Planet iFolder

Links for 2010-03-08 [del.icio.us]

2010-03-09T08:00:00+00:00

75 (Really) Useful JavaScript Techniques - Smashing Magazine
Here are 75 more handy JavaScript techniques that have made websites much sleeker and more interesting.

Packrati.us = Twitter + Delicious

2010-03-08T17:04:11+00:00

This site provides a simple bookmarking service. We follow your twitter feed, and whenever one of your tweets contains URLs, we add them to your delicious.com bookmarks. Optionally, bookmark URLs in @replies to you. We'll even add a delicious tag identifying the sender if you like.

via packrati.us

Links for 2010-03-06 [del.icio.us]

2010-03-07T08:00:00+00:00

CSS Border Radius
web tool for generating cross-browser rounded borders CSS code

Links for 2010-02-11 [del.icio.us]

2010-02-12T08:00:00+00:00

Eleven Django blog engines you should know | Monty Lounge Blog
Nice collection of django blogging engines. I was considering building my own at one point, but decided I was happy enough with Drupal. It's good to know there are lots of good choices out there, rather than reinventing the wheel.

JetBrains PyCharm Preview

2010-02-04T16:05:32+00:00

JetBrains PyCharm is a new Integrated Development Environment for programming using Python with the following key features:

Intelligent Editor: for Python with code completion, on-the-fly syntax and error highlighting and code inspections

Code Refactoring: including rename, introduce variable, introduce constant, pull up, push down and others

Web development with Django: with specific templates editing support, server launch from IDE and best in class support for HTML, CSS and JavaScript editing.

Project and Code Navigation: specialized project views, file structure views and quick jumping between files, classes, methods and usages

Error-Free Coding: on-the-fly code analysis, error highlighting and quick fixes

VCS Integrations: out-of-the-box support for Subversion, Perforce, Git, and CVS with changelists and merge

Cross-platform: works on WIndows, Mac OS X and Linux

via jetbrains.net

Sounds like it has a lot of promise.

Pastebot

2010-02-03T14:34:14+00:00

Pastebot is a powerful clipboard manager that stores text & images copied from your iPhone/iPod Touch. Organize, apply filters to, and copy clippings to be pasted or sent to other apps.

via tapbots.com

Fantastic clip board manager for the iPhone. The killer feature is the free companion sync Mac application that lets you push clippings back and forth from your Mac and iPhone. It basically helps turn your iPhone into a data gathering device. Check out this Macworld review and watch the video on the Pastebot website to really get a sense of how amazing this app is. Thanks to John Gruber for the find.

Links for 2010-02-02 [del.icio.us]

2010-02-03T08:00:00+00:00

calibre - About
calibre is a free and open source e-book library management application developed by users of e-books for users of e-books.

Links for 2010-01-30 [del.icio.us]

2010-01-31T08:00:00+00:00

Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation

Introducing: Readability 1.5

2010-01-30T21:54:41+00:00

Today, we’re excited to announce an important update: Readability 1.5. Some of the changes are more subtle than others. We’ve been listening to your feedback and we’re working to improve Readability for everyone.

via blog.arc90.com

Readability is a simple tool that makes reading on the Web more enjoyable by removing the clutter around what you're reading. It's a bookmarklet you click that formats a web page so it is much more enjoyable to read. If you haven't checked it out yet, you really should.

Links for 2010-01-24 [del.icio.us]

2010-01-25T08:00:00+00:00

Lighthead - Caffeine
Caffeine is a tiny program that puts an icon in the right side of your menu bar. Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again to go back. Right-click (or ⌘-click) the icon to show the menu.

Links for 2010-01-17 [del.icio.us]

2010-01-18T08:00:00+00:00

Khan Academy
The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere. We have 1000+ videos on YouTube covering everything from basic arithmetic and algebra to differential equations, physics, chemistry, biology and finance

Free electronic copy of Multiagent Systems textbook

2010-01-08T15:37:45+00:00

We recognize that an electronic copy offers benefits that cannot be realized in print, such as hyperlinks, full-text searching, use of PDF screen captures in lecture slides, and access from multiple locations. Thus, on this page we provide a free electronic copy of Multiagent Systems. You are invited to use it without restriction for screen viewing, but are requested to print it only under one of the following circumstances:

You live in a place that does not offer you access to the physical book;

The cost of the book is prohibitive for you;

You need only one or two chapters.

via masfoundations.org

Posted via web from Rogue Wolves

Testing out Posterous

2010-01-07T22:19:07+00:00

I was considering building a simple app to post links to multiple places, then I discovered Posterous. Looks very much like what I wanted.

Posted via email from roguewolves's posterous

Only one squirrel can say it as it is…

2009-12-16T16:42:01+00:00

If you can’t see the video above, click here

Misadventures with Mac and Mozy

2009-12-11T07:19:43+00:00

First, a confession. This year I became a Mac fanboy. Yes, it's true. I purchased my first Mac in June. It is a 17" MacBook Pro with all the bells and whistles — and I love it! 8 GB of RAM. 500 GB of disk space. A BSD shell. iPhoto. Parallels with Windows 7, Windows XP, and Ubuntu Linux 9.04. Ah, Chirstmas!

Then two weeks ago I was greeted by a flashing question mark when I booted up. Okay, this is a Mac, it shouldn't be too bad. Hah! I did a quick search and found out that I needed to run the disk utility from the OS disk. So far, so good. The disk utility tells me, all sweet like, "you have an invalid b-tree node size." Okay, fix it. Now without compassion, "you must repartition your hard drive." What? Surely, you jest. Knowing this couldn't be right, I called the experts at Apple. They were on the side of the disk utilities, and had just as much sympathy.

I am not a complete idiot, I have been backing up my data on Mozy for the last five months. About 170 GB of data. My photos and music are safe . . . I think. I reinstalled the Mozy client and commanded it to restore my data. With all speed of children at work, Mozy began to download my files. Relax. Mozy, you can have the night; I am going to sleep with dreams of my data flowing back to my computer.

Ah, it wasn't meant to be. Mozy, knowing better than me, started a new backup, which of course, crashed the restore. Lesson learned. Bad Mozy. Preferences. Automatic backup off. Good to go again. No! Mozy hung three files into the restore. Argh! I started the restore again. No! This time, to bring variation to my life, Mozy was unable to keep a connection with it's all knowing servers and gave up — completely.

So, I went the rounds with Mozy five or six times with similar results each time. I even said pretty please and asked it for just a few files — "no soup for you!" I was on the ropes, but I remembered the good people at Mozy had a second option for restoring. Through the web. I was almost out for the count when I had to wait thirty minutes just to see my files so I could select which ones I wanted to download. Hanging in their, I selected the files to download and . . . nothing.

The next morning I received a lovely email saying my files were ready to be downloaded. Awesome.

When I returned to the website, I was greeted with 119 individual downloads. Breath... Breath... Breath... Okay. I started downloading and combining the files. Yet again, Mozy, protecting me from myself, made all of the directories read-only.

So here I sit, downloading files, pondering life, changing permissions, and . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . KO.

If you know where I went wrong, first, I hate you. Second, I would love to know. Thank you.

Everything but the Kitchen Sink

2009-12-07T19:00:59+00:00

Transforming data is hard. When I joined my current company, there were stupendous amounts of Perl/PHP/Bash/<insert random programming language here> scripts that would run on a cron job and do magic things to our data. They’d create reports, they’d tell the purchasers when we were running out of stock, they’d synchronise data between our Frontend and backend databases, they’d collect, they’d collate, they’d do everything and anything.

Except, with all these scripts, in all these random languages, written by a multitude of previous developers (at different skill levels), they weren’t particularly maintainable (and sometimes, they weren’t particularly readable or understandable either – imagine a 6000 line perl script that pretty much ran different permutations of the same data over and over again)

Enter Pentaho, and specifically it’s “Kettle” project. (since renamed “Pentaho Data Integration”), a tool that lets you manipulate your data in pretty much any way you can imagine, in the simplest and easiest way imaginable.

That’s right, it’s a GUI for data manipulation.

I know a lot of you are probably sceptical right now. The first time I ever saw this was when a previous boss of mine put it forward as a potential solution for one of our problems (getting our orders from the front end database down to the office/warehouse). I saw it, and I thought “GUI? Nah, that’s not how real programmers do things!”, so after the development team put forward another proposal to solve this, and it got accepted, I thought I’d never see the thing again.

