It's been a long time coming, but I keep getting bogged down in other projects. I'm only releasing a tar.gz file. I wanted to do a Windows installer, but I can't seem to get an installer that builds a desktop shortcut. I don't really want to keep throwing time at it either. So if you're inclined to tackle this issue, let me know.

Things in this release:

• Added Python distutils support (will make packaging much much easier).

• Removed the Tintin eval mode and the idea of eval modes.

• Refactored hooks. Hooks now pass around arguments in dicts rather than tuples--this is a big big change from 3.x.

• Split much of Lyntin's internal configuration into the constants module and the config module.

• Wrote a completely new configuration system.

• Overhauled ui's so that they'll work correctly. This also makes it possible to write ui's in other widget systems.

• Split the substitutes module into substitutes and gags.

• Added a configuration ini file for setting boot options.

• Added tagged actions and also the ability for actions to trigger off of text with/without ansi colors removed.

• Fixed a bunch of bugs, some documentation updates (but not many), and additional features here and there (most of which aren't documented yet--sorry everyone).

If you discover bugs or have other problems, let me know. I'm on vacation 9/24 through 9/30--so email sent will likely get queued until I read it.

Download here (.tar.gz).

Rock on!

At least, I thought it was a bee. It might have been a yellow jacket. It was flying by too fast for me to tell the difference. I should tell my friend Jerome. He's allergic to bees. He has some kind of funky bee radar--he knows where they are before they're within sight/hearing range. He'll put his hand calmly on my arm and say, "There's a bee over there." To which I respond, "Where?" And then he'll quietly say, "Beyond that building." And I'll say, "What building? That monstrosity of a building over there which people refer to as Gilette Stadium?--that one?" "Yeah. If we're quiet, though, maybe it won't come over here." Weirdo.

I finally got around to buying new strings for my guitar and restringing it. The guitar sounds totally different now. I'm not entirely sure whether I like it better now or better before, but I do know that I'm not going to change the strings a couple more times to find out.

This is an ongoing essay which will collect a series of links and thoughts on how to avoid spam. Avoiding spam is a way of life, not something you think about today and then forget about for a few years.

• Don't have anything to do with chain letters Personally, I'm not sure why anyone needs a reason to roll their eyes at chain letters--and I mean _all_ chain letters.

• Don't put your email address on your web-site I'm sure there are harvesters out there that can take an email address in some weird form (like willkg at bluesock dot org) and convert it to a regular email address. However, it does raise the bar a bit. Especially if you make up your own syntax.

• Don't reply to spam When you reply to spam, you notify the spammer that someone is receiving email at that account. It's better to just delete it.

• Better yet, automatically reject email from known spam domains There are domains from which I only get spam. Things like 247mail.com and crushlink.com. My vote is to reject all email from those domains categorically. For instance, you can set up sendmail to reject them. This is different than filtering email in the sense that it tells the SMTP server trying to deliver the spam that you're not accepting email from them whatsoever.

• Don't give people your email address There are lots of forms out there for free whatevers and various contests. If you can, set up an account that you can use for these purposes, but don't use your good email account.

• Don't click on any spam links, don't buy anything from spam email This should be obvious.

• Don't use an email client that renders HTML emails Sometimes HTML emails will have links to images which get downloaded and tell the spammer that you are a real person reading the spam.

• As a last resort, use a spam filter I say this is a last resort because the mission is not to remove spam from your inbox, but rather to avoid getting spam altogether.

Updates:

12/9/2004: There is no way to avoid spam anymore. You can probably reduce it by not telling anyone anything, but every second that your email address exists increases the likelihood that you'll start getting spam.

Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2003 22:04:59 -0700
From: project-purge@sourceforge.net
Subject: SourceForge.net Project Removal

Greetings,

...

The varium project on SourceForge.net, originally
registered on 2000-01-14, meets the criteria we have set up for
this purge.  If you fail to respond to this inquiry, your project
will be removed in approximately 21 days.  A final warning will be
sent in approximately 14 days if we have not yet heard from you.

...

