Terry Poulin

Hackish Solutions

by

Well, couldn’t stand my bloody wireles keyboard any more. Its a nice one, made by a chinise company that specializes in KBs. Restamped Gateway of course.

The keyboard I got for $3 at a library book sale (along with a pretty sweet 15″ Monitor). Has a problem of a sticking left shift. Well I think I’ve fixed it.

I Rolled over the keyboard and unplugged it. Unscrewed stuff and took off the bottom. I unscrewed what looked like a grounding wire and metal plate. Pull off a flat flismy layer with a pattern on it. No clue what its for yet. Then pulled off the wafer that interfaced with the keys. Yes I did read the technical manual to the NCC-1701-D a few to many times when I was young. So ‘wafer’ is in my technical volcabulary, thank you. The thing was pretty clean, so no problems. Packed every thing back up but the key was still sticky. Although not as bad, so what I did. Was to improvise from masking tape & a cable tie (which has been sitting on my desk annoying me for weeks). To make a little anti-stick sticky buffer. So instead of the key getting pushed down far enough to get STUCK it would be buffered back up from the cushion effect. So far it works prety good,maybe 95% of the time no stuck key, vs 75%. Not bad for a quick & DIRTY solution. Not very elagent but gee it worked well :-).

bounty

by

Plentiful day really. When I logged on both Valroe and Leon happened to be on. Ahh perfections start. Managed to get Miles for back up, Rasas office for ASCII support, TS2 for Voice over, TG#1 for operations and take care of some business.

Wiz has been showing me around the site. I’m really lucky to have some one to teach me. I know he didn’t, so he had to learn the hardway and fast often enough. Although I am sorry about the amount of AFK’age I’ve put him threw.

Oddly enough, ma was complaning that I “don’ do any thing but sit infront of that ing computer all day”. Well I think Wiz might disagree with her on that <_< ehehe!

Been working threw a nice book on html4/xhtml1/css2. I know that we’re on 1.0/1.1 recommendation & 2.0 working drafts for xhtml. But it helps. I do know my way around plane old HTML enough but I’m not familer with CSS. Casscading Style Sheets do how ever seem a good thing to learn. Oh well hehe. I also need to start learning PHP a bit, I want to inhale the manual some time along with a few others.

Honor

by

I have been perhapes, more greatly honored then I ever thought I could be.

Who knows, maybe they will put me to good use without over working my sorry @l2$$

Note to self

by

My scratch pad.

>3. any tryout should be posted on the calendar so everyone in the clan
>knows that there will be a tryout. Before you make the appointment, the
>tryout administrators need to be all lined up.

Now if I could just wrangle a few people into the right position at the same time. If I have to, I’ll conduct this tryout my self although I’d really like it if a LCpl can do it.

Supplimental note to self, be more agressive if neccessary about getting people involved then come as you are lets get the flubber done on time.

MicroMac

by

Been playing a bit, installed editors/ uemacs, qemacs, em, mg, jove, and emacs.

uemacs is a simple MicroEMACS 4.0 set up, looks good for learning. I.e. a Pico/Nano style shortcut buffer on top.

qemacs wouldn’t start, so much for quick emacs

em is a modified MicroEMACS 3.x/4.0 with an ID of uEmacs/PK-TOY 4.0.17

jove is Johnatons Own Version of Emacs, looks like my favorite so far. It asks “Some buffers haven’t been saved; leave anyway? ” rather then a save y/n, modified buffers exist still leave yes or no and please say exactly yes or no blah blah like GNU Emacs. em & uemacs share joves trate here as well but mg takes after emacs proper. Only mg won’t ask before exit if its the stratch buffer.

emacs, well is GNU Emacs. Slow loading bukly bastard with a 4.5MB binary !! Compare to the others which are smaller then nvi/nex but bigger then ed. I suppose the fact that its the only emacsen in this list that has X11/GUI support warrents its bulk… maybe

Terry@Dixie$ du -ch /usr/local/bin/emacs                                   8:04
4.5M    /usr/local/bin/emacs

