New Laptop

Finally I ordered a laptop for myself. I've been saving up for a while, but now I will be able to use my GSoC money towards it also. It should be arriving this week.

I'll be probably doing most of my development on it, so the first thing I will do is install Ubuntu alongside the pre-installed Vista. Yes, because I still need access to Windows for testing things, I will probably keep Vista, but reduce its partition size and dual-boot it.

Seeing as I have never used Vista before (only looked over someone's shoulder) you can be sure I will be posting a Vista vs Ubuntu right here very soon :)

My Google Trends

Google recently released a new 'Web History' service, where they log your wanderings through the web. A great tool, or a ploy to get even more personal data about you, this is a service Yahoo have offered for a long time.

Suffice to say, I won't be using it. However I do have Search History enabled. It logs your all your Google searches, and logs which results you click on, with the aim of getting better results next time.

Some statistics from that service (running since May 2005):



Yes, I am responsible for Google searches at every one of the 24 hours in a day...

Google Summer of Code

Dear Applicant,

Congratulations! This email is being sent to inform you that your
application was accepted to take part in the Summer of Code.

Yay! I applied to work on gloox, a C++ Jabber library, under the hood of the XMPP Software Foundation as the mentoring organisation.

This project is important to me in many ways. Firstly I know I need to get back to C/C++ coding, of which I have not done much for quite some time. Second, my task is all about adding XMPP-over-HTTP support, which is currently my only way around my ISP's restrictions. Gloox is also the library that Tessa (my new Jabber client, more coming later) uses.

All this, plus the (much needed) payment, and being able to add this to my CV, all is good :)

I will be posting development progress updates to this blog, tagged with 'Jabber' and 'GSoC' (view) (rss).

Some other interesting projects I really look forward to seeing:

• Data Form Designer Suite for XMPP (Jabber)
  
• Jingle Audio/Video for Gajim (Jabber)
  
• Revision Controlled Home Directories (Ubuntu)
  
• Mouse Gesture Recognition for the Desktop (Ubuntu)
  
• Proposal for the Development of a Graphical BZW 2.0 Editor (BZFlag)
• Interactive Wiki Maintenance with Jabber/XMPP (MoinMoin Wiki)
  

The Big Bad ISP?

I have told this story so many times, I forced myself to tell it once more, so I will not have to again :D

For months now, during certain times of the day (early evening until 11PM), I have been unable to use the internet, with the exception of HTTP, which is web browsing. All other attempted connections fail, transmit a FIXED amount of data (I think it is 1Kb, but I have not yet counted) and then hang, or the data packets can simply arrive delayed... often by hours.

I can't state for definite that this is my ISP filtering traffic. How can I? They have not announced they are/will, though they do 'reserve the right to at any time'. Until I get a definite answer from them, I shall not write their name here.

I am hoping to resolve this, (currently battling with their seemingly non-English technical support), on the basis that this problem severely limits my use of the internet. I shall switch my ISP if all fails.

To be continued...