I have been playing with XUL over the last day or so. I have always had it notched up on my blackboard of things to mess about with, and I figured I would spend some time with it. After reading around some docs and writing some test code I am well on the way to writing my first main XUL application. It really is quite impressive. Creating effective interfaces is really simple, but I wonder if there is a Qt Designer type application for creating XUL interfaces. I am sure someone is bewing one somewhere.

The only problem I have found with XUL is that plugging something such as PHP in is a little bit of a pain. A typical example is that I want to populate a XUL listbox with data from a MySQL database. I have a few options for this. One is to use RDF as the middleman between PHP and XUL, another is to use some experimental Mozilla SQL code, and the final option is to create a PHP script that spits out a valid XUL header and generates the code inside the script. this sounds all fine and good but the DOM implementation in PHP seems a little scrappy, so I need to reference the DOM with Javascript while doing the processing with PHP. It does work though, and it is cool. It seems a little long winded but I guess there is a reason why it is this way. To see what you can do with XUL, see the Mozilla Amazon Browser, an example of which is running here (you will obviously need Mozilla to see this.

Anyway, today I woke up at 2pm and hacked some more of this XUL before I went for a band practice and made a lot of row. Got home, ate fajita’s and I am now going to write an article on RSS.

It was the last Sex In the City last night on Channel 4 and was, well, pretty shit to be honest. I really do like Sex In The City, but the last episode had more cheese than a block of chedder eating a three-cheese cheeseburger. Yes, pretty cheesy.

After I had watched the final episode that was sandwiched in between two other programmes ranting on about how we were “missing four best friends” (ahem) I tried to get Flightgear working for Mac OS X and then went and fiddled with it on some other machines. After this I then recorded some new riffs for a song that I am working on for my album. I am recording these songs down as scratch tracks that I play about with when composing the tunes. When everything is in place I will take a week off work and record the entire thing. I still want to learn some more about mixing and mastering before I can do this right though.

Well, I now have the joy of cleaning our bathroom. Not only is it joy getting on my hands and knees moving bleach around, but the bathroom has not been cleaned for a while so is a little, how shall we say, minging. This agony will however be tempered by plenty of death metal being blasted in my ear from the studio. If you don’t hear from me over the next few days I may have been eaten by the toilet. OK, I am going in…

Sorry for a late update today by the way. You may have noticed some network trouble with jonobacon.com earlier. Not sure what happened, but I think it is about fixed now.

Anyway, I went over to Birmingham today to the Open Advantage opening do. Impressive place, and I am looking forward to seeing what potential this organisation can achieve. It was good to meet some of the folks there and I saw Kat there too. I also managed to meet a few faces that I have been working with in other areas.

When I got in I wrote an entry to my O’Reilly Blog called Government IT rights in a new world. It is basically a ramble about how our government should be using free software for their systems to improve stability and save costs. When I had written this I also had another play with Flightgear some more. Some bits are not working right so I am going investigate this over the weekend.

We did some karate tonight too. I sparred with Sooz for the first time and it was fun until she started kicking my arse.
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It seems that initially LUGRadio Episode 3 is doing well. Lots of posts on the forum and a new record of users reading the forum at the same time are all good signs. 🙂

I was taking a look at Simon Willison’s blog and noted two interesting finds that can be plugged into Firefox. The first is the Web Developers Toolbar and the second is the Clear HTTP Auth bolt-on that can clear authorised site content stored in the browser. Cool stuff.

I am pretty tired today and I think Karate is going to interesting as I try to keep awake. Nevermind. I need to finish a few bits in the next hour before we go.
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Yes people, the mighty LUGRadio Episode3 has been released on the net. We recorded the show last night, and it is our longest show yet. We had a lot of fun recording it and I was up until 4am editing and bleeping out swearwords with animal noises. Go and download it at the LUGRadio website. Oh, and don’t forget to drop by our forums.
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I have seen Flightgear before but never really gave it some time. Anyway, I got an email today about a cool flightgear setup being constructed at the expo in april, and thought I would look into it. What did impress me when looking over the website was the sheer amount of scenery offered. Check out this page – it seems that virtually all of the world is covered. Wow. Another great thing is that the main program is in Debian. I am apt-get’ing as we speak, and I am just awiting some nightmare 3D driver problems that I have ignored for too long.

Today I have been messing with fonts for some hacks in the O’Reilly book and I sent off the Cocoa tutorial for MacFormat this morning. I then wrote a few more tips for the feature and did some more screenshots. I am now going to work on some more hacks before the guys come over tonight.

Yes, tonight is the LUGRadio Episode 3 recording. We are all looking forward to this. 😀
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I have spent most of today exploring the world of Mac OS X Cocoa development for a series in MacFormat magazine. I have been playing with Xcode, Interface Builder and some other bits and bobs. Overall it seems quite an interesting system, although Objective-C is taking a little while to sink in. I suppose this is due to my C++ roots. OO programming to me has always been in either C++ or PHP and Objective-C looks rather strange at first sight. One thing that is very cool about Xcode incidentally, is the pre-compiling thing. As you write you code it compiles it in the background. This means that when you have hacked some code your compile time should be quicker. Cool. 🙂

Well, it seems that some information on my talk at the Linux User & Developer Expo has gone online. They have put up a bio and some information about the talk. I am looking forward to this. should be a bit of fun. 🙂

Well, the forum is pretty much complete now. I have finished the major chunks of what I wanted to write. As I said before, this forum code is being written for a book, so I cannot put the code online at the moment. I may well be able to do this in the future but I will have to check. I have put some screenshots in the gallery though. Go and check them out. 🙂

It was pretty busy today. Coding all day in PHP and some jamming in the evening. Another new song is in the works to record with Emelye and work is going well on my solo album that I am writing. I am just fleshing out the guitar tracks at the moment in some Cubase scratch tracks. When this is complete I will record it and release it. I can’t wait for you folks to hear it. 🙂

Right, I need to sleep. 🙂
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I am just hacking this forum at the moment. Most of it is pretty much working – members, categories, forums, threads etc. I just need to finish up some things, make it look pretty with CSS and then tighten the code. I want to finish it today so I can start working it into the chapter tomorrow morning.

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Well, I went, struck, I blocked, I kicked, I kata’d and I sparred. After two hours of training I left the dojo with an orange belt. I am, as you can imagine, well chuffed. After the grading I legged it back home (if you can call ‘legging it’ driving), picked up my guitar and case and went to the band practice. I have now just got in and I am preparing for mucho curry. 🙂

Thanks for the words of encouragement from you all. Sparkes – maybe we should spar sometime. 🙂