Mon, 26 Mar 2007
Flu, The Puppet Muppets and NPW 2007
I've been in bed for most of the last week and a half (apart from two very
short staffed days in the office) with the cold / flu bug that seems to
stalk through our office on permanent rotation. Apart from the general
feeling ill and lots of sleeping I missed a GLLUG and the first London
Puppet Muppets meeting. But I did decide to go to the 2007 Nordic Perl
Workshop, an event I've managed to miss for the last three years.
I've never been to any of the Scandaweigan countries so I'm both looking forward to having a look around and the conference itself. I expect to see many trees and much snow. The perl in financial institutes talks and Flexible Business Rules with Brick (brian d foy) look very interesting. And I get to meet up with The Hukins as well, (who needs both an easy to link to web page and a blog dammit) just not in any vegetarian restaurants.
Now I just need to do the actual bookings and not get distracted before the event starts...
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Posted: 2007/03/26 22:23 | /events | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Frank Miller's 300
I've never read the comic, I didn't recognise any of the cast and quite
enjoyed 300 as a not
very challenging film. Lots of very cool fight scenes, an acceptable amount of
plot and a great 'arrows blotting out the sun' scene. Oh, and a war
rhino.
What else is there to say? The fight scenes are bloody but not especially gory, the Spartans are portrayed with the right amount of bad-ass nature and it had a number of Sin Cityesque deformed villains in it. 7/10. Don't think I'll re-watch more than a fight scene or two though.
And it had a cut down (and Venom free) version of the Spider-man 3 trailer before it came on. OH YEAH! Come on Spidey!
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Posted: 2007/03/26 22:13 | /movies | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Top $FOO Of All Time Lists
Digg People: Please note that "Top $FOO of all time lists" should not be
completely comprised of $FOO's from the last two years. You
should also dock points for all uppercase words, txtsp3k, leet speak and
every use of 'AMAZING!!111' and its ilk.
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Posted: 2007/03/26 22:04 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Monolithic Config Files Considered Harmful^WAwkward to Manage
This came up in conversation with a developer at the Google OpenSource
Jam so I thought I'd mention it while it is fresh in my mind (update: at
which point I forgot to move it to the published directory. Doh).
Breaking up config files isn't done just to annoy people, it's done to
make automated and mass management easier.
A solid practical example is the Debian Apache configs. Historically most distros (and too many current ones) used a single config file for Apache. While this made interactive editing easier by presenting all the options in a single place (and in a sensible order) it made it very hard for the package management software (or automation aficionados) to add a module or virtual host without some hairy scripting. Removing settings when a package is removed or updating a small chunk of the config in an upgrade is even more painful; as for preserving local changes - haha.
By breaking the config out in to a number of files / directories and combining them at run time it makes the addition of a new vhost or module config just a file drop and possibly a symlink (often used if the configs are order dependent). This is easier for third party packages to perform and makes provisioning of additional apps a lot easier.
So what's the main downside? Debugging. An "Error on line 50" is harder to track when line 50 could be in one of twelve files. But with a little forethought debug messages can be updated to show all the useful information. So next time you're writing an app of many parts please spare a thought for the sysadmins and make it easily manageable.
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Posted: 2007/03/26 22:02 | /sysadmin | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Google - Second London OpenSource Jam
I recently went to the second Google
London OpenSource Jam over at Belgrave House. I've been aware of some
of the London Google evenings but I've never made the effort to go, how
ever there were a couple of people I've not seen for ages on the attendee
list for this one so I decided to sign up.
I don't know exactly what I was expecting but what I got was more than a little weird, part pre-2000 dotcom and part group hug; it wasn't really my kind of event. The whole venue seemed to be baiting the bubble busters. A couple of people gave lightning talks about topics close to their hearts, free beer and pizza were made (copiously) available (my kool-aid detector was overwhelmed by the whole place so I stayed away from both) and lots of nattering in small groups followed.
I had a good time but I mostly spent the evening catching up with people I've not seen in a while; I don't speak at these kind of events - people still complain about the first time. I think I'd have been in and out damn quickly if I hadn't known any of the other attendees, it did feel like quite an established group (even though it was the first time for most of the people present, a lot of us cross paths at other tech nights). I met a couple of people I know from mailing lists but have never met in person, scared a Thoughtworker (I used to spend more time than I should researching potential speakers) and then left a bundle of Lonix and GLLUG people in the pub near closing time. A mostly fun night.
On a tangent, the fact that there were still five or so places available on the evening itself surprised me. I've always assumed a Google sponsored evening would fill out within minutes of being announced. Having seen Google booths at a number of conferences over the last couple of years they don't really seem to get the whole wider community thing; I'm not saying they don't do anything for us but they always seem like your great uncle trying to be cool with the kids. Giving out glowing badges and asking people if they want to enlist isn't playing well with others.
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Posted: 2007/03/26 22:00 | /events | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Copyright © 2000-2005 Dean Wilson
