Thu, 17 Jan 2008
This years blockbusters?
I've just had a skim through the Times onlines 50 movies of
2008 and while I was picking my handful of must sees (Cloverfield,
Indy 4, and Hellboy 2) I noticed a couple of interesting comments
While I'm actually very fan boy about the idea of an Avengers movie (mentioned in the "The Incredible Hulk" comments) I felt a cold shiver of dread when I read 'Hayden Christensen, who has also just signed to star in the long-awaited movie version of William Gibson's prescient sci-fi classic Neuromancer,'. Nothing good can come of this; unless we get Dina Meyer back as Jane nee Molly.
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Posted: 2008/01/17 20:38 | /movies | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
OpenSolaris User Group - Jan 08
I attended the Advances
in OpenSolaris Network Administration talk hosted by LOSUG over at London
Bridge last night. And no one mentioned MySQL.
I came out of the session with a couple of pages of notes but two things really stuck out - the talk covered the new developments as a sequential feature list rather than showing you something cool or interesting and then explaining how the new technologies made it possible. A couple of slides had command lines on them to illustrate a point but they were little tweaks and changes rather than something that made you sit back and say "I want that." This is in no way uncommon but it is often an opportunity wasted.
This leads to my the second point, a lot of the topics covered were about incremental improvements and addressing concerns from previous versions of Solaris. While these are probably great things if you are stuck with older Solaris installs and looking for a way out the ability to sniff loopback traffic and rename nics didn't really inspire me much, we've had those abilities in the Free and Open worlds for a fair while now.
I should also note that I -really- dislike the term "vanity naming" when it comes to changing the name of a network interface. It just makes the process sound so pointless and frivolous.
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Posted: 2008/01/17 20:33 | /events | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Wed, 16 Jan 2008
Neward, chromatic and External Perspectives
Ted Neward is the latest person to get linked to in the ongoing campaign to
prove that parrot isn't dead,
sleeping or pining for the fjords (sorry, couldn't resist). While
chromatic rebuffs some of Teds points I can't help but think something is
missing - a little outside perspective.
chromatic rightfully points out that the project isn't dead (and has actually been pretty visible in the perl sphere since the start of the year) but look at it from more of an outsiders angle - unless you are already in the perl community it's not obviously moving. A release every month is lovely and all but the announcements are apparently not hitting all the right places if people like Ted (who seems to at least keep an eye on a number of different projects and technologies) haven't noticed. And if he's not seen them then the unwashed masses of other developers won't have either. Is this a problem? Depends on what you want from the project. Mindshare is a wonderful thing but introducing people to a technology before it's ready can destroy its chances of success.
PS I wanted to be glib and just say "motion != progress" but that seems unfair considering the amount of time people are investing.
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Posted: 2008/01/16 11:36 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Tue, 15 Jan 2008
Three Things - 1 of many
This weeks three things are -
- MySQL 5.1(.20+) can log errors via syslog (finally)
- IBM Blades run quite well despite being very wet. (don't ask)
- Amazon Prime is too helpful. (Wooo individual book orders)
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Posted: 2008/01/15 19:48 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Short Review - Hellboy Animated: Sword of Storms
I liked the original Hellboy, it had great casting, an OK story and Selma
Blair being hot. Well, technically on fire, but we'll let that slip. I was
expecting great thing from the first of the animated Hellboy films - special
effects are great but you can go completely overboard with the monsters in
an animated film.
Instead I spent a couple of hours watching Hellboy Sword of Storms plod along at a very slow pace. The story was dull, the animation was fine but nothing exceptional and the only highlight were the occasional witty one liners. Wait for it to hit TV
Score: 3/10 - bring on Hellboy 2
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Posted: 2008/01/15 19:36 | /movies | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Proof of Ownership and Third Party Escrow
I own a lot of old comics, piles of DVDs and a somewhat smaller (but
still decent size stack) of audio CDs. These take up a lot of physical
space, the comics decrease in quality, they all attract dust and are a
pain to dig through when I want to find that one song on a compilation
CD from 2002. Or was it 2001?
I have a lot of data - iso images and virtual machines are among the biggest disk eaters. A large percentage of it sits on a number of small external hard drives that are cheap, easy to upgrade (buy a bigger one, run an rsync and done) and simple to take offsite.
I'd love to use the latter to solve the former - I'd happily buy two 500GB drives (dirt cheap) rip redundant FLAC and MP3 copies of a number of my CDs (and scan / rip everything else) and then dispose of them to get a shelf back but how do I then prove everything is legit when something crops up and I have to display the fact I paid for them? Amazon orders? Credit card receipts? With the grossly inflated fines being levelled in the US I'd be bankrupted if I couldn't prove I did buy the soundtrack to Finding Nemo (although the fine might be less painful than having it in the public record that I did - it was a present, honest!)
