Memory Leak

Version 0.7 of the Firefox slideshow extension is now up. Compatible with Firefox up to 3.0.1 RC (and a few versions thereafter) and capable of displaying image attachments on certain online forums, the latest version can be found on my projects page.

Holy crap, has it really been 5 months since I last posted? I’m a pathetic blogger…

I’ve been working on new projects and decided I’d let what little portion of the world that reads this site know something about them. Besides Aldahar (which is going pretty well and might reach public beta in the next few years), I’ve started work on a web-based (à la WarFish) version of Settlers of Catan (I had no idea how addicting this game was until I played it the first time) which I call Colony Islands, as well as a Java-based representation of a popular collectible-card game. I suppose it’s a curse of a programming freak such as myself to constantly commit to projects which end up taking a great deal of time more than originally thought. Getting in the way, of course, are work (Whoo, getting paid!), hanging out with friends, and reading other people’s blogs.

A side topic, which is actually what gave me the incentive to write this post in the first place, is thoughts on my willingness to help people, even when I know it will hurt me. I keep in seldom contact with a friend who I am always willing to help but has a tendency to let me down. For instance, I drove 1.5 hours away (which is a feat for me, especially during the night) to give this friend an emergency pick-up due to parental problems. Only when I arrived and waited for an hour did I find out that the arrival time had been delayed for 6 hours past midnight. I’d chalk this up to bad communication or coincidence, but similar situations have come up often enough to know that I’m seen as merely a dependable rescuer and not as a friend.

This raises the question: why do I do it? If I know I’m going to get hurt, why do I commit myself to it. Perhaps I feel better being taken advantage of rather than letting someone down? Perhaps I derive some perverse pleasure from putting myself into situations like this? I won’t know without some deep introspection, and I’m not up for that kind of thing often. The wildly popular V (whose opinion on such matters seem to fit very well with what I would consider as ideal for myself, not that I know the author personally) would tell me that I need to dump this friend and move on with my life.

Crap, I just noticed that one of V’s catch-phrases was “Because Obsessing Over My Opinions is Easier Than Forming Your Own”…

I’ve released a new version of my slideshow extension for Firefox which works with version 3, beta 1. I’ve also updated my description of the Guifications Trillian theme. Check out my Projects page for more info and links to download.

On this day, in the United States, we give thanks in honor of Squanto and members of American tribes giving assistance to the settlers of Plymouth Colony in 1621. For those who believe in a Judeo-Christian deity, thanks is also given “to the Author of Life who granted our forefathers safe passage to this land, who gives every man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth the gift of freedom, and who watches over our nation every day.” (George W. Bush, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/11/20071119-9.html)

Today, I give thanks to my family, who has enabled me to become who I am; the support of my parents, my brother, and my extended family has allowed me to become a kind and intelligent person, as they have shielded me from many of life’s worries so that I may pursue my own dreams. Today, I give thanks to my friends, who enables me to be who I should be; the support of my closest friends guides me in my life decisions and encourages me to accomplish my dreams.

In other news, I’m working on a bunch of new projects, hence the lack of updates. Hopefully, you’ll get to see some nifty screen-shots soon.

I recently came back from Las Vegas, and I took quite a few pictures. To check them out, go to my Las Vegas 2007 page.

I upgraded the Firefox slideshow extension to support better duplicate link checking. You can download the new version at my Projects page.

Getting JWChat to work with OpenFire is difficult without some customization. Here’s a step-by-step guide to how I got it working with Apache running on Linux:

1. Make sure Apache is running - The computer I was using had Apache 2 installed but Apache 1 configuration files, preventing Apache from starting. Since I didn’t have any site data to lose, copying the default Apache 2 configuration file worked fine.
2. Make sure OpenFire is running - This seems pretty obvious since you need a Jabber server to connect to.
3. Edit /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf - If you don’t have a <VirtualHost> section for your site, you’ll have to make one; <VirtualHost *> works just fine for a single site server. The following JWChat configuration lines need to be added inside the <VirtualHost> block that you’ll be setting JWChat up in: <Directory /var/www/html> Option +Multiviews </Directory> AddDefaultChatset UTF-8 ProxyPass /http-bind/ http://127.0.0.1:8080/http-bind/
4. Extract JWChat - Download JWChat from the project site and extract it into your website directory. I moved the files to /var/www/html/, but you may want to place it elsewhere, so update any paths to match your set-up.
5. Edit /var/www/html/config.js - JWChat needs to be configured to connect to your OpenFire server. Make the following changes:
   1. Change SITENAME to reflect the server name that OpenFire is configured to host for.
   2. Comment out the existing backends in BACKENDS and add your own. You can provide your own name and description, but these must be same:
      • httpbase:"http-bind/"
      • type:"binding"
      • servers_allowed:[SITENAME]
6. Edit OpenFire properties - Log into OpenFire as an administrator and add two server properties:
   • xmpp.httpbind.client.requests.polling = 0
   • xmpp.httpbind.client.requests.wait = 10
   These are required because of a bug where JWChat won’t respect the polling values given to it by the server.
7. Restart Apache - Run apachectl graceful to restart Apache gracefully and load the new configuration.

At this point, when you visit your site, you should see a JWChat login screen. The username is without the @domain suffix.

Cygwin is my preferred development environment for C/C++ programs at the moment, but I don’t want to create executables or libraries which depend on cygwin1.dll, forcing me to release my programs under the GPL and requiring distribution of an extra DLL. To compile libcurl without Cygwin dependencies, use the following configure line:

I’m also a stickler for only building exactly what you need, and since I plan on using libcurl for static linking, I want the library to be as small as possible. Here are my configuration options for generating a small library:

One drawback to this approach is having to manually edit the resulting curl-config script to remove -Os -s so it doesn’t forcefully optimize a project depending on libcurl.

Note that neither of these compile lines will work in the standard Windows command-prompt without removing the backslashes and new-lines. If you combine the two options, that makes:

That results in a 12.6 MB library suitable for static linking and without dependencies on Cygwin. Unfortunately, that seems rather large, considering a 90 KB library can be created according to the “Reducing Size” section of the curl install guide.

Recently, an article was written for the Towson Towerlight about Liz. A link to the article can be found on my Elizabeth Juhasz page.

I updated my slideshow extension to work with Firefox 2.0. If you’re curious, crack it open (it’s only a ZIP file renamed to an XPI file) to check the changelog. I’ve posted it on my projects page; while you’re there, check out some of the other work I’ve done. For those of you who are impatient, you can download it directly.