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Murray.
(sounds innocent enough, doesn't it?)
Murray Client for OS/2 Version 1.21 2/23/97 10/2/97
Concept and implementation by Stu Mark.
Copyright 1997.
(yea, the same guy who wrote NYTS II)
Don't worry, there's a Windows version on the way.
I take that back. There's a windows version on the way. Worry.
*** Section XX and later have update changes, the rest of the document
is the same as the original. If you've already read it skip to
section XX. If not it makes for fun reading, I'm told.
This program is free. That means you can download it, use it as much as you
want and give it to everybody you know. Nothing times out, there are no
annoying splash screens. So read the pricing section below. :)
Also, this file is kinda big, so print it out and keep it in your bathroom
so you have something fun to read next time you go to take a shit.
I have play tested this by printing out this file and going to the bathroom
after about 20 minutes you get tired and need a break, so it'll take about
two shit sessions to get through the whole thing.
I. Who the hell is Murray? (A.K.A. why am I reading this)
Murray is the result of this cool idea I had while I was being beaten
senseless with happiness at Walt Disney World at the wedding of my
friends Lenora DiBart and John Cloidt.
This fact is very important to your understanding of this document and
needs to remain clear throughout the reading of this file.
Here's the story: Humans by nature get bored of things. We're
constantly looking for more, newer, faster, creative, different.
In a word: change.
One thing humans do better than anything else as a race (aside from
kill each other, I suppose) is adapt. Our brains adapt to all sorts
of things. That's why practice makes you better. This is why you
eventually get tired of listening to Stairway to Heaven. This is why
I think you're going to get a kick out of Murray.
Now let's transpose this problem over the image of my perception of
the average PC user. A lot of people (much to my dismay) run some
variant of Windows.
Some people run some variant of OS/2. Some run DOS. The DOS people play
games. Dos has turned into a very feature rich game loader. (Boy am I
going to get it for that.)
The Windows and OS/2 people have these neat little settings
in their environment that allows them to change things like the desktop
background (or wallpaper), and sounds that the system makes when you
do things like get an error or open or close window.
Most people ignore these little toys or play with them for a little
while and get bored of them. "Oh look at this really cool background!"
Which two weeks later you find annoying in view of "This other REALLY
cool background." After a while it gets to be a chore to keep changing
it so you stop.
Then you find this really neat program that changes your background
every time you start the machine up. Well that eventually gets played
because you have to dig up all the pictures you're going to have it
slide show for you.
Enter Murray.
Murray is my first TCP/IP project, so if some experienced TCP/IP
programmer tells you that Murray is a piece of shit, quietly ask
them to shut up and go away, and then kick him in the ass for me
when they turn around.
Murray plain and simple, changes desktop settings for you in the
background from a repository of images, text and sounds such that
you can ignore it, and your computer's desktop changes without any
input from you. The perfect human boredom solution: It changes by
itself, and requires little to no effort from you, and the warehouse
of resources it pulls from is a large pool that is collected and
maintained by somebody else.
Why didn't I just say that before eh?
Note: My writing style is okay, but my organizational skills are
horrible, you may have to skip around to get the idea of what
I'm getting at here. Read through the whole thing, and you'll
understand Murray much better, and how to use it's different
features.
II. How it works / System requirements. (I'd rather read a text file than
play with the program)
The magic behind Murray is really the server and the internet. I run a
server on my machine at home which is connected to the internet all
of the time (minus NYNEX's inability to maintain a clean connection).
The server delivers all of the requests that the clients ask for on a
first come first server basis. So if a lot of people run Murray you
may get messages that say the server is too busy to deal with you.
You need: A connection to the internet, and a TCPIP stack. If you've
got a web browser running, you've got everything you need.
Murray does not require a full time internet connection.
Firewalls are your problem. Go tell your network admin that you have
an application that you need to get working through the firewall,
that runs over TCP/IP on port 1123, and let them deal with it.
Murray works by keeping a list of things you want updated at regular
intervals in a config file on your machine. When Murray detects that
the specified time has elapsed, it will try and make a connection to
the selected Murray server, and get a random sound, quote, or
picture, depending on the selection. If the connection to a Murray
server is not available, no big deal, Murray won't popup an error, it
will just log it in the log window.
Next time your internet connection is up, Murray will check for the
server again, and when it's available, the request will go through.
Murray checks once a minute for any events that are past due. This
results in a lot of logging. No big deal, it's just a log. If I get
a lot of complaints, I'll get rid of it or something. Point is,
don't worry about -3 connection errors if you're not connected to
the internet.
The idea is that you ignore Murray, and he sits quietly in the
background and does his thing when he can. (I tend to personify my
programs.) When a connection becomes available, anything that has
timed out will be triggered.
III. What's available. (All the cool things you can download from
the internet!)
As of 2/23/97, I have only finished the OS/2 client. These are
the options available for the OS/2 version of Murray:
1) Murray Quote
This option gets a text entry from one of the selected categories
(see configuration below). The text entry appears in the top window
on the main Murray window.
2) Background Picture
This is the OS/2 desktop background bitmap. All pictures are
automatically tiled, so patterns don't just end up in the middle
of your screen.
The following apply only if you have sound (mmos2) support loaded:
3) Random Sound
This feature when triggered will download a wav file from the
Murray server and play it. This is useful if you like having
your machine audibly burp, fart and insult you at regular
intervals.
The rest of these are system events that can be found in the
system setup->sound notebook. Triggering these causes the specified
system event to change to a random wav file. The events you can select
are:
4) Alarm Clock
5) System shutdown
6) Lockup
7) Warning
8) Information
9) Error
10) Printer error
11) Opening window (Animated)
12) Closing window (Animated)
13) Begin drag
14) End drag
15) Shred
IV. Me / distribution / pricing. (Send money :) )
I have no idea how well this is going to take off, but for once in
my life, I think I really hit upon a cool idea here, and everybody
I've mentioned it to really likes it. I hope you do too.
This program, as mentioned above is free. You can distribute it as
much as you like without cost or penalty, as long as you give it
away in the original zip with all files intact.
I spent a lot of time and effort on this, and I like audience
participation as much as the next guy. So if you'd like to drop me
a line, my Eddress (e-mail address (I'm trying to coin a new phrase))
is at the end of this file. Or you can send a comment or tip with
the Murray program itself to my server.
