We play at Hot Shots.  Our name will likely suit us again next season because we are moving up to the intermediate league.  No.  Success hasn't gone to our heads already, we just waited too long to sign up for the rec. league.  All the spots were filled.  The level of play at the intermediate level will be considerably tougher and I wouldn't be surprised if we *are* last.  That's OK though.  It'll be a good time to develop skills.

They took our picture.  I suspect it'll be posted here eventually.  (Actually they put the picture in a location that isn't easily linkable.  See pic below.)  I'll be the guy that looks like he just jumped in the pool.  I am a sweaty, disgusting man.  I have a volleyball page here, but it is very much out of date.  You may find the links useful though.

Hurray!

In short, the story is about one man's quest, the gunslinger, to catch the "man in black" and save the "Dark Tower."  The Dark Tower is some sort of nexus of power for all that exists.  The tower is falling and, with it, existence.  Roland Deschain is the last gunslinger, a kind of Arthurian knight, who has vowed to save the tower or die trying.  He has vowed to "..remember the face of his father well." 

His singular purpose makes him a ruthless and relentless enemy.  The gunslinger always reminded me of a more human Terminator and his confusingly anachronistic world always left me  wondering.  I hungrily read "The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three,"  but that was it for me and the gunslinger for a long while.  I started college in '91 and forgot about the quest.  This year, I picked up the series again, re-reading the first two books along with the five I hadn't read. 

In the books some of Kings other characters have made guest appearances - including those from the The Stand and Salem's Lot.  Stephen King even wrote himself into book 6 ("Song of Susannah").  Some may find that to be vain, but I found it rather charming and it gave the author a chance to draw a picture of his younger self.  I suspect there may have been some self-help therapy going on in those pages.

King started the series in 1970, but the gunslinger story sat collecting dust for many years.  He had intended the series to be HIS epic adventure - akin to Lord of the Rings.  He started the story when he was young and very ambitious - even before the likes of Carrie and The Stand.

Stephen King's final book in the series, "Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower," was released this week - Tuesday, Sept. 21.  I purchased it tonight and can't wait to start it. 

You can learn more about the books from The Official Dark Tower Site. You can learn even more about the stories and get into the world of Roland by visiting the Dark Tower fan site.

USA Today has covered the Dark Tower series a couple of times here and here.

"There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! In a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all.  And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew.  'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.'"
-Child Roland, Robert Browning, 1855

A company called NOMACHINE has been developing open source technology that promises to greatly improve remote application access.  NX is basically new compression algorithms along with intelligent caching on both sides - client and server.  It is based on the X11 remote protocol and makes use of slightly modified VNC technology.  This article from gnome.org identifies some of the key technology:
"A Brief Look At NoMachine NX".    NOMACHINE also provides this article: "A brief introduction to NX motivation and technology"

Both the Gnome and KDE desktops are working to incorporate NX client and server technology into their free desktop environments. The day of the big servers and thin clients may be upon us again! Technology trends tend to become popular in a cyclic fashion. Here's a Wiki on KDE/FreeNX integration into KDE: NX/FreeNX integration into KDE.

A number of bugs were revealed when I tested this at work. At work we had several large CVS repositories that were imported into Subverion. I also changed the web page to only show the query form or the results - not both. I added a "Modify" option which allows you to edit the query from the results page.

The bugs fixed since .1:

• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 8
• 9
• 10
• 11
• 12
• 13

You can read the release notes here.

You can download the tarball here: Kamikaze-QSCM 0.2

Alternatively, you can get this release via CVS - tagged: tKAMIKAZE-QSCM_0_2

Be sure to read the README.txt for installation instructions. You can view the README here.

As always, I'd appreciate your feedback. Did it work for you? What features (existing or new) interest you?

Thanks!

-John

The Mac version looks identical to the Solaris and Linux versions. That's because its still an X-Window application. I was somewhat disappointed to hear this. I was drooling at the thought of a Carbon/Cocoa SlickEdit with all its candy-coated goodness. Still, better to have an X-Window version now, than wait even longer for a full-on Mac version.

For those Mac users out there that code, I recommend you try it out. You'll have to RTFM because there are a lot of features you'll miss otherwise. Most features are configurable. I particularly like the code beautifier which is pretty customizable.

The down side is the price. Its $270.00 (US) + $60.00 (US) per year of maintenance. That's pretty steep if you aren't a commercial developer. I forked over the dough for the Linux version several years ago but I'm not so sure I'll do it for this Mac version. I plan to give XCode one last go, but I'm not crazy about its editing power or its code completion. The up side to SlickEdit's price tag is that the $60/year gets you all upgrades/fixes/support for the year.

SlickEdit also runs on Windows. I personally think they should switch their GUI to TrollTech's QT.  QT is used by KDE and many cross-platform apps. Right now, it looks like they are using Motif or perhaps their own GUI lib.

Has anyone found a better cross-platform (or at least 'NIX-based) complete IDE for C++? If you're a Java developer, Eclipse is one of the best IDE's around - followed by NetBeans. No?

Here are some screen shots of the Mac version of SlickEdit: