why yes, of course we have velociraptors

Today instead of even thinking about the projects mentioned in the previous post I worked on HxNet. Now to Elaborate, HxNet was an inkling of an idea I had this morning and then flushed out almost fully with the help of zsizsi. Basically HxNet is a new peer to peer file sharing system. In my mind it works a bit like dropbox, only different… I think of it like this: the principles of bit torrent,  p2p networks (lime wire, etc), and dropbox all combined. Of course being the way I am I am just blinding creating a protocol to hopefully do what I desire. Here is the draft I am actively working on [Draft]. I am hoping to finish the majority of the base protocol either tonight or tomorrow morning, depending on how exhausted I become. After I finish writing the protocol I plan on actually implementing it to see if it even makes the slightest bit of sense. Since I know java best the first iteration of HxNet will be pure java. Guess thats all for the big new project. I welcome suggestions in regards to the protocol, especially since I probably have no idea what I am doing.

I just got back from a 3 day camping trip in Maine on Saturday. It was a jolly good time, although the bugs were nasty and my allergies made me sleep 12 hours a day. Anyway since it was camping and camping involves shunning electricity I was without power in my laptop for the 3 days. I did however have a book on objective-c programming for OSX. So I just read the book from cover to cover. I am hoping to implement some of what I learn in a few projects coming up. The two major projects I am thinking about are as follows:

Application 1: for OSX and eventually other platforms. A universal clipboard server. Basically you run the server on one computer and all computers that connect to this server share their clipboards.

Application 2: For IOS and possibly a website. This application requires a bit if a back story. Recently a game has become popular. “Yellow car I win” I am not sure of an actual name for it so that is what I shall call it. Anyway, to play all you have to do is say “Yellow car I win” whenever you see a yellow car. In this way you gain points and complete with friends.  The idea for the application is to take a picture of the yellow car and then upload it to a central server. This way friends can play together across the world. To make it interesting I would probably throw a few achievements in there. Who doesn’t like pointless awards? I might even link it into FaceBook or Twitter at some point.

Enough with my application ideas. The final bit of news is Second Life related. Since I am only involved with scripting inSL it is related to a new scripting project of mine. I am in the process of creating a sim scanning system. The display system is almost complete however their are a few annoying scaling bugs which I am in the process of working out. The system is currently deployed in The Solarian Republic, which is run by my friend RaithSphere.

Guess thats all the interesting stuff.

A friend of mine recently decided that she was going to built herself a new computer. Inspired by this I got up off my highly apathetic ass, and started planning my new computer. Since my current desktop is named Carthage, I thought Carthage 2.0 would be a fitting name for the project. So far the plan is to get the most power for my incredibly tight budget. This means spending the time to hunt down deals on newegg and other websites like it. So far I have purchased one part. That part is the XCLIO Windtunnel Fully Black Finish 1.0 mm SECC Chassis ATX Full Tower Computer Case. There was a special sale on newegg which dropped the price to 80 bucks so I snatched it up. I must say it is a brilliant case, everything just works. Today I locked myself in my room and transfered the parts from Carthage 1.0 into the new case. Damn it looks sexy. Depending on my next paycheck I hope to buy the next part.

Here is a link to the Gallery hosting pictures of the Carthage 2.0 project: [Carthage 2.0]

After the presentation i actually went to town working on the system. So far the results are promising and yet discouraging at the same time. At this point in time the server would appear to be (almost) sully functional. However due to some client side issues (and possibly one or two server side issues) things are failing miserably. Right now it is possible to retrieve simple webpages. This would be good but these simple pages are lacking elements such as pictures, proper formatting, etc. I am attempting to narrow down the possible locations this bug could be but it is slow going. I believe it is in the server side handling of multiple requests but I am not entirely sure. Today I decided to redesign how the server and the client handle requests. I am pretty sure that once i revision this section and then rewrite it a good portion of the problems will disappear. The current setup has one main client thread handle the connections from the browser. This main thread then spawns two I/O threads which handle input and output from the website, the browser, and the server. This section is pretty solid and I am not sure i will have to change much there. The server on the other hand will have to undergo large changes. The server, much like the client has one main thread to handle connections from  clients. Also like the client this thread then spawns threads to handle input and output. This is where things are getting messy. These threads are a tad bit confusing and don’t do everything they should so they will be rewritten to avoid the problems I am currently having. So, I guess thats all the important stuff about the proxy. I think i will also mention the idea I had while riding a bus back home today: I decided I could create a program that determines the fast route from point A to point B in my school. It does not have a “huge” inpact on anything but I think it will be a neat project to undertake when I finish the proxy or get fed up with the proxy.

So I guess thats all.

Well last night i worked late in order to finish the proxy. However that did not happen as I hit a road block with the server component. So i threw together a little server program that just outputs the request from the client. Somehow I managed to use this crappy program to wow the entire class during the presentation today… I do plan on writing the server side but that will have to wait seeing as I am working Friday through Sunday and will have little time.

Well looks like the teacher for Computer Science took interest in my Proxy system and instead of having me do the actual assignment She is having me present this proxy to the class on friday. Guess that puts more pressure on me D:

So a friends site recently changed to Drupal and the experience has made me interested in what Drupal has to offer. Depending on what my free time is like I may try and experiment with Drupal a bit. It all depends on if I can get Drupal to do what I would like it to do. If I change to Drupal I am not sure if the posts on this site could be preserved. However Drupal seems like a highly flexible platform for hosting a website. I will most Likely see how Drupal works and what kind of Extendability it has then set up a test site in order to mess with it. If I like what I see, who knows, maybe I will switch completely to Drupal. (btw if people were wondering the site i mentioned earlier is http://cortex.subnova.com)

So out of my intense deep-rooted boredom i have decided to create a simple system for distributing the computational load of a program doing mathematical things across many computers. (basically: distributed computing). Once I get a semi-working alpha version done, I will probably create a Google Code repository for it. So far i have created a client, and basic protocol for the system and part of a parsing system to interpret the equation that is required. Anyway more on this at a later date.

So I am on a 767 american airlines plane to JFK airport. I shelled out 10 bucks to have unlimited inflight wifi so i’m kind of happy. Its a lot of fun to talk on irc and aim while being 39,000 feet in the air. Anyway this is kind of the end of this trip, 2 days from now i will be back in school going through the mundane routine that was a constant up until spring break. So, here is a picture:

(no) Snakes on a plane