Jeffrey A. Miller: Hey Aaron

PHPGallue 0.3 (Default branch)

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 22:18:01 GMT

PHPGallue 0.3 (Default branch). PHPGallue is a multi-user, server-oriented image management system with a Web frontend. PHPGallue is suited for photographers to organize and publish their work. It allows the user to mark images, groups, categories, films, and series as private or as only visible to registered users. It is designed especially for large numbers of images. The Web frontend and backend libraries are completely separated, so it is easy to integrate PHPGallue as a management system into existing Web applications.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This release fixes some non-critical bugs and improves the Web interface handling; in the details view, for example, navigation arrows hover inside the images. The setup script was improved by a lot of tracing code that already helped to fix problems with PHP 5 FastCGI binaries. With this release, FastCGI, CGI, and CLI binaries work equivalently. This release also incorporates an .rpm and a .deb package for the first time. Updating existing installations is recommended.

[freshmeat.net announcements (Global)]

Blog Audio: Odiogo, FeedForAll, and TextAloud

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:34:15 GMT

iTunes decreases my blog consumption

After all this time, I'm finally blogging again. I think the issue has been the lack of time (other things are more important?) and the lack of motivation (i.e., burning desire). Oddly enough, I think podcasts have taken me away from blogging. Since I no longer use NewsGator and FeedStation to download podcasts (I use iTunes instead), I spend less time in my news aggregator. Oh, I still consume blogs, and I think that they're still a great innovation, but I'm not using them like I used to.

A twist on blog consumption: Text-to-Speech conversion

One new product that puts a twist on consuming blogs is Odiogo. It's software that will "audify" RSS content to create MP3 audio consumable by your media player or portable audio device. This is similar in concept to a combination of products I saw a while back: mixing FeedForAll, an RSS publisher, with TextAloud from NextUp.com. This combo allows you to create a "podcast" version of your blog. TextAloud also has other uses for text-to-speech conversion as a stand-alone product. Odiogo, on the other hand, combines an RSS aggregator with a text-to-speech converter in one product. The price is fairly accessible at $29.99. I may try it. There are some sample audio clips of Odiogo available. One thing I noticed is that Odiogo seems to offer only one voice (male). TextAloud, on the other hand, offers multiple voice options with a range of sampling rates from vendors including AT&T (Natural Voices), NeoSpeech, Cepstral, and ScanSoft (RealSpeak). TextAloud comes only in a Windows version and costs $29.95. FeedForAll costs $39.95 and is available for Windows and Mac. They have an interesting set of partners offering complimentary products related to RSS feed consumption, RSS-friendly web hosting, and podcast creation.

Conclusion

I may try the audio blog content option. Unfortunately, most of my podcast solutions involve a lot of manual labor to put it onto my player (my Palm Zire 72 with an SD card). The other downside is that the text-to-speech output can sound somewhat bland, causing me to zone out instead of actively listening. I'll put it on my Someday/Maybe list (GTD).

Don't like "Podcast?" How about "Syndicast?"

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 18:27:49 GMT

Some people are confused about what the term "podcast" really means. While it originally involved a reference to Apple's iPod, the term has expanded to mean much, much more. I heard somewhere that Microsoft was trying to find a way to refer to a "podcast" without calling it a "Pod-cast." "Blogcast" was the substitute I heard offered. However, that was only a rumor.

I think there's a better word, still: syndicast. Syndication and broadcast combined. Jason Dunn of PocketPC Thoughts describes several alternative names for podcasts in his article on Microsoft's site.

The problem with coining a new term and supplanting the old term is difficult. "Podcast" is already a powerful meme. I don't suspect that it will make much difference proposing it, but I couldn't keep a clever idea to myself.

And for another perspective, Chris Pirillo says some people think it's "not important": "This is Simply Smarter Broadcasting."

It's nothing more than Internet radio at its core, folks. It's audio, on-demand, that's easily synchronized with your computer system / portable media device...

Podcasting, or syndicated downloadable content, by whatever name, is definitely here to stay.

