Phase Positive

After a not-so-great pass at getting Code::Blocks installed on my laptop, I decided it was time to upgrade from Eft to Gibbon. This turned out to be a huge exercise in frustration as the installer kept “freezing” at odd intervals throughout the install process.

I also made my first foray into using Code::Blocks, installing Tango on a fresh linux install and came to realize that D is hard to use offline.

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I decided to throw a little bit of effort into breathing a little more life into my laptop, in favor of being able to code in different surroundings. In the end, I plan on adding wireless support, a new battery, extra ram and possibly SSD storage (most likely CompactFlash). This will round out this old Dell into a superb development workstation, while severing the power/net tether I currently have.

However, things haven’t exactly gone according to plan.

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For me, 2007 had to be one of the roughest years yet. I’m glad it’s behind me, and I’m glad that there’s a whole new year ahead to fill - a tabula rasa, if you will.

What follows can be summed up in a word: Stress.

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The refactoring and improvements are now very much behind schedule, but very much in the project SVN. I can only blame my lack of adequate planning, and time, to how this has drawn out. Well, that and my complete under-estimation as to how involved a good ORM can be to develop. In hindsight, I think what has cost me the most time was getting my head around some of the idiosyncrasies of Python, and how do accomplish things that I’ve come to take for granted in similar languages.

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I just wanted to post about this utility since I’ve often wanted something like this for Windows.

For the uninitiated, this program mimics the behavior of “apt-get”, a utility that linux admins/users have enjoyed for some time now. It basically handles like Windows Update for *applications* as well as for drivers and your operating system components. Apt makes very short work of installing security releases, hotfixes, updates or even just installing software from scratch.

Win-get doesn’t quite do all that for Windows, but at least it’ll make it easy to get the latest and greatest versions of FOSS applications like Firefox, Picasa, Google Earth, Tunderbird, Gimp and more.

The consensus over on Digg seems to be that this is a killer solution for your next reinstall of XP, or for just getting everyone set-up at your next LAN party.

• Win-Get Project Page
• Digg Article

WGET
As a bonus, the util relies on “wget” which is pretty damn nice in it’s own right (also on the same site). Another unix-ism, wget lets you download from *ANY* URL via the command line:

wget ftp://ftp.mywebsite.com/files/homemovie.mov

Not impressed? How about being able to download an entire website for viewing offline?

wget -r http://www.cnn.com

You can also use it to download just the media from a site, like only the mp3 files. But of course it does much more than that. The list of command-line options on this bad-boy is as long as my arm, and is well beyond the scope of what I’m willing to discuss here.

Wget gives you that kind of power with no browser, no download manager, no extra windows to muck with and consequently, no advertising. Succinctly, it bridges the gap between being able to say “copy x to y” in the command prompt, and clicking on links in your web browser.

A quick note on the progress of various projects I’m currently working on.

• TracForums - This has moved up to the #1 spot, to help with the Tango team’s need to get their site up to speed. Right now, it’s pedal-to-the-metal time for refactoring, better ORM support and an all-round better experience for administrators and users alike. Teaser screenshots are on the site.
• Enki V2.0 -I may be pushing this out to it’s own project next, as I’ve completely re-written the core of this wonderful little app. I’ve added much to the syntax, changed a few obnoxious quirks and even provided a swappable code-generator architecture. The motivation for this was simple: I had need for a good code generator at work and found it very daunting to re-work the one in Enki 1.2.
• DDL - Everyone’s favorite “when the hell is it coming out already” application, is still on the table, just out of reach for the moment. After the other blockers are cleared, this will come up to release very soon. I promise to get this out the door before Duke Nukem Forever, or I will eat my hat.
• DSP - By the time I get to this point in the queue, it may be too late. There has been a lot of movement on the CGI front for D - and good thing too. DSP may be re-envisioned as a series of technologies, including a templating engine and a D-based webserver architecture. Other things like a good ORM library and other web-essential widgets will need to be added if they don’t exist by this point. More realistically, the D community may have to band together to build a D web team of sorts to focus everyone’s research into such a super-project. The name (DSP) can go, but I still want the idea to live on.

The old blog died, and had to be replaced.

The new blog now features an OpenID login system, so you can post comments using your LiveJournal account (or other OpenID compatible service).  Simply type in “myusername.livejournal.com” into the openID field and hit Return.  LJ will ask you if “pragma.solaries.net” is cool with you - just click “yes” and you’re logged in.

As the  title suggests, the blog also cross-posts things to LiveJournal.  Take it or leave it - personally, I think this is a nice feature.