Blog

[Jere_Jones]

Ah... when it rains... my, my how it pours.

The AC in the house is broke. My development environment is still screwy (but partially up!). One of my favorite customers had his copy of SA expire on him. ARGH!!!

On top of that the next version of SA (0.5.0, the public release) is failing and I can't tell why! I split the program into two parts + plugins. The plugins will be for accessing show information from databases, webservers, etc. But I (re)split SA into the app and an analyzer dll. It should have gone smoothly because I was only realigning where the split was. Did it? Noooooo. That would have been too easy.

Double Argh!

Jere

[Jere_Jones]

My favorite word: argh.

Jere

[Jere_Jones]

My dev machine is back up. My dev enviroment is back to spec. SA is back on track.

My AC is even working again. I tell ya, it's hard to concentrate in 95 degree heat!

My current to do list in order of priority:

• Get the API working.
  Merge my decoder and the public code.
  Public Release
  DVR-MS support
  GB-PVR support
  Add learning capability
  Automate the learning
  Have a beer

I'm hoping the first 3 won't take long. I might even be able to release tomorrow.

Jere

[Jere_Jones]

All day troubleshooting a simple thing.

Lesson learned: do not assign to a string across dll lines. Heap corruption is the result. Instead use a dll method to set the string.

Some days...

Jere

[Jere_Jones]

I've been working on an API so that pretty much anyone can call ShowAnalyzer from inside their own program. In theory, even SageTV could do it using a little JNI. That's almost ready for a little testing.

With that out of the way, I'll be ready to release. I apologize for the delay, but I ended up having to rewrite SA's infrastructrure to support the API and, in the end, I think it will be a better program for it.

Jere

[Jere_Jones]

SpaceGhost is here!!!!

I loved that show as a kid!

Jere

[Jere_Jones]

Microsoft just rejected my request to license the ASF container. This is a serious problem if SA is to support DVR-MS files.

Something about they only license for commercial development.

I have replied stating that SA is a commercial development and await their reply.

Jere

[Jere_Jones]

One of the disadvantages of SA is it's reliance on time stamps. I had thought that I had the problem defeated until a recent wave of trouble shows. I had (wrongly) assumed that the timestamp should increase throughout the show. I mean, come on. Time progresses forward, right?

The lastest trouble shows have the timestamps reset in the middle of the show. Sometimes multiple times! Originally I was extremely discouraged by this. How in the heck could I maintain any type of syncronization if the timestamps are unreliable? Well, inspiration hit! Synthisize the timestamps! Why be depend on them when I can generate them myself? Hopefully this will be the end of all such bugs!

This is my last fix before the public release. Some testing, tuning and I'll release it to the WORLD!

/me gives a Dr. Evil type laugh...

Jere

[Jere_Jones]

I think I'm ready to release publicly. It has passed all my internal tests.

I have an SDK made up so if anyone want's to use it within their own program, they can. That SDK has gone to a developer and once I hear that it works for him, I'll release and y'all can have fun.

Now to work on database support for GB-PVR and DVR-MS support for the decoder....

Jere

[Jere_Jones]

Of course, my internal test never tried to run ShowAnalyzer under a normal user account. Which is something I can expect my users to do.

So... back to the drawing board....

Jere