Terry@Dixie$ du -ch /usr/local/bin/jove                                    8:05
148K    /usr/local/bin/jove

Terry@Dixie$ du -ch /usr/bin/nex                                           8:05
304K    /usr/bin/nex

Terry@Dixie$ du -ch /usr/bin/vi                                            8:05
304K    /usr/bin/vi

Terry@Dixie$ du -ch /usr/local/bin/uemacs                                  8:06
124K    /usr/local/bin/uemacs

Terry@Dixie$ du -ch /usr/local/bin/em                                      8:06
 84K    /usr/local/bin/em

Terry@Dixie$ du -ch /usr/local/bin/mg                                      8:06
 98K    /usr/local/bin/mg

Terry@Dixie$ du -ch /usr/local/bin/vim                                     8:06
1.4M    /usr/local/bin/vim

As you can see, em is the smallest and emacs the fatest. So far, I think I like Jove but they all seem to lack GNU/X Emacs self-documentational nature. Personally I prefer nVi or Vim, but Jove is pretty nice. All of these emacsen do support multiple editing buffers, which is one thing I did like ’bout emacs back when I used to use XEmacs as my primary editor.

mg is a variant of MicroEMACS maintained by the OpenBSD people, nice little editor. I’ve never used OpenBSD and have little expirence with NetBSD so I don’t know if they have an easyeditor like FreeBSD’s ee but I’d reckon mg could serve the same purpose. I generally use ‘vi’ on systems lacking vim though, so I dunno. So far in my travels the only editor I can’t use well, has got to be ed and emacs. Why? Because ed’s ‘?’ error message annoys me and GNU Emacs just pisses me off by its very nature.I can use Emacs pretty well, I just choose not to (again I prever Vi)

shocker

by

Well to day I did get a bit of a shock. Me, Wiz, Shield, Recon, and a few pubs on TG#1. Between maps Shield tells Wiz he’s in vialation of the Code of Honor.

Wiz got promoted to Troop Captain, a fine thing 🙂
He’s our web master, keeps the site going, good SNCO for as long as I’ve known’em. Maybe as close to a mentor I’ve had in [SAS]. Its always good when friends got promoted hehehe.

Next map. Shield tells me I am breaking CoH too, tells me I have Wiz’s old Rank (sgt). So I tag up after bumblers moement. A min later Shield says he made a Mistake, I’m not a Sgt I’m SSM.

I miss read SSM as RSM, since we have not had any SSM in awhile. Kinda embarrasing on X-Fire for a minute. When I re-read Shields msg and saw the first S and corrected it. I was never so happy to be promoted ! lol. Wew…

Turns out my m8 Rasa is also a SSM and our mutual team mate Rouge is acting RSM. Really, I was hoping they’d just promote Rouge to Sgt and let us Cpl have a good leader. Damn I’m glad they picked Rouge. Not that I have issues but, hes the best and I’m actually glad we all skipped regular sgt. I’ve always looked at the higher ranksk with respect, first time I met Shield. This was before he was CO, prolly Major or an SNCO. I called him Sir. Being the sort he is, of course he didn’t like the ‘sir’ part.

Even though, I have a lot of respect for our officers and every member. To be honest, I’ve always looked on the ‘Sgt’ rank as sort of a death curse. Since Wiz made Sgt way back when, I noticed how his activity dropped. Not to mention JB, Blade e.t.c. This is why after Cpl, I stopped sending promo-suggestions. Being where we are now I’m happy. I was some what fearing promotion actually.

To be honest, for a long time I’ve always wrestled with the idea of leaving. Even when I was a P.R. But, when I was a P.R. I had such joy and I desided I wanted to continue on to the Selection Course in the hopes of some day passing on what I learned. My time in the [SAS] has really been a blessing to me, in numerous ways really. As a trp I trained my self to a razors edge, as a LCpl I floundered (imho). I remember being told that it was a Sgts job for such things, never have really wanted to have rank. Well, I did always have a soft spot for Cpl. Thanks to Adze, Wiz, JB, and Blade. I remember when I was just a newbie Adze was always popping in/out. That bloody Cpl was inspiring slash annoying. Being a Cpl, really was the highest I wanted to go. Just high enough to be free to get involved in training/clan matters but low enough to be sure I’d spend a lot of time with the server, public, and members.