If you're feeling generous, and think Murray is worth more than the
initial cost (it's free, remember?), I will gladly accept monetary
donations which will further entice me to continue development on this
an other systems that I'm writing, and will also help offset the cost
of running the Murray server. $5 would be nice. $10 would be even
nicer. $50 will get you a thank you card in the mail. I think
Murray's worth $10, can't hurt eh?
It was asked of my what currency I'd like (since the internet is a
big place and spans many countries). Anything I can deposit at my
good old fashioned american currency bank. You might know better than
me what they'll take. But hey, beggars can't be choosers, so whatever
currency you want to donate, is fine by me. I'll go to the airport and
exchange it.
Keep in mind that any donations would be put towards the Murray fund
which will pay for extra hardware to support the Murray
server, because when I first distribute it, I'm the only one with a
server so everybody who uses Murray is going to be banging away at
my machine. If there's more demand than supply, Murray ain't gonna
work too well. So I'd like to deliver the best product I can, but
(in a whining and distressed voice) "I need your help!"
In addition, if you send money, I'll add you to my mailing list and
send out mail or email with new releases or information about
upcoming products, versions or fixes.
Ok, enough begging for money.
V. Why is it called Murray? (The name shithead was already taken.)
I'm still trying to figure this one out. If you can think of a good
reason why it's called Murray, send a comment to the server (see
below).
So far, the best answer I've gotten was this. I was rock climbing with
my friend Joe and while he was climbing, he wanted me to lower him a bit,
so he yelled down to me "Slack, Murray!". This is a quote from one of
his climbing videos where there was some climber who wanted to be
lowered, and the belayer's name was Murray.
This happened around the time I started to write Murray, and may very
well be the correct answer. I do seem to recall calling it Murray when
I first had the idea during the middle of last year. I dunno.
Send me your comments. I keep a scrapbook so I can show it to my kids
someday.
VI. Installation. ("How to use the pkunzip program for dummies")
To initially set up Murray, very little is required. I hate complex
installation programs, so I don't write any. (It always seemed to me
that the guys who write viruses write the best installation software
known to man. How many viruses have ever failed to install correctly
or have given you an error message saying that they can't install?)
Step 1: Unzip the Murray distribution zip into a directory. I recommend
C:\Murray because people like it when I recommend things.
Step 2: Edit the file Murray.cfg with your favorite text editor. E
will do fine. Change the line in the file that says
"Directory = C:\Murray" to point to whatever directory
you unzipped the files in. If you unzipped the distribution
file into C:\Murray (like I recommended :) skip this step.
Step 3: Run Murray.
STEP 2 IS REALLY IMPORTANT BECAUSE MURRAY WILL RUN BUT WILL GET
CONNECTION ERRORS IF THE DIRECTORY IN THE CONFIG FILE DOES NOT EXIST.
SO YOU CAN FUCK EVERYTHING ELSE UP, BUT MAKE SURE YOU GET THE DIRECTORY
ENTRY CORRECT.
You may want to make a shadow of Murray and put it in your startup
folder. This way, it'll always be running when you start up your machine
always waiting for that oh so perfect moment to download a "WHEEEE!"
sound as your boss is walking by.
Ahh yes. Another holdover from NYTS II. I remember well. If you pass
a "/N" to Murray as a parameter, it will start up minimized. The idea
is that Murray does his thing in the background. You don't need to know
from it once it's set up, unless you want to read the quotes.
Version 1.2 adds the command line option "/Q" to keep it quiet on
startup. More about that in the Update History section (section XX)
***** Murray Features.
VII. Configure Murray. (Be in control, bend Murray to your will.)
NOTE:
In order to use most of Murray's functions you have to have your
net connection up and running. Murray requires information from
the Murray server in order to configure itself to run in the
background, and will make requests from the server even while just
in the configuration dialog.
This may make it slow to use depending on how fast your (and the
server's) net connections are. But you only have to do it once.
Of course, you'll want to be playing with it more, I assure you.
Here's where you get to tell Murray what to do with itself in its
spare time.
The first time you run it, Murray will set the default Murray server
and port. The defaults are 199.224.7.119 for the server IP address
and 1123 for the port number.
Actually, I changed this in version 1.2 to be nyti.spaghetti.com
which is more correct, seeing as I don't use that 199 ip address
anymore.
The above IP address is my server running at my house. Murray
accepts names for the server address, but for some reason TCP32DLL
blows up when Murray tries to resolve it. You can try putting in
nyti.spaghetti.com and you can see for yourself. If it works, more
power to you, if you know what the problem is, let me know and
I'll fix it :)
Note: This bug has been fixed as of version 1.02. (See section XX.)
8/25/97 Important note as of now. I got my dynamic dns working and
if all goes well, it's accurate to 15 minutes. So the above ip address
is a crock of shit and will never be used again. (Never say never
because I might have to use my other isp again) But regardless,
ddns works very well, so always use the name for the server:
nyti.spaghetti.com and the ip address will follow. It has a time to
live of a minute and refreshes every 15. Can't go wrong there.
I will be posting addresses of other Murray servers as people tell me
they're installed. They will be available in the Murray News section.
(see below)
The port number (everything seems to have a story, don't it?) is 1123
for personal historic reasons. I applied to the nicmasters for a
proprietary port number, but they're being more than fast in getting
back to me. When/if I ever get one, I'll update the Murray default.
I'll run the server on both ports on nyti.spaghetti.com, the only
reason to get an assigned port number is to avoid (possible future)
conflicts with other people running server software on the same port.
In fact, looking back, they were very cool about it. Port 1123 wasn't
registered for anything else, so upon my request, they gave it to
me. (Once again proof that people at the bottom have all the power)
Make sure these two fields are set correctly and your internet
connection is up and running.
Now for the fun part.
The list box on the left side of the dialog shows all of the options
that Murray can change for you. By clicking on one, a list of possible
categories will load up in the right side list box. There are three
categories of items. Text, (Murray quote), Pictures (desktop background)
and Sounds (all of the system sounds and Random Sound).
If the category list for the type of item is not in memory, Murray will
connect to the server to get it.
The cool part here is that different Murray servers may run different
categories. So if you like a different set of categories, you can
attach to a different server.
