Month: June 2004

mozCC 0.8.0 Now Available

(duplicated from mozCC News)

After an interminable delay and over 60 days since the last preview, mozCC 0.8.0 is now available. This release represents a major upgrade to the previous codebase, and will hopefully form the basis for the 1.0 release. Features include:

  • Support for localization. While mozCC still only support English, this opens the door for the addition of new translations. If you’re interested in translating mozCC, contact me.
  • Better RDF extraction: mozCC now supports metadata specified as <a rel="license" ...>.
  • Performance improvements: mozCC parses and retrieves metadata only once, and allows the browser to continue rendering during retrieval of <link>‘d metadata.
  • New, improved details UI. License and work metadata is shown as human-readable strings, as opposed to a semi-mangled tree representation.
  • Support for the new extension manager in Firefox 0.9.

Installation instructions are available here. Note that CVS is currently down at MozDev, so you should only install from yergler.net until that comes back up and the download network is updated. I’ll post a notice here when that happens.

If you are upgrading from a previous version of mozCC, it is strongly recommended that you uninstall and restart your browser before installing 0.8.0. Changes to the internal layout of mozCC have made upgrades, well, dicey. For that reason, I’m not enabling the “upgrade” button that appears in the preferences. Sorry, but I can’t find a way to make upgrades work consistently well. If you have any questions about this, drop me a line .

While this is a major step forward for mozCC, there are a few known issues:

  • When customizing the toolbar under Mozilla Firefox, the toolbar button looks, well, weird. Screwed up, you may say. Yes, I know.
  • The icon size is a little off in Firefox.

I anticipate an 0.8.1 release within a week or so to correct these and other bugs. If you find any additional issues, please contact me (good) or file a bug (better). As always, suggestions, criticism and ideas are welcome.

date:2004-06-29 16:53:20
wordpress_id:146
layout:post
slug:mozcc-080-now-available
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category:mozCC

You must be kidding!

My civil disobediance for today:

Sellotape prohibits linking to their site, so here’s a link to the prohibition . How incredibly braindead.

date:2004-06-28 12:45:13
wordpress_id:145
layout:post
slug:you-must-be-kidding
comments:
category:geek

ccRdf 0.4.5 Available

ccRdf 0.4.5 is now available. Improvements include:

  • updated to support RDFlib 2.0.3 and it’s new API
  • added unit tests
  • added new rdfextract.py module, a nascent pluggable RDF extraction module under development for use in the new version of ccValidator.

ccRdf is a set of Python classes which allow developers to easily parse and manipulate Creative Commons licensing metadata. ccRdf supports parsing, manipulating and emitting license metadata in RDF format. ccRdf performs the core validation and parsing for the Creative Commons RDF Validator.

date:2004-06-24 13:44:07
wordpress_id:144
layout:post
slug:ccrdf-045-available
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category:ccRdf

Eclipse Wish List

I have a confession: I’m enamoured with a Java IDE. Eclipse, to be specific. I knew it was a respectable IDE. I used it to teach my Java class last year, and it worked reasonably well. With my work on ccSaver, I downloaded the release candidate for 3.0, and was blown away. It’s intuitive, packed with features and not a total dog in the performance category (at least once it’s up and running). Which leads me to the rub: why can’t I use it for all my development? Well, there’s a couple of things I wish it had, and maybe one day I’ll find them or get around to coding them.

  • True support for Python files; I’m obviously not alone in this one, as witnessed by the number of plug-ins aimed at integrating Python with Eclipse. It’s just that I’ve yet to find one that actually, well, works.
  • Support for JavaScript. This should be easy. After all, it’s just a subset of Java, right? Anyway, far fewer people seem interested in this, but it would allow me to work with things like mozCC in Eclipse. Of course, I would like a way to manage the entire development process, which leads me to…
  • Support for developing Mozilla plug-ins. This is the one that gets me the most excited. Eclipse already has support for things like the “build” process and testing in an external container. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could create a Firefox Extension in Eclipse, have it manage the install.rdf, and then provide testing facilities. As an added bonus, why not support for XUL, ala the Eclipse Visual Editor Project. Currently building XUL code can be a royal pain in the ass; a graphical editor for XUL files would lower the bar to a reasonable level.