Really what good is a job if you don’t get to be with your friends and meet new people ? At least as an SSM I know I can still be where I want, yet still be useful to the team. The happiest thing they could have ever given me for a Rank they did. Trooper when I passed my second tryout with a 98%. Any thing after thats kinda gravy as long as I can be useful.

So what is my new Job Description?

/****************************
The Squadron Sergeant Major, working closely with the Regiment Sergeant Major, will be expected to make suggestions regarding our [SAS] member training procedures, and implement any necessary changes upon approval of the Captain. The Squadron Sergeant Major must ensure that all Staff Sergeants are correctly educating the [SAS] membership and Sergeants are correctly educating prospective members on all aspects of the [SAS] Code of Honor and Standard Operating Procedure Training.

The Squadron Sergeant Major will report directly to the Regiment Sergeant Major about their training methods and scheduling, but he is allowed to, when necessary, act independently to provide supplemental training to the [SAS] membership.

The Squadron Sergeant Major is responsible for administering the Advanced Training Awards Tryout to selected [SAS] members. Eligibility to participate in the ATA Tryout is determined by the SSM. In situations where the SSM is not able, due to logistical reasons, to administer the ATA, the RSM or a qualified trainer shall act as a replacement for that instance.
************************/

The ATA part is a bit dated since the one fearsome training map for it. Has been released for general training, I use it often. But other wise the JD looks ’bout ripe. Speaking of ATAs the only person to come close or actualyl did do it on the first (can’t remeber which) was Random when he was CO. I take my helmet off to ye for that !

Great map for self-training though heheehe.

by

Some how its ironic, mine is a gneration that may be best noted for ‘dis-functional’ familes. But mine tends to work on the un-functional side…

Sigh, back to code I guess.

QTechnic

by

I’ve been working around in assistant and designer (qt3). Docuementation is pretty good and the system looks neat. TO be honest, I started on it because I was bored =/

When it comes to graphical toolkits I’m some what familer with Javas AWT (abstract window toolkit) as it was in the pre JDK1.0 days. I’ve never writen a AWT app. Dang gum it, get up for five minutes and the dogs all ready bamboozled me out of my spot ! So far I think I like QT, good solid documentation. Good GUI for making a GUI, and seems a pretty smart system for building graphical applications. I prefer ANSI C to C++ but C++ does have its virtues.

I once started a GTK+ C tutorial but I couldn’t stand the examples… To much of the GNU coding style in it. Just seeing a function ( like, this ); makes me cringe !

Personally I like functions like this:

type
name(parm1, etc); {
        /* code */
}

and thats generally how I write C. When I first started learning programming in C++ I wrote out in the style the tutorial dictated, namely.

int main()
{
    // Code
}

As various coding styles have always interested me and I like the idea of beauty meets readibility. I some how developed an attraction to keeping the opening sqiggy brace on the same line rather then the next line. I don’t know why but I find it more astectic.

PC-BSD Backup-Howto

by 
/****************************************************************************
 *                                NOTICE                                                                           *
 ****************************************************************************
 * This is still under construction. Having gotton very tired before getting*
 * this far. Makes this less then optimal. Also since I have little in the  *
 * way of practical exp. It will probably show. I've never had need or using*
 * any of my backups.                                                       *
 *                                                                          *
 * I did enjoy learning a few new things like basic cpio usage, well.       *
 * I've read about using tar/cpio/afio/dump before. But I've only really    *
 * used bsdtar with / without gzip/bzip2 for the most part.                 *
 * I will get stuff cleaned up as soon as I can. Feedback/comments always   *
 * Welcome.                                                                 *
 *                                                                          *
 * Chow                                                                     *
 ***************************************************************************/

The most important policy a computer owner ever works on. Is his/her backup
plan, what happens if that hard drive blows up or you erase all your mp3s ?

