News

• Tag support for devices added, including support in JS and the SetBuilder.
• Worked on socket support and learned much about boost::asio in the progress. TcpSocket is functional (at least the parts covered by tests) but still missing the server parts.
• Got used to using gitorious.
• Released 0.7.6, a bugfix release which should enable non-git users to communicate with their demo-sets again.
• Had to answer (and still have to reply to) some support mails, a clear sign that people are starting to use the code.

If you ever need to get a bank clearing number from a IBAN string, this page will help you complete your quest ;-)

This week was rather short with me having a day off, but that’s what we’ve accomplished last week in digitalSTROM Server (dSS) development:

• Some Documentation added (yeah it’s still a bit thin for my taste too…)
• Wiki cleaned up
• Released 0.7.5
• Rewritten meterings polling-loop to be event-based
• Set-up & moved to gitorious.digitalstrom.org
• Updated the developer page
• Closed some resolved issues that weren’t closed in a long time

At the digitalSTROM.org Developer Day (last Friday) we’ve officially opened up our git repository, allowing everyone to access the software. It might be of little use at the moment as the hardware is still not available (for sale anyway) but since we’ve got a simulation built into the dSS you can actually develop cool stuff without having access to the hardware.

As it’s not yet officially linked anywhere, here a short link collection to get you started:

• Redmine for bug-tracking and wiki
• Update: Git repository: git://gitorious.digitalstrom.org/dss/dss-mainline.git
• Mailinglists

If you’re not familiar with git you can download our latest release (0.7.5) here.

Today I had to code something up that checks if a socket got closed on the other end, without touching the data if it’s still up and running. I came up with the following lines:

  bool isSocketAlive(const int _socketHandle) {
    uint8_t tmp;
    bool result = true;
    int res = recv(_socketHandle, &tmp, 1,  MSG_PEEK | MSG_DONTWAIT);
    if(res == -1) {
      if((errno != EAGAIN) && (errno != EINTR) && (errno != EWOULDBLOCK)) {
        log("lost connection", lsInfo);
        result = false;
      }
    } else if(res == 0) {
      // if we were still connected, recv would return -1 with an errno listed above or 1
      log("lost connection", lsInfo);
      result = false;
    }
    return result;
  } // isSocketAlive

“Show me a man who cannot be bothered to do the little things, and I will show you a man who cannot be trusted to do the big ones.”
– Lawrence Bell, Founder Bell Helicopter

Today, I moved over to a new server at Hetzner. So this is a delayed test of the new setup as well as a test if I’m still able to post something.

“L’histoire est une suite de mensonges sur lesquels on est d’accord.”
– Napoleon Bonaparte

“Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.”
– Laurie Anderson
 

Cool page that pictures the state of the SVG support in today’s and tomorrows browsers: http://www.codedread.com/svg-support.php.

IE is lagging way behind while the nightly-builds of WebKit and Opera are moving on to near complete support. Firefox lacks most of the animation features but I was surprised that 3.0 already supports features like filters.

If you’re ever running out of diskspace on your gentoo system, be sure to remove old kernel sources. I just removed > 20 and freed about 10 gigabyte.

“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, then what are we to think of an empty desk?”

– Albert Einstein

Shamelessy copied from an article on timesonline.co.uk: Messy? I’m an artist!

Last night I was tinkering with the source-code of kdelibs to make the thumbnail generation optional/configurable. No point in having truecrypt if your documents get thumbnailed and stored directly in your home. It ruins your deniable encryption[1] if your desktop tracks every move you make. Except if your desktop cleans up after it has run.
But then you’ve got the problem of files still lying around in unallocated inodes on your hard-drive.

One solution to this problem is to create a file containing all zeroes or just random data, fill your partition up till the brink and delete the file. This will overwrite everything you wanted to hide from the eyes from your room-mates, your geek-girlfriend or your oppressive government. And as recent studies have shown[2] [3] it’s perfectly secure to overwrite the data just once.
The problem is, it takes forever to write gigabites of zeroes to our hard drives.

This morning I’ve had this idea:

• All inodes that get deallocated have to be stored in the free inodes table to be reused (nothing new here).
• If an inode gets deleted put it in tthe table but flag it as “dirty” (as in still containing data).
• If your filesystem needs to allocate inode it should prefer the dirty ones.
• On shutdown (or periodically) go through your “dirty” inodes and fill them with zeroes.
• Life life in happiness and peace.

The performance impact should be minimal as you don’t need to zero out the inodes that you’re reusing[4].

I’ve emerged[1] my copy of KDE 4.2 last saturday and I’ve been using it since then at work as well as at home. Apart from the occational crashes (it’s a .0 release after all) it’s running really smooth. It’s way better than 4.1.x which I was running for the last year on my notebook at work.

What I’m mostly missing are configurable items. Like remembering last used directories and disabling the generation of thumbnail-files directly into the root of your home directory.
But these things are easily fixed (and give me an excuse too look into the KDE sources a little bit closer).

And the one thing I really like is the new KDevelop with DUChain. It’s really cool to have your meta-template programs evaluated directly in your IDE. It still lacks support for documentation and gdb but these things seem to be coming along in the next two or three weeks (from what I’ve read on the kdevelop-development mailinglist[2]).

“I have just had eighteen whiskeys in a row. I do believe that is a record.”
– Dylan Thomas, his last words