Yes people, LUGRadio Episode 4 has been released. It was recorded last night and it is now available for download. Go and grab it and then come and join us on the LUGRadio forums.
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Today I have tidied up an article on Qt programming that I am writing for the Linux Journal in Germany and sent it off. I have also been working on my presentation for my talk on Linux as a viable desktop platform at the Linux User & Developer Expo in April. It is all coming together. I am just waiting on a few emails, one of which was to Robert Love of Project Utopia fame. I wanted to get an update on his work.

I had a chat today with John Southern from Linux Magazine. I haven’t heard from John for a while and it was great to catch up. He has been knocked out by the Manchester comunications problems, as has Kier from Linux User & Developer and countless others. I find it amazing that in this day and age a city like Manchester can be knocked down like this. Crazy.

Last night I was hacking away at the re-design of the site; well, as it is, it is not so much a re-design by a good overhaul. I have added some more functionality to the different sections of the site to make it easier to navigate and view content. Each section will have its own content and features visible instead of the main sidebar in the current design. Although this is really looking cool, it is naturally going to take me longer to code all of this. I am also re-setting images and proofing/updating sections. I think it will make for a better site overall.

Today I was reading my usual batch of sites and saw Simon Willison has scribed a comment on the current Apache 2.0 / PHP debacle. He makes some good points and I had forgotton about how long this is taking to get coded. I wonder how many prople are actually working on this. Is converting the PHP module over to the new threaded Apache really that much of a challenge or is it just a man/womenpower problem? I would be interested to see what the bottleneck is. This issue has been in my mind recently as I have been suggesting the LAMP system to a number of people people and I have been writing about it quite a bit. Fingers crossed it is straightened out soon.

Right, I need to change this CD (Judas Priest – Painkiller) to something else as I have listened to it three times in a row now. We are also doing LUGRadio Episode 4 tonight. 🙂
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I have just stuck a new song online called Presence. It is a song about a soldier coming back from a war and trying to return to normality. The aim of this one was to create a truly atmospheric piece. Emelye Penfold played cello.

Last night I worked on my new design again and things are really coming together. Much of it is still broken in IE, but I am going to concentrate on this in a few days when I have some time. I have moved some bits around and overall I am quite pleased with how it seems to be looking. There is still a lot to be done, but I am making progress.

A few days back I got an email regarding my first O’Reilly article The hacker ethic explaining his views on what makes him a hacker. It was interested reading, and this is what was in the email:

hi jono,

anyhow, i enjoyed your article and if you have any questions…

It is certainly interesting to see the commonality between different hackers and what they do and how they look. Thanks for the email Curtis.

We went away this weekend to visit my brother and his family in Doncaster. It was great seeing them and I am looking forward to meeting up again with them soon.

When we got back I spent a few hours on the website redesign. As is usual, I needed to spend some time trying to figure out why my design is broken in IE5. Once again, this came down to the different ways that browsers handle the box model. This box model involves how a browser understands the calculation of width from a specified width, padding etc. Some browsers do it one way (not just IE) and some do it another way. I made use of the Box Model Hack that is commonly used to get around this, but I am also looking into the suggestions made by Simon Willison. I am so very tempted to make use of some of the draft CSS3 definitions that are currently available in Mozilla to specify a specific box model, but I am unsure. Do I make use of draft CSS specifiers or use dodgy hacks?

Last night we watched Most Haunted that has kicked off with Series 4. I love this programmee and it was quite an episode. Video footage of a partial manefestation of a spirit. We also watch a programme on Channel 4 about The Passion Of The Christ and the issues surrounding why Mel Gibson created it. I am not a hugely religious person but I do have a big interest in religious history and I am intrigued to see it.
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Busy day today. I got up at about 9.30 when the postman presented me with the new Blender manual. The manual is very, very good by the way. You all need to go and buy one. It is fairly reasonably priced too. 🙂

Today we moved the LUGRadio forums over to Trigs server and everything is working great. We are just waiting for the DNS servers of the world to catch up now. Today I have also been on the phone to all kinds of people Maggie Meer, Mark Lloyd, Aq, NPower and more. while doing that I am about finished on some edits for the Manning book.

