Re: [Caml-list] Mandelbrot renderer

[Chris Campbell <cyberdanx@gmail.com>]

On 23/11/05, David Baelde <david.baelde@gmail.com> wrote:

> People don't realize OCaml is a general purpose language: I was once
> told on an IRC chan: "OCaml ? I only know one software written in
> OCaml..." Also, people learn to write many fun real-world application
> in C, but only "boring" scientific stuff in OCaml (when they're taught
> OCaml). That's the kind of problems which was adressed.

Here's an idea for an application.  How real world it is I'm not sure.

A good podcast client for Linux with support for Bittorrent.  I tried
a few at the weekend and basically they all suck to varying degrees of
suckiness.  Usually it's the UI that prevents you from doing anything
because you can't fathom how to work it and the help that's there
isn't more than a HTML-ised About box.

Hierachical viewing of casts, queueing of downloads, all the podcasty
stuff you need.  ITunes is great, once you figure out how to add a
cast it's easy.  It has two issues a) I have to be in Windows (don't
have a mac yet) and b) downloading big casts like the SICP lectures is
a pain (too great to miss tho'); ITunes doesn't seem to allow queueing
yet (couldn't find it).  Oh and it strains the server because they
aren't Bittorrent hosted casts.

Podcasts + Bittorrent isn't a new idea, but it's a good one.  Why have
the server do all the work, when clients can lighten your load?  If
you're a popular podcaster your bandwidth costs are going to be high.

Irrespective of bt support a good client is needed. Have it handle
ITMS pod links so I can write a ffox extension to call it on those
links, and an intuitive gui and it's a contender.


Just a thought,
Chris

p.s. if anyone knows of a good one already pls let me know.  So far
the best I've found is a command line app.