Idea Farming

Feb 8, 05:15 PM

I have a request from those who still stop by from time to time to see if I’m actually up to anything (if anyone is still stopping by, that is):
I want some ideas. Basically, I want to know what you what to know about. What are your geeky fascinations? What topic(s) do you think about researching, but never get around to? Or possibly you don’t understand it, because the explanation is “cryptic as all get-out”?


One thing I’ve found myself enjoying is helping others in their gaining of knowledge. I like to research/learn new stuff and then share it with others, but my problem is coming up with things to research – so, I ask you, Mr(s). probably-non-existent-reader, what do you want to learn today? Or rather, sometime in the near future, when I post an entry researching your suggestion – hopefully explaining it in a simple manner. Any geeky topic is in play, as long as it doesn’t involve whorecraft [Link NSFW or those under 18].

— Mark Harrison

,

---

Comments

  1. The decision of me being more than a figment of your overworked imagination ultimately comes to you. That said, the ideas that are in my back-burner lately are:
    learning GTK programming (via Swing, then SWT, then GTK, just because),
    learning to configure a simple mailserver, the kind of setup that replaces a graphical MUA with postfix/exim/etc. - fetchmail - mailx/mutt/pine/etc. for a single machine. Most setups assume too much complication, and thus gloss over the \"simple\" bits. That said, I do acknowledge that in this situation installing a mailserver is overkill, but hey, it can be done and it\'s exercise.
    Learning CVS and Subversion. Doing my programming chores in one of them.
    Reading my bookmarks on Vi, Vim and Gvim use, and finally learn to harness the m4d p0w4. Also learn Eclipse (all that Swing and SWT are so much easier there...).
    Learning to type Dvorak - Spanish Layout (I wants my ñ and my accented letters, sorry).
    Anything that would make it easier to accomplish any of the above, and that I do not know of.
    Hope I\'ve given you food for thought.

    — Adriano · 07.02.09, 05:56 AM · #

  2. The eclipse idea isn\'t too bad - I\'ve worked with it before, for Java, but I could easily sit down and see what I can get together.

    GTK programming is also something I\'ve had an interest in, but never got around to. Perhaps a GTK programming in Java series? hmmm....

    — mark · 07.02.09, 01:17 PM · #

  3. Obviously I would vote for some sort of OpenGL graphics series, however I\'m assuming you expected that. I think it\'s always a cool idea to start a help/tutorial wiki. Similar to that of GPGPUs graphics wiki or www.devmaster.net wiki site which are both dedicated to snippets and tutorials for games. What if we just had geektyme wiki with everything from AJAX to PHP to OpenGL and everything, including GTK tutorials. Also I would probably add some QT stuff but then again you might behead me for that. I can\'t help it, me likes the KDE.

    — Douglas · 07.02.09, 01:48 PM · #

  4. Nah, not GTK in Java: C or Python are fine. I\'m taking the path mentioned above because I liked Java, and have two nice books to learn from.

    I\'d like to get the fundamentals of GUI programming in Swing (it\'s nice and easy enough using Eclipse, that\'s why I want to improve my knowledge of the IDE). That said, I also own Programming Python, it\'s just that I don\'t have the time. That, and it teaches Tkinter, which is aesthetically just wrong.

    — Adriano · 07.02.09, 02:17 PM · #

  5. Doug: I think OpenGL is your area of expertise :P - as far as the wiki, that may be an idea but wasn\'t the kind of idea\'s I was looking for. I was looking more for stuff I could blog about here. The rest of geektyme is still, as you know, in a state of development...so ideas for it are still coming. We should talk more about that, though.

    Adriano: I\'m more for C++ then C or Python - mostly because that\'s what I know. Perhaps I\'ll sit down and cover gtkmm, and possibly just write an article on GUI design and the various tools available (Glade, for example).

    — mark · 07.02.09, 02:39 PM · #

  6. Oh, that tutorial on GUI design and tools would be great. For the C++, I just started http://cppfactoftheday.blogspot.com/ (as in \"just started today\"), so if anyone has useful tips or comments, by all means.

    — Adriano · 07.02.09, 07:40 PM · #

  7. I recently made a Beowulf cluster, mainly for kicks and the learning experience but also to see how easily it could be done so we weren\'t restricted to turn-key solutions at work. The documentation was quite poor but I got there in the end.

    Some things I didn\'t solve were using openldap for authentication (I used NIS) and how to set up a basic mail server to notify users when their jobs had finished - it wouldn\'t need to accept mail, just send it.

    Away from the cluster, I\'ve always been interested in configuring my mail with some sort of key signing but never really got anywhere with it.

    Not sure if you can use any of those, but thought I should throw them in the ring.

    — Grant · 07.02.14, 01:29 PM · #

 
---