After the Crash

Fri, 16 Dec 2005 16:29:41 GMT

My blog has been down because my Linux server died. I've bought a hosting account and I'm trying to recreate it in the new space.

Please be patient with me. My blogging skills are getting rusty, but I still contend that I am a blogger. After all, I put it on my license plate, so I'd better live up to the label.

Update:I've been having fits trying get Radio to update my weblog! My upstreaming doesn't work. In fact, if you see this paragraph, that means that it is working again. I'm using this text as an update to trigger a "refresh."

Still not working...Aargh! I'm beginning to think it's time to ditch Radio as my authoring tool. Though, it could be my hosting account that has a problem...

Mon, 12 Dec 2005 22:25:46 GMT

iText 1.3.6 (Default branch). iText is a library that contains classes to generate documents in the Portable Document Format (PDF), XML, HTML, and RTF. It can also parse XML documents and convert them into any of these formats. Pages of existing PDF files can be imported and copied to new PDF documents.

License: Mozilla Public License (MPL)

Changes:
You can now define a repeating footer for a PdfPTable. Lists and combo fields can now be set in the AcroFields object. There was some serious debugging activity in the area of class Table. The toolbox looks a little bit different now. There's a new tool that allows you to inspect the internals of a PDF file. In the area of RTF generation, some minor bugfixes were done. [freshmeat.net announcements (Global)]

Mon, 12 Dec 2005 22:24:27 GMT

wsdlpull 1.9.6 (Default branch). wsdlpull is an efficient and powerful command line utility for dynamic inspection and invocation of WSDL web services. It's also has a C++ library with a Dynamic WSDL Invocation API, a WSDL parser, a schema parser and validator, and an XML parser/serializer.

License: GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)

Changes:
Windows support for dynamic invocation was added. SOAP Faults in a response are parsed, and a meaningful error is shown. Bugs in <choice> validation were fixed. The -s option was added for the wsdl tool, which suppresses printing of type names in a response. [freshmeat.net announcements (Global)]

Mon, 12 Dec 2005 22:23:06 GMT

The Firefox Hacks You Must Have. With a new version of the open-source browser out, we offer our guide to the nifty, fun Firefox extensions that will change your life. By Quinn Norton. [Wired News]

Mon, 12 Dec 2005 22:22:06 GMT

squid-mysql-acl 0.2 (Development branch). squid-mysql-acl can bind Squid ACLs to a MySQL database trough an external helper. It has a Web interface to add, remove, and control Internet access in real-time. Computers' IP addresses are grouped into "rooms". The main target of the application is the school environment, where a teacher can temporarily disable Internet access for a class, while the sysadmin can manage the entire list of IP addresses permitted to connect to the Internet.

[freshmeat.net announcements (Global)]

Time to Reinvent

Wed, 26 Oct 2005 20:46:19 GMT

OK, it's time to reinvent some things here. I'm ready for a change. I've shaved off my goatee. I'm updating my resume. I'm considering deprecating the Xagronaut blog in favor of a new personal website. I'll still post to it now and then, probably. But the point is that some things have changed in my life. Other things need to change.

Managing the Change Online

The first thing I did was to redirect my existing domain (xagronaut.com) to my new domain (jmill.net). I made old blog a subdirectory of the new site. My next decision is whether to use Radio to manage the site. I may use Drupal. I may use a custom PHP-based solution. I may use a hybrid of approaches, including Gallery for photos and PHPGedView for tracking the family tree.

A Question of Goals

It's time to reevaluate. Do I want to focus inward, on family and personal interests? Do I want to focus outward, on church and work activities? Do I want to retreat and retool? Do I want to branch out and expand my reach? Much to consider...much too much to consider...

Sat, 22 Oct 2005 14:28:48 GMT

HTML::TableExtract 2.06 (Stable branch). HTML::TableExtract is a Perl module that simplifies the extraction of information from tables within HTML documents. Tables, no matter how nested or clustered, can be targeted symbolically with column headers or by more specific depth and count information.