That was until my current boss started playing with it, trying to work out what it was doing so that he could get these evil GUI based scripts into something manageable, like nice, pretty code. Thing s, when my boss plays with things that he doesn’t know about, he tends to read up, research, and, 9 times out of 10, change his mind.

We wiped the previous server (it was rather noisy! We’re glad it’s no longer switched on!) and set up a new server to house our “BI platform”. Starting off with a few scripts, my boss learnt to love this tool, and then, as I’m his “2nd in command” (aka general lackey) – started making me learn how to use it.

Again, I was sceptical, I didn’t want to learn, and I put up resistance, but my boss was going away for nearly a month, and by this time, a few of our key business processes relied on Kettle, so, grudgingly, I sat down, and started to learn.

You may be wondering now, why I started off this story talking about all those magical and wonderful scripts that no one seemed to know the inner workings of. These scripts, as I’ve already mentioned were unwieldy, and at times, god-damned awful. The plan was to move them to the BI system (as my boss had been doing already).

I like to think of Kettle as a bridge between the process-flow diagram, and the code. I started converting these scripts, and I was astonished by the fact that most of the conversions I was doing was converting a long perl script into 3 or 4 “Integration steps”

I’m totally besotted with this program now. Any time I have to do data manipulation, I turn to it. I can’t describe how (once you’ve got used to it’s quirks) easy it is to use, how simple it is, and how much it just makes sense. Best of all, most of those evil scripts are gone now, and replaced with “pretty” diagrams that do the work for you.

If you have to play with large data sets on a regular basis, I urge you to try it out. You can buy me a beer for reccommending it next time you see me at $conference.

SSH Host Completion – zsh Stylee

2009-12-06T11:49:59+00:00

Ok, so recently, Richard Johnson and Michael Lustfield blogged about tab completion for SSH hosts.

I’m an avid user of zsh, and have my own way of doing this (liberally stolen from Daniel Silverstone).

Now, this requires a little setup to start with, as some Linux Distributions have a habit of creating “hashed” known_hosts files. So, what I’ve done, is before I ever SSH into a host, I add the following line to my ~/.ssh/config

HashKnownHosts no

From here, I can then add the following line to my ~/.zshrc

zstyle -e ':completion::*:*:*:hosts' hosts 'reply=(${=${${(f)"$(cat {/etc/ssh_,~/.ssh/known_}hosts(|2)(N) /dev/null)"}%%[# ]*}//,/ })'

Now, when I try and ssh into a host, I can use tab completion to complete any host I’ve previously ssh’d into and any new hosts I ssh into get automatically added to the list

(UK) The Gadget Show – PC vs Mac

2009-11-30T22:21:58+00:00

Today, an episode of “The Gadget Show” aired in which they compared PC and Mac to put on their “wall of fame”.

I was shocked that there was no mention of Linux at all in their rundown.

Here is the email I just sent to them in response to the show:-

Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:16:28 +0000
From: Martin Meredith <mez AT debian DOT org>
To: gadget.show AT northonetv DOT com
Subject: PC vs Mac – Yes, you mention windows

But both PC’s and Mac’s have the ability to run a little thing called “Linux”

Linux is the base of an operating system that’s been around for years, often
making innovations BEFORE Windows or Mac are able to.

It’s an Operating system that’s written by the people, for the people, which
shows in the fact that there are hundreds (if not thousands) of distributions
available to download and use – for FREE!!!!

A large motive behind the Linux movement is the fact that it’s completely free.
Both in the sense of Free Speech, and in the sense of Free Beer. You don’t have to pay for it, and you can do what you like with it.

Compare the above to a Mac. With a mac, you’re limited to the hardware you can use, you’re limited in the functionality, etc etc. Comparing to Windows, you can see the benefit of the price. Constantly upgrading windows can cost a LOT of money.

Ok, Linux does have it’s flaws. Some hardware isn’t supported correctly, and a lot of the software you’ll find on the shelves of your local shop probably won’t work with it. But, nowadays, with the advent of the iPhone, and to a lesser extent, Android based Mobile Phones, people are coming to expect easily available software.

Enter the package Manager. Most distributions of Linux now offer an easy way to find and install applications, and some go a step further and give you an application that makes life even easier (See attached screenshot)

Linux also has the benefit that, like the Mac, the fact that it’s not Windows,
and something that 90%+ of people use, it’s not a target for Viruses. Add that
to the fact that it has Least Privileged Access built in (Think Windows Vista
“are you sure that you want to run this program as an admin?”), and has done
since the very beginning, and it makes it one of the most secure operating
systems you can find.

Linux has come along in leaps and bounds in recent years, and is surely a
competitor for any operating system out there. While it may be unfamiliar,
with the advent of new technology, it’s perfectly placed. This has been shown
by the fact that until Microsoft made a sly move to relicence Windows XP for
netbooks, it was hard to find a netbook with anything but a Linux based OS on it (and all those who tried out my eeePC 701 when it was new and shiny out of the box tended to prefer what was on that than Windows!)

–
Regards,
Martin Meredith

Freelance Writer for Future Publishing
Debian Developer – http://www.debian.org/
Ubuntu Developer – http://www.ubuntu.com/
Deputy IT Manager for Mobile Fun Ltd. – http://www.mobilefun.co.uk/

Things that make me angry …

2009-11-09T15:28:27+00:00

Christmas Songs on the Radio
64-bit Flash Support (edit: or lack thereof)
Blog posts discouraging people from contributing to Debian

My Hobby…

2009-10-12T19:24:59+00:00

Freaking out the freaks on Omegle.

Call for… stickers

2009-10-09T19:09:58+00:00

Random plea for free stuff.

If anyone out there has any geeky stickers (or anything a bit random for a sticker) lying around, please send them to me!

I’d rather not put my address on the intarwebs, so please feel free to email me on martin AT sourceguru DOT net if you have something to send me, and I will happily send you out a Stamped Addressed Envelope.

The stickers will be put to good use decorating my laptop

Edit:-

I’ve just realised that sending a SASE to another country really doesn’t work particularly well, different countries use different stamps after all!!!!
I’m trying to think up a solution, but please let it be known that I am in the U.K., so if you’re outside and want to send me stickers, you may have to help me come up with a solution for getting round the whole stamp thing!

Most Awesome Warranty Ever!

2009-10-09T13:07:15+00:00

If this product should fail in your lifetime, we will replace it at no charge. If the proeducts is damaged by aggressive music listeners sliding a rail, sliding down the emergency ramp of your aircraft, slammed in your locker, slammed in your car door, run over by a car, running into a wall, getting run out of town, mountain biking, road biking, sky diving, beating your boyfriend unmercifully, getting beat down by the man, blown up in an accidental experimentation with flammable substances or damaged in any other every day experience, it means you are living your life the way we want our product used! In these, or any other damaging events, we will replace the product for a 50% discount from retail.

Skullcandy rock! – I’m loving my new headphones

Geeky Lights

2009-10-03T18:33:12+00:00

I’m an avid reader, and normally curl up in bed at the end of a long day with a book. However, since I’ve been in my current flat, I’ve had a bit of a problem, as I don’t like to leave a light on while I’m sleeping.

So, seeing as my bed is at the opposite end of the room than my light switch, and I also tend to sleep on the side furthest from the light switch, my night-time habit would be something like this:-

Turn on light
Walk to other side of room.
Walk round bed
Turn on bedside lamp
Walk back around bed
Walk back to light switch
Turn off light
Walk back to bed, and around it
Get into bed
Read
Turn off bedside lamp
Sleep

Not exactly good when you’ve had a hard days work, and just want to curl up and read a book until you fall asleep.

On Wednesday however, I stumbled across a range of products on the net, and ordered a remote control light switch, and also a remote to go with it. My bedtime arrangements are now:-

Turn on light
Walk to bed
Get into bed
Read
Turn off light with remote control
Sleep

A lot more easier!

Have been playing with the remote from my office, and I think that if I were to order more switches, I’d be able to turn on/off all the lights in my flat from my desk.

Another neat feature about these lights? They can be programmed to use any button on any remote control!

