ride.

Bugs in Bluefish - DO NOT attempt to exit without having saved your work - the autosave on exit function blanked two files for me :(.