What's a category?
Well, what kinds of things do you want to see? If you're talking about
text, do you want to see jokes, or one-liners or stories, or trivia
or any number of types of text. Same thing with pictures and sounds.
Do you want obnoxious fart noises? or samples like AOL's "You're in
Jail"?
To select a category for Murray to look through, just highlight it in
the list box on the right. Your selections are stored in the config
file.
If you don't make any selections, then this item will be turned off,
as in, Murray will not attempt to change the system sound or background
or whatever item you have selected no categories in.
The refresh button forces Murray to go to the server to refresh the
list in case it has changed (see below, Adding a category).
The Ping button is just a test event to make sure you're attached
to a server correctly. If you don't get a message saying the ping
was successful, then check the server name and port number.
(This is an example of what I meant by poor organization, you'd think
this would be at the top of this section.)
The three spin buttons below the left list box specify the interval
at which the highlighted item in the left listbox will trigger.
The default setting is once a day. You can go as low as 10 minutes
or as high as 2 years minus 1 minute for each of the items.
*** New as of Version 1.10 6/8/97
There is now some new spin buttons for a function called 'Start time'
This enables you to limit the time of day that Murray does it's thing.
The check box selects whether or not to use Start Time. It is
off/unchecked by default. If left off, Murray will work as described
above.
If the 'Enable Start time' button is checked, then Murray will perform
a time of day check before it attempts to make any automated request.
There's a different recorded setting for each option, so it's actually
possible to change the background picture at one time of the day
and have random sounds only happen during lunch time.
You select the start and end hour in 24-hour time (0 = midnight,
23 = 11pm). These settings have no effect if Enable Start time is
not checked.
So if you have a dial on demand setup, you can set Murray to only
do things when you think you'll have you IP connection up.
Wow, too much information, not enough jokes.
Joke break: Did you ever wonder why when you see a flock of birds
flying in that V formation one side is always longer than the other?
Because there are more birds on that side.
The "Reset this item's timer" button is there so you can set Murray
to trip different things at different times. If you set everything to
once a day, Murray will try and shoot them all off at the same time.
This might hunker your machine down a bit, maybe not, but if 400
people do this every day, it will more than likely kill my server.
So pick a time of the day you want to have the item change, and
click this button to reset it as if it had just triggered, and then
the counter will start running from that point and will trip
at the next interval time. That probably didn't make too much sense.
If you don't get it, ask your wife or your kids or something. They'll
explain it to you.
The "Trigger this item now" button oddly enough, trips the item to
load just as if it's timer had run out. Simple enough eh?
The only difference between tripping an item with the button or
having the timer do it in the background is the popup box that says
Murray is trying to connect to the server.
At this point maybe we should talk a little about scheduling.
Windows (you knew this was coming) in my opinion is a very solidly
written display interface. By no stretch of the imagination is it
an operating system. You boot DOS (DISK OPERATING SYSTEM) and you run
the program called windows. Everybody and their mother tried to make
it do a hell of a lot more than it is designed to and thus everybody's
having lots of problems with everything and the word GPF was entered
into the Merriam Webster Dictionary.
I wrote Murray with the intention of porting it to Windows 3.1
and possibly Windows NT (I refuse to acknowledge win95 as, wow. I
don't even have a word or phrase for what I would describe win95 as.
'An Operating System' is certainly is not one of them. I'll work on
that.) So I chose the least common denominator to make it easier to
port to win 3.1 (With enough convincing I may try and port it to
win95 as an exercise in where the world is being sent.)
As a result there's only one thread in Murray, and you can see
where it might get hung up during a connection. I've tried to minimize
this problem as much as you can with one thread, but it's not perfect.
Another thread would make it much better, but then none of the windows
people would ever get a copy of Murray and we all want to spread the
joy of Murray so the happiness can be had by all, right?
It turns out that that's not exactly what happened upon the first
release of Murray back in February. I had it firing off threads left
and right to keep pm running while blocking on reads and connections
and stuff like that. With version 1.20, I rewrote the tcpip interface
in Murray and everything's a lot slicker now. It's in the history.
When Microsoft asks you where you want to go today, you say "Outside."
The point is that you may get little hangies if the server or
connection is slow, and it will be a little more noticeable when you
trigger the event rather than letting the timer trigger the event
in the 'background.'
I think that's about it for the configuration screen.
The practical upshot of all this, is that, at every interval specified,
Murray will call to the server for each of the selected items, one
at a time, getting a new item from one of the selected categories.
***
I'll try to make the other sections shorter than the config section,
the rest of it's a lot simpler once you understand what Murray does.
***
VIII. Donate a file to the Murray server. (You can be part of the action too!)
"Dynamic is good." My dad used to say. He has since moved on to other
more profound statements.
What fun is Murray if you keep getting the same pictures and sounds
from the server over and over again?. So Murray allows you, the user,
to make your own donations to the Murray server. You can elect to
donate a quote, a picture or a sound.
Pictures must be in BMP format, and sounds must be in WAV format.
I will be screening everything coming in to my server to make sure
it's not too vulgar. I'm very anti-censorship and if you can't deal
with people talking about abortion and anti-god ideals, that's your
problem, but that's what categories are for. If mom doesn't want
to hear "unh unh" noises coming from her computer, she won't select
the "Sex noises" category for Random Sound. As such, if you donate
something to an inappropriate category I will not delete it, I will
move it to a better category.
To donate, select the item type and category and hit OK. You'll get
the standard OS/2 file box. Pick your file and hit 'Donate.'
That's all there is to it.
The idea is that if everybody donates something every once in a while
Murray becomes a lot more fun for everybody to use. This is the
advantage Murray has over the other 'Wallpaper changers'. You don't
have to set it up yourself. Everybody donates to the cause.
You'll notice (depending on when you start using Murray) that there
may not be a lot of categories or samples or pictures. My collection
is limited. My hard drive space will someday be limited. I'm going
to be asking for lots of donations in the beginning to get it
started off. When I start running out of drive space I will buy
more equipment (see the pricing section).
Be Kind. Rewind. (Don't be a dick, rewind this flick.)
IX. Add a category to the Murray server. (Leave your mark on the server for
all to gape at in awe.)