Oh, and also, The Birmingham Jam is going pretty well!

I’m really enjoying Karmic

2009-10-02T20:33:42+00:00

Today, I reinstalled my laptop to use a fresh install of Karmic.

My laptop’s one of those annoying ones that have problems, however, it seems Karmic has fixed a fair chunk of those. My wireless now works (though still only with WPA networks for some reason), I no longer have to boot with “nolapic_timer” (urgh!) and those annoying little niggles have gone. Also, Karmic is looking pretty swish. It’s new notification icons are stylish and minimal, and the xsplash looks good. Also, I’ve noticed that shut down time is drastically reduced! (2 seconds vs my old 10-15 seconds).
Boot time isn’t amazing, but it’s pretty nippy.

I’m lovin it.

Dear Lazyweb…

2009-09-28T15:59:35+00:00

Is there a decent dotfile manager packaged in Ubuntu/Debian? I need something that’ll let me have a repository of my dotfiles and manage them easily amongst multiple locations.

I’ve seen a lot of homebrew implementations of something like this, I’m just wondering if there’s something that’s worth using already out there!

Ubuntu Global Jam – Birmingham (UK)

2009-09-20T21:40:01+00:00

The Birmingham Bug Jammers at the Last event

The Ubuntu Global Bug Jam is just around the corner, and once again, the kind folks at the Linux Emporium have kindly offered the use of their offices to the Ubuntu UK team.

Last time, we focused on bugs, and this time it’s only slightly different. Instead of it being a “Bug Jam” – it’s just going to be a “Jam”. There will be people on hand to talk to about Bug Triaging, packaging, translating (and I hope we’ll get the whole of Ubuntu translated into English by the end of the Jam), and anything else you can think of.

So, if you’re interested in helping make Ubuntu a better distro, and live in (or can travel to) the Birmingham Area in the UK, then you’re welcome to come along.

The Jam is on the 2nd-4th October, and we’ll be around on all three days. If you need more info, please feel free to email me on <mez AT ubuntu DOT com>. Last year we had a great time, with refreshments (including beer) provided. Juggling penguins, and one person sleeping underneath the conference room table overnight. Hopefully we’ll also have the live Video Streams up and running again for anyone who can’t make it (or other Ubuntu Jams) to join in with!

You can also find some blog posts about our last bug jam

Derren Brown: My take

2009-09-18T22:04:33+00:00

So, anyone watching the show was actually pretty much told (although indirectly) how it was done.

(Potential spoilers – see full post for my take)

Ok, the image with the flashing and the stuff, pretty noticable. From what I know of the subject, it was meant to be. What noone seems to have mentioned was the fact that as it flashed, there was a brief tone.

I believe that the image wasn’t meant to actually be “subliminal” as he mentioned, “subliminal” images are “invisible”. It was meant to be noticed, but only to assosciate the tone with the image.

I also feel that the video did play a part. From what I can tell, an image (or text) was over/underlayed over the image of the rotating (fuzzy) lines, but had a very high transparency. This meant, that like the UV pen, you couldn’t pick up the image conciously, but you could unconciously. (UV pens leave a small residue behind that makes visible light reflect slightly differently. Try it, get a UV pen and write on a shiny surface. (like the back of a playing card). Looking head on at it, you don’t notice, but if you tilt the card, you can see the writing at some angles – the mind subconciously picks this up).

Tie this in with things like the wording used before the video, the trailers, and hidden wording/images throughout the show, and you have your whole thing. No “sublimilal” messages were used, but there were many uses of whatever that term that he used was (SVP?)

Stepping down from the Ubuntu IRC Team

2009-09-03T20:24:22+00:00

After long deliberation (a good few months!), I today came to the decision that I no longer felt that I could be part of the Ubuntu IRC Team.

I have felt for a long time that the Ubuntu IRC team has become an elitist crowd, with a very cliquey inner circle, and those who are not in the inner circle being treated on multiple levels like second class citizens.

There are a lot of things that have pushed me to make this decision, and I’ve not made it lightly. I’ve voiced my concerns to the IRC Council previously, (via individual emails), and had no response. I don’t see the situation getting any better. In fact, more and more, I see it getting worse.

I know that I’m not the only person who’s thinking this way, though I may be one of the only ones that feels that I need to lay down my cinnamon roll. I’ve discussed these issues on multiple occassions with various members of the community (both in and out of the team), and with people linked to the Ubuntu IRC community in one way or another (Debian Developers, Freenode Staff, etc etc).

There are also other people who’ve come out of the woodwork after I posted my resignation. Within minutes of doing so, one member forwarded my mail onto the community council, and another replied with his thoughts and feelings regarding the matter. I’m glad to see that there are other people out there who’ve seen what I’ve seen, and like me, also dislike it.

I will however, retain my @ in #ubuntu-uk. This is a channel I participate regularly in, and the ops there are chosen by the LoCo Team, rather than the IRC council.

It’s nice to see young people getting into Open Source

2009-07-12T14:23:46+00:00

I live in one of the roughest areas of Birmingham, in the UK. Today I was walking from my flat to go and visit my mother, and as I was turning a corner, a kid of about 10 years old started to give me some funny looks as he went past me.

“Oh Great” I thought, thinking that I’d have some cocky little kid trying to cause trouble.

At the time, I was wearing a T-Shirt that I’d gotten while I was at EuroPython, with the Google logo on the breast, and “Python – Programming the way Guido indented it” across the back.

The kid asked me whether I worked for Google. Still thinking that he was going to try and start causing trouble, I answered no, and walked on. It was great to hear afterwards though “You use Python? I’m learning Python”

Good to see that even amongst the rough, there are some people out there starting young in the Open Source world.

Good luck to you kid, whoever you were!

EuroPython 2009

2009-07-04T10:47:58+00:00

So, for most of the last week, I’ve been at EuroPython 2009. The conference was amazing, even if I am still completely shattered.

A lot of people who know me have asked why I went to EuroPython. I know at least one person made the comment “But you’re a PHP Hacker (hiss)”. Yes. I’m a PHP hacker by trade, but I’ve been trying to teach myself Python over the last few months, and I’ve really been enjoying it. I’ve not done much of great interest, but I’ve found that Django is a pretty awesome tool, and lets me build stuff like my Video Site with minimal effort.

Anyway, back to the conference. I got involved pretty simply because I’m a local, and know most of the organisers from my Local LUG. I’m glad I did get involved in it though. I enjoyed it (though, until I got home from it, I hadn’t had time to realise I’d enjoyed it!).

Day 1

I arrived at the conservatoire at about 7:30 am. I was half asleep, and didn’t really know what was going on. I found the registration desk, got my badge, and buggered off to the crew room to get changed into my lovely blue shirt, and then I started off helping set some stuff up (projectors and such)

Knowing that I’d previously lost my Bank Card, and that I’d need cash, I scarpered pretty quickly to the bank, to go get some money for the week. I headed back to the conference for about 10, and then wandered aimlessly around looking at the different stalls. I hadn’t volunteered to do anything till 11:30.

At about 11:15, I headed to the Adrian Boult hall to get ready and Mic up the first speaker I had to work with. This was Simon Willison, talking about CrowdSourcing with Django. A pretty cool talk, which was kind of interesting to me after listening to Matthew Somerville’s talk at my local LUG the month before.

Next up was the talk that had been advertised in all the toilets around the venue. I’ve no idea why it was advertised in the toilets, and I didn’t really watch that much of the talk. The speaker had wanted a screen with IRC in for the talk, and this was where the first major fail came in. Chris Swift’s laptop didn’t like the projector, so I had to dash up and replace it with mine. Unfortunately, for some reason, my laptop didn’t want to work with the projector under Ubuntu, but happily worked with it under vista, so I loaded that up, loaded up putty, and SSH’d into my irssi session. Anyone who saw this will probably agree that I need to be in less IRC channels!

Lunchtime next. I quickly ran off to McDonalds to grab some food (not wanting to have to stand in the long queue!) and headed back to set my laptop up with the projector for the big Twitter screen, which people seemed to enjoy (espescially Fiona!).

