Mono article tribulations
I’ve spent the better part of last night and today getting ready to start the research for my Mono article. I’ve been trying to get Mono, MonoDevelop, and XSP running on my Linux box. As you can guess, it hasn’t gone well.
A couple of months ago I wrote an article Installing Mono on SuSE Linux with Red Carpet, so the problems I’ve been having come as a surprise.Yes, the Red Carpet installation of Mono did go smoothly, unfortunately I was left with only Mono and the Mono compiler working correctly. I can’t get MonoDevelop, mod_mono, and XSP, critical pieces for my article, to work correctly. Right now I’m stuck until I can get my SuSE installation disks and install and configure everything to build this software myself. I may also end up doing the same for the 1.1.4 release of Mono itself.
It is just so frustrating. I feel like I’m sitting in a really fast car in the middle of a busy city. Every time I punch the accelerator I have to slam on the brakes to avoid crashing or running a red light. I focus on something that is not working and then make a discovery. I solve the issue and I’m ready to zoom through to the finish, but then I discover something else that isn’t working correctly. Stop, Go, Stop, Go, Stop.I’m learning stuff as I go, which is great, but I didn’t expect to take so much time preparing.
Eager to taste at least a little success, I even tried to run a simple ASP.NET application on Windows. I’m sure it won’t surprise you, but that also failed. The .NET Framework wasn’t working correctly, and now if I right click on anything in the Windows Explorer, it crashes. Another screeching stop.
In search of a community
The last week I’ve been longing to participate in a vibrant community. I see Paco interacting with and contributing to the Mono community, and it makes me wish for a community that oscillates around what I’m most interested. For Paco it is Mono, and he is a perfect fit for that community (and they are extremely fortunate to receive his focus). His success within that community is directly related to the degree he makes the Mono project his primary focus. I want that same situation. For me, it is more complicated than just picking Mono and adopting the very same relationship. Because I know that, for me, Mono is not a perfect fit.
I haven’t heard about any projects that seem right for me, but I haven’t really searched for one. It would be like a combination of the following mash-up of ideas: open source, web publishing, entrepreneurship, writing, making exciting things happen, software, process, marketing, publishing, business plans, and networking. Where I stumble is trying to find how all of these interests work together to form a project to complete something. There must be collaboration, there must be reasons to cooperate, share, push each other, and learn.So for now, I remain faithfully a community of one.
