Merry Christmas to everyone at Cemetech and in the community; we hope you enjoy the remainder of the waning year. All the warmth and joy of the holiday season to you and your families, no matter what you celebrate. Nothing particularly momentous or exciting has happened at Cemetech itself in the past week or so, given that half a week ago most of us were finishing brain-bending final exams and semester projects, but a few noteworthy items deserve mention. As previously extensively noted here on Cemetech, December 14th brought the release of Doors CS 7.1, including new flagship networking library CALCnet2.2 among many tweaks and bug fixes, the culmination of eight or nine years of development and dreaming and learning. To demonstrate the power and versatility of these projects, a pair of videos was created, respectively showcasing CALCnet2.2 on a nine-calculator network and highlighting the many features of Doors CS 7.1. To my surprise, these propelled Doors CS and CALCnet into the public geek consciousness on technology megasite Slashdot and hardware hacking hub Hack a Day. Since then, Doors CS 7.1 on ticalc.org has been hovering in the 25 top downloaded programs of the week, although I'm disappointed to see that it slipped to 23rd place this evening. I hope that if you haven't given it a try, you will do so. To quote a recent unsolicited review at ticalc.org:

Is it like any other? Nope.
Is it better than Mirage? Yes.
What difference does it make? It's not like it matters where I run my programs. That's what I said when I saw it but when I tried it out, I realized that it was much more than just a shell.

Finally, for those of you who neither keep up with the latest posts nor frequent our IRC channel (#Cemetech on IRC.Efnet.net), I want to announce significant progress on the Chat program for CALCnet2.2 under development by rising Cemetech gMod Shaun "Merthsoft" McFall. I have taken over the networking side of things for the sake of everyone's sanity, and I have succeeded in implement decentralized joining, quitting, message transmission, usernames, and username switching. I have a few more features to work on and improve before I hand it back to Shaun; my current progress can be seen below. Your job: suggest more creative project names than "Chat" in the attached topic.

Merry Christmas! And very nice on all the recognition things. Also, I notice in chat that everyone but you has an "ii" before their name, could that be changed? Not sure how, but I'll post in Chat's topic as well. Also, do you know why calc3 didn't recognize Elfprince joining?

Merry Christmas Cemetech, and congratulations on the recognition.

Also, the CALCnet chat program looks very good! I'll definitely have to try this when it gets released.

Merth is a sellout.

Thanks to both of you. _player, the Chat bugs you mentioned are both, well, bugs. Those aren't supposed to happen by any means, but it's progress that it can do what it's doing in that screenshot. Any program name ideas?

Edit: Fixed the 'ii' bug.

*bump* I got a ton of stuff done on Chat today, and in fact it's more or less ready to be handed back to Merth, unless I get bored and do some of his parts myself. Here's a fun little screenshot:

You misspelled "Snd." If you're really squished for space, why not use "TX?"

Blame Shaun "McFail" McFall for that particular design decision. What about a right-pointing arrow?

2 days late to list this stuff out... but I'll list the nerdy cool stuff I got. (not the sweaters or the fruitcake ):
I got:
a good digital camera. (NO MORE SCANNING)
CASH
an iPod
CASH
oh and some more CASH!

I guess I really didn't get much else of note. But lots of CASH! Big gifts though. Really happy for the camera. I'm can take pics of Calc82 now (well hassle free). Video too maybe! iPod Nano is ages better than that old Shuffle. (can I get an AMEN) too bad its not the new multi touch . Lots of family stuff, and living in the boonies, and that stuff... I'll be home in Cruces soon.

With the new iPod Nano, now you have a wristwatch.

I got the older video one. (4th gen I think...)

I think you're better off; the new one is just a bit ridiculous.

In other news, I've moved on to play with gCn prototypes, so it's up to Merth to finish Chat at this point.

Aww, this outflanks TI-Mail by a long shot D:

this is very interesting... I especially like how people can have their own nicknames. Out of curiosity, will this at some point have some sort of op/authority gimmick?

You still did a great job with TI-Mail for what it was. And no, I don't plan to have any authority thing like voice or op; as you say, it would just be a gimmick.

That looks sweet!!!!! Also, names:


Calchat
Link Us
You just lost the chat
Cable Connect
Cable Chat

Meh these suck

Connect isn't bad. And thanks. This is on hold (or rather in Merth's court) while I work on gCn development.

gCn? Sorry, never heard of it

gCn is global CALCnet, where calculators can be linked across the internet.

which would be especially cool 'cause we might one day have this chat program suited for gCn. no more need for our boring old computer chat clients

Well, I'm the first to admit that the concept is sort of silly, considering that we can just use the computer that will be hosting the gCn connections, but I think it will be a fun proof-of-concept.