I'm not the most imaginative thinker in the world. It took me 15 years
to come up with the idea for Murray, so I quickly accept the fact that
Murray users will have ideas for categories and samples/pictures/quotes
that apply to them that I will not think of. So you can add a category.
Select 'Add a category to the Murray Server' and you'll get a dialog
asking what kind of item type you want add to, and then the category
name you want to add.
Let's try and not go ape-shit. Don't waste my time and yours with near
duplicates or categories that don't apply to the item type. I'm
just going to get rid of them.
When you add a category, the server updates it's tables every 30
seconds if there's nobody pounding away at the server. So check back
a few minutes after you add the category to see if yours has been
added. (Thus the Refresh Category List option in the config dialog.)
X. Send a comment or tip to the Murray server. (Spread your gospel to
the Murray server site in hopes that your tips will make it to the
tip file.)
So I can send information to Murray users without having everybody's
Eddress (I'm still trying to coin that word:) there are two information
files that Murray can display in the quote window. The News file and
the tip file (see next two sections for descriptions).
The idea of the send a note to the server is so that you can send in
notes or tips of things about Murray you have found. I will check
this every couple of days and see what people have to say.
I would prefer Email for such things as bugs, feature suggestions and
things like that, but for tips or questions about using Murray or it's
content this feature is useful. If you've really got something
worthwhile to say, I'll add it to the news or tips file that Murray
distributes and everybody will be able to read your divine words.
If you've ever sent me email before, you know I always respond to
email and I just love getting messages from people.
XI. Get news file from the Murray server. (If this file isn't entertaining
enough, there's plenty more where this came from.)
The news file is a text file of information about Murray. Bug fixes
or new release information, or news about me and my future wife and
things like that. I will probably be the author, so expect this writing
style.
I'll also be listing addresses of other Murray Servers here.
Selecting this option will send the request to have the most current
news file loaded into your quote box.
XII. Get tips file from the Murray server. (Read the written gospel of other
Murray users.)
Exactly the same as the news file, except for the purpose of the
content. The tips file is more for user input than my babblings.
You can contribute to this file with the Send a comment option
(described above).
XIII. Right Click. (Q.E.D.)
Ever since a whole bunch of people asked for right button functionality
in the New York Telescheduler II, I've been going right click happy.
So, you can right click in two places so far. The quote window, and
the 'send a comment to the server' edit window.
The quote window allows you to copy the current highlighted selection to
the clipboard or trigger a request for a new quote (as if the timer
had run out). The idea being, you want to save the quote in your
own personal jokes file but don't want to retype it.
In the 'send a comment to the server' window you can cut copy and paste
text, so it's easier to manipulate the text you want to send.
XIV. Timer held (I'm busy, leave me alone)
Murray does one thing at a time due to its one-threadedness design.
Whenever Murray is busy doing something, a little "*Timer Held*"
message will appear in the bottom right corner of the Murray window.
While this message is on, Murray won't do much except for what
it's doing until it's done. Even exit. No timer events will trigger
when this message is on (for example while on the config screen),
or when an event is currently being dealt with. Nor will any of
the other menu options.
***** Miscellaneous.
XV. UnInstallation. ("How to use the del command for dummies")
This section gained such popular favor in NYTS II, I decided to add
it here too.
Murray itself is one EXE. It requires a CFG file, and downloads a
bunch more files from the internet. It, unlike most MS products,
contains itself to the one installation directory.
So. If you want to get rid of Murray, you first tell a friend to
download it, so it spreads to other people and the whole world can
be blessed with the magic of Murray and the happiness that it brings
to all.
Then you just delete all the files in the Murray directory, and
the directory itself. There. No more Murray.
XVI. Legalooze. (This is where I tell you that Murray is my idea and my
program and no matter what, I thought of it and implemented it first.)
This piece of art is not published under the GNU license because,
while I stand for what they're doing, I'm personally not too thrilled
with the way they do it. So let's call it Ford-ware or Stu-ware.
I have the source, you don't. You have the executable, and this DOC
file. It all comes in one nice neat zip, and it's simpler if you
distribute it that way. I wrote it. It's mine. Say what you want, but
the copyright belongs to the original creator, which is me: Stu Mark.
Give it out freely, but give out the original zip.
There is no warranty expressed or implied, and all that other shit.
You use it at your own risk, I make no claims about what it will and
won't do.
This software makes every intention of downloading data via the
internet (God's great god damn). If you worry about viruses, read on.
Some people have suggested that I add screen savers to the list of
things Murray can distribute. But I'm not going to make a highway
that viruses can drive on. Murray delivers data. Text, WAVs, and BMP's.
that's it. You can't possibly get a virus from Murray unless the EXE
itself has a virus on it, and if it does, I didn't distribute it that
way, somebody else did it to you.
XVII. Slaughtercow. (I haven't proved to you yet that I need to get out more)
I was young as a child. I remember listening to the radio and hearing
the meteorologist report that "there's a chance of darkness tonight."
I would sit at home reading my books dated 400 B.C. and wonder how.
XVIII.Future releases/bug fixes. (There are no bugs, only design flaws.)
This is the version 1.20 release of the Murray Client for OS/2.
I am in the middle of a port to windows NT, and if it happens to
work on that 95 disaster area, so be it. Win98 will get pushed back
to windows 2000, mark my words. Mark my mark. Make a Dilly Pickle
Willy Chilly Fiddle in the Dark.
As such there are bound to be problems. Mostly because I learned
everything I know about TCP/IP by guessing. (Better than the damn
cat or kindergarten.)
If you report a problem to me, I'll do my best to fix it as soon as
I can and release a fix, and give you credit for rubbing it in
my face. It's easier to talk the talk than to walk the walk.
New with Version 1.20. I found the godsend of os/2 reference, and
here it is:
http://service.software.ibm.com/devcon/showcase/cat/catalog.htm
Along with tons of other great stuff that you can dl if you
register as a guest (for free) I found the os/2 tcpip programmers
reference. Now I can figure out all those little differences
between stock BSD sockets and the os/2 implementation. And as
a result, Murray 1.20 is a much more robustable program with
this release.
8/25/97. Well, I got real inspired the other day, and ported what
I had of the 3.1 program to NT (I just really really hate 95) and
it went fairly well. Neither work yet, but they're getting there.
It was my renewed interest in the NT version that got to to change
things in the os/2 version which will eventually make it to the port.