So where are the companies offering indemnity, escrow and proof of legitimate ownership? Why can't I tick a "remember I bought this" button on Amazon and know that they've got my back? (as well as my VMs, online storage and book purchasing history?) Is this impossible to do? Is there no market for it? Where am I going to put that next order from Play when it turns up...
It could even be a way to recover things you've lost, they'd have the proof that you owned it and it'd cost them practically nothing to issue you another copy. As much as I love CSI, Buffy and Stargate I want my floor space back.
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Posted: 2008/01/15 19:28 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Tue, 08 Jan 2008
Short Review - I Am Legend
I've watched the original Omega
Man, enjoyed the Kiwi perspective (named The Quiet Earth) and now
I've seen Robert Neville Will Smith style - and it wasn't bad.
The plot is mostly unchanged (although explained through flashbacks), the pacing is decent and the feeling of being alone is well conveyed - the DVD store scene is a great glimpse of a man about to lose it.
The zombie/mutant hordes are a lot more visually impressive than those in the Omega Man (20 years of special effects and it shows) but their near mindless nature does change the tone and pace a bit. Score - 6/10
PS: there was also a version (The Last Man on Earth ) with Vincent Price which I'll be adding to my rental queue.
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Posted: 2008/01/08 23:48 | /movies | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
O'Reilly Books and Odd Password Requirements
It's not that widely known but O'Reilly offer a user group discount -
it's 35% off the cover price and free delivery so it's often cheaper than
you can get the books new from anywhere else.
A few days ago I wanted to order a couple of books and because there are no conferences this month (and so no lovely Josette) I signed up online. The process itself was quick, easy and painless but one step stuck out in my mind - "Password cannot contain special characters or spaces". To me this is a weird limitation and one that seems to harken back to the days of old.
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Posted: 2008/01/08 23:12 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Bash Puzzles - Brace Expansion
There is nothing like other peoples code to highlight all those little
gaps in your knowledge of a programming language. I know what the first one
does:
$ mkdir -p {projectone_,projecttwo_,projectthree_}log
$ ls -1
projectone_log
projectthree_log
projecttwo_log
And I was a confident (and a little bit happy) about knowing what the second one does:
$ mkdir -p {project_one,}log
$ ls -1
log
project_onelog
But I had no clue about this one. And my guess (that it would be treated as a single element and expand to 'projectone_log') was very wrong:
$ mkdir -p {projectone_}log
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Posted: 2008/01/08 21:34 | /languages/bash | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Mon, 07 Jan 2008
Three out of Three - New (contract) Job
Thanks to everyone who sent me leads and links to relevant job adverts
but since I posted that
I was out
of work
I've started a two month contract that began this week and runs
until the end of Feb.
It's my first contract role (and it's not a typical one by any stretch) and it's taking a little time to get used to considering I've spent most of my working life as a permie. Still, it's got good people and pays the bills so I'm glad I accepted the offer.
It does mean that I won't be hitting LCA this year though, which is a shame because last years was excellent. On the plus side not spending money on the travel and flight means I can consider taking two/three months off and catching up on all those little things I keep putting off until I'm not quite as busy; a time that never arrives.
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Posted: 2008/01/07 20:57 | /career | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Fri, 04 Jan 2008
The Empty Envelope
This is a weird one (and a bit of a long shot) but someone kindly sent me a
letter this week, well I assume they did, as I only got an envelope.
If it was you then please drop me an email. I'm not ignoring, you I just don't know who you are or what you wanted. Not knowing is going to bug me now.
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Posted: 2008/01/04 23:38 | /nottech | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Wed, 02 Jan 2008
YSlow - a Grade A Tool
I spent a couple of hours running the YSlow
FireFox extension against the main website for one
of my little side projects and I couldn't stop fiddling with the sites
config until I got the score up. Improving a category until you get an
'A' gives you that same moment of satisfaction as all your tests passing
or a file restore working perfectly.
Due to not being amazingly wealthy I cheated with the content delivery network stage and just overrode it with the sites own name.
I'd happily recommend this tool to anyone who wants to learn some good habits. With the exception of the CDN rule it's hard to argue with most of its suggestions. The performance grade is a nice way of giving near instant feedback and encouraging at least basic sensible behaviour.
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Posted: 2008/01/02 22:52 | /tools/firefox | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Linux Journal - Offensive Adverts and the real Problem
Linux Journal is getting some coverage again, last time was an
advert, this time it's a headline about Perl that Andy Lester didn't like
and caused him to post that "The Linux Journal owes the open source community, especially the Perl
community, a big apology." You can read the full
complaint yourself over at use.perl 2.0 - sorry - Perl Buzz ;)
I like his post, despite the fact he's got a valid point the delivery irks me more than the underlying issue. It's a great example of person being indignant on behalf of a whole lot of people who don't care, and in many cases have no clue who he is or why he's claiming to speak for them. For some reason I keep wanting to type 'ESR' now... He could have posted in his own (actually very good) use.perl journal and stated that he found it unpleasant/disgusting and people would have nodded or disagreed with him. But no. Instead it has to be a big sweeping thing. I don't mean to pick on Andy but as a member of the Perl, Linux and open source communities I wanted to voice my counter opinion and say - LJ please publish what you want. I have a credit card and the ability to cancel my subscription if I don't like it. Oh, hang on, I did that over two years ago - which leads me to my other point.
Right - ignoring the whole moral outrage thing can we focus on the real issue please? Why does Linux Journal seem to be such a waste of paper these days? From 2000 to 2005 I used to be a devoted reader but over the last couple of years it's just not worth the time or money. I don't know if it's just the explosion of blogs and other decent technical content or just my reading habits changing but I find it hard to justify the cost (and actually finding a copy) just to get the hidden gems that are Reuven Lerner and Mick Bauer. To avoid sounding overly harsh I should probably point out that the articles haven't taken a huge dive in quality so much as so many clued, interesting people are now posting daily in indirect competition. Oh and the new editor was annoying as hell.
Going back to the original Perl headline incident the possible highlight of this for me (which I realise I probably shouldn't find childishly amusing) is that LJ just pulled the original story. No negotiation or endless discussion, they just pulled the whole thing.
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Posted: 2008/01/02 16:40 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Tue, 01 Jan 2008
Perl 5.10 - My Favourite Three Features
Since the release of Perl 5.10 (back on 2007/12/18) there have been a fair
few articles discussing all the shiny new features - including smart matching, a
built-in switch and state variables but my favourite three haven't really
received much coverage. So I'll add to the pile of blog posts.
First up is a tiny (from the outside anyway) change that may have the biggest impact of all the new features on my day to day perl - the display of the actual name of uninitialized variables.
# older perls
$ perl584 -we 'print $foo, "\n";'
Use of uninitialized value in print at -e line 1.
# perl 5.10
$ perl510 -we 'print $foo, "\n";'
Use of uninitialized value $foo in print at -e line 1.
From the perspective of someone who has to spend the occasional afternoon reading Apache errorlogs I really like this one.
Now we move on to stackable file tests; something I was surprised perl couldn't do when I first noticed it was missing years ago -
# older perls
...
if (-s $file && -r _ && -x _) {
print "$file isn't zero length and is +rx\n";
}
...
# perl 5.10
...
if (-s -r -x $file) {
print "$file isn't zero length and is +rx\n";
}
...
Lastly on my little list is named captures - instead of referencing
$1 and $2 etc. you can now assign them names at
the point of capture and then pull the values out of a hash at a later time
-
# requires 5.10 or above. But not 6.
my %date;
my $sample_date = '20071225';
if ( $sample_date =~ /(?<year>\d{4})(?<month>\d{2})(?<day>\d{2})/ ) {
%date = %+;
}
say "The year is $date{'year'}";
While none of these are massive attention grabbing additions like the powerful smart matching, switch statement or say (one of those is not like the others ;)) they help make the day-to-day stuff a little more pleasant.
Bonus feature -
my $x;
my $default = 'foo';
$x = 0;
$x ||= $default;
say "\$x is $x";
$x = 0;
$x //= $default;
say "\$x is $x";
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Posted: 2008/01/01 11:59 | /perl | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
New Day, New Year and New job - Well - Two out of Three
As of 6PM yesterday (or midnight - depending on how you interpret my
employment contract) my current role is redundant and I'm no longer a member of
the working world. It was a mostly good 28 months and I was lucky enough
to work with some damn smart people.
This wasn't unexpected. Between the Register articles and a generously lengthened consultation period most of us were pretty sure we'd be on the market again soon. My initial plan was to take a couple of months off (it's been nearly five years since I had more than a week and a half off in a single block) but there is a permie job that sounds very cool and a short term contract I'm interested in (and should hear about today) so I may have to delay the skiving a little longer.
One of the nicer things to come out of this being over is that I can start getting involved in external projects again. I think I'll spend more time this year annoying the people writing some of the projects that should make up my tool chain over the next year or two. I still like Puppet and after a little playing around with Cobbler I quite like it. Especially if the "Debian breed" stuff works. Of course, this means I'll need to learn at least basic Ruby and Python so there goes that extended holiday I was going to take. Unless I lug a pile of books to the beach :)
Now to spend the day lazing around, recover from a late night and enjoy being a drain on society for a whole day. Happy New Year.
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Posted: 2008/01/01 11:01 | /career | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Copyright © 2000-2005 Dean Wilson