After lunch was the first Keynote from Cory Doctorow, who I’ve already mentioned before, is one of my favourite authors. Cory managed to give us a dark perspective on where life in the digital age could be going, and a rallying cry for us to fight against that (though surely,this is reminiscent of M1k3y?? I wonder if the DHS will be after Cory now!). I also managed to snag a copy of “Little Brother”, which Cory asked that we email a copy of the ebook to people after we’d read it. I’ll one up that, and tell you that you should go read it (espescially if you saw his talk!) If you want to be emailed a copy, please leave a comment and I’ll add you to the list I’ll be sending it to!

It was about this point that I started wanting to get onto IRC and chat to people. Unfortunately, my laptop is a right dodgy thing, and doesn’t like using wireless of any kind. Luckily, I had my E71 to hand, and so managed to get online with that (and it shocked me how easy it was to set up in Ubuntu). I ended up using this as my primary means to access the net throughout the conference. I just wish I’d had my E71 Desktop Charger with me, as I’d then have been able to charge my phone via USB at the same time! Unfortunately, it meant that I had to spend my time at the hotel flicking and changing between the charger for my phone and my laptop to try and keep them both going (why a hotel room only has one plug socket, I don’t know!)

Next up was “Mashing up the Guardian” and “Flickr for Formulas”. .. the second talk I don’t actually remember any of. But the first one was pretty interesting. I thought during it “Oh, I could link that up to twitter and generate a personal news feed based upon what they were twittering about. Unfortunately, the last few slides was showing someone who’d done exactly that. I guess my ideas aren’t that original!

Off to the Australian bar for the social, where I got rather tipsy, and chatted to some very cool people (thanks for the link to the Biltong seller Brad!)

Day 2

Bruce Eckel started the day off with the keynote. I was half asleep during this, having been out for most of the day, but I do remember that there were some pretty amusing pictures, and some good commentary. I also enjoyed the talk about unconferences, which led me to thoughts about possibly doing something similar for FizzPOP.

The day dwindled away with me running round until Bea’s talk “We need to fail, and we need to fail fast” – a very good insight into Agile Methodology (some of which we should probably adopt at work!). First barefoot presentation I’ve seen. Bea’s a very good speaker though, you can tell she has a lot of passion about what she’s talking about.

Next was a caged deathmatch. I didn’t really know much about Unit Testing in Python, being a bit of a n00b and all, but the talk was interesting nontheless. Even if I did end up running up and down the stairs like a trained monkey (ah well, I needed the exercise anyway!)

Next Keynote: Bletchley Park. I found this talk had some interesting content, but it’s delivery was a bit dry.

Then it was time for the GPG Keysigning. I’d left my ID in the hotel. What an idiot!

Lightning talks were next, followed by another keynote, followed by a spectacular fail trying to get Guido up on the big screen (10 second delays, him not hearing anything, and then the laptop battery running out). Alex took it in his stride though, the bow with a flourish was certainly amusing!

Off to the conference dinner. Good food, good conversation, good talk.

Day 3

I’m surprised I made it in. I was tired. Too much running around.

Tobias started off the day with a short talk on OSS, BSS, and Python, and then I went to the “Clean Code Challenge” talk, which was interesting, though I’m not too sure about the actual coding bit of it. There were a few things in the talk that I wish has been delivered to my bosses, but I’m not too sure the example “Clean Code” that was meant to be pythonised was the best code to work with.

Another Keynote, lots more lightning talks, and then a prize draw. I didn’t win anything, but I enjoyed myself.

After that, there was a “secret” organisers meal at the Hyatt Hotel. Good food and good conversation again.

And that was it, I headed home, and slept for 16 hours!

Thanks to everyone who made EuroPython a success. All the organisers, all the speakers, and all the delegates.

Though hopefully more people will help out next time. I don’t think Ciaran got to sit down for more than 5 seconds during the day!

Linux Format: Security: Protect your server

2009-06-24T21:11:24+00:00

For all those who can, I’d urge you to pick up a copy of Linux Format tomorrow.

A couple of months ago, I pitched an article to the editor of Linux Format and it was accepted. Tomorrow, the magazine will be on the shelf. While I’ve already seen the PDF for the article, I’m going to be up early to make sure I can get my hands on the physical copy. For some reason, it won’t seem real until I can run the paper through my fingers and smell the ink.

Here’s a sneak preview:-

Way back in the early days of dial-up, the internet mostly contained library catalogues, military secrets, and students’ Dungeons and Dragons spec sheets. Now there are websites for people, their pets, their friends and family, and their businesses. However, while most people are happy to use a free hosting provider, or to pay a company to host their websites for them, the more dedicated web master tends to plump up for a dedicated server, or a Virtual Private Server (VPS).

Running your own server means that you have to be aware of the multitude of potential security issues you’re exposed to on the internet, though. These days, most home computers have a firewall in place, or connect through a router that can protect them from the dangers lurking on the web. If you own a server, you’ll still need a firewall, but there’s much more you can do to be safe online and we’ll show you how.

I hope that anyone who reads the article in full will find it useful, and please, do send me feedback if you’ve read it!

The big question now is, what do I pitch for my next article?

Floss and Art

2009-06-17T22:06:17+00:00

So, recently (the last couple of months), I’ve been involved with the Birmingham Hackspace (aka FizzPop), and I’ve found it a great community to be part of. For those who aren’t in the know, a HackSpace is a place where a group of people interested in Hacking (and that’s not the bad sense of the word, nor just the coding sense of the word – there’s a lot of Hardware hacking going on ) can get together, share a space, share knowledge, and come up with some mad and cool inventions!

Anyway, one of the group’s main leaders, Antonio Roberts is very very arty, but is also pretty much your classic computer geek too. It’s been interesting talking to him of late regarding his journey into the FLOSS world, and how he’s coping with that, and integrating it into his artwork.

For all those interested, he’s doing a talk at the Birmingham LUG tomorrow about FLOSS and the art community tomorrow (Thursday 18th June), and you’ll be able to watch his talk Live on the internet. The talk is starting at approximately 7:30 UK time. You’ll also be able to interact with us on IRC, we’re on the Freenode Network, in the channel #sblug, and for those of you who miss it, a video of the talk will be available online at some point after the talk on my Video site. (where you can also find videos of past talks, including Dave Walker’s talk about Mythbuntu, and Scott James Remnant’s talk about Upstart)

Pagerank mystifies me…

2009-06-15T18:56:41+00:00

So, because of my work for an online Mobile Phone Accessories Site – I recently installed a Pagerank Plugin for Firefox.

I was pleasantly surprised when I loaded up my blog and found that I had a PageRank of 5. I’ve never done any “SEO” work on my site, and until recently, it was a bog-standard wordpress installation. (now I have a theme, and I point at feedburner, as I was curious about statistics)

It’s kind of nice to know that a simple blog can achieve a decent PageRank, without actually doing anything special

I think what mystifies me more, however, is the fact that googling for my name brings up my site within the first page of results, even though my name isn’t mentioned anywhere on the site (I guess I can blame the planets for that though!)

I’ve got to admit, I’m quite happy that even though a famous author shares my name, I’m still on the first page of results in Google.

VB.Net just doesn’t cut the mustard for me

2009-06-13T00:47:43+00:00

So, this morning (or yesterday morning, as it is now!), my attention got drawn to Wolfgang’s post regarding VB.Net. While I understand his point, I’m not too sure whether I agree with it in it’s entirity.

When I first started programming, I learnt how to write Basic. I don’t mean Basic as it stands nowadays, but Basic as it was back then (or should that be BASIC?). I learnt to code while I was wheelchair bound, as my father thought it’d be something interesting for me to do. It taught me the basics of programming, and I stemmed from there, moving on to learn Perl, then PHP, then C, etc etc etc.

The first time I ever wrote an application for a Modern computer, I wrote it in Visual Basic. I loved it. It was so simple to use, and I could use everything I’d learnt (apart from stuff like Music Envelopes etc etc) with ease in it.

Since then however, the world of programming has moved on. People have discovered Object Oriented programming, and found new and better ways of describing the data structures and logic behind an application. I have also moved on, I no longer write my own code in Visual Basic. I’ll generally use a tool more suited to the task.

I do, however, have to maintain some VB.Net code. In fact, it’s the code that Wolfgang mentions in his article. I can fully understand why the original subject’s response was “Urgh!” – the code is horrid.