XIX. Known problems. ("It's not my fault, really.")
I recently installed Warp 4.0 on one of my machines (not the one
the Murray server is running on). I have noticed a bunch of
things have been fixed, and a few that don't work.
Some of these may be problems with Warp 4 or it just might be my
installation.
1) The desktop background only changes once. When you reboot, the
last downloaded image comes up, but it doesn't change on the
fly like it's supposed to. This works fine for me on all the
machines I tested except for my Warp 4 machine.
This has been fixed.
2) Same kind of thing. The pop up message box that says things like:
"Connecting to server" doesn't size correctly on my Warp 4 machine.
But works everywhere else.
As of version 1.20, I am now completely convinced that WinDrawText
is broken. I didn't change a thing, and the function hasn't changed
but every time I call it I get a "PMERR_ATOM_NOT_FOUND" error.
Fascinating, since you don't pass any atoms to WinDrawText. So
I gave up on it, and use GpiQueryCharPos. Does the same thing,
except that it works, so now the box sizes correctly.
3) If Murray makes a successful connection to the server and then you
lose your internet connection, it will seem to hang (it just takes
a really long time to time out). Enter Fixpack 17 or Warp 4.
(Put this in your config sys: SET PM_ASYNC_FOCUS_CHANGE=ON 500)
This is a problem because I avoided using threads in Murray so that
it would be easier to port to windows (and because of my limited
amounts of documentation on TCP/IP). When you're planning on
porting you always write for the least common denominator which in
this and most cases, is windows.
As I learn more about TCP/IP I'll try and fix this.
V1.20 It's fixed. If it's taking too long, you can hit cancel.
4) When entering the server address, you can enter a name or an IP
address. For some reason I can't explain sometimes the TCP32DLL
blows up when trying to resolve the name thus killing Murray.
You can try hostnames for the server entry, and if it doesn't work
use the IP address. The IP address for nyti.spaghetti.com is
199.224.7.119
This is a lie. Don't believe the man. Do the NSLOOKUP yourself
and see! The man is a fake. Be yourself, don't try to act fly,
cause if you do, I might pass you by. Whoops, sorry about that.
Ahhh, a little rap never hurt anybody. A lot of rap made 2pac, 1pac.
If you want to attach to another Murray server (not that I know of
any, and you want to get it's IP address do a whois or nslookup
on the name and you'll get the IP address.
Again, when I learn what I'm doing wrong, I'll fix it.
It's been fixed. Both the ip address and the name work.
5) Running multiple copies of Murray. Probably wont work. I'll leave
this one as an exercise for the reader.
XX. Update history.
2/4/97 Murray Server Version 1.00
Murray Client for OS/2 Version 1.00
Unlike Microsoft, my version numbers mean something.
This will not be the case in the windows version.
2/21/97 Some problems have cropped up and I haven't gotten to
releasing this yet. I got hold of the winsock API which
I'm planning to port Murray to, and I found that I guessed
wrong about how it worked, and limiting Murray to use one
thread was a mistake. So I added threads to the OS/2 version
so it shouldn't hang the machine at any point, while it's
connecting or receiving. Also rigged it so you can quit
Murray at any time. I always hated those programs that
didn't quit when you asked them to, like MS VB.
Here's another one: I was working in powerbuilder 4. The
second worst development environment I've ever seen. I'm in
the middle of debugging, and I find my problem, and go to exit
the debugger, and it says "Terinating the debugger while
stopped may violate PoweBuilder integrity." This translates
to: We hired a bunch of ex-MS employees who never learned how
to write good programs, and never planned for the program
to be ended. So we're pretty sure it's not going to work,
but try it anyway.
Also, it turns out that you can run multiple copies of Murray
as long as you do it from two different directories, I.E.
two config files. Can't imagine why you'd want to do it, but
it works.
4/7/97 Version 1.01
Added error message to explain why Murray doesn't appear to
be doing anything when you think it should be.
I started seeing this on the first day and realized it's more
a failing of the documentation than a bug. So I added an
error message to make it more obvious what to do, but the idea
is that, if you're on the configure screen and hit 'trigger'
and there are no categories selected in the right side box,
nothing's going to happen. This is okay if it's tripped by the
timer because selecting nothing is how you turn the option off,
but when you hit 'trigger' and nothing happens, I can see
where it looks broken. Next time I'll have OTHER people beta
test. heh heh.
When you read tips or news, the cursor is moved to the top of
the editbox. Not a big deal, but I noticed it and it bothered
me.
Thanks to Anders Green for helping me out with a few things.
He assured me that the Warp 4 background problem was in fact
a problem and not a fluke of my install. After a month of
trying to figure it out, just the other day I was dead tired
from lack of sleep and a full day of hikking and rock
climbing, I got home, and *dink*, a little light went on.
So I did a bit of fiddling and sure enough, simple problem
with Warp 4 backgrounds. If you want the dirt, here it is:
Murray downloads a random picture to the file "backgrou.bmp"
Then it tells the desktop to make that the new background
picture. Well, apparently in Warp 4, either because of a
sharing problem or because it sees I'm using the same filename,
it doesn't update the screen. So I flip between 2 different
filenames, and voila.
Mr. Green also helped assure me that I wasn't doing anything
wrong with the TCP/IP name resolution call, so I looked to
other things. I think I've got it fixed. Had to do with
structure packing. As if PC's aren't complicated enough, let
us all buy chips from a manufacturer that after 17 years still
can't make a chip that reads odd boundary bytes quickly.
Fuck em.
Well, I make it a habit of structure packing everything to
1 byte to avoid compatibility problems between versions of
software (The windows and os/2 versions for example) and
didn't realize I was packing the TCP/IP headers as well.
I'm amazed Murray works as well as it does considering.
This seems to have cleared the name resolution problem up.
Still the ip address will go faster because there's no
name lookup, but you should be able to use
'nyti.spaghetti.com' instead of 199.224.7.119 if you like.
I think that's all I did so far. Ahh yes. I made a neat
change to the server. I almost forgot. It's in the news file.
I rigged it so that when you get a category list, it also
puts a number in parenthesis next to the name. This is
the number of items available in this category. So if it
seems like you're getting a lot of repeats from a category,
it means: A) There might not be very many items in the
category, and now you can tell for yourself, and B) You can
make an effort to rectify the problem. :)
Thanks to those who have donated sounds and pictures to the
Murray server. Your help is greatly appreciated.
I have found (from this end, testing and some user reports)
that they are getting 'TCP/IP error during block read.'
This is a timing problem with Murray. If I knew exactly what,
I'd fix it now. I'm still looking into it though. What kills
me, is that I had this working perfectly when I was testing
Murray, and then just before I released it, I set it to
dynamically bind the tcpip stack instead of link it staticly.
This way instead of the program just not running with a
"Can't find tcpip32dll" error or something like that, I could
give a useful error message. Unfortunately, this is when the
timing errors started. I'll let you know when I get it fixed.
5/11/97 Version 1.02
Things are going horribly wrong. I'm spending what little time
I have to try and fix it. Everybody's getting exceptions
but me. I'm trying to figure out what's causing them.
In this version, I took out some of the attempts to make
Murray share time with PM. It works for me, but other people
have been saying it causes problems. So if it doesn't work
anyway, might as well get rid of it. It might be causing the
timing programs that make donations fail. Oh yeah, I've been
reading my Stevens book and think I might have fixed something
that makes the donations not work right.
I appreciate all the attempts at donating files, but I've
gotten very few that worked, so if you never see them pop
up, that's why. I apologise for this, I will fix this though.
I'm hoping 2 big changes I made in this version will solve
that problem, but you guys can test better than I can, because
I can only test on my lan, and don't have an outside connetion
to try this stuff on. That's why I never knew there was a
problem.
Version 1.02 attempts to fix things and clean up source
internally, it's not meant as a signifigant upgrade and
there are no new features.
I take that back. I just found and fixed the name resoloution
bug. Yahoo. This one's been killing me for months, so let me
share with the crowd. To keep from tying up PM while getting
the category list, the whole lookup is done as a separate
thread. I allocated 8K for the stack for that thread, because
OS/2 has this nice guard page that will increase the stack
if it gets a hit, but apparently there's a function or two in
the TCPIP stack that sucks up more than the 4K guard page
and blows away Murray because the stack is too small. I made
the stack bigger, and voila! Name resolution works.
*** So: very important note: The Murray server is at
nyti.spaghetti.com Use this as the server name because my IP
address will probably be changing soon, and there's no way
to know what it will be, but I will be keeping the name
"nyti.spaghetti.com" current, so when Murray goes to look
that up, it will always get to the right server machine.
I am extremely happy about this particular fix. Wow. What
a day. I'm going to go outside and enjoy the weather now.
I think I did a few other little things, but I'm not exactly
sure what. They weren't too important. I think I got rid of
some of the sleeping that may have made Murray time out.
Play around, see if the things that made 1.00 or 1.01 blow
up still do.
6/8/97 Version 1.10
Well, I got my new job, and now I have to work real hours
and have very little time for fixing and testing, but a few
cool things happened.
I swapped motherboards that the Murray server runs on and
was able to finally install warp 4. This means that email
will work for my BBS. Big whoop. It's a slightly faster
motherboard and it's intel, not cyrix, so that can't hurt.
As I said, I have very little time, and even less to work on
Murray, but I got a neat bit of mail from one Rene Kint.
He asked for a very useful feature, and I felt it important
enough to stop everything else and work on it. So I pounded
it out last night at about 5am and it seems to work. It has
to do with time of day.
It seems Rene has a dial on demand setup on his pc, (this
thought never occured to me, in the origional design of
Murray) so everytime Murray goes to do something, he makes
a phone call. Not cool. So, I added a 'start time' feature to
the config screen to limit the times of the day Murray
will try and do things.
Look in section VII for a description of how it works.
In addition, I changed the internal packet size that Murray
uses to send blocks of information to the server when
donating. I don't know if this will help any, but it's worth
a shot while I'm sending out a release anyway.
I've got plans for version 1.2 having to do with rewriting
my tcpip interface layer which will either fix everything
or completely break it, so hang on to this version.
I think those are all the changes I made.
8/25/97 Version 1.11
Long ago, I realized that problems are what you make of them.
Actually this applies to many parts of life, as I will
explain.
Everybody has a certain capacity to worry about shit. Some
people have a lot, some people have a little, some are
so stoned out of their mind they aren't quite sure they can
grasp the concept of reality long enough to notice that it
contains thing that could be worried about.
So as it goes, if you have a large capacity to worry, but
don't have many problems in your life, you will magnify your
insignifigant problems to fill the gaping hole in
your personality (in much the same way Microsoft Word will
allocate all available resources by swapping everything else
out to disk).
As an aside. Somebody figured out that Microsoft Word actually
takes up 8 times more memory than all of the programs on the
computers on the Space Shuttle. Think about it. Considering
when the machine was built, it's quite easy to imagine.
Look at the last few things that you've worried about today
and see if they'd stand a chance against any email going to
starving@ethiopia.com or help@911.com. Now get a grip of
yourself.
What I'm getting at is that I like Murray up to the level that
I think it's a neat idea and everybody would want to use it
like I do. This is not the case. I'm a dreamer.
OR!
Or not enough people know about it! So go out there, you
brave os/2ers and tell the world about Murray. Or tell me
where I can go to tell the world about Murray. Nobody seems
to be willing to give a away a free plug. Go figure.
As for what I changed...
Like I said above somewhere, I got inspired to work on the
NT version, so I sat down and added some crap to this one.
Nothing big:
1) When you click on the enable start time button, it greys
out the Start/End time buttons. I always found the spelling
of the word 'grey' fascinating because nobody seems to know
or agree on what the correct spelling is.
2) This has been annoying the piss out of me since I first
wrote this. When you change anything on the configure
dialog, the cfg gets updated immediately. This, however
rare it happens when the average user isn't testing it
like I am, is annoying. Really annoying. So I fixed it.
All changes are now saved on the loss of focus to the
field you changed. Less disk whirring.
3) I plan to be a millionaire.
4) I'm going to write a book like this.
Items 3 and 4 required no programming changes to Murray.
Not even spritually.
9/25/97 Version 1.20
This is an understatement. I did a lot of work to this version.
Here's the short and skinny:
1) Learned how to make a non-blocking socket thanks to the
developer's connection. Found the tcpip reference.
