MYCH

Jrubzjeknf:

To the rest:

[11:21] <Jrubzjeknf> a request for permission to spam the wiki

[11:21] <tarquin> what with?

[11:21] <Jrubzjeknf> MYCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[11:22] <tarquin> heh, go for it

Revision 2 . . December 10, 2006 2:35 by Fyfe [Ever heard of e-mail]

Yes, I emailed him several times on various email addresses, and got no response. This is my last resort.

Tarquin: Hey Mych. There's a few things to do with JB that we'd appreciate some pointers on.

Mychaeel: Extra points for creativity (to Jrubzjeknf). If I were easily embarrassed, I'd probably be right now, but in fact, you made me grin.

Before I actually had a day job creating software, I had lots of energy to expend on Jailbreak and other creative, personal things like that. Now, my employer pays me money to make his problems mine. It's interesting and satisfying with a seasoning of occasional exasperation about some of the third-party software the resident Powers That Be force us to work with – a rather good, if sometimes spicy, mix overall.

In the past two years that I've had this job I realized that I'm mostly good at one thing: Focusing on one single problem at a time. I'm very bad at multitasking. (Yes, I can do it to some degree, but it degrades my performance from what I can do to something rather average.) I tried to fit Jailbreak into that scheme along with my day job, but it didn't work out.

Recently, I've started again doing some small-scale personal development work at home, things that I've come to think of as "weekend projects" – getting a LDAP server to work for my Thunderbird contacts; making a Perl script that generates a photo gallery; getting acquainted with Symbian OS development for my mobile phone; and a while before, even making some Thunderbird extensions for my own benefit – stuff that I could pursue at my own pace. (I made the mistake of releasing my Thunderbird extensions to the public, just to realize that I cannot handle the amount of support requests they generate. That, and the Mozilla source code makes Epic's UnrealScript code look saintly.)

I don't like to see Jailbreak languish, and I don't want the people I've worked on it with to think that I've abandoned them. (There's no solace in it being uncomfortably close to the truth.) For a time, I hoped that the Jailbreak team would just get over my not being there anymore, figure out that I really wasn't that important, and get on. That's harsh and unfair and I'm a bad person for bailing out like that, but I did have the best intentions of never being a irreplaceable part of any team I was in – I wrote loads of text and made a best effort in writing maintainable code to that end. (So much for starting something and then not seeing it to its completion.) I realize all this might just have backfired, and it's nobody's fault but my own.

Now... I'm slightly scared that attempting to get back into Jailbreak development will suck me in and try to claim more of my time and energy than I have available. I know that this kind of work needs ongoing dedication, but I might have streaks of days or maybe weeks at a time where I just cannot pay any attention to Jailbreak. (And after that, I have to make a conscious effort to wrap my mind around its problems again.) I just happen to have some leeway right now (some of it just spent on writing all this), but that may change any moment, and just getting up to scratch with what happened during the last weeks (months?) is certain to take quite some time.

How can we make this work? Any suggestions?

Jrubzjeknf: Finally you respond. Thx!

I understand if you're unable to put effort into Jailbreak. After all, there's more out there than UT2004 (like that midterm tomorrow, for which I still need to read half the book ) and real life just has a higher priority. That's not your fault, that's life. Learn to love it.

You're not really required to release the patch. You are just sometimes needed, because you did some weird stuff we don't get. Example: tarquin spent an afternoon of hacking around in your perl scripts to allow me to post news on PJB. Another example is [this stuff in the CVS]. I bet it's helpful, but I 'll need to know what it does, and if needed, how I need to update it before I can use it.

The things we need are primarily for finishing stuff, like timestamp.exe to set the build variables. It's not needed on the spot, but needed for a release.

So in conclusion: you're still needed, but only for small things, like an explanation of something or a file transfer. I'm thinking less than 15 minutes of work. Waiting we've done enough though, so if you're able to respond more quickly to requests, it'd be awesome.

I'm sure I'll be able to release the patch with Tarquin and Wormbo backing me up.

ps. Don't take the first comments too seriously, I just wanted a reaction.

Tarquin: Oh yeah, and is there a way to add new actors to JBToolbox without breaking network compatibility?

Jrubzjeknf: We already made JBToolbox2 for that. Actors that are not placed in maps won't break network compatibility. Actors that are, do.