I don’t neccesarily, however, think that this is because of the coders themselves. While this may have contributed (I’ve had many a “WTF” moment) – I think that the main problem behind it is the fact that it’s an Object Oriented design written in a language that’s tried to shoehorn Object Orientation into it’s core functionality, where the core functionality should probably never have had something like that done to it. It sits in my mind like some bad genetic experience resulting in some sort of mutated behemoth.

VB.Net, to me, just seems like a poorly made implementation of something it was never originally designed for. Wolfgang mentions that the ease of use of the Basic Language allows a user to start working without having to dive straight into OO programming, as would be forced onto you using something like C#, and in a way, I agree. The thing is, that Basic, as Wolfgang rightly said, is meant for beginners, after all, it was originally an acronym. “Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code”. This, in my opinion, is where it should stay. Basic is great for beginners, and VB6 was amazing. But, the advent of VB.Net means that programmers are going to start writing OO code in Basic, something it was never designed for, and to that end, fall into pitfalls and misconceptions where they have been led to believe that the VB.Net way of doing something is the de-facto standard. When they come to start working in another language, they have to re-learn things from scratch. If their experience is in a corporate environment, then their skills are only transferrable to something also written in VB.Net, and rarely anything else.

Basic is for beginners, it was never designed for the more complex stuff, which should probably be left to languages that were designed to handle it.

Dear Lazyweb

2009-06-08T07:29:25+00:00

I’m looking for a “Soundboard” application for Linux (preferably that works with Jack)

Does anyone know of one?

I’m impressed

2009-06-07T15:53:11+00:00

My latest blog post about PPA Keys has had a few comments already. Having just returned from visiting my parents, I’ve noticed an email asking me to approve a Pingback.

The pingback was to a Portuguese site which had taken my post and written it into a tutorial.

I’ve got to say, my portuguese may not be up to scratch, but it’s obvious that this is a well written tutorial. I’m very impressed by this site, and the way that they’ve written, and illustrated this tutorial.

All I can say is, great site Claudio! Keep up the good work! Something like this site in English would be an asset to the ubuntu community. It’s well thought out, and well written

Automated PPA GPG Keys

2009-06-07T00:29:03+00:00

After reading Alan Pope’s recent post on installing GPG keys for PPAs easily, I thought I’d have a bit of a hack around.

Personally, I regularly add PPAs to my system, whether it be for Chromium Daily Builds, Bazaar, Gwibber, or anything else. I’ve found the most annoying thing is the installation of the GPG keys.

Now, I wouldn’t reccomend this for everyone, but, for some, it might be exactly what you’ve been looking for.

Here’s what I did:-

Firstly, I saved the Script that Alan linked to as /usr/local/bin/ppakeys and chmod’d it to 755. I then created a new file, “/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/05ppa” containing the following line

APT::Update::Pre-Invoke { "if [ -x /usr/local/bin/ppakeys ]; then /usr/local/bin/ppakeys; fi"; };

Now, every time I do a “sudo apt-get update” – it’ll check for new keys that I need, and install them as neccessary.

Magic!

<edit> Please make sure the quotes are correct if you copy and paste this!</edit>

CAMBIO

2009-06-01T21:19:20+00:00

EL NUEVO SITIO ES: www.linuxveracruz.com

This whole GPG/PGP thing

2009-05-10T18:00:34+00:00

So, SHA-1 has potential exploits, but you know what? I only use it for signing plain text things. Email, change files… I’ve no reason to use it for encryption, as I don’t encrypt things

Surely, if anyone is going to make something that collides with a valid signature of mine, it’s going to either a) be noticable to the person reading it (random characters in an email?) or b) not be processable by whatever automated sytem is using it.

I’ve yet to hear of any exploit that could affect the way I use SHA-1 in a meaningful way. Ok, yes, I’m not going to be using it to hash passwords in future (well, GPG uses it to hash passwords, but generally, to be able to crack that, someone would have to have my secret key anyway, which I would count as being compromised!)

If someone can give me a real world example of how this can be used against me, I might go out of my way to replace my key, but for now, I don’t see the need. Ok, I might take the next time I meet up with a fellow Debian Developer as a chance to replace my key, but I’m not going to go out of my way to do so (as I had to for getting my key signed by my first Debian/Ubuntu Developer in the first place)

Trying KDE again

2009-04-19T20:30:11+00:00

When Kubuntu switched to KDE4 as it’s main desktop, I was disheartened. KDE 4, at the time was just, well, pretty unusable for me. It kept crashing, I couldn’t do the things that I wanted to, and I spent more time fighting with KDE than I did actually doing work. After about a week, I’d had enough, and I switched to Gnome.

Now, a lot of people are probably going to respond to this with Gnome vs KDE flames, but let me explain my viewpoint on the whole “Desktop Environment” war

I prefer KDE, but if a desktop will let me do the work I need to do without getting in my way and causing issues, then I can learn to use it.

The above is possibly the reason that I can get along ok with Windows XP, but if I have to use Vista, I’ll end up wanting to throw the machine out of the window.

So, for possibly the last year or so (I’m not too sure on the timescale!) I’ve been using Gnome in Ubuntu, and I must say, I’ve liked it. the fact that I can login, and instantly get access to my servers without having to type in my SSH key password (yes, insecure I know!), and that everything seems to integrate in a nice way, well.. it’s been fun.

But still, my heart lies with KDE, and I’ve been flipping back to it to see how KDE4 is coming along on a regular basis.

So far, I’ve seen it gradually improving, and well, it looks damned sexy to be honest, but there were a few things that I felt it was missing. The ability to have multiple rows of apps on the task switcher was a big one for me. I generally have a lot of windows open, and I don’t like the “Grouping” functionality. So when I get more than a few apps open, I could only see the icons. That’s been fixed in KDE4.2, and it does it in a nicer way than Gnome does it (only switching to two rows once there are a certain amount of windows open.

Next on the list is the whole password management thing. Gnome does a GREAT job at this. I login, and it unlocks the default keyring, sets up the SSH agent, adds my key, unlocking it from the keyring, and I don’t have to do anything but login with my normal user and password (though I intend to switch that to biometric login once I can be bothered to setup the fingerprint reader).

I’ve fixed that little issue (well, for SSH) by setting up an autostart script using ksshaskpass to add my SSH key when I login.

So far, KDE seems pretty usable for me now, but then, I’m quite happy to plod along on my Laptop and try things out. I’m feeling a bit lost with all the new functionality, and wishing that the Ubuntu Gnome Notifications (from pidgin, which I use as my IM client) didn’t look so ugly in the new sexy KDE Desktop (in fact, if anyone knows a way to get pidgin to use the Jaunty style notifications in KDE, let me know, as they’d fit in quite well under the new KDE look ) – I’d like to see some sort of common ground for notifications across the desktops, but who knows when that’s going to happen!

I’ll also try using it at work, if I can use it there without it getting in the way, then I will happily switch back permanently, but that’s the ultimate test.

I’m pretty sure that KDE 4 will be usable for me soon, and I’ll let you know if that’s now

My Boss, with a little help, starts the conversion to Linux

2009-04-09T20:06:55+00:00

Ok, so at work, pretty much the whole company uses Windows, of some sort. The web team, however, are pretty adamant that they use the best tools available for them, and we use Ubuntu because of this (because it’s the easiest option that we all have the same distro, and as long as it’s Linux, we don’t mind)

Anyway, at the moment we’re working through the process of moving all our internal business applications from Visual Basic.NET (urgh!) to PHP + a web based app. The “Product Owner” for this is one of the bosses, who currently uses Windows Vista.

He has, however, seen us all using Ubuntu and it’s got him interested in using it. He’s said that he wants to try using Ubuntu, and see whether he can get his work done on that, and slowly transition to it, as obviously, he needs to be able to use Windows for the .NET stuff (which sadly, doesn’t work well under WINE).

So, we set him up a Virtual Machine, and he got to grips with what he was doing, great. Except for the fact that he had to allocate memory to it, switching back and forth between windows and Ubuntu was a pain. He eventually gave up on this idea, and got a spare machine, a spare monitor, and set it up next to his machine.

Still, however, it was a bit of a pain, he’d have to switch position on his desk, start using a different keyboard and mouse, and i was all a bit of hassle.