I rewrote the whole tcpip interface layer to Murray. No
more threads, so nothing should ever hang any more. No
random fits of freezing, and less connections problems.
The problem with threads is that os/2 doesn't know what's
going on and gives a lot of time to the wrong thing. The
way it's written now Murray controls the free time, not
OS/2. This is a good thing, trust me.
2) I thought I had done this before, but maybe I missed it.
I dialled up like a good little user and tested Murray
over the internet with a real 28.8 modem. And you know what?
It was annoying as hell to use. Why doesn't anybody tell
me these things. I had no idea. I'm a programmer, and I
have this big deficiency with user interfaces and user
needs. Did anybody notice the complete lack of a CANCEL
button? Don't know why it took so long for me to notice.
Mostly, I guess becauser on my lan, a 2 meg file transfers
in about 10 seconds. I never noticed it would be a problem.
So. In every case where Murray hangs out talking through
(MY BRAND NEW) tcpip layer, it give you a cancel button.
You can click this to stop the current action. This button
is only available when an action you triggered is running.
You started it, you should be able to stop it. It's a little
rough around the edges I think. In some cases it will say
"Transfer cancelled", but in some cases, I think it will
just give an error 6. Don't worry about it. It's working
correctly, it just doesn't trap all the messages correctly
yet. Gives me something to do for 1.21. This cancel button
is now part of a window that you can move and accidently
shove in the background, but it shows up in the task list
so you can get it back. If you close this window from the
task list, it's like clicking the cancel button.
3) Another really cool thing. So there I was testing Murray.
I donated a file to the server, and saw the message:
"Sending file to server." And there it was. Hanging. Or
so I thought. I never realized that you have no indication
of what's going on. And there was no way to stop it.
I applaud those that donated those 1 meg files and patiently
waited for it to finish. So I added a status line.
On the main windows, between the *Timer held* and the
Murray version messages, there's a status for the transfer.
This comes up for any Murray transfer. Be it files comeing
to you, or sent from you. The format of the display is
How much sent so far / Total bytes to send (percentage done).
You'll notice that a Murray packet is 1000 bytes. Keeps
it under the 1500 common MTU.
4) What else. Oh. I know. Run Murray, and take a listen. Neat
eh? I thought this was the neatest thing since sliced bread,
and I can see where it would get annoying, but again my
view is skewed. I have 4 machines and they're on all the
time doing all sorts of things. I rarely ever reboot my
machines, but my dad (remember my dad? The one who said
"Dynamic is good.") pointed out to me that most people turn
off their machines and reboot them all the time. And some
people have their machines in their bedroom where their
wife is sleeping, and they want it to make as little noise
as possible. You can pass Murray a /Q to keep it from doing
this. But it's so cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuute.
5) I did a bunch of little things, like always, to tidy it
up here and there, but that's the bulk of it. Certainly
a much more robust program now. Enjoy and donate!
(files or money :)
10/2/97 Version 1.21
I finally found a good use for the hundreds place in the
decimal part of the version number.
Have to admit, this was a pretty stupid bug. So I'm sitting
there, pounding all of the 1.20 changes into the NT version
and I test it, and it hangs. So I click cancel, and nothing
happens. Hmmm. All that effort on a stupid cancel button
and it doesn't even work all of the time. Blah.
Hunting around, I found the one case I missed. If your
machine takes forever to resolve the name nyti.spaghetti.com
you can hit cancel, but if it get the ip address and takes
forever to connect to it, cancel don't do squat.
Oops.
All fixed.
XXI. My life saga. (People who like to read about my personal life.)
If you're a NYTS II documentation follower...
When we last left our hero he was spending way too much money on
his international phone bill. It's gotten better.
How much do you think I have to spend to get a letter from AT&T that
says "You've saved over $1000.00 in long distance charges in the
past two months."
For those of you new to my rather bizarre and off topic documentation
style here's the story.
My fiancee went to Israel to go to school at Bar Ilan University.
I live in New York in the United States. I spend quite a bit of money
calling her, writing letters, and sending flowers and such things.
But thanks to the mighty internet, I'm going to help AT&T shoot
themselves in the foot (aiming gun at foot in mouth) by installing
iphone or some such similar product, thereby getting lousy voice
quality sound at somebody elses expense (using their own cable network
against them). This is only temporary until we get back together. I've
paid my dues (thousands in phone bills). Am I bitter?
4/7/97 Well, did I tell you? My future fiancee/wife made a surprise
visit to come see me from Israel. Ain't she sweet? So I pretty much
put everything off for the two weeks she was here.
Then there was that noreaster. My apartment complex got nailed with
every tree down you could find. No power for 3 days (no heat either,
ever try and sleep in 40 degrees (farhenheit)?). No power, no Murray
server. Only so much complaining to the power company I can do. Sorry
for the loss of service.
The windows version is about 80% done, but I'm currently looking for
new employment and this is taking up some of my nonexistant free time.
I will finish it. Oh yes, it will be done.
For all you os/2 fans out there (like me), I installed Win NT on my
DX4/100 with 64 megs of memory. And it's still a dog. Os/2 is happy
as shit with all the memory, I don't have a swap file. It's neat. If
you can afford it, I recommend it. Just say No to NT.
5/11/97 My girlfriend said she's coming back in August. This will
be the shit. Hopefully I'll have all the big problems squared away
by then because I don't know how much time I'm going to have after
she get's back here. We have a lot of catching up to do.
Murray for windows has been put on hold for a bit, until I can get
the OS/2 version working the way I want. I'm having a few problems
with the machine that the Murray server is running on, doesn't effect
Murray, just my BBS. Oh yeah, I won't go into details, but you might
have noticed that you can't telnet to nyti.spaghetti.com anymore.
This makes me very angry. Until I can resolve this problem, you can
telnet to nyti.spaghetti.com on port 1111. This will work. I also lost
my http port and my ftp port for a similar reason. I will be fixing
this.
And lastly. I got a new job. It's farther away from my apartment, and
if you take into account the extra commute, I'm not really making
any more money, but there's no dress code (jeans and sneakers are
allowed, YAY!) and it's near most of my friends, and I'll get to
actually do work, as opposed to being on the phone all the time.
My part timer that I'm in charge of told me that the phone would have
to be surgically removed from my ear soon. At that point I knew it was
time to get out, if she noticed it.
