Hacks Blog

New web content engine, part 9 15 years ago
I notice that an essential part of every coding session is refactoring. I got rid of some really ancient code that only made sense for the version of Rm that was XSLT-driven this time around and has been sitting there ever since. I realized that I was getting ticked off about not having a good way…

A ruby time zone bug 15 years ago
A subtle bug I found in the ruby timezone handling

Some observations on rebuilding a box with Ubuntu 15 years ago
Ubuntu is now one of the most popular Linux distributions, so I decided to give it a try for my box. At the very least, I've had a Debian box that's been fairly easy to keep current for years, so I'm not too scared about using any Debian-based distributions. I rather like Debian's APT packaging…

Some thoughts on smartphones 15 years ago
Evolution tends to go in spurts. For a brief period of time, every possible configuration might be tried (Cambrian Explosion anybody?) and then eventually basic forms will be shaken out to be refined. I'm kinda happy about how the market's being shaken up for once. I had regarded the whole PDA…

Why I'm not excited about Windows CE and Windows Mobile anymore 15 years ago
Long time readers of the blog have noted that I've been using Windows CE in various forms for quite a long time, largely by accident or because I like to think even more different than your average Apple user. Palm OS was the first palm device to really succeed in the marketplace. This was largely a…

KDE still worse than Windows, FLV's at 11. 16 years ago
So my primary computer at work is a Macbook Pro (which I viewed, upon receipt, as a sign that life was looking up) and my computer at home is a custom build PC running Windows. Both cygwin-X on the PC and X11.app on the mac are designed to be rootless and fairly ambivalent about desktop environments…

Maildir... the one true mail format (more or less) 16 years ago
So I just want to highlight one very important point that I've noticed while moving my mail around. When I was using an mbox-based mail system, every so often I would have a mail corruption bug where "something" would go wrong. My Outlook email box has gone funky in the past and not all of the data…

New web content engine, part 8 16 years ago
I think I might have been sleeping when screencasts became so popular, because it seems that every site is now pushing their screencasts on you... More recently, I'm seeing pieces of software where the ONLY documentation is a screencast. So why can't you use screencasts as documentation? It's not…

ruby-xml-smart in Rm 16 years ago
I'm not done yet... so my benchmark that used to take 7.3 seconds now takes 5.2 seconds (so, only 40% faster, but that does include the time spent loading all of the libraries) but I'm part way through removing all of the REXML out of my formatting code in Rm and replacing it with Ruby-XML-Smart…

New web content engine, part 8 16 years ago
A brief recap I'm realizing that I need to get Rm together and stuff while the iron's hot. See, the idea of Rm predates CouchDB, but if I release it too long after CouchDB gets buzz, everybody will think I just stole some ideas from that. The basic idea behind Rm comes from my longstanding…