Recently, we’ve gotten a “big screen” (which isn’t actually that big!) for the Web Team to monitor the servers, our order download service, etc etc. We were showing our manager some of the stuff we could do with it, and he asked the question “So, how do you control it” – to which my response was to move my mouse off of the edge of my screen, and onto the big screen. “So is that a third monitor?” he asked. “No” I replied, it’s another machine.

Enter Synergy

So this is the point where I explained to our manager exactly what synergy is. Trying to explain it however, is a bit of a hassle, so I’ll try my best here. Synergy is an application that allows you to control another machine’s keyboard and mouse from your own PC. It’s a bit of a mix between a KVM switch, and Remote Desktop, but it doesn’t require extra hardware, and you dont have to relay the video across the network to show it on your screen too.

At this point, our boss got a glint in his eye

“Does it work in Windows?” he asked. At this point, I didn’t realise that he had a seperate machine for Ubuntu. I told him it did anyway, but I wasn’t too sure whether it worked with Vista

“Lets give it a go anyway”

So we went over to his machine, and I installed quicksynergy on his ubuntu box, while he downloaded the Windows installer for Synergy. 5 minutes later, he was grinning like a maniac as he moved his mouse from one machine to another.

Now he’s happily using Ubuntu without any hassle, it’s just a third screen to him – with different stuff on it.

I think the moral here is, there are different ways to get people to be able to use Linux, and Synergy is one of those great tools that enable people to use Linux without having all the hassle that comes with switching over.

I think also, a quote from m manager sums it up.

This is one of the best things I’ve seen all year. I thought it’d take forever to setup, but it was so quick. I can be so much more productive now

I hope that this will be one of the turning points for my manager, and we’ll have another convert by the end of the year

vim, cherokee, etckeeper

2009-03-31T23:09:37+00:00

Ok, so, today, I started using vim. I’ve never really had the time before to learn how to use it. I think the most I’d learned before today was just how to get out of vim if I ever accidentally got into it.

Now, however, I’m quite happy to do basic editing of files with it. I’ve got to say, I’m impressed with it’s code highlighting features.

I hope to eventually switch to vim permanently, but I’m not that confident with it yet – my first command was “nano ~/.vimrc” *chuckles*

Anyway, next comes cherokee. I’m actually loving this webserver. It’s so simplistic, yet so powerful, and it’s admin interface is a dream. If anyone out there is interested in having a lightweight server, have a look at cherokee before you go and install lighttpd !

The most exciting new thing that I’ve been using of late is etckeeper. (ok, maybe exciting isn’t the word – but I like it!). This hooks into a RCS and basically keeps a track of your /etc/ folder. It will automagically commit changes made to it when using apt-get (or similar) and I’ve actually set mine up to have bound branches. Meaning that my /etc/ is kept on a remote server.

All my machines are now using etckeeper (with the exception of the eeePC, which is tucked away in a corner with a network lead plugged into the back, being used as a playground machine) and I’m happy that if I ever have a hard disk crash, I can always get my configuration back from my server in a simple manner (which is massively useful for stuff like X).

Anyway, just some stuff I’ve been playing with of late. It seems I’m switching more and more to the command line

Maybe I should start using w3m instead of Firefox?

Cheese Nibbles and Podcasts

2009-03-07T16:20:57+00:00

So, fanatical readers of my blog (are there any?) may remember a long time back that I got bored and wrote a little script that amused me.

While testing something out yesterday, I needed to find a domain that I wasn’t using in production so I could test on it. I stumbled across Cheese Nibbles which had a lovely “We’ll be back with something cool soon” message on it.

So, I did my tests, and they worked. Everything’s good. I’d actually forgotten what was on Cheese Nibbles in the first place, so I started rooting round in the code. I found the old site, and I decided to resurrect it.

I posted in a couple of IRC channels, to see if other people found the site amusing, and got the following back in response

<Daviey> neat
<Daviey> Mez: rss feed needed
<Mez> Daviey: *chuckles*
<Mez> but then it’d be twitter
<Daviey> sure, but a shared account
<Daviey> Or.. make it twitter when changed

So, well, thanks to Dave Walker’s suggestion, I did a quick google, and within 6 minutes, had it working. You can find the twitter feed at http://twitter.com/cheesenibbles

Also, over the last couple of weeks I’ve been working with Zeth from my local LUG (and the tech, who shall remain anonymous, like “The Stig“) on a podcast, which we are, for now calling “The Podcast” (imaginative I know).

I was interviewed in the first podcast (which Zeth did alone, and I (apparently) provided the comedy element for) and presented with Zeth for the second one. Also, as the second one was recorded during the Ubuntu Global Bug Jam, of which I was running one of the venues, I actually allowed myself to be interviewed for it aswell. The podcast is very rough around the edges at the moment, and well, we haven’t got a website, or an RSS feed yet, but you can find the show notes here, and download the podcast episode in either MP3 Format, or OGG Format

All comments/thoughts/suggestions welcome!

A compelling read

2009-01-28T02:34:42+00:00

Now, It’s probably obvious to anyone reading this blog what my thoughts on Open Source and Licencing are, so I won’t go into that. However, I’ve recently found a new author, who I’m liking a LOT.

His name is Cory Doctorow, and after reading some of his short stories, I thought I’d look into his longer stuff. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a fan of feedbooks.com – and, as an author who’s releasing his works under a Creative Commons licence, his stuff is also there.

I started reading one of his books called “Little Brother” (http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2466). I read the intro, and I was hooked.

It’s kind of hard to explain what I mean, so I’d suggest if you’re interested, goto the link above, and click on the PDF link, then read pages 4 through 12 (the introduction/foreword to the book) and you’ll see what I mean.

I’ll probably review the book once I’ve finished it (curled up in bed with my trusty eeePC), but from what I’ve read, and that intro, Cory Doctorow is fast becoming one of my favourite authors.

You can find more about Cory Doctorow, and his works at http://craphound.com/

Drupal

2009-01-27T18:50:01+00:00

Drupal: Es un manejador de contenido que utiliza para su funcionamiento varias aplicaciones subyacentes y que permiten la operación completa del entorno: un servidor de web que es Apache, un manejador de base de datos como MySQL o Postgresql, y un lenguaje de programación como PHP.

Este manejador de contenido puede instalarse de tres formas.
1) Desde los archivos con el código fuente, compilarlo e instalarlo.
2) Instalación ordenada de aplicación por aplicación, buscando los paquetes correspondientes a Mac OS X.
3) Emplear un meta-paquete como Bitnami-Drupal, que es la última opción y la más fácil para el recién iniciado.

Drupal es la alternativa a WordPress,
En Mac OS X tienes varias alternativas para tener aplicaciones como Drupal

Bitnami Drupal

Bitnami es una organización patrocinada por Bitrock quien se encarga de empacar aplicaciones nativas en el mundo Linux y ofrece paquetes o stacks de aplicaciones para sistemas operativos como OS X y Windows.

Las ventajas de instalar un stack de aplicaciones desde un solo paquete son obvias: se ahorra tiempo en el proceso de instalación y configuración de cada paquete necesario para la operación en este caso de Drupal, por ejemplo: apache, mysql, php, etc.

Se requiere un conocimiento previo de las tecnologías del lado servidor, puertos,

Obligatory Post

2009-01-14T00:39:21+00:00

Ok, so here’s my obligatory “Hello Planet Debian” and “I’m now a Debian Developer” post.

So, yeah, I’m now a Debian Developer - and have a shiny new email address. For those of you considering going through the NM process, or already going through it - don’t give up hope, you’ll get there eventually!

Thanks to all those who’ve helped me along the way.

In other news, I’ve been meaning to blog about a couple of sites for a while now.

First of all, is Feedbooks.com - a nifty little site with lots of ebooks to download. Including a lot of the classics. You can also publish books on there, but I haven’t got round to it yet. This is currently my homepage on my eeePC. I’ve setup the “custom PDF” to be a good size for the eeePC (152mmx91mm, 10px font, 5mm all borders) and have been reading some of the Doctor Who books on there (and actually not finding it that uncomfortable curling up in bed with.

The next site is Stack Overflow - I’ve mentioned this briefly before, but it’s a great site. A community driven Programming Q+A site. Kind of hard to describe, but go have a look, you’ll soon get the gist of it!

