The Return of the Invisible Mesh
Several years ago my main WASTE profile disappeared. The program ran, received and sent files, IMs, chat etc, but the main window just plain left the building. I mentioned it to some users on meshes I frequent and heard from other folks with the same trouble. It didn’t happen often but it was a hitch, it was real, and not being able to see the member list was a problem. People told me their windows came back after a while, as mysteriously as they vanished, so that was something to look forward to and sure enough mine did too eventually, about six months after it departed. So OK, chalk that up to the vagaries of an early release that never, ever had a single upgrade and little oddities like that are to be expected. It’s a testament to Justin Frankel’s programming talent that his WASTE file-sharing system works as well it does, considering we’re still using the very first version he released on a day in June more than five years ago, when he let it out for just a few brief moments, before AOL dragged it back in and slammed the door on it.
Last month I ran this versatile utility directly from a USB drive – without installing it first on a host computer, and remarked how well the setup works on the road. It opens normally, runs the same way, connects instantly to meshes and allows chat, IM’ing and will save downloads right back to the dongle it’s running from. The only issues I found were on a Windows 2000 ThinkPad where WASTE had never been installed: the laptop wouldn’t display the GUI’s. At first I thought it might have something to do with a lack of any initial installation or perhaps even the version of Windows, but it got me thinking and you probably know why. Sure enough the folder I pasted to the USB was copied from that box with the old vanishing interface and it was doing the same thing: launching invisibly. To see if perhaps another profile might produce better results I copied a different one and ran it on the ThinkPad. It worked. As soon as WASTE launched the interface popped up and the windows appeared. Files transferred to the thumb drive, chat and the other features functioned, all exactly as if I’d been running it off the original machine where it was first created several years before. The clone was perfect in every respect which was what I was hoping for so I simply copied several folders from a few PCs that connect to various meshes and placed them on the thumb drive. After a brief moment of C&P’ing the setups were done. Normally these profiles are time consuming to generate and a connection is needed to at least one other member of each mesh to complete the process and load current IP addresses. It’s basically impossible to do alone on the fly. Not that it’s easy to begin with. For some reason generating profiles doesn’t always work even under the best conditions – it’s the number one problem preventing WASTE from catching on beyond the very determined - but no matter how difficult it was I still had to recreate these iffy profiles from scratch each and every time if I wanted to log onto any networks while traveling. Not anymore. Now I can connect effortlessly to any mesh I belong to, including my own personal LAN, without installing or creating anything or leaving any trace on any computer I’m borrowing, making an already versatile app the king of the roam.
There was still one more thing to do however. Out of curiosity I re-ran that “invisible mesh” and tried sending IM’s and files to see if it was actually operating in some inadvertent stealth mode. It was. Even though I couldn’t launch a chat box directly, incoming messages from another host popped open a window making two-way conversations possible, and even though I couldn’t start a download, incoming transfers pushed from the host streamed directly to the thumb drive. The bottom line is that everything worked, even if I couldn’t see it.
Several years ago my main WASTE profile disappeared. The program ran, received and sent files, IMs, chat etc, but the main window just plain left the building. I mentioned it to some users on meshes I frequent and heard from other folks with the same trouble. It didn’t happen often but it was a hitch, it was real, and not being able to see the member list was a problem. People told me their windows came back after a while, as mysteriously as they vanished, so that was something to look forward to and sure enough mine did too eventually, about six months after it departed. So OK, chalk that up to the vagaries of an early release that never, ever had a single upgrade and little oddities like that are to be expected. It’s a testament to Justin Frankel’s programming talent that his WASTE file-sharing system works as well it does, considering we’re still using the very first version he released on a day in June more than five years ago, when he let it out for just a few brief moments, before AOL dragged it back in and slammed the door on it.
Last month I ran this versatile utility directly from a USB drive – without installing it first on a host computer, and remarked how well the setup works on the road. It opens normally, runs the same way, connects instantly to meshes and allows chat, IM’ing and will save downloads right back to the dongle it’s running from. The only issues I found were on a Windows 2000 ThinkPad where WASTE had never been installed: the laptop wouldn’t display the GUI’s. At first I thought it might have something to do with a lack of any initial installation or perhaps even the version of Windows, but it got me thinking and you probably know why. Sure enough the folder I pasted to the USB was copied from that box with the old vanishing interface and it was doing the same thing: launching invisibly. To see if perhaps another profile might produce better results I copied a different one and ran it on the ThinkPad. It worked. As soon as WASTE launched the interface popped up and the windows appeared. Files transferred to the thumb drive, chat and the other features functioned, all exactly as if I’d been running it off the original machine where it was first created several years before. The clone was perfect in every respect which was what I was hoping for so I simply copied several folders from a few PCs that connect to various meshes and placed them on the thumb drive. After a brief moment of C&P’ing the setups were done. Normally these profiles are time consuming to generate and a connection is needed to at least one other member of each mesh to complete the process and load current IP addresses. It’s basically impossible to do alone on the fly. Not that it’s easy to begin with. For some reason generating profiles doesn’t always work even under the best conditions – it’s the number one problem preventing WASTE from catching on beyond the very determined - but no matter how difficult it was I still had to recreate these iffy profiles from scratch each and every time if I wanted to log onto any networks while traveling. Not anymore. Now I can connect effortlessly to any mesh I belong to, including my own personal LAN, without installing or creating anything or leaving any trace on any computer I’m borrowing, making an already versatile app the king of the roam.
There was still one more thing to do however. Out of curiosity I re-ran that “invisible mesh” and tried sending IM’s and files to see if it was actually operating in some inadvertent stealth mode. It was. Even though I couldn’t launch a chat box directly, incoming messages from another host popped open a window making two-way conversations possible, and even though I couldn’t start a download, incoming transfers pushed from the host streamed directly to the thumb drive. The bottom line is that everything worked, even if I couldn’t see it.
There was and still is something spooky lurking inside that old profile, and although the original device on which it resides accommodates it somehow, the new drive will not. Yet. It’s one of those unexplained things that defines WASTE. Mysterious but workable, and always I think worth exploring. Who knows? Under certain circumstances a ghost in a machine like this could become an interesting friend.
- js.
posted by JackSpratts at 8:52 PM
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