So, anybody? anybody?

date:2004-06-23 06:47:05
wordpress_id:143
layout:post
slug:eclipse-wish-list
comments:
category:development

Updated Tagger

Just a quick note that I’ve uploaded new builds of ccTag, a set of graphical and command-line tools for embedding Creative Commons license claims in MP3 files. Builds are available for Win32 and Mac OS X; the source is available as a tarball. This build corrects a problem with the Mac OS X builds which caused ccTag to crash in a rather disappointing way. Go and check it out.

date:2004-06-22 16:15:18
wordpress_id:142
layout:post
slug:updated-tagger
comments:
category:General

Well that was anti-climactic

Yesterday afternoon Garrett and I officially became domestic partners, if not in the eyes of the law, then in the eyes of Purdue University, his employer. With my impending job transition, I’m hopping onto his benefits package. For this to happen we were required to sign an affadavit and have it notarized. So yesterday, at 4:10p.m., with our bank’s notary Sara acting as a witness, we signed. As we walked out Garrett commented, “so, I guess we’re married now, huh?” Yeah; I guess so. Funny, I always hoped there’d be more kitchen appliances foisted on us when this happened.

date:2004-06-22 13:53:54
wordpress_id:141
layout:post
slug:well-that-was-anti-climactic
comments:
category:my life

ccSaver 0.2 now available

I’ve uploaded an update to my Java experiment, ccSaver. The 0.2 release adds some features, er, necessities, for actual usage. Such as an error message if it’s unable to download an image (instead of a stack trace and spectacular JVM crash), and actually paying attention to configuration settings. Additionally, 0.2 lowers the bar for Windows installation by only requiring a JRE 1.4 installation (0.1 required a 1.5 beta).

Anyway, give it a try and let me know what you think.

date:2004-06-21 10:00:46
wordpress_id:140
layout:post
slug:ccsaver-02-now-available
comments:
category:ccSaver, development

Boring Software

Yesterday morning I had a meeting with an accountant. As part of my transition to my new job, I’m also transitioning from respectable, properly W2’d corporate flak to renegade, rebelious, “damn the man” 1099 contracter. OK, maybe not exactly that, but sometimes it feels that way. So my partner Garrett asked one of his co-workers for a CPA recommendation, and she recommended Randy. Now, even though I worked at an accounting firm for a while (where while == 4 months), I managed to avoid learning absolutely anything about accounting. In fact, I was a little fuzzy on exactly how deductions worked when I showed up for my appointment yesterday.

Lucky for me, Randy was more than happy to guide me through the maze of Schedule C, Section 179 and the like. He was also very frank about the fact that while he was happy to help me out, he wasn’t the accountant for me. Seems he does mostly Fortune 500 audits, and bills at around $250 an hour; not the guy I’m gonna rush to call with a question about my math. But he had taken the time to print off a stack of forms and documents for me to use, provided me with some excellent advice and references, and did it all for free. Someone should give him a cookie.

After my meeting, I decided to look for software that might help me out. I was even willing to try something like Quicken, or Money, if they would make my life more managable. What I found was slightly disheartening. First, both Quicken and Money do have editions available that manage things like Schedule C, Estimated Payments and Section 179. However, Money doesn’t support Mac OS (suprise, suprise) and Quicken’s Premier Edition (which you have to have to get the 1099-related features) is also Win32-only. These two points lead me to believe that 1099 support software is limited to the Windows world, which is amazing, if not completely suprising.

Consider: writing finance software is boring. To me, at least, and I don’t think I’m completely outside the norm. Writing finance software that needs annual updates to retain relevance to the current US Tax Code isn’t sometime that sounds like a nice Friday evening to me. GnuCash is a passable checkbook manager, but I guess I was looking for something a little more tailored to my situation. Maybe I should take the time to figure out how to hack GnuCash and add the features I want.

No, that would be boring.

date:2004-06-18 09:25:53
wordpress_id:139
layout:post
slug:boring-software
comments:
category:my life

Bookmark Syncronization

Andy pointed out that someone developed a Firefox extension which allows you to syncronize your bookmarks across multiple machines/platforms. While not exactly what I had in mind, this is definitly a good start towards my desire for better bookmarks.

In addition to the extension, I also found an article on IDEAlog that discusses the properties Internet-aware applications (such as the one I envision) should have. An interesting read that has me thinking again about what I can do to improve my browsing experience.

date:2004-06-18 07:05:27
wordpress_id:138
layout:post
slug:bookmark-syncronization
comments:
category:geek

We Won!

Tonite our sand volleyball team, the poorly name “Hot Shots”, won our first game this season. And it wasn’t even a forfeit! Woo-hoo!

date:2004-06-16 20:56:14
wordpress_id:137
layout:post
slug:we-won
comments:
category:my life