We have also booked the hotel room for the Linux User & Developer Expo in April. It is gonna be great event and we are all looking forward to it. Aq, Matt, Dan and I will be staying in the hotel down there and Sparkes, Helen and many others are going down to the show too. Should be fun. 🙂

The new web design is on its way and should be up next week sometime. I have been reading through many a website to fix the problems encountered with pesky CSS implementations in certain browsers.

LUG Meet last night and I ate way, way too much curry. I also drunk a load of coke because I was driving and felt pretty sick towards the end of the night. Feeling better now and preparing for a gig tonight.

Last night I got in and decided to start a redesign of this site. although this design has done its job well, I feel things need sprucing up and I would like to add a bit more content that is visually more interesting. I started hacking it all together last night in Mozilla and gave it a whirl in IE today where it was completely broken. Now there is a big surpise. 😛

Worked on the book today and things are taking a more refined shape now. 🙂 Also, while browsing the net the other day I saw this on Amazon. Cool. 🙂
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My mum and dad came up yeserday to visit. It was really great seeing them and we went out for curry and had some drinks. Good fun catching up and I look forward to seeing them again soon. I am off to visit my other family members at the weekend and in a few weeks hopefully.

Finished of part two of the Cocoa article and sent it off today. I then spent some time making my mind up for the Linux User & Developer Awards 2004 that I am helping to judge. I made my choices and sent them off. I am happy with the products/companies/projects that I selected. 🙂

I am now going to spend an hour working on some book stuff before I get off to the LUG. 🙂
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Today I have been looking into Objective-C further for this Cocoa series. I spent some time exploring how the different parts of the Mac development system fits together, and trying to organise all of this in my head. There are a number of things that have taken a while to sink in through my thick C++ skin.

An example of this is the concept of a nib file within the Interface Builder. This nib file actually includes live instantiated objects; you don’t actually instantiate an object in your code. This is rather strange. It took a while to understand that the object is already there and all classes are actually generated in the Interface Builder. I have been used to generating visual interface implementation classes before (such as with Qt Designer) and then re-implementing these classes in a subclass, but in Xcode you don’t actually need to re-implement these methods, you just implement them.

Another interesting facet of this programming is the concept of outlets and actions. I initially suspected that an outlet would be like a signal/callback and an action would be a method. An outlet is similar in concept but is a more generalised plug into an interface element. You create an outlet for each interface element so that it can be accessed in code. I suppose the equivilent in other systems is just naming a widget. 😉

It is all pretty much sinking in and the overall picture seems to make sense, if not a little complicated. Objective-C is a strange old beast though. It is a difficult to read language and the claims of a more simplistic C seem lost on me. I will however, stick with it, and part two of my three part series will be ready soon. My parents are coming up to visit so I want it ready soon.

It is not often you see a news story title such as BT engineer denies deflowering lesbian. It seems that some people are selling the popping of their cherries online to raise money for university and suchlike. The world certainly seems to get stranger every day and lo and behold, a quick search on ebay brings up the goods. Oh dear.

While looking at these results I stumbled across this lucky find for all you ladies and gay guys. At the moment this sideshow bob lookalike is going for the hefty fee of five quid. The sad thing is that although this is quite obviously a joke, there are 7 bids at the moment. Riiight…
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You know, I have been thinking about how expandable Mozilla is becoming. I can foresee it becoming the modern day emacs. Emacs has always been reputed for the fact that it can do anything you want it to do including web browsing, programming, reading email, news and even…editing text. Mozilla seems to be heading in the same direction in terms of flexibility. I am really digging the whole XUL concept at the moment. Hooking XUL and DOM together with other frameworks creates some exctiting opportunities for application development. Mozilla could well be the equivilent that emacs has become…only better. 🙂

Oh yes, and when I say “modern day”, yes, this does apply to emacs. Emacs is an old, old editor. No, I don’t like it. 😀

I have just updated my Amazon wishlist and you are very, very welcome to go and buy me something from it. If you do decide to splash out and treat a hard working Bacon you will get much gratitude in this blog. Oh yes.

Go on, you know you want to…
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