Sun, 31 Jul 2005
Ruby on Rails Podcast and Perlcast
I'm a big fan of the "big three" scripting languages, Perl, Python and
Ruby, but I don't get a lot of time to keep up with all the relevant news.
Fortunately you can now download and listen to the official Ruby on Rails Podcast or the ever
growing Perlcast.
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Posted: 2005/07/31 16:34 | /sites | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Fri, 29 Jul 2005
Names Matter -- DRM and the Press
While reading the comments at the Digitial
Rights Pledge page I noticed one by D Walker: "Digital Rights"
would too easily be muddled up with "Digital Rights Management", which in
itself should be called "Digital Restrictions Management". It's an
ever so small point but I think it's important; Digital Restrictions
Management is a much better name than "Digital Rights Management". It
pushes the point that it's taking things away from us and is a lot less
media friendly...
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Posted: 2005/07/29 15:54 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Fantastic Four -- Quickie Review
Over the last couple of years comic book fans have been spoiled by some
great big-screen adaptations. Spiderman 1 and 2 (which NEED more witty
one-liners from the wall crawler), X-Men 2, HellBoy and Sin City have all
been enjoyable and lived up to the franchises that spawned them. We've also
been witness to some truly dire moments, Catwomen and Electra spring to
mind. So where does Fantastic Four fit?
It's pretty average. Michael Chiklis does a good job as The Thing (although the suit looks dire; that needs to change for the sequel), Ioan Gruffudd is pretty bland, Chris Evans character is badly written and never fleshed out (possibly on purpose but it just gets annoying) so we'll discount him and Jessica Alba... well she looks damn good with blond hair and wearing a cat-suit but the role didn't exactly seem challenging. She was better in Sin City and she had a lot less screen time in that.
While it's not a disaster it's not something you should bother travelling to see. One to rent cheap. 4/10.
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Posted: 2005/07/29 14:51 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Using sudo Without A Password
If you add a NOPASSWD directive in your sudoers file then you can,
as you'd expect from its name, use those commands without a password.
This is a pretty useful trick that allows you to set up sudo entries
that allow commands to be run with different privileges from cron
without requiring the setuid flag. However twice this week I've seen a
similar question asked on mailing lists and I thought I'd stick this
entry up, hope google indexes it and saves me from ever seeing it again.
Yeah right.
When you use sudo and authenticate it sets a short timeout period in which if you use sudo again it won't ask for your password. This is typically a useful feature (for interactive use anyway) but a couple of people seem to follow a series of events that go something like this: sudo visudo (add the NOPASSWD line). sudo "command I want in cron." "Oh look, it worked. Now let me add a cronjob." The next day they (hopefully) notice it didn't work and then ask on a mailing list. Which I'm on.
Now it seems obvious but people don't seem to realise that the trial run is pointless, the timestamp is still valid from when they ran sudo visudo and so sudo WILL NOT PROMPT FOR THE PASSWORD. In order to run a real test you need to use sudo -k to invalidate the timestamp and then rerun the command.
As a closing note adding a sudo -k to your .logout/.bash_logout file can also be a smart thing to do on some systems.
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Posted: 2005/07/29 14:33 | /tools/commandline | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
O'Reilly Want to Connect?
There's something up at connection.oreilly.com... will it
be another jobs site or do they have an ace up their collective, animal
decorated, sleeves?
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Posted: 2005/07/29 00:16 | /sites | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Amazon Wishlists in Perl
For a small play project I needed the ability to pull down all the DVDs
from a given persons Amazon wishlist. After a quick look on CPAN two main
options presented themselves, first up we have WWW::Amazon::Wishlist.
The module has an easy to use interface, doesn't require an Amazon developer token (it's a naughty screen-scraper) and doesn't need any XML modules. Unfortunately while it has no problems getting books I couldn't get it to download any of the DVDs from the wishlist so I moved on.
Net::Amazon on the other hand is a larger, more comprehensive and complete solution but it has one advantage. It actually does what I want it to ;) After reading some perldoc and Data::Dumpering some structures I've managed to get a list of the DVDs from my wishlist in the format I want.
I've put a copy of my DVD Amazon Wishlist retrieving code up on the site in case it's of any use to anyone else. Now I can get on with the harder bits...
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Posted: 2005/07/29 00:09 | /tools/commandline | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Thu, 28 Jul 2005
Another entry on the CV
Yesterday was my last day at my now-previous employers, For the rest of
this week I'm on emergency phone support only (which they'll never have to
use as things pretty much work). Next week I'm at the UKUUG conference in
Swansea and then a couple of days after I get back I start my new job at
one of Londons premier OpenSource and Perl companies. No, not the BBC.
;)
I've been thinking about why I only stayed for a year at a company that has a hell of a lot of potential and some very top notch people and I've come up with a couple of ideas, how valid they are I guess I'll work out over time.