Anyway, I think it’s time to head to bed for me!

Console Love

2008-12-27T07:03:35+00:00

Ok, so, some of you may know that I recently switched from using Xchat + ctrl_proxy to irssi for my main IRC connection. I did this as I’d been pestered literally thousands of times to “get a real IRC client”.

While I don’t agree with this philosophy (Xchat IS a real IRC client!), I have to admit, I’ve not regretted switching to irssi! Combining it with screen means that I can see the same IRC session from anywhere, and using irssi gives me quite a few cool new features (I’m a HUGE fan of regexes!). So, irssi, after getting used to switching channels, and managing everything is great for me. I can now authenticate to OFTC using SSL, I can use IPv6, and many many other things. Slick.

Anyway, as I’ve said, I also use screen. This is one of the best tools ever created by man. It’s increased my productivity, and it’s so simplistic to use.

So, why am I writing this now?

Well, over the past few ways, I’ve finally got around to using mutt for the first time, and while it’s not as pretty as some of the email clients you get out there, it does exactly what I need. And, although I’ve spent the last 2 days tweaking my configuration, getting confused, rereading the mutt manual, shouting and swearing, getting even more confused, rereading the mutt manual again, I’ve found that mutt, for me, is actually an email client that does what I want it to.

For example, using mutt, I now no longer have to worry that I’ll send an email to a mailing list using the wrong address, I can subscribe to a better “Inbox Zero” philosophy (Inbox Zero Status: 0!) and managing my email seems to come more naturally.

Mutt may be hard to get used to, a pain to configure just the way you want it, but, in the end, it makes sense. I’d reccomend everyone try it at least once!

So, yeah, I’ve moved my ubuntu email address over to mutt (in a screen window alongside irssi!) and will be moving the others just as soon as I can be bothered to goto all the different places and combine my .procmailrc. But I’ve made a start, and, for the forseeable future, it’ll be my mail client of choice.

It seems though, I’m spending a lot more time in an xterm than I am in anything else.

Maybe I should start using bitlbee too

zsh seems to be getting a lot of press of late …

2008-12-17T01:53:32+00:00

And so it should - it’s an awesome shell.

Anyway, I’ve just spent a lot of time sorting out my zsh so it does titles in the right way. By this, I mean changing the title of your xterm window, and/or your screen window.

Anyway, here’s the code that I use for my zsh titles

precmd () {
 case $TERM in
 screen)
 print -Pn "\e]0;%n@%m: %~\a"
 print -Pn "\ekzsh: %~\e\\"
 ;;
 xterm*|rxvt)
 print -Pn "\e]0;%n@%m: %~\a"
 ;;
 esac
}

preexec () {
 case $TERM in
 screen)
 print -Pn "\e]0;%n@%m: $1\a"
 print -Pn "\ek$1\e\\"
 ;;
 xterm*|rxvt)
 print -Pn "\e]0;%n@%m: $1\a"
 ;;
 esac

}

I find this works in the same way that the default bash shell does though - it also works quite nicely with screen, and sets the screen titles for you too

Also - my prompt lines are (inspired by Daniel Silverstone circa 2005)

export RPROMPT='%B%d%b %t '
export PROMPT='%B%n@%m %#%b '

Happy zsh’ing folks!

Family History and Genealogy Conference 2006

2008-12-10T11:07:25+00:00

This week I was able to attend the Family History & Genealogy Conference. Many years ago, I used to work and teach in the BYU Family History Lab. But, as I learned at this conference, many things have changed. It was a great opportunity to catch-up on the state of Genealogy work.

The Internet, the Internet, and the Internet

The Internet has become a pivotal tool in Genealogy work. Resources include digitized records, indexes of records, family websites, blogs, and newsletters. Here are a few of the blogs that were interesting to me:

Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

Taking Genealogy to the Common Person - Dan Lawyer

The following site puts together a world time-line for one of your ancestors:

OurTimeLines.com

Because of the large number of resources there are also a number of websites that index the many genealogy websites. A few of note are:

Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet

Linkpendium - The Definitive Director

Modern technology has greatly enhanced our ability to do genealogy work.

Research Guidance

I have used the FamilySearch website on a number of occasions, but I never noticed the Research Guidance. Information is presented by locality on how to find records. Using the information on this site I ordered a marriage certificate for my great-great-great grandfather.

Genealogy Software

I was able to meet with some of the engineers and other employees working with the following genealogy software programs:

Ancestral Quest (and PAFWiz)

Legacy Family Tree

PAF Insight

RootsMagic

It was interesting to see the software packages start to take advantage of the Internet resources.

The "New" FamilySearch

There was a lot of talk about the "New" FamilySearch. The major goals of the project are to eliminate duplication, simplify the temple process, and increase participation. It is hoped that the roll-out will start the end of this year.

The New Church History Building

The construction North of the Church Office Building is for a Church History Building, not a Family History Building — a common misconception. The construction should be completed late 2006.

Mac OS X

2008-12-09T12:20:47+00:00

La temática de este blog será lo relativo a mi trabajo cotidiano con el sistema operativo de la manzana: Mac OS X

Si estás interesado en unirte a Planeta OS X México manda un mensaje directo a maggit en twitter.

¿No sabes lo que es twitter?

Atte.
Jorge Mauricio Hernández Torres ó http://jmauricio.blogspot.com

Hacky HTML

2008-12-09T02:19:56+00:00

Ok, so working on a new site, I’ve realised that an image I’ve floated to the right of my text seems to be overlapping the items beneath it.

Ok, so, that’s obviously not what we want!!!!

Normally, I’d use clearfix for this, however, I have the issue that I will also be using a sidebar (at times) and well, clearfix will interfere with this:-

So, that’s obviously not something we want! - I had to find a nice way of doing this, without it interfering with everything else!

I thought about this, and thought I’d do a bit of voodoo with CSS and make this work!

Yay! It worked!

How’d I do this you may ask. Well, the containing div needed the following CSS (which also, quite niftily extends the height of the float if it’s the shorter one, making it the full height of the containing div

overflow: hidden;
padding-bottom: 32767px;
margin-bottom: -32767px;

The only issue? - It doesn’t work in any Internet Explorer Version, or Opera <= 8 - though it works in pretty much every other browser (according to browsershots)

*sigh* back to the drawing board, unless anyone else has some suggestions?

Edit: I was wrong - it works in IE7, but not in IE8
Edit 2: and it works in IE8 if you tell it to run in IE7 compatibility mode

Django - S3 Storage Engine

2008-12-02T18:25:12+00:00

After having read James Bennett’s article on Django Media and Performance I decided that I wanted to be using S3 for storing and serving media for a new site that I’m working on (in Django)

So, it seems that it’s not that easy. I did first of all experiment with using FUSE, but decided against it.

Anyway, looking through some obscure documentation, I found that Django can use custom storage methods. So, I thought I’d write one.

You can find the file here

The code requires you to have Amazon’s S3 API installed.

So, how do you use it? It’s pretty simple really. First of all - you need to setup your configuration - so edit settings.py and add the following (changing the values to suit your needs!)

S3_SETTINGS = {
    'aws_key': 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX',
    'aws_secret_key': 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX',
    'bucket': 'bucket_name',
    'default_perm': 'public-read',
    'vanity_url': False
}

The settings should be self-explanatory - apart from ‘vanity_url’. S3 allows you to CNAME a domain name to a bucket with a similar name - for example, I could CNAME files.sourceguru.net to files.sourceguru.net.s3.amazonaws.com and it would allow me to serve information from that bucket as if they were coming from my own domain. (infact, I’m tempted to do this - I’ve too much stuff in my files section!) - the vanity_url - when set to True - will use the bucketname as the domain instead of <bucketname>.s3.amazonaws.com.

Now, to use it in a model, it’s as simple as adding an import line at the top of the models file

from site.app.s3storage import S3Storage

and then, in your model

class Item(models.Model):
    storage = S3Storage()
    image = models.ImageField(upload_to='path', storage=storage)

Pretty simple,

Hope this helps some people out there!

Launchpad: The forgotten URL

2008-11-06T11:36:28+00:00

A site I use quite regularly is Stack Overflow - a great, community driven site for programmers.

