Month: December 2003

2003-12-19

Yet another status change at PerlMonks. Now I am a bishop (level 8). :)


Also, my ranting about the lack of documentation for arch was totally wrong. There is an excellent tutorial/reference in the distribution. :)


Meanwhile, the more I use arch, the more I like it. Another sweet addition is automatic Changelog updating. What you have to do is generate it once with “tla changelog > ChangeLog”, and then add the file to repository with “tla add ChangeLog”. Arch will put a couple of lines of comments on the top, something like “Autogenerated by arch…” and a tag (similar to CVS $Id$, for example) that will push it to regenerate ChangeLog file from you “tla make-log” records every time you execute “tla commit”. Sweet, indeed! :)


Also, I would like to mention (once again?) that arch has a much cleaner way of representing projects in the repository, their branches, versions and revisions. It is also extremely easy to query the repository about projects it has, and then to locate the all the branches of the specific project, it’s versions and revisions. Very nice.

GNU Arch – first impressions

Something really strange happened today. I never thought that this is possible, even less that it could happen to me, but it did. CVS did something really strange to my Intranet/Webcentral repository. All the code is there, but there is no more diffirentiation between versions. Whatever you try to see, you get all the code at once. Yuck!

That happened probably because I was waiting for something like this to happen. Not like this, but, well, whatever. I’ve been constantly irritated with CVS recently. Maybe I am using it wrong, maybe it’s the wrong tool for the job, maybe something else. Anyway, I switched to using arch. It seems to be better then CVS in certain areas, so I decided to give it a shot.

Here are the first impressions:

  • No RPM found in standard places like FreshRPMs and RPMfind.net. Maybe they are there, but I was not looking hard enough.
  • Building from source is simple, but two things I hate: 1. Files like INSTALL and README start with a “=” sign. “=README” and “=INSTALL” is something that disturbes me. :) 2. configure didn’t want to start in the same directory I got after extracting the .tar.gz . I had to make another one and start configure from there. Messy.
  • Organization of archives, projects, branches and versions is much cleaner then in CVS.
  • Resource like CVS Home is either missing or not easy/fast to find. Again, I was not looking hard enough just yet.
  • Generation of GNU Changelogs is sweet.
  • …so are the patchset, although until now I just like the idea, but have no practice. I can see that it’s possible, just haven’t got myself that far yet.
  • Distributed repositories and ease of setting one up using http/ftp/sft/etc blows my imagination. Simpliest so far. Mine is over sftp. :)

I’ll be writing more code in all the different place for the next few days, I guess.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King


Today is The Day. Olga, Hazard, Lev, and I are off to the movies, trying to see “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King“…

IVR in RIO cinema informs us that there are two screenings: at 20:00 and at 21:30. We are there at 21:00. It doesn’t seem too crowded, but the cashier says that all the tickets are sold (minus some delta, whatever that means). We are suggested to wait for few minutes since there was a possibility that someone will not show up. Yeah, right…

By 21:40 there are few people still waiting and most of us refuse to leave. Cinema management decides that they will do additional screening in the RIO Gold (VIP class) hall. That’s the lucky part. Not only we get to see the movie on The Day, but we will enjoy a small (50 places approx) hall with leather sofas and a lot of personall space! :) Woo Hoo!

There were 2 breaks and we were out of there by 02:15am. Now, if there is one movie to see in this century, then this is the LOTR: ROTK. Not only it shines by itself, it also compensates for all the Matrix II and III sadness. Excellently done, it, IMHO, even outperforms the first two LOTRs. Defenitely to see once again and get a DVD with special features (like Saruman, etc).

2003-12-16

A quick session with Lev in the Chesters Bar was everything it was a part from being quick. :) Chesters is running a campaign of “Warming Up For Chirstmas” or something like that – they have live music daily (except Friday) for the whole pre-Christmas week. Every day a different band is playing. Carlsberg promotion is running smoothly hand in hand. Again. It becomes a tradition now, that Lev and I go to Chesters during Christmas, find a Carlsberg promotion there and win all the prizes. This year it was a couple of hats and a bag. Whatever. Nice time!


By the way, the bend was kind of semi-cool. There was a nice guy doing keyboard and back vocal. He was OK. Another woman with an interesting voice, but I’ say she would be better with another woman, then with the black guy, who had this deep, blues-kind of voice. They were happilly killing each other, but that was their choice. :)


Lots of pictures were made in “Manual” mode, which kind of spoiled most of them, since they came out blurred and/or underexposed. Tough light. Dark, with lots of movement. Flash would have spoiled everything. Without a flash there was nothing to see. Especially the black guy was masquarading nicely on the pictures. :)