Last night I installed Paludis (read: I was really bored). I'm proud to say that I'm ready to do my first update using Paludis.

Installing it is a breeze...just use Portage. I enabled the inquisitio USE flag. Then, if you check out the Getting Started page on Paludis' website, you'll find info on automatically configuring Paludis. The script they give you works very well.

When first running Paludis, I got an error about missing the file repo_name in /usr/portage/local/profiles. I solved that by sticking the name I chose for my local/custom ebuilds in said repo_name file.

When I tried to pretend to do an update, I got more errors, mostly about unavailable versions or blocks. For instance, if mod_perl requires dev-perl/Compress-Zlib (which isn't available) or evince is blocking dev-libs/poppler, re-install mod_perl and evince using Portage (the problem here is that ebuilds have been changed since these programs were last installed).

The final error was about /usr/portage/distfiles belonging to the wrong user. This is fixed by running chown -R paludisbuild:paludisbuild /usr/portage/distfiles.

Other users might run into other errors, but those are the only ones I've encountered so far. Since I haven't actually installed anything using Paludis, I don't have much to say about it. However, I must say inquisitio is very slow, even with a names cache.

I'm working on a few projects.

First, there's the Evince nsplugin (for browsers like Firefox). I've noticed some inadequacies in mozplugger and there is at least one way I thought of to improve Evince when used in a browser. I started working on this and, honestly, I don't see this project getting much further. I have no experience with nsplugins, which has become a major stumbling block.

Twimblr is the second project. More info is at icorey.com/twimblr. I would really like to turn this into something very robust and I can definitely do that with enough time. However, it's solely a web tool and that makes it a little less interesting to me.

Finally, I thought of something that I can't believe no one has implemented: an internet-humor e-mail filter. It would be sort of like a spam filter. This project seems like it would be very feasible for me. The only problem is that I use Gmail primarily and I don't know how I'd be able to integrate something like this with Gmail.

I've figured out my goal for the summer: develop an Evince PDF Netscape plug-in so I can read PDFs within Firefox using Evince (particularly on amd64 Linux).

I have yet to find out if this is at all feasible. I am thinking it is very feasible for a more experienced Linux programmer, but I'm assuming it will be a huge challenge for me. But, I've already found the Netscape plug-in API and some other documentation. Bonus points to anyone who can tell me why the API is only available via archive.

Part of me thinks this should be very simple, but another part of me is pretty sure this will take me years.

EDIT: Screw it, I just installed mozplugger and, despite what I read about it, it works great. I guess I need a new summer goal now.

It seems weird that personal computers and widely−available internet access have existed for so long and yet there are still TV commercials for malware like FinallyFast.com. Before this, I remember commercials for Stop Sign. I’m sure that both suck profoundly.

I like to compare things I don’t understand to…other things I don’t understand. Ads for malware must be similar to get-rich-quick scams. You download FinallyFast.com’s software and your computer goes slower, just like how (I imagine) you invest in Quixtar and you find you’re making less than minimum wage (or no wage).

What I would like to see is a commercial for biological malware—something like a sponge that gives you the flu.

A few days ago, I wrote my third ebuild for Gentoo. Actually, wrote isn’t the right word. In two cases, I revised older ebuilds and submitted them. I wrote the other ebuild myself.

The thing that upsets me about the whole process (from raising a bug to having the ebuild in the Portage tree) is how slow it is. I submitted my first ebuild in mid-November and it’s still waiting for a maintainer.

Here’s a summary in table form:

LinCity was just submitted, so I can understand why nothing has happened with it yet. But, Midori is one of the few webkit browsers (if not the only) on Gentoo.

Nevertheless, I’m glad it’s very easy to write ebuilds. Now, if I see a program that I want to use that’s not in Portage, I’m not afraid to attempt my own ebuild.