Wed, 23 Aug 2006
Is Perl Installed? Don't use this script to check!
Over at use.perl.org Ovid recently posted
How to tell if Perl is installed on your computer
, an entry that points to a shell script that must die.
Go and read the script in the post, I'll wait.
Note: this isn't his code and he's blame free, he just found it and started waving it like a red flag so the anal shell scripters among us have something to moan about :)
Firstly why use ksh? The script doesn't do anything neat so just use sh,
which exists on almost all Unix machines in some form (even if it's bash
in a dress playing pretend). Secondly, why do a which perl
and then COMPLETELY IGNORE the results? You might as well just run
perl -V on the command line as you're using
$PATH anyway. GAH!
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Posted: 2006/08/23 01:39 | /justdont | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Eric Cartman^WRaymond Strikes Again
The Register is one of the sites covering ESRs
Linux / iPod-compatibility rant and he's managed to confuse himself,
other people and the issues. Once again.
Firstly we have this request that the "community", most of whom cringe when he starts talking, start compromising on closed source platforms and formats. Apparently the OpenSource movement hasn't given up enough rights yet and he'd like us to back down and hand over a couple more.
He then tangents off about 64bit architectures and the desktop... Which is an odd mix to start with, all the early 64bit action will happen in the datacentre and the server room. But anyway, Linux has had better AMD64 support than Windows for years now. SuSE led the crowd (Bo Thorsen gave a couple of great 64 bit porting talks at GLLUG years ago) and his "the end of the transition to 64-bit computing by the close of 2008." is insane. The sheer number of people still running Windows 95 is a testament to how slow the conversion process happens.
As for binary kernel drivers being a necessary compromise what can I say, I'll side with people like Theo De Raat and RMS any day. They've done the legwork, written the code and actually stick to their principles. Unlike the guy who's now most famous for a kernel build system that the kernel builders wouldn't touch and altering the Hackers Dictionary to suit his own ego.
Bonus link: The Everybody loves Eric Raymond Cartoon.
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Posted: 2006/08/23 01:22 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Scientific American and Developer.com Printer Friendly Greasemonkey Redirects
The overly long title has most of the details. I've created a print
friendly redirect Greasemonkey script for both Developer.com and Scientific American.com.
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Posted: 2006/08/23 00:58 | /tools/online/greasemonkey | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
I'm going to YAPC::Europe 2006
And you should be too!
YAPC::Europe 2006 is my first YAPC since 2001; when I stopped working as a Perl developer I started spending my cash and holiday time on more relevant conferences. Now I'm working in a heavily perl shop they've been gracious enough to pay for my attendance in Birmingham. Where they have curry. Lots of curry. And a Perl conference, but I should get my priorities right ;)
There are a number of great talks in the schedule but I'm especially looking forward to Marty Pauley and Karen Pauley, who have a couple of talks each and are both excellent speakers - Marty is one of the most animate, likable speakers I've ever seen and Karen has a perspective on the IT industry that's *always* worth listening to, Tim Bunce on DBI (THE horses mouth when it comes to DBI), Dave Cross talking about actual databases (you know, the ones with views, stored procedures and real replication) and a couple of SNMP talks which'll be useful for work.
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Posted: 2006/08/23 00:36 | /events | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Enable ICMP Internally - Or I'll Find You...
When designing internal firewalls and filtering policies *PLEASE* stop
and think about ICMP Echo Request and ICMP Echo Reply (the ICMP types
used by ping). If you turn these off you're not really
gaining any real security (especially on your internal network, and to
be honest you want to think long and hard about what turning it off on
the external facing machines gets you) and you're making life much
harder than it needs to be in the long run.
Network diagnostics and host discovery are two simple, and quite common, tasks that become a hell of a lot harder to do, and consume more time and resources, if you turn ICMP off. And it annoys the hell out of new staff as they try and learn about your networks, it also irks people you ask to do you a "quick favour".
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Posted: 2006/08/23 00:34 | /misctech | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
FireFox Extension - Disable / Remove Weirdness
I use a LOT of FireFox extensions and in an attempt to slim my install
down I disabled the less used ones so I could remove them in a week or
so if I hadn't needed them. The first stage was easy, right click the
extensions in the Extensions menu and choose "disable". I then
carried on using FireFox as normal. I didn't need the extensions removed
immediately so I didn't restart it.
A couple of days went past, the browser had been restarted a few times and I wasn't missing any of the functionality. So I removed the extensions thinking all was well. Very foolish of me.
I first started to notice my tabs were acting a little different a couple of days later; after I'd removed the (previously disabled) extensions and restarted the browser. External applications were opening a new tab each time rather than replacing the right most one and other little bits like that. But this only started after the remove, not the disable - which is wrong.
I don't know why, I'm assuming that something doesn't understand "disable" and left the extensions running even though the GUI displayed them as greyed out. And then when I removed them it actually actioned the change. I've not (yet) been able to reproduce it and it's bugged the heck out of me for almost ten whole minutes. I'm mentioning this in the hope that someone else has seen the same thing but actually managed to reproduce it or work out what's wrong.
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Posted: 2006/08/23 00:34 | /misctech | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Basic Accessibility Analyzer IE Plugin
I'm happy to announce the first release of the Basic
Accessibility Analyzer IE Plugin. This IE plugin wraps the service
provided by Peter
Krantz and has already found some quirks in my own site.
The full list of what it checks can be found here.
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Posted: 2006/08/23 00:34 | /tools/online | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
An Evening with Kevin Smith - Short Review
I've been watching my way through Kevin Smiths back catalogue of work
recently and one of the forgotten highlights of my DVD collection is
An Evening with Kevin
Smith. Although the format's pretty simple, Kevin Smith engaging the
audience in Q&A sessions in a number of American colleges, the material
is polished, the delivery near perfect and the speaker charismatic.
Over three hours of footage he fields questions on pretty much everything, his films, loves and life. All tied together with a number of entertaining stories and anecdotes. If you like Kevin Smith films and his style of dialogue then buy this now. 9/10.
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Posted: 2006/08/23 00:34 | /movies | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Snakes on a Plane - Short Review
How could I resist a film called Snakes on a Plane, featuring
one of the masters of over acting, Samuel L. Jackson, that had some of
its scenes re-shot to be funnier, yes, funnier, based on anonymous
internet posts on movie forums? Well, obviously I couldn't.
I'm honestly not sure why I bothered. I like good films, I also like REALLY bad films, I have a soft-spot for the old Godzilla movies for instance, but this film wasn't good and it wasn't that bad. The over acting wasn't as extreme as I thought it would be, the pacing was OK and none of the actors either redeemed or destroyed their careers with their performances. The film was pretty much middle of the road. Rent it on DVD if you're really bored. 3/10.
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Posted: 2006/08/23 00:34 | /movies | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Copyright © 2000-2005 Dean Wilson
