Lonely Lion

The same conversation about LAME naturally found its way to bittorrent clients. The suggestion is: ahttp://azureus.sourceforge.net/.

I usually use iTunes to rip CD’s, but it was recently suggested I try EAC (Exact Audio Copy), which uses LAME, http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

I’ll give it a shot.

A developerworks article on integrating Tomcat with Eclipse: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-ectom/

I have a two week respite from school, I had planned on working through some projects, but I mostly just mess around the house, and play computer games. Ho hum.

Work has been pretty busy lately, we’re in the middle of a massive Netbackup upgrade / overhaul. I’ve been using Open Office pretty exclusively for any and all documentation needs. I set up a wiki for my coworkers, which has been pretty well recieved.

It’s been a while since I sat down and wrote a project list, so here goes (this really belongs in a wiki…):

1) wirelion.com billing system: My first attempt at a Webware project. Meant for automated billing, and easy-peasy invoicing of the half dozen or so wirelion.com clients. There have been some pretty serious stability problems. I’ve sent a few messages to the webware list, most of which have been answered with grumbling. I talked to Ian, the author of SQLObject (which I use in the app), and he suggested upgrading to the latest SVN version of SQLObject. I haven’t, yet. Hopefully that will shore things up.

I’m considering rewriting the app in a Hibernate / Spring / Tomcat sort of way, depending on how the updated SQLObject thing goes. Despite the fact that Java is considered “uncool”, there’s plenty of work out there in the world for folks that understand it. It’s pretty much the lingua franca of DePaul, so it’s about time I sucked it up and spent some time learning to love everyone’s least-favorite-but-sort-of-necessary-to-know tool. Harumph.

On a side note, in my last class, a java data structures class, I used Jython…A LOT. I really enjoyed using the interpreter to play around with java.util.*. Good stuff.

2) Some chicagoimprov.org stuff. I promised an RSS feed reader, but kept getting distracted with “which framework should I use?” internal debates. I need to buckle down and finish this. It’ll be a good opportunity to see whether or not my billing app is unstable because of SQLObject, or Webware. The RSS app, in its current form is a Webware app, sans SQLObject.

3) Things I’ve promised, but can’t seem to start or finish: a Florida lottery thing & a cookbook thing.

As for projects that don’t require electricity:

1) My workbench. I have a pile of 2×4’s in the basement that need to be turned into a workbench. I cut one half of one mortise & tenon joint a month ago. Harumph.

It looks like there’s been some progress made on the Eclipse & Python integration front, http://pydev.sourceforge.net/ as well as a new (to me) Subversion plugin for Eclipse http://subclipse.tigris.org/

I really like Eclipse, I’ve used it for all my Java homework up until this point, I’m glad to see that other folks in the Python community are trying to bring Python to it.

Even more good stuff from PHP, a form builder.

It’s getting harder to justify building web apps in not-PHP.

PEAR::DB_DataObject – kind of, sort of, a Object Relational Mapper for PHP.

I installed php 5 on my laptop, and I’m working on installing it on the Solaris 8 / Apache 2.0 webserver we use at work. I’ve been working on converting a few email “forms” to web forms, and would like to give php 5 a spin.

More news as it becomes available.