Fedora 11

Well, I'm updated. I started on this crazy train of sticking with Fedora back in 2001 when it was my only option at work. I've since converted to Linux full time, and Fedora has been my distro of choice. Boy has it come a long way. Fedora 10 was my first time using yum to update exclusively, and I have to say with 11, it's gone swimmingly. I still had a few 386 rpm's floating around, but I managed to remove them and not lose anything (sound, Flash, etc.).

Kudos, Fedora team.

Perils of RPM

So, I've loved package management, for the most part. It makes installation of software much easier than installing everything from source. I started using Linux full time in 2001, and since then I've had my share of situations where the tangled web of dependencies caused me hours of configuration wrangling.

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Blogging Software & Firewalls

Since I started at my new place in December, getting to my home server has been a challenge. We have a Cisco 871 firewall here. I soon noticed that all traffic to and from my server would be blocked at times. At first, I suspected I was being flagged with the dreaded Comcast blocking. However, I was soon able to suss out that my site wasn't being blocked outside our firewall. The Cisco became the culprit, and it was further revealed to be the problem when some Google servers were also being blocked.

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First Steps in ActionScript3

I'm starting to mess around in Flash. I finally bit the bullet and purchased a copy of Flash CS3 Pro (after trying endlessly to mess around with Open Source alternatives).

I'd love to get some simple prototypes going, and my previous experiences with Flash led me to believe it was possible. However, ActionScript2 had this wonky problem with scope that required use of a klugy function called Delegate. I don't remember the specifics now, but it involved registering events within a class definition.

After reading the docs and O'Reilly books I recently purchased, I was afraid they hadn't quite remedied the situation. Last night, I was able to put most of it together, and I got a class going that handled its own events, including mouse. Seems that I was missing adding the item to the master display list. What confused me was that if I had the root AS class do something, it just showed up, but all other creations weren't doing squat. I'm guessing that the first class declaration is automatically added to the display list, but all subsequent ones need to be explicitly added. I haven't found this in the documentation anywhere yet.

I hope to be able to progress a bit further now. Looking forward to having more time this Easter weekend.

Finding the Path

Why the heck is it that we're perfectly happy to send the CPU off to do most other mundane tasks like modifying every single pixel, culling every errant vertex, and monitoring every directory for new music, but when I'm coding, I spend WAY too much time with other people's code trying to work out the proper paths for everything?

It's 2008. My computer and compiler should be perfectly happy searching some nearby directories for files. Sure, it might find the wrong one, but it's better than not finding one, no? Seriously. WTF.