License: Artistic License

Changes:
Tightens up element interactions in TREE() mode when examining rows, columns, cells, etc. Was running into trouble with dereferencing scalars vs objects. The space() H::TE::T method has been documented, and tests have been added. POD tests have been added. There are documentation updates and fixes. [freshmeat.net announcements (Global)]

Sat, 22 Oct 2005 14:27:54 GMT

pmpkg 2005-10-21 (Default branch). pmpkg provides a script and definitions to build SysV style binary packages for Solaris from source tarballs in an automated way, somewhat similar to ports or ebuilds. It aims for reuse of system packages where possible and a minimalistic dependency set.

License: Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL)

Changes:
This release adds two new package fields: maintainer and description. There are also many changes to make it more robust. Support for GNOME applications was improved. This release also adds the new packages vim, drwright, sbcl, sdl_net, sdl_mixer, lmarbles, and lbreakout2, and updates the packages php5, py-ZopeInterface, py-Twisted, and gwydion-dylan. [freshmeat.net announcements (Global)]

Sat, 22 Oct 2005 14:27:40 GMT

sr 1.0.0 (Default branch). sr (search and replace) is a small and fast search and replace utility that can handle multiple files at once. It requires no knowledge of regular expressions and is much simpler to use than sed or awk for simple search and replace in a global or specific mode. It can contain embedded character codes in search or replace specifications, or entire sentences. [freshmeat.net announcements (Global)]

Sat, 22 Oct 2005 14:27:08 GMT

Company Claims Patent Over XML. Aviran Mordo writes "News.com reports that a small software developer plans to seek royalties from companies that use XML, the latest example of patent claims embroiling the tech industry. Charlotte, N.C-based Scientigo owns two patents (No. 5,842,213 and No. 6,393,426) covering the transfer of 'data in neutral forms.' These patents, one of which was applied for in 1997, are infringed upon by the data-formatting standard XML, Scientigo executives assert."

[Slashdot:]

Sat, 22 Oct 2005 14:22:07 GMT

Zenwalk 1.3 (Default branch). Zenwalk Linux aims to be focused on Internet applications, multimedia, and coding tools. It's a complete system, which means that out of the box, you will be able to browse, email, chat, listen to music, program in C, Perl, Python, Ruby, etc., watch videos in various formats, write documents, print, scan, burn CDs and DVDs, connect your camera, and edit your photographs, all without adding anything. It has the following objectives: be simple and fast; provide one application for one task; be a complete development/desktop environment; and be small (distributed on a single 400MB ISO image). [freshmeat.net announcements (Global)]

Sat, 22 Oct 2005 14:20:37 GMT

GeSHi 1.0.7.4 (Default branch). GeSHi is a generic syntax highlighter for PHP that takes any source code and highlights it in XHTML and CSS. It features case-sensitive or insensitive highlighting, auto-caps/non-caps of any keyword, an unlimited scope for styling, the use of CSS in which almost any aspect of the source can be highlighted, the use of CSS classes to massively reduce the amount of output code, function-to-URL capabilities, line numbering, and much more. Over 50 languages are supported, including Java, C, PHP, HTML, CSS, SQL, Pascal, C++, XML, ASP, and ASM.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
Two new languages (MySQL and BlitzBasic) were added and some bugfixes were made. Upgrading is recommended. [freshmeat.net announcements (Global)]

Sat, 22 Oct 2005 14:20:21 GMT

Twisted Words 0.3.0 (Default branch). Twisted Words provides implementations of a handful of IM protocols, including IRC, MSNP8, OSCAR, TOC, and Jabber. It also comes with a multi-protocol server built around a few simple interfaces, the goal of which is to facilitate implementations of novel servers, clients, and bots. Out of the box, it comes with server that accepts connections over IRC and PB and seeks out installed third-party plugins to support other interfaces (for example, a Nevow LivePage-based Web interface).