Since PC-BSD is a desktop based OS, I’ll think more so from a desktop users
perspective then a server. I also don’t know of many people that have ‘tape’
drives at home so I’m not saying any thing about what I don’t own.

Why should I back up my data ?

0.) In case of hard ware failure, namely the hard drive

1.) In case of disaster. Such as fire/flood/electric surge

2.) In case of accidental deletion, oops I just shredded my tax returns the
night before tax day !

3.) In case you have to reinstall the Operating System and want your data.

4.) Just in case you install another Operating System and it over writes some
data.

All good reasons to have a plan, further more its generally assumed that before
you go installing OSes, partitioning drives, e.t.c. that you got back ups.

Ok, so I need backups but where to put them?

Good question, depends on the type. I generally use a mixture of drives and
disks. You should keep them in a safe place, probably not in the same area as
the computer. In case of a fire or burst pipe. You might loose the computer but
not the backups on a shelf down the hall. A fireproof safe would be nice if you
got one.

Remember, while it can be secure on your computer behind passwords and access
controls. Once your data is backed up there is no protection. Although you can
backup encrypted user files with luck and decrypt them after restore. Such as
ones Documents. If your backups contain sensitive information be _sure_ to keep
them in a secure location. It can be just as easy for a smart thief to restore
a backup of yours on his/her computer as it is for you. If given access to the
backup media.

When to backup ?

The question is how much could you afford to loose? If you work on files
often such as a writer, programmer, or an artist. You might want to backup
daily. If your a casual user more worried about bookmarks and mailboxes. Ever
two weeks to two months might do it. Really your the only one who would know.

If you want to automate the task we will be looking at tools meant for that
purpose.

What to backup ?

This is all a matter of personal preference. The most important things for the
desktop user are files. Namely one would rather save a few 1000 family photos
then installed software that can be reinstalled. My suggestion is at the bare
_minimal_ that you backup your home directory and any major file storage
folders or collections.

System configuration can also be important. Maybe you had to make some changes
to get your system working right or theres just some stuff you don’t want to
tinker with again. Hopefully you did write down any changes you had to make,
like wireless configuration details e.t.c. But a backup never hurts ! I’d
suggest you backup the /etc directory, the loader.conf file and modules
directory in /boot/ if you have drivers there, as well relevant directories
under /usr/local/ if your software requires it (like global configuration
files). It might also be of interest to grab the /var directory and system logs.

At best

/boot/loader.conf
/boot/modules
/etc
/usr/home/

What to backup to!

Any proper safe location. If you do use a tape drive, I suggest you take _good_
care of the thing and don’t use it very often. If you don’t know what tape
drives are don’t worry, I’ve never used one ether.

The best storage medium you can get would be CD-R, DVD-R, CD-RW, DVD+R, or Hard
Drive. You will need a burner to write files to a disk but heres a run down.

CD-R, needs a CD Burner. Holds about 650MB of data and files burned to it are
stored for as long as the disk lasts.

CD-RW, needs a CD Burner, works just like a CD-R but you can erase files from
itand reuse the disk. Costs a little more but can be well worth it.

DVD-R / DVD+R, needs a DVD burner but tends to hold much more data, a bit over
4.3GB or over 4,400 MB. Most burners to day support both -R and +R formats, I’d
suggest DVD-R but what ever your systems support.

There are also DVD-RW and Dual Layed DVD media that your drives may support. A
DVD Burner will also burn CD-R and CD-RW 🙂

Another good medium is the external USB hard drive or large capacity USB
sticks. These are good in that they can be used just like hard drive space, but
taken else wheres for storage. If you often use a USB stick for file shares,
you should back it up as well in case of loss or damage.

You can also use hard drives, if you have several computers a reliable one can
be tasked with a high capacity hard drive for the purpose.

My greatest fear is generally for hardware failure rather then accidental
deletion, I’m kinda careful. So I generally make use of hard drives then
optical media for storing long-term backups.