I worked on Varium with Josh and Pat for a couple of years. The project started out in C, then we talked about embedding Perl, then we switched over to writing the whole thing in Python. That was in the end of 1998. It's what got me coding in Python and also what got me working on apsects of mud development--a hobby I continue to this day in several forms which has helped significantly with my career and growth as a developer.

Even though I stopped working on Varium in 2000 and started working on bluemud (another Python-based mud server) and then left that project to work on stringbean which hasn't really gotten very far (for all kinds of really good reasons), it's sad to see these sorts of beginnings finally pass into the quiet of the night.

I have access to the code-base if anyone is interested. As Josh pointed out, there's very little documentation (i.e. almost none), the code-base is messy, and it was written in the days of Python 1.5.2 when I (and likely my cohorts as well) didn't really know what I was doing in Python land.

Iy'd figgivuly to typr ehrn yout lrgy hsnf id ogg by onr kry.

I've been trying to cancel my service for 2 days now. I call them up, go through 47 menus 2 of which involve them repeating back to me the things I just typed into the phone in a voice not unlike DRSBAITSO, and then finally sit on hold and listen to whatever tunes they play. Right now they're playing Shaggy's "Wasn't Me".

Do they know what this song is about? Who's idea was it to put this on as hold music? It reminds me of living in California when it just came out. So that's nice. But still, I'm pretty surprised they're playing it. What's next? Sir Mix-a-lot?

Why can't I get a human to answer the phone? Hello? Hello RCN! Pick up the phone so I can cancel my service. Stop apologizing for the delay and telling me how all your representatives are assisting other callers--I don't believe you!

I think the reason some people buy houses is because they're just sick to death of moving. I know I'm very soon going to become one of these people... well, maybe in a year or so.

I've only hired movers for two moves: going from NH to CA and going from CA to MA. In both cases, the cost of shipping the stuff was so large that adding in a bunch of big hefty guys packing everything up and moving it down a million flights of stairs into a truck parked miles away was barely .001% of the cost.

For every other move (and I've moved a lot over the last 10 or so years), I've moved myself with the help of friends and family. Every time, I've used muscles I didn't know I had and gotten bruises the size of small third world nations in places I didn't think could bruise. It was nuts!

This time I vow not to get any new stuff and to give away half of the stuff I have! I swear I'm going to do it this time!

After work, I went to my car with the full expectation that I was going to hop into it and drive home. Alas, such was not the case! There was this bulge in the sidewall of my front driver-side tire. The bulge was the size of Kansas, so I thought it prudent not to drive on it. I look in my trunk and notice my spare is flat (again). It has this really really slow leak that totally stumps the people I've brought it to twice to get it fixed. Anyhow, so I bring it all across the street where we have a most convenient gas station with an air hose. But the air hose is broken. I toss things around and decide it'll be ok to drive a mile and a half down the road to the next gas station. They have an air hose and it works. So I pull out all the gear, jack up the car, pull all the bolts off, and when I try to pull the wheel off, it doesn't budge.

At this point, I'm really stuck. There's no way I'm going to get this wheel off the car. I called AAA and they came down and this HUGE MAN pops my wheel off as if he was popping off the head of a dandelion. Then we filled my slow-leak spare and he informed me that a tire that looked like mine did (it had a bulge on one side the size of Kansas and the other side had lots of cracks) was definitely not fit to drive on. Furthermore, he added I should get it replaced for free because tires shouldn't degrade like that with such little usage. Then the HUGE MAN hopped into his truck and drove off.

I know nothing about tires. I think I could go to the dealership (I bought the car in CA and I'm in MA now) nearby, but I really hate doing that mostly because I just hate interacting with the people at the dealership. I think I'll just have to buy a new tire. Blech.

And that's the end of the story where I found myself in a situation which I had no hope of solving and I called AAA and they came to rescue me.

A couple of friends pointed out to me my META tag to refresh from /~willkg/ to /~willg/blog/ was borked and while it worked fine in Mozilla and derivatives (which are the only browsers I use), it didn't work at all in Internet Explorer. All fixed now though.

For future reference, the "good code" is like this:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL=http://bluesock.org/~willkg/blog/">