License: MIT/X Consortium License

Changes:
The server infrastructure was greatly simplified, the documentation was improved, extraneous code was removed, and test coverage increased. Jabber support was improved immensely. twisted.xish was renamed as twisted.words.xish. [freshmeat.net announcements (Global)]

Sat, 22 Oct 2005 14:20:04 GMT

phpflashy .01 (Default branch). phpFlashy is a Web based flashcard program. It repeat the questions until you get them all correct and it always tells you the right answer. Your progress is tracked through a deck of cards. At any time during the deck you can email deck statistics to anyone.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
Basic deck and flashcard classes were created along with very ugly templates. [freshmeat.net announcements (Global)]

Sat, 22 Oct 2005 14:18:32 GMT

PDF::ReportWriter 0.81 (Default branch). PDF::ReportWriter is a Perl module that produces high-quality PDF reports from a report definition and a data array. It supports text formatting and alignment, unlimited grouping with group functions, intelligent page breaking, color support, image support, shaped cell backgrounds, and numeric formatting.

License: GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)

Changes:
Page headers and footers were added along with cell-level control of cell borders, including color support. Support for setting PDF info was implemented. Major code cleanups were made and calculation of y-space needed was improved. 'bsize' and 'legal' page sizes were added. [freshmeat.net announcements (Global)]

Sat, 22 Oct 2005 14:17:23 GMT

Smart Package Manager 0.40 (Default branch). Smart is a package manager (like APT or Yum) that works with several backends including RPM, dpkg, and Slackware packages. It uses an algorithm that will not only find a solution, if one is available, but will find the best solution. This is done by quickly weighting every possible solution with a pluggable policy, which redefines the term "best" depending on the operation goal (install, remove, upgrade, etc.).

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
A channel --remove-all option was added. A bug that made the rpm-metadata loader ignore explicitly provided files in certain situations was fixed. A detectsys.py plugin was added, which will automatically detect and include system channels when they're missing. Double conversion of paths in LocalMediaHandler is now avoided. German translations were integrated and the French translations were merged. The deb backend now uses an underline for the name/version separator. A bug in the protected read code for old Python versions was fixed along with a locking issue in the RPM pm. [freshmeat.net announcements (Global)]

Sat, 22 Oct 2005 14:14:57 GMT

delsafe 0.0.72 (Default branch). delsafe is a set of utilities to hopefully allow you to recover recently deleted files. Basically, when you delete or in certain cases overwrite a file the original file is moved into a trash can. It does this by overriding the original unlink, rename, open, and fopen library calls using the Linux LD_PRELOAD mechanism. Trash cans are placed on top of each mount point and are accessible by each user directly or through links placed in the user's home directory. This makes deletion very fast because, in fact, it is only a renaming. To each filename in the trash can is appended a time/version stamp.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
A bug that caused Install to fail when psyco was not available has been fixed. There are some versions of psyco that may cause segmentation faults with the current version of Python; users should just uninstall psyco until a new version is available. [freshmeat.net announcements (Global)]

Sat, 22 Oct 2005 14:14:40 GMT

OpenSign 1.3.2 (Unstable branch). OpenSign is a collection of Java applets providing client-side digital signing functionality using x.509 certificates. It currently consists of two applets, one for signing plain ASCII text and another providing login functionality.

License: GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)

Changes:
A new menu structure for the classic layout has been introduced. The local caching mechanism has been improved. Each version of OpenSign now keeps its own versions of the cached plugins. [freshmeat.net announcements (Global)]

Sat, 22 Oct 2005 13:43:04 GMT

PHP html2ps 0.7.3 (Default branch). html2ps is a PHP equivalent of the popular Perl script by the same name that accurately converts HTML with images, complex tables (including rowspan/colspan), layers/divs, and CSS styles to PostScript.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This release contained several minor bugfixes and feature improvements. The most important ones were major improvements in the FPDF output method, support for local links/anchors generated by <a name="..."> and <a href="#..."> tags, the removal of whitespaces at the beginning of text lines in the PS2PDF output method, and support for elements having 'position: fixed' being drawn on the page margins, allowing generation of page header and footer elements. [freshmeat.net announcements (Global)]

Palm Zire 72 camera review

Mon, 22 Aug 2005 19:57:02 GMT

Here's a picture from the camera on my new Palm Zire 72. What I like about the camera:

I can capture pictures when I need to (sort of).

I can moblog (sort of).

I can take short videos (sort of).

