About a week ago, I finished the first release-quality beta version of an application I have called Chatly. It isn’t a whole lot right now as not all features have been fully implemented, but it includes both the client (a stand alone application that uses PyQt for GUI management) and a server. Both client and server utilize Twisted under the hood for robust network communications. The project itself has been written entirely in Python. I also have a brief write-up on this site about Chatly, although you might be more interested in looking at Chatly’s Trac page that includes browseable sources!

I currently have only a Windows release available for download, although you may also grab a source-only version linked from here. The distutils/setuptools setup.py doesn’t quite work yet, but I do intend to package a functioning Python egg in the future. For *nix platforms without Python (or the necessary libraries), I’ll also be releasing a “freeze” distribution. For now, you’ll need PyQt 4.4.3 or later, Python 2.5 or later, Twisted 8.2 or later, and some patience. I’d like to build an OS X package in the future but haven’t any access to Apple hardware for now. If you can help, just drop a comment here as I may have future projects that will be Qt-based.

Chatly is released under a two-clause BSD license (no advertising clause).

My old SoundBlaster Live! was finally starting to show its age. I’m not sure whether it was a driver issue or hardware, but whenever I’d start up something with environmental audio (particularly games), I’d hear nothing but static–and maybe some of the game’s audio mixed in with it. Now, the unusual thing is that it would occasionally sound like a driver issue; there’d be a single sound, like the clicking of a menu button, that would repeat over and over again as if the system were playing whatever happened to be caught in the output buffer. Sometimes, it would genuinely try to do something, and you could hear whatever sounds were actually taking place–except that they were mixed in with awful static. While I once tried to uninstall/reinstall the SB Live! drivers, I couldn’t get this particular issue to go away this time around (it worked once before I re-imaged my system). Heck, not even reducing “hardware acceleration” would work. Not that I expect that setting really does a whole lot in the first place. Maybe it’s there to make people like me feel better that we have a slider to tweak. At least I have /proc and /dev in Linux to examine if something doesn’t work quite right…

So, I finally broke down and got myself an HT|Omega Striker. It’s a really impressive card that most certainly lives up to its expectations.

Yeah, so I lied. Thursday didn’t happen. Friday didn’t happen. Hopefully today will. I’ve been pretty busy working on a few other things (Will knows) and will be unveiling a new layout either later tonight or tomorrow. I’m also planning on cleaning it up and releasing it as a free WordPress theme. If I get a few creative streaks, I might even make a few extra themes here and there.

Following along with a LotW layout I did about two weeks ago, I’m just going to write random rubbish about some of the things I stumbled upon in the last four or five days.

Programming/Scripting

Google’s progress on Unladen Swallow is moving ahead nicely.

Digging through my bookmarks, I came across this gem related to JavaScript arrays. If you’ve ever wanted to know how to create associative arrays (although they’re not technically associative arrays) in JS, look no further. It’s also a great reference if you happened to forget the exact syntax after playing around with a few other languages in the interim.

Khaled alHabache has an insightful write-up on Scala. I’ve been eyeing the language off for a couple of months now, but I think he’s convinced me to give it a try. It seems appealing.

Adrian Pelletier has an article that explains how to create a realistic hover effect using jQuery. I’m not sure what utility this would have for most sites, but I imagine flashy media sites that refuse to use Adobe Flash might find a use. (Note: This is a good example of JavaScript supplanting Flash in some cases; using Flash for menus and simple animations? Ridiculous.)

DIY

Did you know that simple and fairly common household items can make your old plastic hardware look new again? Surprised me, too!

Hardware

Speaking of hardware, I’ve finally decided to replace my ages old SoundBlaster Live! with this puppy. It should be coming in tomorrow afternoon sometime. I’ll take some pictures and write up a brief review.

Well, that’ll be it for now. I need to do some work on a new template!