Lots of lost sleep this week hacking a fun new feature in up2date.
It will finally allow me to have a really really good answer to
“The Question That Never Goes Away”.

So, I compiled cvs gimp on the debian pa-risc box. Kind of
a test run to see how long I can expect it to take to rebuild
a given package.

result, about 3h40m to build, probabaly another 10 to
make install. So figure just about 4 hours to build an
rpm.

Building a dist could take a while.

I seem to have somehow gotten into some sort of weird email version
of “The Cube”.

It looks like a few hundred random people got subscribed to
some mailman list for no apprarent reason. Now of course,
I’m getting ~100 messages a day of people posting to
the list (not the request address mind you) asking…
no… demanding to be removed from the list.

We just need to find the guy whose special ability is
hacking mailman.

Weird.

Just decided to click the random project
link at Freshmeat.

Out of the first 5 times I hit it, one is for NPTL (written by a coworker)
and another is for Snarf.
Written by xach.

from heinous

1. A candle on your desk suddenly starts burning, although there is no
logical explanation (like you lighting it). What do you think/do?

I would unfold my mithril wings and fly to my secret hideout
in atlantis.

Might as well do something impossible if somthing else impossible
happens.

I’m a skeptic. So I’d probably try to figure out the logical explanation,
whatever that may be. It happened, there _has_ to a be a logical, if
not unlikely, explanation.

2. If you could instantly transport yourself anywhere you wanted and be
invisable upon arriving (granted, you can come back when you want),
where would it be?

Debates about what the constituion really was supposed to mean?
(though, I suspect in reality, that would be amazingly boring…)

Building stonehenge/gaza pyramids/easter island statues/any
other mostly unexplained “how did they do that?” construction.

3. What sort of dishes do you like the most?

Corningware, or perhaps pyrex. Cast iron is cool too.
Stay away from the lead cups though.

Or do you mean food? I like cheese, so italian food
of almost any variety is usually at the top. I have a
sweet tooth, so most non chocalate deserts. Seafood
is a good bet as well. Any thai/korean/indian is pretty
good as well. I’ve also recently discoverd my inner
southerner and picked up a taste for barbeque and
fixings (especially hush puppies and corn bread…)

I dont tend to cook much beyond the “heat up something
out of the can” variety.

4. What would be a dream stereo/entertainment system for you?

Heh. For the longest time the only cd player I had was a dinky
~$40 boombox. Then I moved up to a ~$75 noname flashy light
stereo. So, I’m pretty easy to please stereo wise. I’m an
unaudiophile.

Ditto with vcr/dvd. I’ve owned a vcr forever that I think I’ve
used maybe 3 times. I have a 5 disc dvd player that I
recently finally got enough dvd’s to actually fill up. Only
took two years.

I think I’d like a nice huge flat screen plasma display. And
some sort of tivo like device that could also store mp3/ogg,
album covert art, etc. It would be cool if it could record several
shows at once, and automatically skip commercials. And if
does audio files, something that understands the concept
of an album. I almost never want to listen to a particular song,
but an entire album instead.

I think it would be cool to have a nice pair of flat panel speakers.
Maybe about six feet tall. Mainly just because I think they look
really cool. A poweramp/reciever with exposed glowing tubes
would be cool for the same reason.

5. What do you think would be a neater thing to throw than beads at
Mardi Gras?

Beads have an interesting property that they are easy to catch.
So, if you were going to replace them, it should either be something
very hard to catch (just for entertainment value) or something easier
to catch (in the name of progress!).

harder things to catch:
rabid ferrets
broken pyrex dishes

easy things to catch:
Nerf Babies (everyone knows your not supposed to drop babies!)
Bolas

More approriate for the festivities:
food (isnt it somehow associated with lint or something?)
std’s (might as well just save everyone time)
toilet bowl seats (see above)

from pam

still kind of tired, so the verbose when tired still applies.

1. Why/how did you get started working on Linux, and what got you started on The Gimp?

linux:

Was at ncsu, rediscovering modern computers by spending way way too much
time at the computer labs. I was learning bits of unix and email/ftp/web/etc.

My roomate had a old 486 sx25 with 4 megs of ram running windows 3.1.
We decided it would be cool to figure out how to get to the internet from
the dorm room. Since this was pre wired dorms days, that meant dialup.

Since we were also cheap, we wanted to connect though the schools
dialin servers. At the time, you could dial in and get a shell. Or if you
poked around, you could run ppp. Probablem was, at the time, trumpet
winsock for windows didnt support ppp. So after some research, figured
out that all the people using ppp on the dialup boxes were doing it with
linux. So off to the computer lab with a box full of floppies and some
vague ideas on where to download slackware. Eventually got it installed,
and X running, and after much struggle, got ppp working. Much rejoicing
was had. A few weeks after that, I paid $5 to get into the first Linux Expo
on Centienal Campus (about a block from where I work now…). Started
showing up at NCSU lug not too long after that.

