The Gaim Buddylist, Completely Revamped

gaim-buddylist
Originally uploaded by CloCkWeRX.

If I were to completely redo the gaim buddylist, this is what I'd do.

The application 'folds' away to the side of the screen, ala google desktop search.

I click "contacts" button, or something similar, which brings up a full screen overlay.

It shows my most frequestly talked to contacts biggest of all.
Offline users are smaller, and grayed.

If I start typing, only buddies who match my text move closer to the center, everyone else fades or vanishes.

I have a list of groups on the right hand side of the screen, tied to my different states: for instance, I talk most to some people between 9-5 in "WORK" mode, but I talk to others in "HOME" mode - selecting a different view should reshuffle the screen.

I should find a flash designer to give this a shot.

Iraq Internet

The Localist has a great article about adhoc, troop run ISPs within the US Army in Iraq.

My favourite quote:

“We were having serious problems with the network. We took the baby Jesus nativity scene, and put that right up on top. Problem solved. Jesus saves,” Sgt. Coughanour says. “That's all I can say.”

So true of our networking fun we've been having of late!

The Burnt Gift Card

Pictures are worth a thousand words, or at least $90. Follow the links :P

Scripting with Python in Firefox

Check it out.

Blogged with Flock

Today's Lesson

Temper tantrums solve nothing, and calm in the face of hostility should win the day.

I hope.

DDos on a Bank

Today a bank began testing with our company. We've written a SOAP service to accept jobs, and as the bank does not have a reciprocal service to recieve completed jobs, they opted to have files Secure Copied to their server for distribution.

Running a script to send off 20 jobs or so every two minutes from two of our servers managed to break the bank's service within a short period.

I thought it was nifty: how many people can say they've pulled off a DDOS attack on a large bank with impunity?

Crashing

Crashing
Originally uploaded by CloCkWeRX.

I can't stand it when crash reporting tools make problems worse. TortoiseCVS just crashed (ok, it's bleeding edge beta software, I expect this); so Windows wants to report an error, only tortoisecvs is not a Microsoft Partner or anything like that.
So Microsoft doesn't know how to fix my problem. TortoiseCVS developers probably do. Only I can't copy and paste the information I need because someone thought it was more useful to me to have only a readonly box full of text.

Big Business vs The Internet

There's an article in the NYTimes about employers googling potential employees.

When a small consulting company in Chicago was looking to hire a summer intern this month, the company's president went online to check on a promising candidate who had just graduated from the University of Illinois.

Tien Nguyen, a college senior, signed up for job interviews but said he was seldom contacted until he withdrew a satirical online essay.

At Facebook, a popular social networking site, the executive found the candidate's Web page with this description of his interests: "smokin' blunts" (cigars hollowed out and stuffed with marijuana), shooting people and obsessive sex, all described in vivid slang.

It did not matter that the student was clearly posturing. He was done.

There's a quote that leapt up and smacked me between the eyes, a little later on.

Ms. Rose said a recruiter had told her he rejected an applicant after searching the name of the student, a chemical engineering major, on Google. Among the things the recruiter found, she said, was this remark: "I like to blow things up."

He's a chemical engineering major! Of course he likes to blow things up: this is why he's in love with chemistry!

It's terrible that the recruiting industry is used to find talent for companies these days: recruiters only know about recruiting, and are highly unlikely to find the right people for the job - more often they will find someone qualified on paper than anything else.

Though there's no chemical engineering equivalent of silicon valley as far as I know - there's no real fly by night startups. There's only monolithic companies that blunder on through life never really achieving remarkable things - in part because they rely on stuffy recruiters to find their talent; in part because they are all caught up in image rather than actually getting things done.

But what can you do? You can't fight big business, you can only wait for generations to die off.

Fact

FactBites on the Semantic Web.

This is as cool as Nationmaster.

400th Post, Centrelink, and Anger

Today I arrived home to discover that once again my girlfriend is being screwed by the department of human services. Centrelink, the Australian welfare agency and offshoot of the DHS, has just removed income from my girlfriend.

Here's the reasoning:
Her family, who own land, have "millions" in assets.
Chloe, who can be legally tried for murder or choose not to be resuscitated in the event of an accident, is still considered a dependent on her parents.
Thus, her parents, who have "millions" in assets and are no longer considered to require economic assistance for drought; can simply pay her way with a sheep or two; or perhaps some fencing.
Fencing is an asset. Livestock is an asset. Assets have value. Things you need have value. Money is a medium for representing value. Chloe's parents can simply exchange things of value to them for money in order for Chloe to maintain a basic standard of living.
QED. There's no problem here.

Yesterday, it was considered absolutely vital for her to get money. Despite living out of home, being an adult, studying full time, incurring a massive HECS debt and working up to 20 hours a week at McDonald's for FUCK ALL per hour, the mere passage of 24 hours has changed her previously dire situation into one in which she is suddenly 'rich'.
All because desk bound people who have never even felt a flicker of emotion close to something human have decided that there's no drought in Australia anymore.
All because some inhumane red tape dispenser pretending he's doing something useful can't tell the difference between someone who is in need and someone who is not.

I hereby declare war on a new front: the Australian Tax Office is no longer the enemy I hate the most.

SOAP, Feed Validation, and Unit Tests

This is a heckle to myself: the W3C feed validator provides SOAP web services, so my work stuff should validate by direct input during unit tests.

Bye Bye, Filezilla

I'm sick of you, Filezilla. You don't SFTP properly to ning, and I just discovered WinSCP actually does.

It's got a far better interface, and makes me actually want to use an FTP client.

We're through.

Don't call.

Breaking News: Developers Don't Grok User Friendlyness

Argh! Stop pestering me and just let me use gaim.

Such a suggestion was met with a "No, gaim is right, you are wrong, you didn't actually want to chat, you wanted to fill out forms and never find the secret, hidden control to never see this again."

So I whinged to Chris a bit and mulled over how to make them catch the whole The Inmates Are Running the Asylum germ.

I don't want to hassle them, because I hate being hassled and I more or less ignore hasslers.
I do want to make them see they are wrong, at least for me. Suggestions?

I don't want to make them feel as though they are stupid or wrong.

So, Chris suggested I hassle them out in IRC. I didn't want to get into a bitching conversation, because hell, they have given me a great tool for nothing.

Thus; I tried the tactic of talk about something from the sidelines.

Me: No, Chris, I'm not going to hassle them about Linux on the desktop, usability, or making software really friendly, because they are decent developers, and I'll just get ignored, kicked from the channel, or given strange looks.
Chris: But I thought these people were open to suggestions.
Gaim Developer: We are open to constructive criticism (in exactly the manner which suggests that our criticism isn't constructive)

But we stepped over the line and we lost them shortly thereafter. Damn.

How do we tell people who like to code in C about being nice to the user? The two things seem completely opposed - not because you cannot code in C and make great software, but because user stories are about the big, broad picture and C is about the step-by-step details.

So, I need to marshal my forces for another attack-that-isn't-an-attack.