How to backup ?

Interesting question, lets think a few. We have a few options we can

Archive the whole system and stick it some where safe.

Take a snapshot of the file system, good if your prone to erasing stuff

Copies of the disks, poor mans RAID.

If for some reason you are working with a Database, stop the thing before you
back it up. Or at least check the documentation on it before backing it up.
Trust me you don’t want to break that local copy of a website your developing
do you ? Hehehe. Our major software will be dump, cpio, and a few
archive/compression systems.

Dump, the real way to backup a toilet bowl !

Sorry just had to say it. Dump writes raw data blocks that make up
files/folders I’d suggest reading the man page on dump(8) and restore(8) if you
have need of it use it. If you know how to, I’d really say use it. The manual
pages are very good but feel tape-drive centric. Perhaps some one with more
experience with dump/restore can provide better info.

Here is a
good article

If you don’t understand a lick of that or the manual page, do not bother with
dump unless you have to. Trust me, you’ll only get a headache. Learning the
details of dump/restore is also on my to do list.

That being said, dump and restore are probably the _best_ thing you have in the
arsenal of backup and restore tools.

Tar and Friends, the zippy way.

This is probably my most used method and it should prove usable for most
desktop systems. The basic idea behind tar is you take many files and create
one. For example tar can take the files tom, dick, and harry. And turn them
into the file ‘names.tar’, when unpacked you get your tom, dick, and harry
files back. The problem here is tar does not compress data to save space. For
this if we are not working with just a few small files. We probably want to
archive it with tar, then compress it using a program like gzip or bzip2.

PC-BSD uses BSDTar but includes GNUTar as tar and gtar respectively. See the
man page tar(1) and the info file on tar (GNU info page). If your used to
advanced tar usage under GNU/Linux you might find gtar more to your liking.
For basic usage the differences are not worth noting.

We can create a tar archive like so in the konsole

tar -cf files_to_add tarfilename.tar

If we want to be quick about compressing this file we can do it in one line and
use ether gzip (tar.gz) or bzip2 (tar.bz2) like so:

tar -czf filename.tar.gz files_to_add
tar -cjf filename.tar.bz2 files_to_add

GZip is faster but BZip2 may offer smaller files but use more resources when
dealing with bigger files. One can also backup over the network using ssh or
rsh if necessary. For simple usage like this we can use the graphical program
‘ark’ but it may take longer to process the operation (imho). To extract the
files we can open it in ark and extract it or simply run

tar -xzf filename.tar.gz
tar -xjf filename.tar.bz2

A quick and dirty way to back up ones home directory would be to run ark as the
root user from the run dialog or konqueror in super user mode. Add the folder
/usr/home/ to a new archive of given format or to create it like so from
a root konsole.

cd /usr/home
tar -cpzf Terry home-Terry.tar.gz

That is, create a tar archive of my home directory, preserve my file
permissions, and gzip it from the file ‘Terry’ in the current directory.

A far bit of warning, the manual on tar will make your eyes bleed so its
probably best to look for examples or use ark until your used to the command.

See Pee Eye Oh, I see you.

The program cpio or ‘copy input / output’ is the backup tool I recommend along
with pax. Its usage is more complex then tar but more useful. The version
included with PC-BSD/FreeBSD is GNU cpio.

A simple way to create a file with cpio from a konsole is like this

find ./ -print | cpio -vo –format=crc > filename

Will make a ASCII cpio archive in the new portable SVR4 format with a checksum
of all files/folders in the current directory. To restore it to the current
directory.

cpio -vidm < filename The v option means be verbose, that is show us what its doing. The -o option is create, -i is extract. -d is make directories as needed, -m is preserve modification times, and --format= is the archive format. Thumb
around the manual page for more details. Sadly this lacks compression 🙁 The
sysutils/afio port is an updated cpio program with more options including built
in compression.

Any one seen K-PAX?