I say "sort of" on the above items because the quality is not so great. What I don't like about the camera:

Taking pictures is slow. You have to be very steady with the camera and wait several seconds for a shot to "take." If your hand isn't totally steady, your pictures blur easily

Low light situations cause poor picture quality. The camera doesn't have a light or a flash, so taking a picture inside can be difficult.

Sunlight washes out pictures taken outside. Yeah, that cuts down on your optimal picture taking conditions, doesn't it?

It's a feature I was convinced I had to have. It was either the Palm Zire 72 with a camera and no WiFi or a HP RX3115 Mobile Media Companion with WiFi and no camera. Now, I think I might have opted for the WiFi instead with all other things being equal (which they never are). With WiFi, you can sync wirelessly over the network, surf the Web, and check email. The Palm Zire 72 only has Bluetooth. You can sync over Bluetooth, but I haven't tried it yet because my desktop doesn't have it. The problem that I see is the physical range that is required with Bluetooth. I don't have the specs, but Bluetooth is definitely more localized than 802.11b. My computer is in the basement, and I like the idea of charging and syncing without ever going down there. Oh well, that's opportunity cost, right?

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 18:52:04 GMT

How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items?.

I was working with a client a couple weeks ago, giving a demo through a remote desktop session, when he wanted to jot down a few notes.Â His â€œTODOâ€ list is saved on Outlook, sort of.Â What he did to record his thoughts was pen them in a new email message, which, when completed, he simply saved and closed.Â Later I saw his Drafts folder in Outlook, which had several thousand drafts, all various TODO notes.Â (Interestingly, this client wasn't using any desktop search, so to find a TODO he apparently poked through the draft subject lines or used Outlook's molasses-slow search... I recommended using Google Desktop Search, so hopefully he's now a snappier TODO list searcher.)

Anyway, this got me thinking - how do you manage your TODO list?Â I have the annoying habit of - gasp! - writing things down on little pieces of paper.Â This habit is annoying for several reasons, the most significant one being the end result of a cluttered desk with bits of paper everywhere with reminders, ideas, and tasks.Â Add to the fact that if I'm away from my desk I cannot access my TODO list, and you can see why this is a no-win situation.

Due to my haphazard approach to maintaining a TODO list, I decided to change things up.Â I wanted to be able to quickly record a TODO item, be able to search a list of TODO items quickly, and have the TODO list be accessible from any computer, be it my desktop where I do 99% of my work, my laptop, or a public terminal.Â Clearly I needed to use some Web-based solution here, but rather than reinventing the wheel I decided to simply use GMail.

One of the nice things about GMail is that you can send an email to yourself and add on a â€œqualifierâ€ after the email name.Â That is, if your email address is me@gmail.com, you can send yourself email like me+todo@gmail.com.Â The +todo is what I call the â€œqualifierâ€ and, despite its addition, your email will get delivered as normal.Â The benefit of this is that you can create a filter that looks for incoming messages addresses to me+todo@gmail.com and have them automatically labeled and archived, thereby bypassing your Inbox.Â With GMail the TODO list is readily accessible from any online machine and can be quickly searched.Â And when I finish the TODO task, I simply delete the email from GMail.

To facilitate quick additions to the list I added an Outlook contact that goes to me+todo@gmail.com, along with a Contact in my GMail address book to the same address.Â Therefore, either from my desktop through Outlook, or from a remote computer through GMail, I can add to my TODO list by whipping out a quick email to the appropriate contact, adding my TODO item in the subject with any details needed in the message's body.

Is this how you manage your TODO items?Â Got a better idea/approach/suggestion?Â If so, share away by making a comment!

[Scott on Writing]

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 18:20:20 GMT

Skype 1.2.0.11 (Default branch). Skype uses P2P (peer-to-peer) technology to provide voice-based communication with other Internet users. The technology is extremely advanced, but easy to use. It features excellent sound quality, end-to-end encryption, and automatic negotiation of firewalls or routers.

License: Freeware

Changes:
A "Find dialog" feature was added in the chat functionality. New voicemail icons were added in the call list. echo123 is now always seen as an online user. Lots of bugfixes were made. [freshmeat.net announcements (Global)]