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JSON API in the Fossil SCM

Wanted: Late-night Hacker seeks SSH Access…

Hello, fellow hackers!

i just have to ask…

As part of the cpdo project i would really like to start work on a database driver for Oracle (based on ocilib, which i quite like and is well documented). My main limiting factor here is access to a Unix/Unix-ish machine with the necessary Oracle bits.

If there is anyone out there who could give me (unprivileged!) SSH access to such a machine, you would be doing me a great service. My requirements would be:

• Some form of Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc.
• A decent C compiler and related build tools.
• Access to link to libclntsh.so (some admins lock that away in a dir only readable by the oracle user and/or dba group).
• A decent editor: xemacs (preferred) or emacs. (Note that xemacs works fine without X11, and i would not need to tunnel X11 over ssh.)
• Access to a single Oracle database with minimal space requirements (maybe a meg or two, at the very most).
• i think that i need Oracle v10 or higher, but to be honest i’m not certain.
• Far under 1% (amortized) of your total CPU capacity, with most of that coming from the C compiler and the linker.
• Initially i would need a total of probably 36-48 hours of login time, and would of course like to have further access to improve upon the driver over time (but i would settle for the initial block if that’s all i can get).

i would of course Do No Evil (or even Mischief) on your machine - my sole purpose would be to develop and test this driver. i would of course also sign any disclaimers, waivers, etc. which you would require, as long as copyrights to the source code developed there are not transfered from me (the code will remain free and open source, like the should be).

Is there someone out there who could help a brother out? If so, please get in touch (contact info is at http://wanderinghorse.net/home/stephan/).

i actually have tried to get Oracle running, but after spending a whole day trying, and never getting past the installer, i gave up. (Oracle for Linux requires truly ancient system libraries which have not been seen on my PCs since about the time of Bill Clinton’s presidency.)

Thanks once again for reading, and Happy Hacking!

—– stephan beal

New Article: Doing OO in C

Good evening, fellow hackers!

While i tend to write absurd amounts of technical documentation, mostly in the form of API docs and other code documentation, it’s been several years since i’ve published a technical article.

For those 5 or 6 remaining aspiring C programmers in the world, i’ve got a new article which demonstrates a useful 999(shit, my left shift key just quit working…)… ahem… demonstrates a useful (in my opinion) model for implementing object-oriented data structures and APIs in C. DAMMIT, AND NOW MY ENTER KEY BROKE!

(thank god for the numeric pad’s enter key…)

Since my keyboard just died, i’ll keep this short… the article is here:

http://wanderinghorse.net/computing/papers/

happy hacking1

9you never truly appreciate the left shift key until it’s gone…0

—– stephan beal

Update:

LOL! (i’ve now got my backup keyboard…) At the very same time my keyboard broke i began being affected by this new Google Chrome bug:

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=66071

(Short version: mouse wheel cannot scroll up, but can scroll down.)

i thought, because my keyboard and mouse (in Chrome, anyway) weren’t working, that maybe my USB bus was dying.

OMFG: i am on the cover of Dr. Dobb’s Journal #416 (Feb 2009)!

Back in October i briefly met Mr. Jonathan Erickson, editor of Dr. Dobb’s Journal, and spoke to him a bit about the presentation he had made at the Qt Developer Days conference in Munich, Germany (primarily about concurrency). After he returned to the States we shared a few emails and then went around our business. He had, in one email exchange, asked if i would fill out a short questionnaire for a column DDJ does now and then to briefly present random programmers they meet. Not one to miss a good opportunity to write, i of course answered. That was, incidentally, on October 30th (my father’s birthday and the two year anniversary of my cancer diagnosis), and i hadn’t given it any thought since then. But i just learned that all that time, Jon was busy plotting…

A couple hours ago my mother called me to tell me that (A) she loved me, (B) the latest edition of DDJ had arrived (my subscription is sent to her to save the overseas shipping costs), and (C) that i was on the cover.

What? i beg your pardon? i seem to have a small mammal in my ears, interfering with my hearing. i thought you just said that i’m on the cover of DDJ. The DDJ.

No, seriously. The cover is my face. It’s the same picture from my home page. Only a lot bigger. Huge, one might say. (For the curious, the picture was taken in Sylt, Germany, in August of 2006, by my girlfriend, Simone.)

The articles mentioned on the cover have absolutely nothing to do with me (nor i with them) except for the little blurb on the bottom/right:

Freelance Programmer Stephan Beal, see page 12

No, seriously.

My mugshot certainly isn’t going to help them sell copies, so why that picture for the cover, of all the lovely and beautiful images they could have used? Your guess is as good as mine. My only theory at the moment is the visual association of a cloudy sky (which is mostly cropped out of that copy of the image) with the headline article, entitled “Computing in the Clouds” (but, again, i’m not associated with that article). Well, and maybe because my clothes match the overall color scheme pretty well. No idea, really.

Unfortunately, the February edition of DDJ isn’t online yet, so i can prove to you not one word of what i just wrote. i can’t post the scanned copy my mother sent (for copyright reasons). So it’s my word against… well, against someone’s, certainly.

So here’s how we can settle this: if you’ll go to your favourite I.T. news stand right now, you might just find me waiting for you! If you’re a DDJ subscriber, i’m already there.

Happy hacking!

PS: Thanks again, Jon! That really made my day!