Since the many versions of tar and pax in use by commercial UNIX and Free Unix
likes such as HP-UP & Solaris on one side. And GNU and BSD on the other
userland side. Have various compatiblity issues from time to time. POSIX UNIX
standards people. Created their own program called ‘pax’

If your prone to ‘Distro’ hopping or having to deal with several different Unix
systems you probably would prefer pax to cpio. Dru Lavigne has a great article
about it, so rather then write about it I suggest you read
hers 🙂

Heres a simple usage of it just for the same of this document.

pax -wf archivename /what_to_archive

cd /where/to/restore/to
pax -rf /to/archivename

Direct Device Access
dd(1) is a utility to convert and copy files. It has more use then it sounds
really. dd is a powerful tool and a dangerous one. If your not used to it,
please don’t make a typo trust me it could be bad. This program can do some raw
disk copy jobs and even has use in computer forensics to get byte exact copies
of drives. It is also some what hated in that it is used very diffrent from
other UNIX programs. Rather then -options you use a option=value method for
setting options. Here is a demostration of coping a mounted floppy disk in drive fd0.

dd if=/dev/fd0 of/tmp/floppy.image

Which very well may take awhile, we can add the obs= option to write
‘bytes’ at bytes at once and ibs= to read at ‘bytes’ at bytes per once.
Or we can just use the bs= option to set both the same. Thus to speed up
stuff.

We now have a copy of the sucker as I’ll show with the file and Disk Usage
programs.

file /tmp/fd.image
fd.image: x86 boot sector, code offset 0x3c, OEM-ID “BSD 4.4”, sectors/cluster 8, root entries 512, sectors 2880 (volumes <=32 MB) , sectors/FAT 2, serial number 0x742c15e2, unlabeled, FAT (12 bit) du -h /tmp/fd.image 1.4M /tmp/fd.image I only had 96K of data on the floppy but it is a byte for byte copy of the disk. So the image is a full 1.4 megs. Now I will copy it to another blank disk, raw. At approx 16 Kilobytes per. First unmount the disk and insert a blank floppy. dd if=/tmp/fd.image of=/dev/fd0 bs=16384 Now we can mount it and bingo its the mirror image of our old disk complete with the free space on it. mount_msdosfs /dev/fd0 /mnt/fd0/ We can even use rsh or ssh to do this over a network. Remember if you want to 'dd' an image of your hard drive. It will be the same size. For example if I used my systems ad0s1a partition as the In File (if=/dev/ad0s1a) and my ad0s1a partition is 7GB in size with 4GB free space and 3GB used space. The resulting image would be 7GB in size _not_ 3GB. So one must have space to store the image. You would probably be better off with dump but dd has its value. Since dd will probably need to be run as root for much of its usage as a backup tool. I suggest that you _read_ this section of Wikipedia on *WHAT NOT TO DO WITH DD* before using the command and erasing data instead of cloning it! dd
Anti-Examples

Once PC-BSD has released a GUI program for making backups things will get
simpler. In the mean time here are some ports you might research:

rchivers/mtf             A Unix reader for the Microsoft Tape Format used by NT Backup
archivers/rvm             An archive manager that uses rsync to manage backups
databases/usogres         Real-time backup utility for PostgreSQL
deskutils/multisync-backup Multisync backup plugin
emulators/vmsbackup       Reads VMS BACKUP tapes
misc/afbackup             AF's backup system
misc/afbackup-client      AF's backup system
misc/afbackup-server      AF's backup system
multimedia/streamdvd      A fast tool to backup Video DVDs 'on the fly'
palm/pilot-link           PalmPilot communications utilities (backup/restore/install/debug/...)
sysutils/afio             Archiver & backup program w/ builtin compression
sysutils/bacula-client    The network backup solution (client)
sysutils/bacula-client-devel The network backup solution (client) - DEVELOPMENT Version
sysutils/bacula-server    The network backup solution (server)
sysutils/bacula-server-devel The network backup solution (server) - DEVELOPMENT Version
sysutils/be_agent         VERITAS Backup Exec (tm) UNIX Agent
sysutils/bksh             Backup-only shell
sysutils/boxbackup        An open source, completely automatic on-line backup system for UNIX
sysutils/cdbkup           Simple but full-featured backup/restore perl scripts (uses gnu tar)
sysutils/cpbk             Backup Copy programm
sysutils/dar              A full featured command-line backup tool, aimed for disks
sysutils/dirvish          Network backup system based off of rsync
sysutils/duplicity        Untrusted backup using rsync algorithm
sysutils/dvdbackup        Backup content from DVD to hard disk
sysutils/flexbackup       Perl-based flexible backup system that can use dump/afio/cpio/tar/star
sysutils/fsbackup         File system backup and synchronization utility
sysutils/hdup             The little, spiffy, backup tool
sysutils/kdar             KDar is KDE-based backuptool using libdar
sysutils/pdumpfs          A daily backup system similar to Plan9's dumpfs
sysutils/pdumpfs-clean    A utility to clean up old backup files of a pdumpfs archive
sysutils/rdiff-backup     Local/remote mirroring+incremental backup
sysutils/rdiff-backup-devel Local/remote mirroring+incremental backup
sysutils/reoback          Simple but flexible ftp/nfs backup script

Some links that may be of interest

Stress
testing the backup utilities

FreeBSD Backup Strategies
FreeBSD Backup Basics

sighs und curses

by

Been thinking a bit about a friends remark… A good mixture of delight and desiaseter in such thoughts but oh well. A spider can always dream. The odds of a girl friend as nutty about computers as I, is sadly slim. I’m the most “geeky” person I know in town. Aside from professionals with comute I’m also probably the only person in town who knows *nix.

Any way, I’ve been learning a new library. I’m some what able with the standard C library if a tad un-skilled. Not like I have many excuses for using every routine in my spare time xD So I’ve started on ncurses, much more interesting then GUI development IMHO because in a console level of usage. A good UI is a must, at least to be powerful yet eligent the way that Vi or Emacs are.

So far I’ve learned how to create a little window box and move it around with my arror keys. Not really useful but the concept it thought me was.

Mainly that we can loop threw calling getch() or simular routine till we get to our desired escape method. And use a switch/case setup to implement what we want to do on a given input. Like

/* from the file */
while((ch = getch()) != KEY_F(1)) {
        switch(ch) {

        case KEY_LEFT:
                destroywin(my_win);
                my_win = create_newwin(height, width, starty,--startx);
                break;
        case KEY_RIGHT:
                destroy_win(my_win);
                my_win = create_newwin(height, width, starty,++startx);
                break;
        case KEY_UP:
                destroy_win(my_win);
                my_win = create_newwin(height, width, --starty,startx);
                break;
        case KEY_DOWN:
                destroy_win(my_win);
                my_win = create_newwin(height, width, ++starty,startx);
                break;
        }
}

This and the ideas that come to me with this concept. Blow my mind away, I never thought that much about it. Really the most I thought about such things were based on Javas AWT. Although I’ve writen very little Java and I like it that way. I probably am most familer with Java then any other high-level language but I really do prefer C.

Hopefully in time, I’ll learn a lot more and maybe can work on some thing I’ve always wanted to do. You see, one part of my studies has been to try and take what I’ve learned and implement some thing. In the paste I’ve used an integer calculator to redesign to test my understanding of various ideas. I remember the first one I worked on, maybe 2 years ago was testing my abilities with Functions when I first started to learn C++

One of my hearts secret desires has been to design a niffty text editor, dang I’d love it. I could learn so much and working on it would give me some thing to do. If I could, I’d even like to try and implement a ‘vile’ style that merges vi/vim/emacs commands into a single modal editor. Plus give me a chance to make GUI front ends, good excuses to learn more OO and GTK/QT, maybe add wordstar key setups as an excuse to learn them. Not really necessary but still it’d be a fun project for my young mind to toy with.

dang it, my minds starting to wonder off to the first paragraph of this post, time to hit Vi and play with gcc.