I was planning on writing about the problems I faced at work looking up
open source software for SMPTE 125M convertion. I kept finding SMPTE
timecode stuff (for MIDI), and other usages of the acronym SMPTE without
reference to which standard was being used. The one's related to SMPTE
125M are SMPTE 292M (HD-SDI), SMPTE 259M (transport of SDI and SDTI),
SMPTE 305M (sometimes called SMPTE 305.2M which is SDTI), and the
document on ancellary data. Actually SDTI really is quite different from
SDI except that it goes over 259M.
Anways, tonight I think I write a bit about linking and google. Yes,
part of the reason that I'm writing these notes is to increase the
ranking that I'll get for topics that I'd like employers to see. The
bigger way that I plan to get a good ranking is something I've
accidentaly found before. I've put a one line signature in my e-mails to
mailing lists with my resume's URL. I was hoping I could find someone on
the mailing list that might be interested, or might refer me to someone,
but instead I found that the html mailing list archives looked to be
increasing the rank of my resume. I guess this was a neat trick that can
work on google, and maybe on other search engine's that look at what's
linking to a page to give it a score.
When I finnaly am happy with the testing scripts that I'm working on for
my tarball enhancements I'll post the results to various mailing lists
that are development forums for projects with large tarballs (e.g. the
lkml, some kind of gimp mailing list, maybe some OpenOffice.org AKA OOo
mailing lists...). I've got my resume's URL in the scripts themselves,
but I also plan to put my resume URL tagline in my messages.
One of my problems with my tarball enhancement postings is that I'll
want a perminate place with my domain name that I can host the scripts,
but I'm getting free hosting from a friend (thanks Dean). I don't want
to generate a lot of hits on my friend's server due to the fact he
likely has better uses for his bandwith, and his ISP may not apreciate
it. To prevent such a load on the link to his server (and his server), I
plan to keep the scripts only on the mailing lists (archived in their
archives) until interest drops down a bit. I figure a few weeks would
do, but I'll probably wait a few months.
I'm really quite kean to get my scripts out the door, but I feel they're
not yet ready to stand up to the kind of critism that one gets on the
Linux Kernel Mailing List (lkml). I've got a script to do the actual
tarball creation, and one to show the difference between a normaly
generated one, and the one my script makes, but I don't have something
showing the amount of time that it takes. Measuring the sorting isn't
easy, as it's a series of piped commands. My shell scripting really
isn't put to enough use for me to be able to quickly work around such a
problem. I've checked a few howto's like the bash one, I've asked in the
bash scripting IRC channel, but I couldn't find an answer. I decided to
put the commands into a separate script and time that whole script.
The other problem I've run into is testing. My home computer was taking
a beating compressing and untaring etc.. I decided to use my
SourceForge compile farm shell to do the testing, but it's a pain to put
files onto them. It took me a while before I figured out I had to
download the files to my computer, and then upload them to the compile
farm's central server via sftp or scp. That's something I can do, but it
really compounds another problem I'm having. It takes me a while to make
progress on my free time coding projects, so new target files are
comming out for me to test. I want to be able to post on the lkml the
results of recompressing the latest 2.6 and 2.4 kernels. I keep
optimistically downloading the latest kernels and then having real life
interupt things long enough for me to need a new version to continue.
I'll stop doing that for a while though until I've actually got a draft
sitting in my posponed box of an e-mail to the lkml with the scripts
already finnished and attached or actually inline I think. That's
another problem. The lkml only accepts certain posts, and Linus only
usually accepts things that are in a certain format (plain text inline
iirc). That put me on a tangent of looking up the mailing list rules,
and reading the Linux Weekly News. It'll likely do the same once I get
close enough again.
So with all my knowledge, reading, and interest in digging deep into
open source stories that I see writen/posted, I've thought about trying
to get payed to write. These notes are a bad example of my ability to
write, but a good example of what I enjoy writing about. I've been
solicited once to write a book on Intrusion Detection from a genuine
publisher, but I kind of "fubbed" my responce. I said that I'd be
interested in contributing, but I didn't think I'd have time to write a
whole book. I kind of regret doing that, but I think it was the right
thing to say (just look at my bad record finding time to do coding). I'm
hoping however that a paying gig would actually let me take some time
away from real life to actually get things done (and I'm sure it would).
Of course I've got to stike a balance to keep my home life happy and
healthy (fammily, friends, and my own condition). I've offered to write
a peice on the history of the BSD's to the Linux Weekly News, but they
didn't seem interested. They do post BSD articles, and I was pitching
that I could write one that would show the parallels between AT&T vs The
Regents of Berkly (BSD) and the current SCO vs IBM etc.. It's
interesting how the history repeats itself. For good reference I'd
suggest reading the FreeBSD mailing list archives (a google search found
some good stuff).
Later I might publish the research that I used as part of my pitch for
my BSD history repeats itself story. I'm also probably going to consider
writng about why I don't want to publish my unrealized ideas. I'll also
probably talk about:
- Why I don't write about office politics
- Why I don't write much about my personal private home life (well,
maybe I made that clear <g>)
- My music idea's
- My thoughts and research into a self powered home (well actually
getting power form alternate sorces like sun, wind, water...)
- Thoughts on using "image stacking" for ameture (and hopefully
professional) astronomy (I'll talk about this because other people have
already implemented some of this)
- Some idea's for how people can generate data that's easier to compress
(e.g.'s typing in lower case when there's the option, removing obvious
redundant information, using the same words...)
- Perhaps my ideas on natural language processing
...
I may eventually post my project ideas from the last fourteen years that
I've been writing on paper.
Consider sending me money! My resume is at
http://www.boxheap.net/ddaniels/resume.html
Oh, and I'll probably write about resume creation and open source tools
to do it (hey, maybe lwn.net would be interested in buying that
article).
Originally from: http://www.boxheap.net/ddaniels/notes/20050811.txt
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