Firstly the technical challenges. Medical companies are slow and stable. They also spend years in tender for a project and so they are always a long way behind current tech and conservative even then. This is an industry-wide thing I didn't know about until I became involved. To be honest it makes sense but from a personal growth level it's not the best way to stay current and challenged. In a couple of years I think I'd like to get back in to that industry but I'm not ready for the change of pace just yet.
Second we have the people: as a company grows it typically moves from a small number of very capable people to a larger number of more conventional employees. I've got no problem being a cog in a machine if I get paid well for it and I go in with that known. If you get in at the early stage and then the environment changes enough then you need to be aware that your position in the company will either change drasticly or you need to be objective and know when you should stand aside and move on. I was aware of both happening.
They are moving from a pioneer, driven by ideas position to a more stable service model which didn't need anywhere as much raw innovation and things were settling down enough that they don't need the same skill set (and experience levels) in some of their staff. And so I moved off on good terms to find a new opportunity.
To my ex-coworkers, many of whom were very smart and capable people I send my regards and wish you the best of luck. To my new employer I hope you understand how lucky you are ;)
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Posted: 2005/07/28 12:15 | /nottech | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Tue, 26 Jul 2005
OpenTech Resources
I'm going to take a break from my session by session breakdown and point
out some other resources instead.
- OpenTech Recordings
- OpenTech photos on Flickr. I even show up in some; but if you're lucky you won't see notice those ones ;)
- OpenTech del.icio.us tag.
- OpenTech Technorati search
- OpenTech coverage at Newsforge.
I really enjoyed OpenTech and the organisers did an excellent job with the venue, speakers and keeping everything moving. Here's to next years ;)
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Posted: 2005/07/26 14:59 | /events | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Motherboard Kerplunk and Other Games for Geeks
James Larsson's talk was a short, media clip packed one in which he
presented things you shouldn't do with hardware. From playing music through
a monitor (very cool visual effects) to a very sick mouse-trap made from a
broken monitor to removing capacitors from a running system until it
crashed the videos were amusing but worrying. This man must never even look
at my laptops...
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Posted: 2005/07/26 13:45 | /events | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
The Future is Open -- Jeremy Zawodny
"Yahoo has gone from not as good as Google to a very interesting
company" -- Ben
Hammersley.
To most of us Jeremy Zawodny is Mr Yahoo, he's the only face we see (and blog we read) from one of the bigger tech companies and while his blog is well worth reading it's always good to hear someone with his background speak in person.
The session covered a lot of small bits and pieces such as the need for a standard way to authenticate to webservices and APIs (without using the whole WS-* stack). How to streamline the inside of companies to allow for faster prototyping and innovation. What Yahoo Developer Network offers, what Yahoo has a lot of (and not so many of like data centres). Why RSS will grow beyond blogging and why APIs that let you get your data back out lower the barrier to entry (which everyone except management seem to grasp!)
To be honest I didn't take many notes in this session, the speaker was good and the topics were varied and interesting. But don't take my word for it, grab the Jeremy Zawodny OpenTech recording.
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Posted: 2005/07/26 13:24 | /events | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Launch of backstage.bbc.co.uk -- Ben Metcalfe
"What are you wearing?"
"A kilt."
"No man, that's a
skirt..."
"It's a kilt. I'm telling you..."
"Uhhh it's pink, has
flowers and shoulder straps."
"It's a pretty kilt."
From: bash.org.
The third session of the day was introduced by Ben Hammersley in a kilt. Which he then pulled up as he ran up the stairs and gave the first three rows, and the speaker (who he obviously knew) a view of his arse; fortunately this was after the lunch break.
Un-phased by this Ben Metcalfe gave a very lively presentation on BBC Backstage, the official blurb gives a pretty good overview: Build what you want using BBC content. backstage.bbc.co.uk is the BBC's developer network to encourage innovation and support new talent. Content feeds are available for people to build with on a non-commercial basis.
The talk basically covered the why and what of BBC backstage and introduced some of the APIs available and some prototype applications that people have written. The speaker knew his stuff (he's the project lead after all) and was both enthusiastic and passionate; it made the whole session a lot of fun and has inspired me to have a play with the new APIs so I guess it worked.
The talk was also used to launch a BBC competition to get people tinkering with the backstage products. The prize is a rack mount server and should encourage some neat applications.
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Posted: 2005/07/26 13:01 | /events | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Ted Nelson -- Inventor of Hypertext
I'll be honest, I had no intension of sitting through this session but
after buying Perl Testing: A Developer's Notebook and Perl Best Practices I
was too late to even stand in the Media Hacking session so I went back to
the big theatre and sat through what was possibly (in my opinion) the
worst session of the day. Now I know Ted Nelson is a smart guy and he's
got some very interesting ideas and perspectives but as a speaker I didn't
like him.
His whole talk was about how modern computers have got a lot of things wrong by using a paper metaphor for documents, using databases for storage and a lot of bits like that. In general he's against hierarchy and for a more free form, floaty way of doing things. And while he presented a couple of good ideas the only live demo he gave was of a genealogy program that looked like a game of connect four gone insane had me sitting there thinking "I deal with people that can't copy and paste. They'd have an aneurism if I showed them that."