Over the summer decided to teach myself c++ by trying to write a
text adventure game. Made little progress. Mostly do to my attempts
to use templates on circa 95 era g++. That and at the time mysterious
compiler errors (which on hindsights, was the compiler dying because
the 5 megs of ram I had in the machine wasnt enoug)

Started using linux full time about that time.

gimp:

I can’t remember why I started playing with gimp. But it was
after I unsuccesfully attempted to “learn photoshop” on a windows
box. First used 0.54 (pre layers and most anything useful). It was
way buggy, so I started patrolling the devel list archives daily.

One day, an announcement for version 0.99 came. I downloaded it.
I fought with it for a day, and finally got it to build. Then another post
on the mailing list about a new irc channel, #gimp. Being unfamilar
with irc, it took some doing to get logged in. Once in, I discovered all the
core developers were hanging out and chatting, fixing bugs, discussing
features, etc. I kind of got hooked then. Being able to suggest a feature
and have someone implement it in hours. Started trying to add features
and fix bugs myself and got some early (and horrible) patches accepted.

2. What’s the stupidest peice of code you’ve ever written? What about the coolest?

stupidest:
Hmm, the mind boggles at the possibilities. Lots of stupid typos and
just plain wrong thinko’s that broke stuff in horrible ways. I once wrote a
bizzare string of shell scripts that would let you create desktop menu
items for software you didnt have installed. The menu items would
say something like “(install) Mosaic” or whatever, and would go
find the package off a cd and install it. Not a horrible idea, but the
implementation was a total kluge tower.

The Random
Subdivision Name Generator is pretty stupid.

Coolest:
I think the pixmap and “image pipe” animated brushes in
Gimp perhaps. Though, I borrowed the idea. My favorite would
probabaly be the gradient brush stuff in Gimp, since that was an
original idea, that Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro finally added in
the last year or so. See
Making tileable textures with gradient brushes for an example.

Up2date is cool as well, just because so many people use it
to make there lives easier. Even though being tied into a “better-if-paid-service”
kind of sucks some of the fun out of it.

3. Do you have a crush on anybody? Well you tell me who? (yes so sometimes I am a giggly girl. You can ignore the second part if you want)

At the moment, I don’t think I have a crush on anyone. But that could change at
a moments notice[1]. And yes, if you would like to know, I probabaly wouldn’t have
any problems telling you.

1. Now that I think about it, the girl hanging her art down the hallway seems pretty
cool. And I’m a sucker for artist types. But then, thats not exactly a crush.

4. What’s something that you always wanted to do, but haven’t had a chance to yet?

I’ve never really done much travel, so that would be a canidate. Recording
a cd that people actually wanted to hear would be cool.

5. You’re given a long peice of wire, three metal triangles, a largish peice of plexiglass, and a yellow ribbon. Oh, and some duct tape, and whatever tools you need. Your job is to make something out of it – what do you make?

If it were a really big piece of plexiglass, it would be cool to make a topographical
model out of it. Cutting out each section of “height” from the plexiglass to build
up the topographic features. (this is the best example I can find with a quick search).

I’d probabaly used the three metal triangles to make legs, and make it into some
sort of coffee table. The wire could probabaly be used to make an interesting
model of flowing water. The yellow ribbon would be used as a tourniquet for when
I cut myself cutting up all the plexiglass.

From strandist

Feeling kind of tired today, and I tend to be verbose when I’m tired, so
watch out…

1) What do you miss most about living in Statesville or a smaller town in general?

Suppose the standard answer is to miss knowing most people. But never
really lived in a town _that_ small (not to mention I generally have a fairly small
circle of friends). So can’t say I agree with that.

In a lot of ways, it’s just generally having less people. And less cars
and traffic. Etc. But thats kind of a boring answer.

Reasons I’d move back to Statesville or similar towns would
primarily be friends and family. That and cheap cost of living.

Never really been a person who put too much emphasis on
location though.

2) What’s one instrument you wish you could play but can’t?

I would like to be able to play anything really well. But I don’t
really have the ear to be a good musician.

But I think it would be cool to be a great drummer.

3) A person is introducing you from afar. Complete this sentence: “That guy over there is Adrian, he’s the guy who…”

tends to happen in reality:
“works at Red Hat”

around linux people:
“writes up2date”

in an imaginary ideal world:
“knows a little about everything”
“makes cool stuff”
“can learn to do anything”
“solves problems”

4) Tomorrow every door in the world will be painted the same color and it’s up to you which one. Which color do you choose?

White. How boring is that?

5) Which year (within the time of written history) would you say is the best year ever and why?

If I was better versed in history, I’d probabaly have a good answer for this. But
I haven’t had a real history kick yet, so…

For the sake of argument, I’d define best as “most important/influential”

And being a natural pessimist, hard for me to pick out the “best’ of something ;->

So, first thought is 1440. Gutenberg began using the version of the priniting
press that would eventually lead to the archiving of a substantial subset of
human knowledge in a format that would be widely accessible.

And yes, I know others had working printing presses first, sometimes centuries
before Gutenberg. But they didn’t catch on at the time.

I might update this later once I think about it some more.

Typical rules appy. If you want questions, ask. I’ll try to ask them. Though,
historical, asking people interesting questions isnt one of my strenthgs.