Month: September 2007

Hussle Bussle

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Damn it feels good to get my feet out of shoes… Even if it’s only an hour til I go back to work.

I’ve missed the chance to post 3 or 4 entries I wanted to do.. When I’m busy I usually skip my Live Journal for the day. My E-Mail and server time usually being the next ones on the list to go….

The day started with a 0930 roll out to get ready, home from work, chores done by 1700. That gives me maybe an hour to rest. Then I go back to another hour and a half of hell. Not a bad days labour for some one people bitch at that he doesn’t work, eh?

I’m anxious to see what if any response my post in SNCO’s has gotten. But I don’t have time to deal with the other messages if I do log in. I uploaded an HTML Export of the current draft of the SOP’s. I consider them *almost* ready for release, just a couple more things that I know we need to do. Clean up the section on Communication, I think for the sake of Getting It Done. I’d like to grab a couple of Members and have a group huddle to work on a few things.

What En4cer did for the V-Commands SOP which I adopted into this rewrite as necessary… Is good stuff but we need a RvS and S4 V-Com section that goes hand in hand with each other. And En4cer is sure as hell not current enough on SWAT4 to be able to do it so even if he was active enough…

So, Plan C:

Rip it down to an outline and rewrite the hole thing from scratch. Including writing both sections at the same time(ish) to more better synchronise them.

Also Appendix I needs to be reviewed and I want to change a few more things but I need time to do it.

I’ve taken to keeping an Operations.txt file on my Desktop and having Vim open it to show coloured indentation markers. In such a way I can use it as a Quick & Dirty outline / notes file. While retaining the power of my text editor and skipping learning a plugin to do basically the same thing but more completely =/.

*sigh*, between Family and Work, life is a nightmare…. There’s not a lot good left in my days when I’m not around [SAS]. To be honest, I think I’d do better in the Military… I think even a Private would have more take home pay then both of us combined :S. If it was enough to support my mother… I might even manage to have a chance at going after it. It would also be a chance to do some thing with my life… if my body could stand the Physical Training I might even enjoy it. Ones country can’t shit on you as much as your family for trying to be of help can they? lol.

For my age, I should be strong as an ox…. Rather then having nearly as many rattles as a FORD Tempo.

I always hoped to keep the Army and Navy open as possible options for my future. But I don’t know if the parts would stand up to it any more. I’ve been working in this business since I was 15, without pay or respect. I remember when I was a young teenager people said I had a mind older then my years….. Less then 10 years down the road I feel like I’m developing the body to match =/

…. Fuck.

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Re upp’d the library books this morning before work. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one thats half asleep that time of morning hehe.

I’ve been concentrating on Maximum Security: A Hacker’s Guide to Protecting Your Internet Site and Network. A very good book, highly interesting. This is a THICK book, I’ve read only 200 pages or so and keep going. I figure if I keep going at my usual reading rate I can finish it in about a week of reading nights. I’m used to pulling 70-100 Pages a day when reading a novel, more if I just sit on my ass and read the day away.

I really want to dig deeper into the book on PHP/MySQL because I really don’t know shit about Databases, PHP… Is close enough to things I do know that I can generally pick things up fast. SQL, is a different story.

Emacs pinky

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Beware of attractive Blondes in tight cloths…. lol

On a lighter note, I’ve had emacs on the brain lately. Which is some one strange as I’m Vi man with a strong liking for VIM.

Generally GNU Emacs is the emacsen by which I compare emacsen. I first learned the basics of using emacs day to day using XEmacs on a Windows machine. Nice editor although i’ve never cared much for the Meta key. Generally I found emacs key bindings to be the kind, that if you could remember what type of key sequence it was you could figure it out. Generally things are some what consistent, Control + D, deletes the next character (right of the point). While Meta + D deletes the next word. Basically as I remember it for regular commands. A Control+Key combo does a smaller action while a Meta+Same Key combo does a larger action. Like if Control+Key works on words, Meta+Key works on lines e.t.c. And classes of commands I think generally had a consistent prefix. Control+X+Control+F Open/Find files, Control+X+Control+S Save current file, Control+X+Control+C exit editor, e.t.c Most of the mutli-file Editor related commands I recall focused on a Control+X prefix arrangement, like Contorl+X+2 to open a second buffer, Control+X+O to switch to the other e.t.c

