monday

---

Trying something new here. I want something between Twitter and a month long complete absence.

---

• Geoff started his first day at $work.
• Ben and Rob are in town this week for $work stuff.

• Lots of talk about running EMCAScript from inside a flash 9 VM, to generate HTML for things like the Feed Tree.

  • Really, we just need to figure out what the cost of copying data is

• Discussed why not having to write an wireshark plugin, and re-using HTTP as a transport protocol is good thing.

  • Okay, so for those who don’t know, back at Cyan, Rob and I wrote an Ethereal (since-renamed to wireshark) plugin, which code decoded the Uru Online network packets. But the unique thing is that it actually ran the real network layer and de-serialization routines, used by the actual engine, inside ethereal, meaning you could easily introspect objects, as they were packed over the wire. It is still one of the coolest things I have worked on, at least from being in an oh-shit-something-is-broken situation. To be able to know exactly what is going on with complex network applications is priceless.
• Rob merged Berkeley DB 4.5 to trunk. Woot.

• Researched various embedded HTTP Server Libraries:

  • shttpd - Looks like the best. Actively maintained, good license.

Overall, I was quite disappointed by the overall quality and quantity of embeddable servers. If you are writing a client, there is curl or serf; But if you want a self contained server, and don’t want to make an apache module for various reasons, there just aren’t many good options.

• Re-inventing SOAP and object serialzation system without the sucky parts with a staticly typed language like C++ sucks. I wish I had Python.
• Cookies from the Pacific Cookie Company are good. And they ship them, extremely quickly.
• I went to Fry’s twice today. Once I came back with a 320GB Firewire Drive, the second time with Firewire 400 cables. It turns out, it only came with a 9-pin Firewire 800 cable, which doesn’t work so well in an original MacBookPro. Guess this means I need a new computer.

• Dinner at the Brewery:

  • DHH and Mark are both crazy. But, Mark is way funnier.

    • PS: I wish my scaling problems were about storing only 255 bytes per post.
  • More on running EMCAScript inside Flash VMs to do ‘heavy’ client side work.
• Started ripping Dead Like Me, Season 1 DVDs. Handbarke FTW. (DVD Ripping software for the Mac)

Metrics:

• 1 work meeting
• 3 work emails.
• 3 work svn commits
• 1 non-work email.
• 0 non-work svn commits

edit, more:

• I banned 200+ Casino Spammers from Bloglines this morning. I hate spammers.
• Is typo’ing ‘shirt’ for ‘shit’, a feature or a bug?