[kidsgames] ARRRGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

[Jeffery Douglas Waddell <jeff@laptop.wadsoft.com>]

Hello,  no I'm not dead but my main server is....



ARRRRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!



It seems the natives are restless, and think I'm not working on the
project, rest assured that I am, and I will update you on some of my lack
of progress....



Things I've tried...

ztrack.... an interesting little curses driving game, actually got this to
work.  If I knew gtk, i'd update this little public domain program to use
it.

auplay.... a speaker driver to play ulaw (*.au) files  and actually got
this to work, but the quality unsuprising sucks really bad....

festival.... can't understand the speech and the language it's written is
scheme which I don't understand.  The licensing on this thing sucks and
makes it pretty much impossible to redistribute openly and it's huge to
boot.


dumb.... [doom superset] got the source tarball and haven't
even had a chance to untar it yet... large tarball, but not as large as
all the other crap I've been updating on my main Debian/slink system....
Want this to implement the Treasure Hunt idea of my wife's even if she
hasn't sent any mail explaining it on the list.....

speak2me... my own unreleased (don't know the status of the algorithms I'm
using based off of a book I have about phonics) text to speech reader....
this uses c and perl and .au files at the moment....


hangman... I just want to add a choice of word list and stuff, why does it
have to be so freaking hard to mess with.  First I get the source (apt-get
install bsdgames), then I read the documentation, then I try to to do what
it says and it DOES NOT work.  So I gcc it by hand, and it goes nuts
about not having curses.h, so I check and sure enough I need the
DEVELOPMENT ncurses package, which I install.... so now the thing tries to
compile (from my hand carved gcc line) and bombs saying the code is bad.
<shrug>  The really ANNOYING part is that THIS version of the hangman code
SAYS it supports -d dictionaryfilename but the binary on that system that
is already installed DOES NOT.  ARRRGGGHHHHHH.....  And why are all of
these games bundled together so tightly anyway?

in order to do the desktop things I want to do, I decided I need to start
developing with gnome, so I followed the instructions on the
developer.gnome.org site and used cvs to get the gnome source.  TOOK
forever.  Then I did the autogen.sh command they tell you to do and
IMMEDIATELY get a message saying that the code I have is for
DEVELOPING the GNOME LIBRARIES and not applications....
ARRRGGGGHHHHH.....  it tells me to cvs ...blah blah, which I do and the
anonymous cvs server REFUSES me..... over and over again.....
ARRRRGGGGHHHH......

pdmenu... a simple menu program that comes with debian, seems to be a
potential complexity hider for the kids and/or others low on the
typing/computer skills.

smalleiffel...  an object oriented language that is supposed to be really
useful, but most of what I've found to explain how to use the langauge
just points to a book you have to buy... annnoying....

python..... required by zope, which is a web based application server
thing based on objects that I thought would be useful.  zope requires
1.52, got the source and built on this machine (laptop) and tried to build zope,
it crapped out because it needed threaded in python.  the laptop can't
seem to successfully compile python 1.52 with threads, no problem without,
but can't do it with threads.

went to the main server and did 'apt-get install  zope' which it decided
it need a bunch of stuff and I told it to go ahead.....   I know have
zope.  Tested it out.  It REQUIRES a frames capable browser to USE the
freakin' thing.   Did I mention that I don't LIKE frames.....

Things from the bsdgames that I think have potential are hangman, arith,
fortune, and boggle.  NONE of which I can compile.

I'm sure there are other packages I've messed with over the past month or
so, but right now (6 am) I'm tired and I'm going to get some sleep....

I hope I can recover my main server tomorrow, please somebody send me some
decent hardware that doesn't crash all the time.... ARRRGGGGHHHHHHHH.   Or
some money so I can buy some......  And somebody tell DEBIAN that not
EVERYBODY has a HIGH SPEED connection to the internet.....ARRRGGGGGHHHHH

I don't know if this message (coming from built from source pine 4.10 on
the laptop which is connect via pppd (custom built null modem cabling)
through the router machine which thankfully is still up) will get through
my firewall and out to the internet, but I'm going to try to send it.

Sincerely,


Jeff Waddell
jeff@smluc.org


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