Yesterday I tried again to get jhbuild working on my debian installation. This script from jamesh seems essential.

gtkmm and SUN Forte C++

I am still very concerned that I have no access to a SUN box with the Forte C++ compiler to fix the build issues. I guarantee that the Forte users will resurface a few days after the total API freeze.

Gallery

I finally got around to putting gallery on my site so I can have thumbnail views of my photos. It was very easy with my hoster. Moving all of my old (boring) photos into gallery was tedious. Now is not the time to tell me that there is something better than gallery.

Leaving Comneon

Today is my last day at Comneon, where I’ve been a contractor/freelancer/consultant for the past year. This means sweet blessed freedom from ClearCase. ClearCase is failure.

The idea is to be in Munich instead of Linz, though I don’t have anything lined up yet, and I’m not trying very hard. Don’t bother sending email to murray.cumming@comneon.com any more.

This happens every year or so. Once again, I won’t be very online for the next month, because I need to find an apartment and I will no longer have access to the company’s DSL. But I will deal with the important stuff and you should flame me if I don’t.

murrayc@murrayc.com

I noticed that dreamhost have added all kinds of features for free, including SMTP access and mail forwarding (to an account behind a proxy at whatever company I am at) and webmail (so I can see my email behind a proxy even when the company’s exchange servers are down). So I have no more need for usa.net, though they’ve been very reliable for the past 8 years or so.

So, I’ll now be using murrayc@murrayc.com, and nobody needs to think that I’m a Yank. murrayc@usa.net will forward to murrayc@murrayc.com for a while.

Madness

I’m pondering the idea of starting some small open-source-based company in Munich so that I have some hope of working on worthwhile projects in future. I like that using open source means that it’s not a big disadvantage for a software company to be small, or even at risk of being short-lived, and that we could be honest about that. In fact, I think that the ability to have a more personal working relationship with a local software company could be a big advantage, particularly for other small companies.

At the start this would not be so different than freelancing, but it would allow me to have a company name that could build a small reputation and advertise itself, and it would allow other freelancer-type people to huddle under the same company name.

Of course this is insanity, sure to fail, but I for the last few months I haven’t been able to get the idea out of my head. I keep thinking up marketing blurb that sounds both effective and convincing. The only thing that might save me is that it is impossible without finding other suitable developers in Munich. I think I’ll see who I can find over the next few months.