everburning

Sorry for the lack of updates. Its been pretty hectic since my return from Holland. The trip was fun. The actually work part went pretty well and Amsterdam was a fun place to wander around for a few days.

Stacy and I have started looking around at condos in the Young, Sheppard and Finch area. Have been touring around to different places and checking them out. There are some really nice condos in this area. Not exactly cheap, but damn, they’re nice.

We’ll see where that goes.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll have some time to post more later, get some photos up on the site. Write down some EWL ramblings, that kind of thing.

I forgot to mention. Stacy managed to screw me over from, what, 3000km away?

What did she do? She got me a copy of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow for my birthday.

Having been stuck on the Cluetrain Manifesto for a while I hadn’t been able to get to it. I loved Someone comes to town, Someone leaves town when I read it.

I’d have to say, I liked Down and Out better. Started reading the book at dinner yesterday, where I ended up sitting for about 2.5 hrs before getting up to leave.

After watching, what I think, was The Omen (it’s amusing to try to figure out what the Dutch words are from the translations), I picked the book up at 2am. Put it down at 5. Finished.

So, damn you Stacy. Damn you for keeping me from sleeping from so damn far away.

If you get a chance, read this book. The characterization is great, the wacky techo stuff is really well done. Little references to geeky things that if you don’t know won’t matter, but if you do are quite good.

Anyway, I’m a terrible reviewer. Read the book.

Anyone know where I can get a set of cybernetic feet from? Spent the day wandering around the streets of Amsterdam which now has my feet telling me to fuck off.

Spent pretty much the whole day wandering around, about 7hrs worth or so. Tried to go back to the farmers market from yesterday to pick up some more cheese and bread but it wasn’t there today. Instead there was a flea market in its place. There was some pretty cool stuff there, picked out a few things for Stacy.

Happend upon a marathon that was going on in the city, watched that for a little while before running across the marathon path to get to the other side of the road. Once across I went to the Rijksmuseum and saw The Masterpieces exhibit. This includes works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Jacob van Ruisdael and Jan Steen.

After Rijksmuseum I randomly wandered around until I found The Van Gogh museum. I’d have to say I like the Rijksmuseum better. Don’t get me wrong, the Van Goghs look amazing, but the I just find the Rembrandts to be more vibrant and realisitic. Some of the Rembrandts make you blink and say “fuck me, that’s not a photo?”

After the Van Goghs I headed to a more modern type museum which I’d spy’d on my travels. The Heineken brewery. I’ve been to the Keiths brewery in Halifax a few years ago and had a good time. This one was just as good. They had some amusing shows like the “Life of a Heineken bottle” ride. All in all, a good tour.

All in all, a good day.

Well, I’m in Amsterdam. The flight went pretty well. I managed to catch about one hour, maybe hour and a half of sleep. Hm, although I moved ahead six hours in time, does that mean I actually got 7 hours sleep? For some reason I don’t think my brain believes that.

Managed to push through the rest of The Cluetrain Manfiesto while on the flight. It’s got a lot of interesting points in it. Lots of interesting, and given the way the internet has been going, accurate thoughts on how business should be run in the connected age.

Got to the hotel at about 7am (local time) to find out I wouldn’t be able to check in until, at the earliest, 10am.

After thinking about it, and checking my email and some online maps, I decided to go wander around Amsterdam carry my 30-40 pounds of crap on my back and shoulder. This laptop is a fucking killer.

Took the shuttle back to the airport and caught the train into town, after discovering that neither my bank card nor Mastercard work in the ticket terminals. I didn’t realize how quite the trains are. I think of them like the TTC which I usually find loud. The trains where quite and smooth. Definately a nice way to travel.

I was suprised at just how quite it was wandering around town. Maybe it’s because it was about 9am on a Saturday but I’d very infrequently see cars and it was impressively quiet.

It’s always fun wandering around old cities. After coming from Toronto and other cities in Canada we don’t have as much of the old architecture and heritage that these builds have. Just the little touches, carvings, sculptures and little gargoyls.

Wandered into a little farmers market at some point by De Waag. Picked up a fantastic miniture loaf of bread, about a third the size of a full loaf, and some amazing cheeze. Sat in a little park and watched the people as I ate. The bread was some kind of whole wheat but had a touch of, almost, peanut butter to it. Quite possibly the best bread I’ve had.

Anyway, currently back at the hotel recuperating. Trying to decide what I want to do tomorrow and Monday.

I’ve never been very good with EWL fill policies. I always manage to get them wrong, then convince RbdPngn to fix them for me.

This isn’t such a great situation when I’m writting widgets that need to take these things into account. This is causing a bug in the Ewl_Paned widget at the moment.

So, I got a bit of a description on these from Nathan and though I’d share what I’d learned.

There are three basic fill policies, then a few combinations. The main policies are: EWL_FLAG_FILL_NONE, EWL_FLAG_FILL_SHRINK and EWL_FLAG_FILL_FILL.

EWL_FLAG_FILL_VFILL, EWL_FLAG_FILL_HFILL, EWL_FLAG_FILL_VSHRINK and EWL_FLAG_FILL_HSHRINK are all special cases of the EWL_FLAG_FILL_SHRINK or EWL_FLAG_FILL_FILL policy.

There is also EWL_FLAG_FILL_ALL which is just EWL_FLAG_FILL_SHRINK | EWL_FLAG_FILL_FILL. All fill polices at the same time.

What do these different policies mean?

• NONE will be given it’s exact preferred size.
• SHRINK will allow as much space away as possible to be removed, down to its minimum size. SHRINK will grow only as large as its preferred size setting.
• FILL will take as much space as possible up to its maximum size. FILL will shrink down to its preferred size setting.

You can also think of it as:
minimum_size <= shrink_size <= preferred_size <= fill_size <= maximum_size.

A visual representation of this can be seen in the following image.

These constraints are enforced at the object level. If you’re implementing a container you can choose to ignore them but the object will be clipped or have extra space as needed to meet these size needs.