post google code post

Well nobody bothered to comment about the stuff i removed from google code apart from the one lad or lass who lamented the loss of some javafx demos.

I had comments open+moderated for a few weeks but got hit by spammers a couple of days ago so had to go back to id+moderated. Maybe something got lost in those 500 bits of snot but i don't think so. The spam was quite strange; most mentioned web sites but didn't provide links or weren't very readable so i'm not sure what the point was. Perhaps they're just fishing for open sites or naive moderators they can then exploit. Like the "windows computer department" that keeps calling and calling hoping i'll not tell them to fuck off every time (sigh, no i don't normally say that although i would tonight).

I've still got the subversion clones but i'm not inclined to do much with any of it for the forseeable future and i'm not even sure if i'm going to continue publishing other bits of code i play with going forward.

Desktop Java, OpenCL, ARM assembly language; these things are just not very common in the Free Software world. Server Java is pretty common but that's just, well, `open sauce' companies sharing costs and not hobbyists. So i think all i'm really doing is providing hints or solutions for some student's homework or help for graduate programmers to keep their jobs. And even then it's so niche it wouldn't be many, if any.

As an example of niche, I was looking up some way to communicate with adobe photoshop that doesn't involve psd format and one thing i came across was someone linking to one of my projects for some unfinished experiments with openraster format - on the first page of results. This happens rarely but still too often. Of course it could just be the search engine trying to be smart and tuning results to the user, which is a somewhat terrifying possibility (implications beyond these types searches of course). FWIW I came to the conclusion photoshop is just one of those proprietary relics from the past which intentionally refuses to support other formats so it's idiot users can continue to be arse-reamed by its inflated price.

It's just a hobby

As a hobby i have no desire to work on larger projects of my own or other established projects in my spare time. Occasionally i'll send in a patch to a project but if they want a bunch of fucking around then yeah, ... naah. In hindsight i somewhat regret how we did it on evolution but i think i've mentioned that before. Neither do i need to solicit work or build a portfolio or just gain experience.

I'm not sure how many hobbyists are around; anyone with remotely close to enough skill seems to be jumping into the wild casinos of app-stores or services and expecting to make billion$ and not just doing it for the fun of it. Some of those left over just seem to be arrogant egotistical fuckwits (and some would probably think the same of me). Same as it ever was I guess.

I suppose I will continue to code-drop even if it's just out of habit.

For another hobby I made kumquat marmalade on the weekend. Spent a couple of hours in the sun slicing the tiny fruit and extracting seeds (2-3 cups worth of seeds) and cooked it the next day. Unfortunately after all that effort it looks like it wasn't cooked quite enough and it probably wont set - it's a bit runny but at least it tastes good. Not sure what i'll do with 2-odd litres of the stuff though.