FangSoft

I’ve actually had some time the last few days to work on NextHub.  I’m fixing some bugs, making semantic changes, performance improvements, and I’ll be adding some new UI features and making sure that the features we currently have in place are working properly.

Today, I decided to tackle a base32 problem we were having.  Per the official base32 RFC specs, the ‘=’ character should be used to pad the encoded output.  For some reason, the code that we were using wasn’t doing this.  I searched around, and discovered the University of California’s Brunet project.  Their project, an open source P2P library written in C#, includes a Base32.cs C# implementation of the base32 encoding and decoding algorithms.  This implementation takes into account padding.

I decided to take that source code, change some of it up, and then make a DLL out of it.  Since there’s no other good .NET base32 encoding/decoding library, I figured I’d put it up here for anyone to download.

Download: http://www.fangsoft.net/public/Base32.7z

You’ll need an archive manager that can open 7-Zip archives to open this file.  Included is the Base32.dll file and source code.  All credit should be given to the Brunet team at UC.  I merely cleaned it up and created a DLL out of it.

If you notice any problems or bugs, please let me know.

My Digsby emoticon pack has been gaining popularity, so I figured I’d split it off and add a separate page just for that pack. This is where you’ll get the download link and instructions for using it.  I’ll no longer be maintaining the default.7z file on my site.  I will now be releasing the updated emoticon pack on the digsbies site.  You can find the project link on my Digsby emoticon page.

Digsby emoticon page: http://www.fangsoft.net/?page_id=67

The Digsby SA emoticon pack that I maintain has been updated to include 2 batch files for auto-backup of your old emoticons and auto-install of the new ones.  The batch files are simple.  Here’s the code for emotemove-32.bat which is for 32-bit systems:

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SET OLD_LOCATION="\program files\digsby\res\emoticons\default-bak"
SET NEW_LOCATION="\program files\digsby\res\emoticons\default"
del %OLD_LOCATION% /Q
rd %OLD_LOCATION%
move %NEW_LOCATION% %OLD_LOCATION%
mkdir %NEW_LOCATION%
echo "Copying files.  Please wait...."
copy default\* %NEW_LOCATION%\*
echo "Done!"

The code for emotemove-64.bat is the exact same except that the default directories are in \program files (x86) instead of \program files.

Thanks to ryanbruce and Tedronai66 on SA for these easy installation scripts.

A few posts ago, I mentioned how I’d like 3rd-party support for emoticons for Digsby.  I said I’ve been using the SA emoticon pack for a long time with Pidgin.  What I didn’t say is that I’ve been maintaining this pack for Digsby for the official SA Digsby thread.  If you wish to get this emoticon pack, all you have to do is download this file and extract it to /res/emoticons/default/ in your Digsby install folder.  Also, know that every time Digsby comes out with an update, you’ll need to re-extract these files to that folder since it overwrites the emoticons.txt file.

Let me know if you use this, and let me know if you have any issues with it.  I’ll try to keep it updated as often as possible.

I quite liked my old WordPress theme, Jillyj, but I decided I needed something new. I found the perfect theme! Tiga is exactly what I was looking for. It’s simple, very configurable (it even has a built-in CSS configuration page!), and it looks great. I was wanting a theme that could take advantage of a wide screen, and Tiga does just that.

What do you think?

I’ve been using Digsby for the past month or so, and I have to post here to help give it some publicity. Digsby’s a new IM application that’s not just an IM app…it’s also an e-mail and social networking application. Currently, it’s in beta, but the developers are quite impressive. They’re dedicated, and they fix problems and add new features constantly. It’s definitely worth checking out. See some sample screenshots for an idea of what it looks like and how it functions.