In general I didn't like this session as the speaker was very preachy, grandiose, pompous and not very enthralling. The oddest part was a story about his grandfather and a pressure cooker. The short version is that due to bad design his grandfather was injured by a spray of boiling potatoes. Unfortunately the way the story was told most of us (this part of the session came up a lot afterwards!) were expecting some amusing anecdote and ended up feeling guilty when the story ended with a man who only had his sight saved by a pair of glasses.
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Posted: 2005/07/26 12:07 | /events | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
OpenTech -- The First Couple of Hours
On Saturday (July 23rd) I made my way across London to the NTK/UKUUG/BBC OpenTech event,
carrying on the tradition of NOTCON and sponsored by the BBC it had an
impressive list of speakers including Jeremy Zawodny (Yahoos best PR)
and Ted Nelson.
The crowd was a pretty varied one, along with the usual London Perl Mongers, London Linux users, Debian dudes and UKUUG people there were a lot of people that seemed to be more culture and media orientated. The mix worked quite well and led to some interesting between session conversations in the halls. The venue itself was pretty damn good. An on-site bar (priorities ;)), two rooms (one of which was a big lecture theatre) and a lobby in the middle with plenty of chatting room, venders and the lovely (yet insane) Josette from O'Reilly selling her wares.
The first talk of the day was preceded by an impromptu SSH tunnelling tutorial when one of the on-site technical people spent five minutes getting the speakers laptop rigged up to the outside world. It was when he finished and half the audience cheered and the other half looked blank I realised it wasn't a tech geek only event.
The first actual speaker was Danny O'Brien of NTK and Lifehacks fame. His session was on Living Life in Public and it was a perfect intro to the day. I've never seen him talk before and while he's bloody funny (and had some great one liners) he also covered an interesting topic; the idea that when you're micro famous they know you but you don't know them.
While the actual presentation was slick, well paced and kept the audience laughing a lot of the message is a little scary, with Flickr, del.icio.us, usenet, the web and a number of subscription databases it's getting easier than ever to track someone and find out a lot more about them than they'd want you to know. I really enjoyed the topic and the speaker and if you get the chance to hear him speak go for it.
Some of the best quotes from the session were:
"ESR often turns up at my talks. Typically with a gun."
"After about six people unless you have something very wrong with your head
I won't recognise you." And a number of lines about research into
high-school girls that I won't type just in case Google finds them :)
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Posted: 2005/07/26 11:53 | /events | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Help Create a UK Digital Rights Group
I was lucky enough to go to the NTK/UKUUG/BBC OpenTech event on
Saturday (July 23rd) and one of the sessions discussed whether we need a
British digital rights group to help promote and campaign for our freedoms.
While I wasn't in the session (bad Dean!) I can't not pledge money and
consider myself a decent member of the community.
In order to start the group off there's a PledgeBank fund you can sign up for. They're after 1000 people to pledge 5 quid a month for a year and in return it should be possible to have two staffers and go looking for more money to keep the group going. I've signed up and hopefully enough other people will to make this happen.
A more comprehensive overview can be found over on Oblomovka. It's only 60 quid a year and it may help keep our communities open and free. You know you want to :)
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Posted: 2005/07/26 11:06 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Sun, 17 Jul 2005
Hope and the Right to Improve
The right to improve and better yourself is, in my opinion, one of the most
important things a person has. Whether you're from a repressed minority
that is unfairly denied opportunities, a broken home you never want to
re-create or 'just' a poor family that never seems to get any breaks the
hope that you can do better if you're willing to work hard, persist and
keep trying is something you can hold on to in the darker hours, days
and, unfortunately sometimes, months.
As with most of the important things we often take them for granted and forget we even have them until they are stripped from us. Most of us are lucky enough that we can keep the hope of better things to come alive without fighting for it. But every now and again you should stop and take a look at where you are, where you've been, where you want to be and how far away from it you are. And then adjust like hell to keep yourself moving.
To Jeans, who was too short-sighted to realise what he had until he gave it away, thanks for putting me back on the path.
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Posted: 2005/07/17 13:18 | /nottech | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Thu, 07 Jul 2005
Nothing Like Something to Focus On
I'm a Londoner by birth, by dwelling and by choice. I've travelled
through Liverpool Street station, twice almost every weekday, for the
last seven years. I work about 5 minutes from Russell Square. I've
worked in Aldgate and it contains some of my favourite restaurants and
fondest memories of friends I no longer see. My new job is at Old
Street.
To me these weren't just acts of "random terrorism", I'm taking them personally.
To those that died today may you go to a better place than this. To their families and friends, my thoughts and sympathies are with you. To those that did this or helped them to do this, I pass my anger and a promise; look for our response in the thunder.
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Posted: 2005/07/07 19:06 | /nottech | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Copyright © 2000-2005 Dean Wilson