That's all for now. Got to go distribute.
6/8/97
Well, here's some gossip you can sink your teeth into.
My girlfriend/fiancee-to-be that I've been talking about? Well, we
broke up. Sorta. She's coming back from Israel to hang out and we
can discuss what we're going to do with ourselves or without ourselves,
but it was a mutual thing, not unhappy. But we realized that some
of the things we really hold near and dear to us are far enough
different to make marriage difficult. But we'll be spending the summer
together, so don't expect to catch me around here much :)
I'll keep you posted as to when we make up and get back together.
9/24/97
Oh well. It's over. My ex-girlfriend moved out the other day. She's
leaving this coming sunday. And now I'm lonely. Waaaaaa.
It tell ya, computers whirring all the time make for a really empty
and cold sounding apartment.
Experience. That's what it's all about.
Anybody wanna start a rock/metal/ex-grunge band?
XXII. Are you paying attention? (Have you finished your shit yet?
You can use the end of the last page for toilet paper if need be.)
If you've been reading religiously, you'll remember the names
of the people who were getting married at the time I had the idea
for Murray.
If you don't, you won't.
XXIII.I still haven't figured out a good word or phrase to describe how
I feel about win95. We'll also leave this as an exercise for the
reader.
People tell me "I'd've" isn't a valid contraction. Damn efficient
though.
Remember the first time you saw Star Wars (you did see it didn't you?)
and they're in the garbage bin and there's that thing slithering under
the muck? Well, I was 7 when I first saw Star Wars in the theater
and that left a scary sorta worried feeling in me. That's the closest
thing I think of to describe how I feel about win95.
XXIV. Running a Mighty Murray Server. (Consider the fact the 99% of the time,
your Mighty P200 is spinning it's wheels at 200Mhz waiting for the
mouse to move and blinking a cursor. Now there's a good use of
technology. Why not run a Murray Server?)
If you're interested in running a Murray server. Contact me. I'd
be very glad to help you set it up. There's only one version of the
Murray Server and I don't plan on porting it to any other OS, so if
you don't run OS/2 and you don't plan on writing your own server,
this is probably not a viable option for you.
It's really a good idea to have a 24/7 connection to the internet
otherwise nobodies going to attach to your server. Remeber those
BBSes that we up between 10pm and 6am. Yeah, that worked well.
XXV. Not There.
I just had this silly idea. Actually, I had it a long time ago, and
just remembered it now. Free thank you card to the first person who
can answer me this question: (The answer "Because everybody does
what microsoft says." is not valid.)
Win 3.1 is a solid program. NT is a solid program. 95 is not a solid
program. These are all well known documented facts.
NT can run 3.1 program. 95 can run 3.1 programs. Don't need 3.1.
NT can run NT programs, and NT can run 32-bit native 95 program.
(If you've ever seen the requirements for getting a "designed for
windows 95" sticker on your box you'll see that it says it's got
to run under NT.)
Why do we need 95? or 97 or whatever it's going to be called when
it finally comes out. The hardware requirements for 95 are just as
bad as the requirements for NT, so what's the point?
Everybody knows that they're going to dump 95 anyway soon enough,
microsoft said it themselves.
So why is everybody running win95, a shittier less stable dos hack
than a 32 bit stable OS?
Coalition to get everybody to drop 95 and start using OS/2, Linux
or NT.
XXVI. Movie Reviews (The visual arts are for the eyes)
COMING SUMMER 98, THE GREATEST BLOCKBUSTER SMASH OF ALL TIME!
THE NEW ACTION THRILLER FROM MOUNTAPARROT PICTURES....
T h e F e r t i l i z e r . . .
Jack Graves is a renegade cop, who doesn't believe any crime should
go unpunished. He sees that the Police have their hands tied, and he
wants to do something about it. Brandished with the most unique weapon
known to police enforcement, Jack Graves is going to make a difference.
(a scene from the movie...)
"Hey Jack, what's the noise."
(rustle rustle)
"Let's check it out."
...
*SMASH* *ALARMS*
"GO GET HIM JACK, HE'S RUNNING DOWN THE ALLEY!"
"I can get him from here."
And with a swift motion spins around, turning his back to the thief,
bends over, pulls the ripcord exposing his mighty ass to the world...
PFfffffffphhphpphphhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhtttttt.
pft.
Pphhhhhhhhhhlllllllllooooooommmmmmmmpppppphphhhhhh.
"SHIT!!!!"
"GET THIS SHIT OFF ME!!!!"
"Good job Jack."
"Yeah, he should be happy I didn't fertilize him with the strong
stuff."
T h e F e r t i l i z e r . . .
Coming Summer 1998 to a theater near you.
*****************************************************************************
Feel free to get in touch with me. I'm human, just like most of you. And I
like to know the world needs me :)
-----------------------------=====================--------------------------
Murray Client for OS/2 V1.21 10/2/97 Copyright Stu Mark.
email: fordii@j51.com
or call my BBS: 914-267-0504
or telnet nyti.spaghetti.com on port 1111 (24 hours a day)
Check out my web site, it has a cool background.
http://nyti.spaghetti.com
Monetary donations (see section IV) can be made payable to:
Stu Mark Attn: Murray
P.O. Box 77
Valley Cottage, NY 10989
U.S.A.
Latest and greatest versions of all my software are available via ftp
at nyti.spaghetti.com
I have some utilities that I wrote a long time ago that I'll be putting
up sometime.
Come visit my web page (it's rather sparse right now, all my free time goes
to working on Murray and I don't have any time to make a nice page) at
(guess where...) http://nyti.spaghetti.com
-----------------------------=====================--------------------------
As you can tell, I enjoy bashing MS and would do it more, but this file is
long enough as it is. This is an OS/2 program. Why ruin it by
mentioning MS too much. However, I always put in the following disclaimer:
(any nasty remarks sent in the general direction of window's capacity to
function, [are fully intentional,] are not opinion, but state of fact. So
don't try to slam me with some bullshit libel suit.)
I've also decided to start a campaign to make it a really loud notion to
compare The Microsoft marketing department to the Marketing department at
Sirius Cybernetics Corp. Anybody with me on this? If so, mail a message to
my BBS at doom@nyti.spaghetti.com
