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2 Steps Forward - 1 Step Back
Date: 17/3/2006
Well I got Scribe's bayesian rebuild memory footprint down to a mere 300mb instead of a whole 1gb this morning. Which is kinda on par to what it used to do. Still I think that is excessive and I'm going to play around with it some more when time permits. However it's no longer a big (pun intented) enough issue to prevent a v1.89 release. Just one little crash in the Btree code to sort out ;). I'm a little disappointed with how much I've got done in the months since v1.88 final but I guess all of you that emailed me questions and support issues are glad that I answered your mail, fixed your issues or at least had a look into whatever it was that was vexing you, right?

Notable blips on the support radar are non-functioning autozip plugin (partial fix is to more the DLL's into the Scribe.exe folder), more GPG relative path issues (ongoing) and the usual mix of "can't connect" type problems.

Not to mention in the meantime I've updated quite a few of my other apps (i.Mage and i.File come to mind) to fix annoying bugs (i.Ftp is next). And looked after my family and rested up a bit. And speaking of rest, tonight I'm taking off so that I can catch up with some of my friends and watch my new DVD:



Update: Well I was getting some screwy numbers out of the bayesian filter... and I tracked it back to case sensitivity in the Btree keys. E.g. adding 'This' to the Btree would delete the value stored for 'this'. So I made all the keys case-insensitive which suits my needs by changing all the calls to 'strcmp' to 'stricmp'. Now the filter is working as well as the old text file way of doing it. I still have that nagging crash I saw this morning and a memory overwrite this afternoon that worry me (probably the same thing). So I'll get it building on Linux and valgrind the sucker. That should be a few hours work but it'll show up the bug for sure. Then we're ready to roll with v1.89-test1.
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Html Editor
Date: 16/3/2006
Work continues slowly on the HTML editor built on top of the HTML viewer control that ships with Scribe. It now has a toolbar:



Recent changes are:
  • Added backspace/delete handler.
  • Delete with simple selection now works.
  • Fixed blocks of text overlapping by 1px.
  • Fixed drawing of selections.
  • Added deselecting with the cursor keys.
  • Added painting of the cursor while selection active.
  • Added a non-functional (but pretty) toolbar. Functions will follow.
  • Fixed cursor taking time to catch up with editing.


Sure it's no InnovaStudio but I own all the code and it's cross platform and small. So there.
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GnuPG Security Flaw
Date: 10/3/2006
For those of you that use the gpg plugin for Scribe, there is a security flaw in GnuPG, so if you use gpg you should update your install to the current version immediately.
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Windows Is Fun
Date: 9/3/2006
Yesterday my PC started the same old trick of ignoring the pre-set video resolution/refresh that I had asked for and set it to some seemingly random res... well seemingly random until I worked out what machine uses that res. My Res util reported that windows was running in 1440x900x32bit @ 75hz. Which is of course what this machine runs at... not the 1280x1024x32bit @ 75hz that MY machine SHOULD be running at (what IS that, operating system envy?). Like I can understand XP choosing a refresh mode out of thin air, but changing to frigging resolution on me? Damn thats low. Of course the LCD just thumbed it's nose at the whole thing and I had to hard power cycle XP to get something running again.

Update: I'm having some luck with a util called Reforce to force refresh rates to what I want regardless of whether the monitor is plugged in or not. *fingers crossed*
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Tshirt Idea: I Hate Java In A New And Special Way
Date: 5/3/2006
Java sucks, and now you know why. However I don't agree that C++ is worse. At least with C++ you have some damn accountability. If it's broken that the app should be fixed. Whereas with frickin Java if it's broken then it might just be the Java implementation.

Currently all my Java apps are busted because of a bug in the JRE whereby it screws up the local timezone, meaning Java reports the current timezone as GMT (+0) instead of the setting in Windows: Australian EST (+11 currently).

I never liked Java to start with. But this just puts the last nail in the coffin, RIP Java. So I need a DVB recording server (ala Webscheduler) that ISN'T written in Java real quick, ideas?

Update: Seems Java has a bug that screws up the timezone when automatically adjust for daylight savings is switched on. Thus the easy workaround is to switch it off and manually adjust the timezone to some neighbouring country with the right offset from GMT. Gah, stupid STUPID Sun engineers.
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Quickies
Date: 2/3/2006
  • If your using WebScheduler to record digital TV (like me) and all your shows are shifted out of position by the number of hours in your timezone then you need to kiss WebScheduler goodbye and get a real scheduling record service. RIP Java, we hate you.
  • I saw Karnivool last night at the Mona Vale pub and man, they kick butt! Very tight live set, sounded very close to the album a lot of the time. I didn't get to see the band much from the back but hey I can still hear things ;) Not surprisingly they were using a Mesa Dual (Triple?) Rectifier and a 5150 guitar amps. Niiice amps. Oh and PRS guitars. A setup I could definitely see in my future.
  • Speaking of amps, my Peavey Classic 100 didn't fire up on Wednesday, so I had to get that attended to quick. Seems on of the internal power fuses was not seated correctly from the factory, causing undue sparking which eventually killed one of the power tubes. Way to go Peavey! It's fixed now, all good for the weekend.
  • The reason I tried the amp on Wednesday is because I was waiting around for the tech to come and replace the cable modem. They say "sometime between 8am and 12". Nice. So waiting, waiting... 11:59 the van shows up. Arrrgh. Thats so annoying!
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