disgruntled paradigms, inc. :: software the way it should be

I just finished updating the site's design. Figured it’s been way overdue.

Sorry there hasn’t been anything new code-wise from me, but I’m still trying to catch up with recent events. Between a change on jobs and my first kid on the way, I’m suprised I even get to shower once a day.

I’ve also switched back to using GNU/Linux (I would’ve gone back to OpenBSD, but it’s tough enough to get family members to even look at Ubuntu) at home, though I still boot into Windows from time to time. But, as can be imagined, I’m not really in a position to do any shell-related coding just now.

But this doesn’t mean I’m quitting on siaynoq. In fact, I’ve something related to siaynoq in the works.

It’s just a matter of finding the time to do it all in…

For those wondering, siaynoq’s not dead yet.

I know it’s fashionable in this community to raise a ruckus and then disappear for a stretch, only to come back with another hyped project, but I’ve never been one for fashion.

I’ve been very busy these past couple of weeks, but not busy enough not to work on siaynoq, as those who follow the Subversion repository can vouch for. (Well, I’ve only checked in code once or twice since the last news post, but still…)

I’m looking into implementing notification area support right now, which isn’t a piece of cake. This will be my first time dealing with COM on such a low-level, so I’ll have to thread carefully. Of course, I could just copy-and-paste from other projects without trying to understand what the code is doing…

Sit tight. We’re just about due for an alpha. (Just have to figure out a way to get stuff done.)

Looks like siaynoq is picking up some steam… Last night, Anselm Garbe, author of window managers wmii and dwm sent me an email asking about siaynoq.

Apparently, ARG had something like this in mind; had I waited maybe a couple of months more, I’d probably be working on dwm4windows or something.

ARG mentioned siaynoq had been mentioned in dwm’s mailing list, which was how he found out about it. Really cool, considering missing dwm is one of the reasons why I decided to write siaynoq in the first place.

Anyway, I check out the thread, and I see several people have started to try out compiling siaynoq and are running into problems. Stupid me neglected to point out that you have to have the latest snapshot of the w32api package for MinGW. (I swear, Real Soon Now™, I’ll start putting stuff like this down on paper.)

Also, so there’d actually be a common place to discuss stuff related to siaynoq, I created a mailing list for its users (the two or three people trying to get it working :D).

If you’d like to try compiling siaynoq (no, I’m still not posting any binaries), or request feature additions, or report bugsor just plain talk about it, add yourself to the mailing list. Of course, if you’d actually like to request new features and/or get bugs fixed, I’d prefer if you use the appropriate tracker. I tend to pay more attention to people who can follow basic instructions. :P

With the help of Mateo Yadarola (sryo), a news post regarding the initial attempts to get siaynoq off the ground has been posted on blizzle.

Again, I’d like to thank Teo for helping in getting the word out to other shell replacement enthusiasts, and to Chris Sutcliffe (ir0nh43d) (of emergeDesktop) for suggesting that I try blizzle.

For interested developers who got here after reading the aforementioned news posts: if you’d like to join me in developing siaynoq, contact me and we’ll work things out.

I’ve just finished populating the project’s feature request tracker. I plan on moving the contents of the BUGS file to the appropriate tracker in a bit.

I think it’ll be a good idea to use as much of SourceForge’s services as possible. Besides, they’re already there—might as well use them.