fettig.net

I’m currently working on a new ‘projects’ section for this site,

where I can post code, screenshots, etc. for the projects I’m

working on. It will be done eventually ;-). The delay right

now is in working out the storage format for each project’s info.

I’d rather not use MySQL, or any other database server, just

for the sake of simplicity and portability. Instead, I’m going

to use plain XML files. I just have to sit down and hash out

the DTD.

Actually, now that I think about it, what’s really holding me

back is the lack of a nice XML editor. Anybody know of a good

one that runs on Linux?

As of today, you can change the look of fettig.net by picking

a different style sheet. If you’re using Mozilla/Netscape 6, look under

View -> Use Stylesheet. If you’re using IE, you might try upgrading

to the brand new version 6, or you could just wonder why

Microsoft is just starting to support this feature even though it’s been

part of the CSS 1 standard since 1997.

Learning Java just became oh so entertaining, thanks to IBM

and their robocode

game. It’s a game where you design a little robotic tank thing in Java,

customizing how it will respond to events like running into a wall and

getting shot by another robot. Then you send it out to do battle and

watch it win or lose. Fun!

For now I’m going to be playing against the built-in robots that come with

the game, but soon I’ll have my custom bot ready to take on anybody!

Who wants to play?

OK, I’ve added a place to enter your name when you send me

a message. This is user testing in action for you: I had assumed

that people would realize that there would be no way for me to

know who they were if they didn’t identify themselves as part

of their message. Turns out that I was completely wrong.

Nobody ever says who they are. That hadn’t been a problem ’till

today, as I’ve been able to guess the source of message from

its context.

But today I’ve recieved two mysterious requests that I change

the FTP timeout on this server. I don’t have a problem with changing

it, but before I do I’d like to know who wants me to, and why.

So whoever you are, send that message again! And fill in the

“Your Name” box.

So much going on this week!

In brief, I’m:

• Fighting with MySQL. Up until now I’ve been able to

  use MySQL without having

  to deal with anything more inconvenient

  than the occational lack of a nested SELECT. But this week

  I got bit hard when the query builder that I built for a client

  wouldn’t work. It seems that MySQL doesn’t support nested

  JOINs either. So now I’m rewriting the relationships part of it

  to fake INNER JOINS through WHERE statements.

• Learning Java. Many thanks to

  Bruce Eckel for

  making his book

  Thinking

  in Java available as a free download.

  Java is fun. Nice and object

  oriented. I’ll probably write a program in it soon just

  for practice.

• Thinking about my web logging app.

  I’ve been delaying in putting my web logger application up for

  download. The biggest reason is that the

  Blogger API

  seems to be

  becoming somewhat of a standard,

  and so I think I should use it instead of my own

  off-the-top-of-my-head API. But that means changing some

  things…

  OK, I’ve decided: I’ll try to redo the API this week, and if I don’t

  get around to it I’ll just release what I’ve got.

On the TODO list: I really want to write a PalmOS app. But so far I

haven’t thought of any ideas for a useful Palm program that I don’t

have already. Any ideas?