A long time ago, I used the Fontifier service to create a basic font from my handwriting. I didn't use a thick enough marker to do the original and the result was only passable. As a result, while I used it every once and a while, I never did much with it.

Then, a few days ago, I noticed FontForge in the Ubuntu Linux package listings and installed it, figuring I'd see if I could salvage the original font I created.

So, tonight, after making a bunch of calls and doing a lot of running around, I wanted a task I could concentrate on and get lost in without being too difficult. Turns out that fiddling with the size and shape of my own handwriting was up to the task and I spent about 45 minutes tweaking it. The tedium of lining letters up and adjusting sizes was very relaxing.

The resulting version 1.1 is much better. The letters are much more even. The "c" and "d" and several other letters are no longer much larger than everything else. It is still not terribly smooth, but definitely looks much better. Especially if you apply bold and pinch the kerning a bit. At least that is what looks closest to my handwriting.

Now that I've messed with FontForge a bit, I think I could do a better job on version 2 starting from scratch. Given how much worse than the font my normal writing is (I did a much more careful job filling out the sheet), it would be nice to have a font that I can apply a personal touch to correspondance, while still retaining some legibility. But, none of that until after vacation.

36 hours and counting!!

Lets say, hypothetically, that you had a program like, the game Unreal Tournament (just for the sake of discussion). And, say that about every 3rd time you run this application, the gameapplication runs really slowly. So slowly that you get killed by the other users of the application with ruthless efficiency.

Now, lets say that when you exit the application, you discover that some really mundane process like your email or web browser was hogging all of the CPU/RAM while your preferred application had to wait for leftovers.

Well, you might be tempted to code up a really quick VB.NET app that would launch your program, not just as a "normal" process, but as a "high priority" process instead. If such temptation ever crosses your path, you might find the following 5 lines of code useful.

Dim myprocess As New System.Diagnostics.Process()
myprocess.StartInfo.FileName = "C:\UnrealTournament\System\UnrealTournament.exe"
myprocess.Start()
myprocess.PriorityClass = ProcessPriorityClass.High
Environment.Exit(1)


Compiled into an .exe and run, it starts the chosen application with a high priority so it gets to cut in line for CPU/RAM and your email and web browser get to wait for your important computing to get done.

Photo: Stian

After several long, draining weeks, a 60,000 mile service on Shelly's car that cost $811.00 and an english muffin this morning at Baker's Square that was adorned not only with butter and a fine golden brown, but multiple spots of mold, I'm really ready for a vacation. Good thing I'm going on one.

We leave on Friday to go to Washington DC for a week or so and I'm really looking forward to it. History, politics, the Smithsonian and 60 degree days are more up my alley than 80 degree beaches and blinding sun as far as vacations go.

We've got a list of stuff we want to see and do and will be spending our time with family that we get along with pretty well. They're going to be showing us around town and helping us relax. Only 4 more days between.

So, if you are in DC next week and see someone who looks a lot like me, it's probably me.

Photo: tEd

It's no secret that I'm not exactly a fan of most unzip-README-manual-setup PHP installations. The state of PHP script installations has been hammered home to me over the last few weeks as I've been installing lots of stuff in an effort to help some clients figure out the best available tools for their situation.

In the midst of doing simple actions like little more than "apt-get install php5" and "pear install Auth", the geek gymnastics required to get some of the really common CMS packages, wiki's, forums and other popular scripts to install is all the more painful. They require manual database creation, complicated directory permissions, creation of config files and lots of reading README files, PHP errors and warning messages galore to get to the remarkably sophisticated resulting installed software.

Given how slick the PEAR package management is, when I saw the book "The PEAR Installer Manifesto", I figured it was worth a look and ordered it. The book covers the use of PEAR not just for the packages in the pear.php.net repository, but for managing your own distributions. Given how much benefit I've gotten out of using Subversion and other version management products to manage the code while in development, this process offers the possibility of the same for distributing it.

Beyond the topic itself interesting me, I'm just happy to see more and more topic-specific PHP books coming out. There are plenty of 500+ page general PHP books out there and more than we'll ever need get published every year. But, it's been a long time since any of those monster books has offered more than 4 or 5 out of 500 pages that were anything particularly interesting. Yet, books like this on using PEAR to do your own distributions is something pretty new and interesting to even those who have been using PHP for years.

So far, it's really interesting and the info looks really promising. Of course, the only way to really tell how good or bad it is is to actually use it in a project so I'm going to be looking for a place to try this stuff out.

I think I finally got around what I think was the last barrier to me using Ubuntu as my primary desktop. A while back, I got a nice, widescreen virtual machine running Ubuntu. Unfortunately, if I ever tried to change the screen resolution, things got SERIOUSLY messed up.

That pretty much put it onto the back burner. That's because, while my personal laptop is widescreen at 1280×800, my home office desktop LCD is 1280×1024, my office LCD is 1280×1024 and my office native laptop screen is 1024×768. That means that, for me, the ideal portable Linux virtual workstation needs to switch between all of those resolutions easily. Technically, just going down to the lowest common denominator would work on all of those screens. However, the big black border around the screen was really depressing.

I messed with VNC for a few days, but that led to letterboxing, even with the autoscaling of the screen to make it fit (and I hate the scaling itself). So, I set it aside until this week.

With the release of Ubuntu Edgy recently and subsequent upgrades to the VMWare engine, I figured it was worth another shot. Lo and behold, I can now use my Ubuntu workstation on any PC I want. When possible, I'm using Cygwin/X to get whatever size I want. In other instances, I use VNC or just the VMWare console. I always get a full-screen experience, and get to use the workstation as though it's the primary OS.

So, now my USB hard drive contains the ultimate portable app: my complete personal workstation. Beyond that, I can make easy backups to this workstation and use all of the existing resources and servers in my home and work networks, meaning the workstation itself doesn't need to be on a 300GB drive.

For the record, here's how I've got it configured. 512MB of RAM, 250GB potential hard drive (currently occupying 3.5GB) for future growth and migration to bigger hard drives, NAT network, sound, USB, etc. all turned on. I SSH to my home mail server and web proxy to route my main traffic. I've been using it for a couple of days, working out the kinks and using it for anything that doesn't require Windows. Whenever that's the case, I just switch over and use the host OS.