At this site, you get rep when you post good answers, or good questions, which are voted up by the others on the site.

Imagine my dismay, when, this morning, I tried to login using the normal URL that I use for OpenID logins, only to find that the URL that it is delegated to has changed.

“What does this mean?” I might hear you asking.

Well, it means that anyone who’s using Launchpad as their OpenID Provider (OP) doesn’t have their openID assosciated to them anymore. For me, this means I can no longer access my stackoverflow account and my reputation starts at 1 again.

*sigh* - while I can understand that LP’s OpenID implementation is still in Beta, I don’t expect changes that completely change the way the system works. It’s paramount to going through the system and changing everyone’s username….

I’m pretty annoyed at this, and have filed a bug about it.

Edit: It seems they’ve removed the delegation on the pages for users, and This is why it’s happening…

Data-Scraping Evilness

2008-11-05T22:47:27+00:00

So, I’m sure most of you are aware of Facebook - if not, where have you been?

Anyway, I run a site that promotes local events and gigs for a specific group of people, and a lot of the work for the site is in keeping it up to date - going and grabbing the info from various different websites, and plonking it into the format that’s used by the website. (which could consume hours)

This morning I noticed that I kept getting invites to events on Facebook that I should be adding to the website. I also noticed that the emails I got from Facebook were all in the same form.

Regex anyone?

preg_match(“/^Event: (.*)\n.*\”(.*)\”\nWhat: (.*)\nHost: (.*)\nStart Time: (.*)\nEnd Time: (.*)\nWhere: (.*)\n\nTo see more details and RSVP, follow the link below:\n(.*)\n/m”, $email, $matches);

So, yup, that’s what I did - I poked it all through a script, registered a new Facebook account, and now - through the magic of Regular Expressions, when someone invites the special user to an event, it automatically gets added to the site (through a bit of PHP + procmail magic! (with sanity checks!))

It was certainly interesting to get going, and well, quite fun… but I feel a bit dirty doing it

Anyway, now all I need to do is create screen scrapers for the different websites that I get the gig listings from, and well, hopefully, then, I’ll be able to have everything automated!

If only…

Epic Fail

2008-11-03T19:56:58+00:00

So, after finding out that that nasty noise my PC’s been making was actually a hard drive failing (I knew it was, but thought I’d fix it now, while I’m doing my refresher) So, after a few failed install attempts with lovely kernel messages telling me that the disk was failing horribly, I thought, ok, I’ll shut down, unplug the hard drive, and get on without it.

Ha, if only I were so lucky. Seems that for some reason, my PC, having had 2 hard drives connected to the primary IDE channel for the last… oh, 4 years? doesn’t like it - and now, my primary IDE channel is unusable (or at least, nothing is being detected from it :()

So, that leaves me with 1 hard drive…. at least it’s the bigger of the three. However, my PSU has also developed a high pitched squealing noise, which to be quite honest, sounds dangerous.

So, it’s with some regret that I say that, I’m going to be out of commission for a while. I still, however, have my eeePC available, which is a blessing, as it means I’ll still be able to surf and access email.

However, with apathy out of action, and with christmas around the corner, and lots of bills to pay, it’s unlikely to be until around March that I have enough in the coffers to pay for a replacement.

Thank god for the eeePC

Starting from scratch: RAID + LVM

2008-11-03T16:49:02+00:00

Ok, so working with RAID and LVM is… well… not easy.

I have three hard drives in this machine, all of different sizes, (160Gb, 200Gb, and 300Gb), and I’m gong to be setting these up so that I have a RAID-5 made up of three 160Gb Partitions, (with LVM on top) a RAID-1 Partition of 40Gb (no LVM) and the rest split between boot, swap, and misc.

However, the ubuntu alternative CD doesn’t make this easy, and, one of my favourite annoyances is that once you configure RAID, you cannot make changes to the partitions on the disk where you have RAID partitions (hidden away in the middle of a block of text that people aren’t likely to read… I only spotted it on the 4th/5th attempt)

Getting RAID setup is fine, getting RAID+LVM has taken me… 6 attempts so far, and I think that I’ve managed to say the right prayers to the right gods this time… or maybe not…

“The kernel was unable to re-read the partititon table on /dev/md1 (Invalid argument). This means Linux won’t know anything about the modifications you made until you reboot. you should reboot your computer before doing anything with /dev/md1

Maybe I should do this manually *clicks reboot*

Starting from scratch

2008-11-03T13:55:27+00:00

Over the next few days, I’ll be re-installing my main Desktop from scratch with Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex.

This is mainly to help me cleanup my PC (I’ve got a lot of stuff on it) and also so I can make better use of my system.

So, first of all I need a copy of Intrepid. I’ve opted for the alternate CD as I want to try LVM + Software RAID.

I’ve also decided already that I will be completely removing Windows from this machine (having previously had an archaic Windows 2000 install for playing online poker).

While I reinstall, I’m going to be using my trusty eeePC to blog about it, so hopefully those little snags that I hit along the way will be documented somewhere, and hey, it might even make for some good reading.

Well, as we all know, the first step to re-installing a system is… backup…

I’m currently sitting here waiting for my home directory to tar itself up onto my external 1TB hard drive, and watching as the file list goes past, I realise just how lax I’ve been at keeping my home directory tidy. I’ve got the last ~6 years of crap in there (including a backup of all my music which I’d thought I’d lost years ago! - yay!)

I’m backing up my home drive as I’m going to be wiping that, which, while it means re-installing all my settings, etc etc, means that I have a clean start (and if I actually do need something out of it, I can just pull it out of the tarball )

Well, the backup’s on it’s way, my download of the ISO has 15 minutes left, so I’ll go ahead and hit publish, with the final words.

See you on the flip side.

My Package of the Day: blueproximity

2008-10-30T11:41:07+00:00

So, yesterday, my new Bluetooth adapter arrived. I’ve been wanting one for a while so that I can quite quickly push new files to my phone (for ringtones, etc)

However, while playing with bluetooth (and trying to setup a bluetooth headset - which is the biggest headache EVER!) - I stumbled across a package called blueproximity.

The application allows you to use a bluetooth device as a proximity sensor.

Basically, it uses the bluetooth protocol to “ping” the bluetooth device, and then run commands when the signal strength gets low (or hich)

At the moment, I have it setup to do a couple of things, firstly, I have it set to lock/unlock my session, and switch my monitor on/off if I leave the range/enter the range. I’ve set this up so that the unlock is on entering the room, but the “lock” is only if I leave the house.

Secondly, I have a habit of leaving for work, and forgetting to disconnect from my server’s screen session (running irssi) - meaning that when I come back, the highlights don’t show in irssi’s away log. So, I’ve added another sensor that will close my screen session (ssh <myserver> screen -D) if I leave the house. Very useful!

While the app isn’t perfect, and could do with some “built in” features (rather than having to specify commands). It’s a great app with huge flexibility I can think of many uses for it, espescially in an office environment (I remember my boss emailing me from my account once saying “I’m a security risk, I left my station unlocked” - blueproximity would have solved this issue!

If you’re in an office, and have bluetooth enabled, this is a great security feature… I think the whole “walk up to the desk and your monitor switches on and unlocks itself” feature is pretty cool.

Though, it does leave a security risk if someone steals your bluetooth device (in my case, this is my phone!)

<edit>Knew I’d forgot something :-

One step closer to becoming a Debian Developer

2008-10-27T11:40:58+00:00

As you may or may not know, I’m in the New Maintainer Process for Debian, well, not long back, (a few days) I finished off the Tasks and Skills #2, and today my Application Manager (Steffen Joeris aka white) filed my AM Report, reccomending me as a Debian Developer.

You can find a copy of my AM Report here

Thanks to all those who’ve helped me along the way, including (but not limited to) Steffen (white), Francois (fmarier), Nelson (naoliv), Sune (pusling), Ana, Adam (infinity) and many many others :

Succumbing to the meme

2008-09-17T19:08:28+00:00

Ok, so it’s vary rare that I’ll become a sheep and add to the “planet full of meme”… However, it’s quietened down now… so I thought I’d join in.

Thing is … not that long ago, I’d already asked about peoples naming schemas

I had hoped to start a meme with that post. Obviously madduck was more successful