There’re a few things I’d like to see Digsby add/improve upon:

• I’d like to see OTR implemented. OTR is a commonly supported cross-platform plugin for many chat clients that allows private chats. It’s supported in Adium natively, Pidgin, Miranda, and virtually any other chat client via the OTR localhost proxy. There’re tons of very solid implementations out there, and it shouldn’t be too challenging to incorporate it natively into Digsby.
• I’d like to have the ability to hide new messages when away. This is extremely useful if I’m at work. If my boss comes in, for example, to discuss something with me, I’d rather not have an IM pop up in the middle of our discussion. Pidgin does this very nicely by hiding new IMs in the system tray, and I’d like to see Digsby implement something similar. Until then, Pidgin will have to remain my primarily IM application at work.
• I’d like to see TLS encryption support for IMAP/POP e-mail.
• I’d like to see native support for 3rd-party emoticon packs. I’ve historically used the SA emoticon pack, and although it can be modded and manually put into Digsby, the original Digsby emoticons must be overwritten, and this seems like a rather sloppy hack.
• I’d like to see a plugin architecture. That way, if the devs choose not to implement something like OTR or support for 3rd-party emoticon packs, a 3rd-party developer could write a plugin that would support them.
• I’d like to see a better history searcher added in. Currently, in order to do any sort of meaningful search of log files, the Windows search must be used, and this is clunky. This would be rather simple to implement, and I suspect it will be implemented soon.
• Memory usage is fairly massive right now. At any one time, it’s typically hovering around 75-100mb. This figure should still be able to be decreased rather significantly.

Even with all those wishes, Digsby right now is still my client of choice (I’m coming from Pidgin). It’s still beta software, though, and it’s got a ways to go. I’m very impressed so far, and this project is shaping up to revolutionize the IM world.

Oh, and don’t forget that Digsby is coming to Mac and Linux! Very cool!

Well, I thought I’d post to say that the new WordPress 2.5 is really neat. The admin dashboard is excellent, and I quite like the changes they’ve made. If you’ve got a site that runs on WordPress and you haven’t upgraded yet, take 5 mins out of your day to do so.

I’ve been busy. I’ve received several bug reports on NextHub which is exciting since it lets me know that people are using it and want it to improve. I graduate from UT in a mere month, and I’m really excited my graduation is finally here. 5 years and 2 degrees later, I’m still truckin’. I guess I did something right.

I’m still waiting to hear back from grad schools. I’ve gotten into 1 school so far, and I’m waiting to hear back from 2 others. I’ll be pursuing a Ph.D. in computer science. I guess undergrad just wasn’t enough torture.

Once I graduate this May, I plan to finally resume work on NextHub. First on the list of things to do is fix some annoying bugs, and then I’d like to add some new features and continue improving on things. More info will follow as progress is made. Keep sending in those bug reports, and we’ll get to them soon.

Working your way through college unfortunately doesn’t leave as much time for outside projects as I’d like. More news to come in the upcoming weeks….

I just thought I’d pop in to mention that the ADC Protocol is no longer in beta. Version 1.0 was posted 12/2, and that’s really exciting. Yay!

I’ve added a section for Eclipse plugins that I write. NextHub is written in C#, but my primarily coding language is Java, and I spend a lot of time in Eclipse everyday. Eclipse’s plugin community is huge, but occasionally, I find myself wanting a plugin that doesn’t exist. I figured I’d just go ahead and do it myself.

My first plugin is called Hasher, and it generates hashes (MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512) of one or more selected files in an Eclipse project. I find myself comparing 2 files to see if they have the same hash quite often (especially for school projects), and I got tired of having to use an external application to do this. This is much more convenient. I found HashMe! through Google searches, but I read reports that it didn’t report the correct hashes, so I figured I’d just write it myself. I plan on improving the output later (putting the output into an actual table instead of text output to the console), but this is a good start and definitely gets the job done for now.

If you have any plugin requests or suggestions, please tell me!

After taking a break from the project over the last several months, I’ve resumed working some on NextHub (I really like that name ). I’ve reorganized the layout of the files under Subversion, and I’ve fixed a few irritating bugs. I want to fix a few more things that we’ve broken along the way, and once those are up to snuff, I can add some new features.

A new version of the ADC protocol was drafted earlier this month. There’re some exciting changes with regards to the Tiger hash algorithm (namely, that it’s no longer hard-coded as the only hash algorithm ADC supports). I like the SHA algorithm better, anyway. And lucky me, since .NET has built-in support for SHA1 in addition to SHA256, SHA384, and SHA512, life is easy.

Also, Andy added some preliminary SSL support, but we aren’t clear on how to handle certificates. I hope to have that fixed up soon. More news as it comes….