I’ve tried a number of emacsen but never found one I really like enough to use a lot. GNU Emacs I don’t’ care much for but respect it among emacsen. I find it to fat and slow to be effective. On my desktop it’s no problem to run it, theres a lot of RAM and a fast CPU. On my laptop theres a budget CPU and moderate RAM so it’s slow as nails to get it’s motor warmed up. Not being much of a GNU Emacs man, I usually keep a fairly out of the box installation.

I haven’t tried XEmacs on my laptop but I don’t expect it to be faster then GNU Emacs. I think I would prefer XEmacs though.

MicroEMACS 4.0 and variants I’ve used and enjoyed, you could say MicroEMACS is my favorite. I like MicroEMACS in that it is small yet extensible. With just enough features to be useful Some what like Vi but with perks. Most of my issues with the editor would be solved by learning more about emacs ways of doing things and the marco language. I remember poking around a Traditional C style code base as well.

The only emacsen I find my self using often when I do actually use one. Is mg, a Micro GNU Emacs like editor maintained by OpenBSD. It’s a pretty bare bone emacs but it gets the job done nicely. Since I’m to stuborn to install Vim on my file server (OpenBSD) and would _NEVER_ dream of installing GNU Emacs on it. I’ll usually use mg when I need to edit multiple files. Although I could probably use Window and multiple instances of nVi for the same purpose.

I’ve tried Jove but never cared for it. An intermediate between the GNU Emacs/XEmacs variants and MicroEMACS variants I’d say.

I generally have preferences but I do believe in knowing a lot of things when possible. While I don’t remember most of the commands I learned in XEmacs, and prefer the Vi style of doing things more to my taste. Especially to my wrists and fingers liking !! (Escape Meta Alt Control Shiftritis). I can use Emacs fine but generally prefer not to. I generally prefer a light and fast emacsen to most other editors if I can’t have a Vi based one.

scratch file

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To save my the trouble of screwing with SCP/SMB to continue work tomorrow from another computer…

Heres a scratch file I’ve been toying with tonight. For the heck of it I thought I’d toy around with trying to break a $PATH like string apart into some thing a program or file could be looked up and then try to add a primitive file name completion to after tinkering awhile.

Todo tomorrow:

clean up comments, finish playing with the Abbrev class, toy with trying to match up a regex to an abbrev to a filename, worry about rest afterwards.

#!/usr/local/bin/ruby -w
# Build a hash table from a $PATH like string that we can use for calling
# commands.

require 'abbrev'
require 'pp'

PDEBUG=1  # Programmers DEBUG on

path = '/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin'

# Create a hash for $PATH
#
# Arguments:
#   path => string containing a list of directories delimited by separator
#   separator => Any delimiter suitable for String#each
#
# Return value:
#   A hash where keys are directory names and values are handles to those
#   directories.
def make_pathhash( path, separator=':' )

  hash = Hash.new()

  # Parse path for directories
  path.each( separator ) do |dir|
    dir.gsub!( /:/, '' )
    # Creates a key from path containing a directory name
    hash[dir] = dir #Dir.open( dir ) 
  end

  return( hash )

end

# Create a hash from the current directory to assist filename completion
#
# Arguments:
#   directory => A directory to create the hash from
#
# Return value:
#   An hash of filename => filenames from directory
#
def make_chdirhash( directory )

  hash = Hash.new()

  dirh = Dir.open( directory )
  dirh.each do |file|
    hash[file] = file
  end

  return( hash )

end

if PDEBUG 
  h = make_pathhash( path )
  cd = make_chdirhash( '.' )
  pp Abbrev::abbrev( cd.to_a.flatten ).sort  
end

Not bad for an idiot just screwing around if you ask me.

Also to do tomorrow, finish that thing I was doing before dinner.