A friend who will remain anonymous just wrote me:

>the best way I can summarize the feeling is like this:
> I was doing pretty well trying to maintain a positive attitude
> but then it all went into the crapper

My Radio Userland stopped working today (free trial over). It was expected. Oh well. I was really enjoying using the outliner to post to my blog. But we're moving soon, and I don't have even the $40 to get a license to Radio.

Hey! It looks like jim got home safe! Good for you, Jim. Now, get blogging! ;-)

I started seriously hacking on python last night. As I asked on #plex: "why do we always start with the most complex project we can think of when learning a new language?"

Anyway, I started on a python library/wrapper for Conversant's xml-rpc API. I've started this project in 3 different languages now, and I never get any farther than the last time. I suspect the problem lies in my somewhat weak OO design skills - transmogrifying a procedural API to an OO one is not an easy task.

This is no reflection on Conversant, BTW. Au contraire - Conversant's API is very OO considering the functional language it's built on. It's more the flattening nature of remote procedure APIs, and my own aforementioned weaknesses.

I had dinner recently with Wes Felter while he was in Phoenix, and we got to talking about peer-to-peer technologies. It's been rattling around in my head ever since. Yesterday I was emailing with Wes and he suggested getting on #p2p-hackers on irc.openprojects.net.

I finally found an irc client for Mac OS X (Snak) and got on. While there I ran into Aaron Swartz, who in turn pointed me to the work he's doing in distributed information spaces (based on RDF-style tuples) in the Plex. Mmmmm, distributed RDF.

I've spent most of the morning checking in changes to my application here at work. I've found a pretty good process that helps me makes sure that the comments that go into CVS represent what has changed in the code.

• Use CVL to identify changed files.
• Open the file in FileMerge to see the differences between versions.
• I have an OmniOutliner document for tracking change notes.
• I go through the diff in FileMerge, and put my comments in the outline under the filename.
• When done, I paste the comments from OmniOutliner into the comments field when checking in the code.

Wow, it's been a long time... the old Frontier community list ScriptMeridian is coming back to life. Yay!

Well, I am officially IM-less at work for the foreseeable future (and probably slightly beyond that). Our network guys are very security conscious and I don't fault them for it. The AIM protocol has been closed on the firewall.

So, I'm back to email, which in true internet fashion, seems so... slow. ;-)

In the evenings from home, however, I'll be on AIM, and probably[#p2p](http://monkinetic.blog/tag/p2p)-hackers as well. monkinetic or redmonk.

Wow. Garth Kidd has a hacked-together process worthy of Rube Goldberg that lets him record his ramblings to mp3, and have them posted to his weblog. Wow. Coooool.

I wanted to get Python 2.2 on my Mac OS X box... so I installed Fink, which is a package management system for Darwin. The process is pretty easy - pick your components, Fink tells you what the dependencies are, and it downloads and installs it all for you. Not a surprise to most linux users, but this is new to me on Mac OS X.

Linus Torvalds (if you care about this post you'll know who he is) has finally started using BitKeeper, which according to my conversation with Wes was explicitly designed to his specifications as a source-control tool. He has historically avoided any sort of source-control (eg CVS), which is really ironic if you think about it [/.]

OMG! In a round about way I was just given a NeXTStation Mono Turbo by a co-worker!!! I have always wanted some of NeXT's black hardware, and this will have a hallowed place in my office.

Hmm. What will I name it?

Literally. My truck just sucked a grand out of my pocket by way of a bunch of emissions and fuel system repairs. Sigh.

Doc Searls said "And if nothing else works, unplug your cable modem for an hour or two. It's a piss-on-a-spark plug solution, but it works."

Well, we unplugged the cable modem last night, and the linksys just to be sure, and plugged it all back in 12 hours later. Sure enough, I got online first time, and have had no hiccups yet (knock on wood). Thanks Doc!

Doc Searls has been through some of the same connection hell that we have with Cox.Net. He's still upbeat about it, while we're pretty frustrated. I'm going to try some of his sugggestions, however, and try to remain calm. We've been mostly off-line for almost 10 days now.

While chatting with our in-house designer (and Baron Banner) we got onto the topic of our respective design backgrounds and consequently our ability to identify fonts in various ads, etc.

This got me thinking about my old habit of trawling through the old type foundries looking for cool fonts. My favs have always been from Emigre and FontFont. FontFont sells the font that the German gov't adopted for their highway signage back in '96 or so...

Dave says:"When Sam Ruby talks about unwashed masses using IDEs, I know he doesn't get it. But get this, he said it on a weblog, in public, on the record. So he's on the path to enlightenment."

For some reason Dave, from this link on down on todays' Scripting News, there are no permalinks on the entries. I'm not logged on as "me" right now so I can't email you. What happened?

Hey nullgel, get a load of this:

The Amazing Lego DAT Tape Changer

Check out Ditherati for a daily dose of inflated-hi-tech-ego-bubble-bursting. Their 3 weapons are wit, sarcasm, cynicism, and a near-invulerability to hype. Wait... their FOUR weapons are... oh nevermind.