From: Chad Perrin Date: 2008-08-04T23:42:22+09:00 Subject: Re: Cool Projects --CE+1k2dSO48ffgeK Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Sat, Aug 02, 2008 at 11:13:54PM +0900, St=E5le Z.H wrote: > On 31 Jul, 13:10, Alasdair Bell wrote: > > So, anyone working on something awesome? > > > > Brag here... I don't know if I have anything to brag about. I'm working on an encrypted proxy management app -- a very, very simple thing that'll probably end up having a Tk interface, intended primarily to be used on MS Windows systems. I guess that's probably the most impressive thing I'm doing, but it's really just a way to make something anyone with an open source Unix-like system should be able to do using default command line utilities without need of an actual GUI application. I'm only doing it for some MS Windows users who don't have the skills or patience needed to use OpenSSH like $deity intended. There's sort of a business case for this thing in the future, so this project might make me some money -- though this GUI app itself will be open source (probably a copyfree license like http://pdl.apotheon.org). Umm . . . I just hacked together a tool for converting XP totals from D&D 3.5 to Pathfinder RPG Alpha 3 to ease the process of character conversions, since I've done a few character conversions for one game and realized I'd probably be doing a few more for another game in the near future. It took me a few hours to get it written, give it a nice command line interface, and tweak some of the behavior to suit my preferences. This one is certainly nothing to brag about, though -- very simple. It's just a glorified single-purpose calculator script. I'm planning to create at least one, probably two, maybe three different UI wrapper scripts for the XP converter, too. I figure, having written the original script, I might as well make it available to others in the wider Pathfinder RPG community, so when I decide I have the time and inspiration I'll create a web interface for the script, and probably create a Tk-based GUI wrapper, and maybe just for fun and completeness I'll write a very simple captive text interface wrapper as well for people who don't want the GUI but don't want to have to use CLI options either. I don't expect any of these UI wrappers to be more than a few hours long to hack together -- it's all simple stuff, uninteresting code, and nothing worth bragging about really. I think it's "cool", though, because of the subject matter. How much cooler does it get than combining programming with RPGs? Actually, the code itself for all of these things is very subjectively "cool", because I've never written a non-Web based GUI application before, and the encrypted proxy client will use Ruby's threads -- and concurrent programming with threads is something else I've never done before, too. In other words, I'm learning about how to build GUIs and threaded applications, and as far as I'm concerned any coding that involves learning new things is really quite "cool". I guess that answers my question -- about the only thing cooler than combining programming and RPGs is combining the process of learning new programming concepts with RPGs. >=20 > I'm currently working on: > - building a small set of network utility classes (nothing big, it's > just for fun/experimentation) > - a Ruby/GTK application that downloads videos from youtube Will there be a TUI for that as well? I've considered reimplementing youtube-dl in Ruby in the past, but haven't done anything about it. If you beat me to it, and provide a text interface, I'd be happy with that. > - a simple CMS in Rails >=20 > I probably won't finish most of this, but it's fun to work with > nevertheless. \o/ I know how that is. I have several programming projects that have been on indefinite "back burner" status for months or, in a couple of cases, years. --=20 Chad Perrin [ content licensed PDL: http://pdl.apotheon.org ] Paul Graham: "Real ugliness is not harsh-looking syntax, but having to build programs out of the wrong concepts." --CE+1k2dSO48ffgeK Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (FreeBSD) iEYEARECAAYFAkiXFCYACgkQ9mn/Pj01uKX5gACgsfA53AMOIXFTZA+2+ZBzXFfT 774AnR7X0RVe7ojGiDN8UmllqjoSJ+YH =q2C1 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --CE+1k2dSO48ffgeK--