Yesterday, a friend of mine asked me if I’d recommend Ruby programming language. I’ve said that, even if I had never tried it, it is said to be very reliable. Nevertheless, I’ve decided to try it, just by curiosity. So I’ve gone to the Ruby language website, and there, I’ve found some code, a hello word example:

# The Greeter class
class Greeter
  def initialize(name)
    @name = name.capitalize
  end
 
  def salute
    puts "Hello #{@name}!"
  end
end
 
# Create a new object
g = Greeter.new("world")
 
# Output "Hello World!"
g.salute

I tried it, and until today, forgotten it. But, today, I wanted to do a script to generate all IP addresses in an IP block. I first thought to do it in python, a language I’m more familiar with, but, still driven by curiosity, I’ve wondered if I could do it in Ruby. And that’s what it gave:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
# The NetMask class
class NetMask
	@mask
	@baseIP
	def initialize()
		@mask = 0
		@baseIP = 0
	end
	def parseFromString(str)
		array = str.split(".")
		if array.length != 4
			array = str.split("-")
		end
		if array.length == 4
			@mask = array[0].to_i + array[1].to_i * 256 + array[2].to_i * 65536 + array[3].to_i * 16777216
		end
	end
	def setFromInt(value)
		@mask = ('1' * value + '0' * (32 - value)).to_i(2)
	end
	def parseBaseIPFromString(str)
		array = str.split(".")
		if array.length != 4
			array = str.split("-")
		end
		if array.length == 4
			@baseIP = array[0].to_i * 16777216 + array[1].to_i * 65536 + array[2].to_i * 256 + array[3].to_i
		end
	end
	def formatIntToIP(int)
		return (int/16777216).to_s+ "." + ((int/65536)%256).to_s + "." + ((int/256)%256).to_s + "." + (int%256).to_s
	end
	def getMask()
		return formatIntToIP(@mask)
	end
	def getBaseIP()
		return formatIntToIP(@baseIP)
	end
	def generateIPList()
		array = []
		for i in (@baseIP & @mask) .. ((@baseIP & @mask) | ((2**32)-1)-@mask) do
			array.push(formatIntToIP(i))
		end
		return array
	end
end
 
mask = NetMask.new()
args = ARGV[0].split("/")
if args.length == 2
	mask.parseBaseIPFromString(args[0])
	mask.setFromInt(args[1].to_i)
else
	mask.parseBaseIPFromString(ARGV[0])
	mask.setFromInt(ARGV[1].to_i)
end
puts mask.generateIPList()

Just for information, the help is here.

These last two days, I’ve participated to a small Adobe Flash contest in Annecy, named the Battle Flash (Frenchies have recurrent a tendency to reverse orders of words ). The concept is pretty simple: In a first phase, as a team composed from one to six students, you have to realise five different flash animations, each having its subject, one imposed artwork, one imposed sound or music and one imposed text. These imposed media had to be respectively used in each of ‘em, but we were allowed to modify them, providing that we kept their artistical meaning. Secondly, each team is opposed to another, like in a single-elimination tournament. Our team hadn’t done the last subject, so we couldn’t win. But, unfortunately, the first round was on the only one subject we didn’t treat, and so, we were eliminated from the beginning of this tournament, that’s sad…
Nevertheless, I was the only one coder in the team, and as such, I’ve chose what method and software we had to use to produce .swf files. I use a Linux distribution, so I couldn’t choose Flash as coding platform. I like free (and also open-source) software, and that’s why I naturally came to Adobe’s Open-Source Flex SDK. But I have been annoyed by the impossibility to debug my animations correctly. Actually, I didn’t know of the “Linux debugger and standalone players” existence… I will publish my work soon, at least for the subject I have to continue.

Today, I had to checkout some SVN repository, and so, I downloaded subversion. But I reminded that when I used windows, a while ago, a sort of GUI plugin was available for explorer. So, I started to seek for the same thing for Nautilus. And I found out this.

P.S.: I also sorted out this, for those who don’t want to use rabbitvcs. But I haven’t tested it yet.

From a nice web-log on which 404 errors are awesome

Few days ago, one of my friends told me a short story which happened to him a very short while before:

My friend is a web developer, and so, his customers usually want him to code online software. One of his customers, though, wanted an e-commerce website «Like another one». So, my friend immediately thought at a huge web application which was dedicated, would have scaling abilities, advanced features, etc.  The customer then told him that he only had slightly more 700 bucks to start the project. My friend, conscious of the fact that the price of something like that application would cost at least ten times more, told his client that he could do something «light» to start, on what the client agreed. So, he started to work, hard, and got something working, then he put the stuff online. All has been okay for some weeks, ’til the customer wanted to do some slight modifications on his website… These slight changes would have been so if my friend would have done a complete and finished product, what he obviously hadn’t done for this little amount of money. So, despite the fact that his work has been thought to be evolutive, he had to recode most of the website in order to make the site suitable for these slight modifications. So he told that to the customer, who didn’t accept the quote. After arguing a short while, they both agreed that a simple e-commerce website would be sufficient.

So, my friend migrated his customer on an e-commerce website solution, and him and his client are both satisfied with that. The moral of this story is to NEVER trust a customer on his needs: they always are either distorted by the customer’s ambition, or, rarely, willingly lowered, in order to pay less (and, unfortunately, have less) than really needed. The role of a developper is also to understand his customer’s needs, and to explain them why and what they really need.

Tonight I plugged my Xbox controller to my freshly installed Ubuntu setup. I have been using Windows Xp for at least three years, and I didn’t know it should work natively; so I started to look at existing drivers. I founded out that a project exists, but source code was two years old. I contributed to it and it seemed to work.

After encounting some problems I have to debug this driver. I’ll post any further information here.

Today I found a nice software into windows, which is very useful and handy: the Clipboard viewer. It’s located in %SystemRoot%\System32\clipbrd.exe. This great software doesn’t only allow to view, but also to erase, save and load clipboard content.

In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer, create a new DWORD value named NoInternetOpenWith and set it to 1. Done. And, yes, it’s mostly a note for myself.