Jeffrey Dutky's Vanity Page

In heaven I yearn for knowledge, account all else inanity;
On earth I confess an itch for the praise of fools - that's vanity.
— Robert Browning

I'm Jeff Dutky and this is my web page: it has my resumé, some programs I've written, and a few things I like online. It's nothing fancy, but I like it this way.

A few years ago, my wife and I went to Vietnam for an extended vacation (nearly a month). Here is a web-site she put together about the trip.

Here is my resumé.

The software I have written (and been willing to release to the world) is:

• libeval: a simple arithmetic expression evaluation engine.
• libutils: a library of usefull C functions that I have collected over the years. This could also use some updating.
• mime-tool: a simple MIME encoder that, incidentally, can be compiled on K&R-style C compilers (often you will find a K&R C compiler shipped as the utility compiler on commercial unices like Solaris or HP-UX. If your site doesn't have a license for the vendor's development system, you probably still have the utility compiler, hidden somewhere, for arcane sys-admin tasks).
• mlog: a memory based logging facility, see my debugging rant, below, for a quick discussion of what this would be used for.
• Remotty: a shell script that simplifies the management of remote host connections through an XTerm with color themes.
• searchtree: an AVL Tree implementation with minor optimizations to improve search speed. A splay tree would have been just as good, and a hash table even better, but I wanted to write an AVL tree.
• Simple Config: a simple INI-like configuration system.
• turner: an HTML source code colorizer for C, C++ and Java. This could use a major rewrite.
• Warp: a star field simulation (AKA the Star Trek view screen effect) screen saver for Mac OS X.

• Launchy: a simple program launcher and a demonstration of how to build real applications with my GUI framework, StdGUI.
• LLN: Linux Logical Names. If you have ever used VMS then you probably know (and possibly detest) logical names. For the lucky, however: a logical name is a system defined name that acts as if it were an element of the filesystem, even though it does not actually appear in the filesystem anywhere. I have a few ideas that could use logical names on Linux, so I started working on a kernel module to implement them.
• mounty: an X Windows program that displays icons for mounted volumes in the /etc/mtab file and performs actions when these icons are clicked.
• PELE: Plugin Extensible Layout Engine. This is, more-or-less, a ripoff of Apple iWork. After reading some of the pre-release press about iWork, I thought it would be neat to write a program that allowed layout of generic data types (implemented as loadable object modules or plugins) on a page, so I started working on PELE.
• StdGUI: a library that provides a way to write GUI applications in standard C as portably, easily and compactly as you can currently write text-based programs.

I'm a big-time Linux booster, complete with a mention in an important document about open source software. Eric happens to be an old, old friend of my wife, which is how I got to read and comment on an early draft of the Cathedral and the Bazaar. By pure luck I have had a long standing interest in software engineering and was able to make a few usefull observations.

Here is a little rant of mine about debugging.

Finally, the web is a big part of my daily routine:

First, I spend a fair amount of time on Slashdot even though the utter lack of journalistic skill (fact-checking? what's that?) or basic writing ability (as far as anyone on /. knows, the words 'than' and 'then' are interchangable. The same goes for 'to' and 'too', 'there', 'their', and possibly 'they're', etc.) does get to me, I'm completely addicted. I don't post there nearly as much as I used to, but I've got a journal that I update from time to time.

I also read a fair amount of Salon, and I like Joel on Software, in spite of his close association to Microsoft.

Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves;
but I give it fair quarter, wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often
productive of good to the possessor, and to others who are within his sphere of
action: and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man
were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life.
— Benjamin Franklin

Last Modified: 31 January 2007