njr 3.0

As I sit here updating my Subversion install and all its related pieces on three different computers (5 hours and counting…) I realize one thing that would make my life a great deal easier would be a simple distributed notification system that didn't have the single-client limitations of instant messaging.

For example, I don't see why I'm prohibited from signing on to a single AOL Instant Messenger account (or whatever) from my laptop as well as my desktop machine. After a compilation is finished, I want to be able to say “send me a message to tell me this is finished”, and have it reach me no matter what machine I'm user. Systems like Zephyr and Gale have the latter kinds of capabilities-easy command-line access—built in, but have lousy or no GUI clients and require lots of setup. Simpler systems like AIM have nice GUI clients, are easy to set up, but you can only sign onto an account once, and you can't easily send messages from a script.

Can Jabber do this? All the clients I've tried are too flaky to be useful. Several of my friends get around the multiple-signon problem by using one account per computer, but that's incredibly clunky.

Something similar I'd love would be an IM version of xalarm. xalarm is very simple to use, for the purpose of saying something like: in 20 minutes, tell me to go home. But the complicated alarm-clock/calendar programs that exist don't make this easy. Better yet would be a notification on all the computers I'm logged into.

None of this sounds hard from a distributed-computing perspective. So why not?

12:54 AM | Radio
No Comments

I had a long weblog entry almost finished a few days ago describing what I did to troubleshoot a particularly annoying OS X problem. Then Chimera crashed, and I haven't had the time to write it again.

The upshot is: I figured out what was causing the Self problem I was having on Tuesday. Ittec, a FinderPop-like shareware utility for OS X, includes an Application Enhancer module named Camel.ape. I had two copies of it installed, one in /Library/Application Enhancers, and one in ~/Library/Application Enhancers. Worse than the sporadic “RegisterProcess failed” error was that I couldn't unlock my keychain, denying me easy access to lots of things I needed.

Removing the second copy of Camel.ape fixed the RegisterProcess problem. Removing the other copy of Camel.ape also fixed a problem that was causing the Finder to complain about a missing autorelease pool every time I clicked. All Camel.ape does is load the Ittec contextual menu module early. This ensures that Ittec's other features work immediately, instead of only after you've opened a contextual menu and given the module a chance to load otherwise.

I've already heard from one person who was having the RegisterProcess problem and couldn't track it down, so here's hoping Google indexes this page soon.

11:41 PM | Radio
No Comments

them.ws has a bunch of screen-scraped RSS feeds for sites I read sporadically. Thanks!

Just when I was almost caught up with my work, I started to feel sick last night and have been at home all day today sleeping. Sigh.

3:59 PM | Radio
No Comments

Project Builder is trying to tell me something about this breakpoint, but I can't imagine how it would be useful.

F-Script Anywhere 1.1.5 is released with a window list in the FSA menu, miscellaneous bug fixes and workarounds for Mac OS X bugs.

4:24 PM | Radio
No Comments

Self has been ported to Mac OS X: “These days, we use 550Mhz G4 Powerbooks running Mac OS X. OS X seems to make Self more responsive.” I've never played with Self, just read papers. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work on my machine:

PICS for PPC now available!
Self Virtual Machine Version 4.1.10, Tue 17 Sep 02 15:04:56 Mac OSX
Copyright 1989-2002: The Self Group (type _Credits for credits)
 
VM# _Credits
Self VM warning: _allocated went negative
Self VM warning: A one-word branch may not span the gap from the assembler buffer to the zone.
The assembler and generated code will run a bit slower (normal for Mac)
RegisterProcess failed (error = -2805)

10:43 AM | Radio
No Comments