We've Come This Far

08/31/2021

After our loss of Mæŋ Mini, we decided to mature our active projects instead of churning out big new ones. Although we now have three new projects this year, we consider none of them to be big.

Unagi was born out of our NET-Slides reconstruction project a year before its launch in Q1 2021, MLSanitizer is a small utility launched today, and the EDEN Java Commons (EDJC) API was part of QEdit for over a year before its launch today. Furthermore, we did some maintenance to J-Card Template, overhauls to our Compact Cassette for Starters and Media Compression Manual documents, and even Calc: our joke of a calculator dating back to 2013.

Topping the above are maintenances to EDEN Workstation System (EWS), Asset Management Spreadsheet (AMS)--anything that keeps us running. Earlier this month, we reinstalled all of our software infrastructure to use the updated EDEN Workstation Filesystem Hierarchy (EWFH), and restored everything in under three hours thanks to our cfg repository, automation scripts, and fast Internet.

At this point, we are overwhelmed. We have come from a single PowerPoint game nearly thirteen years ago, to a state that is uneasy to summarize. As my school life is on its last trails, so is my leisure time. I could stop now, but where to return? My produces have been embedded to my everyday life for the past half-decade, and it's really difficult to throw them all away.

So, what is next? First, we have a utility web application--codenamed Bus--on its way. However, its full potential requires a server, though investing on one opens up some possibility for online services. Second, we now have three big projects that have been patient for our attention: mJPEGfPlay, NET-Slides, and Mæŋ Mini. Finally, EDEN Online is still far from ideal. We anticipate to be quieter next year, but that's for us to find out.

Finally, we would like to announce the launch of MLSanitizer: Own an electronic paraphernalia that is no longer supported? Stumbled across a copy of its manual in ManualsLib and is distracted by their watermarks? Then this program is for you. Simply install Java--okay no one does this in 2021. In all seriousness, MLSanitizer is a command-line utility that strips most if not all of ManualsLib's watermarks in PDF files. Despite using crude heuristics, resulting PDFs are compatible with pretty much all readers (tested with five different libraries).

Information on all projects mentioned above can be found in EDEN Online, except AMS which is self-explanatory. Use the Projects page as a starting point.