4J

Google's new data center in Finland

2011-05-24T19:03:00.000+02:00

Easier way to get PHP 5.2 on CentOS 5x

2010-09-12T17:17:00.000+02:00

Got this from the CentOS Wiki:Step 1: Create the file /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Testing.repo with the following contents:# CentOS-Testing:# !!!! CAUTION !!!!# This repository is a proving grounds for packages on their way to CentOSPlus and CentOS Extras.# They may or may not replace core CentOS packages, and are not guaranteed to function properly.# These packages build and install, but are waiting

Credit Scores - how do they work

2010-09-09T05:28:00.000+02:00

Got this and it's very interesting...

Google's acquisitions in one graphic

2010-08-27T05:38:00.000+02:00

Research by Scores.org

Robotic Surgery

2010-03-17T09:40:00.000+02:00

Are you obsessed with your cellphone?

2010-03-10T06:49:00.000+02:00

Via: Cell Phones

Rubik Madness

2010-02-26T13:56:00.000+02:00

Amazing Lego Robotics

2010-02-19T05:51:00.000+02:00

First, solving the Rubik's CubeThen, solving Sudoku

Some Vim stuff

2010-01-29T06:08:00.000+02:00

Stumbled upon this blog where I read about this vim tags plugin.Really cool :-)Image source: http://vim-taglist.sourceforge.net/

Electricity Monitor

2010-01-20T23:14:00.000+02:00

So I got my E2 Electricity Monitor the other day and hooked it up. The actual work took less then 5 minutes (although it took me 2 days to find some time to go buy bateries - 3x AA and 3x AAA bateries are required).So I've collected data for a little over 24 hours now and here is a first look at the results:As you can see, pretty easy to understand. It does however not tell the whole story...The

Class and def scope in python

2010-01-15T10:53:00.000+02:00

I added some notes on my Google page for those interested.

Windows 7 "god mode"

2010-01-07T19:49:00.000+02:00

Here is a Video from cnet.com that show a really neat trick...Original article available from cnet.com

Editing the hosts file in Windows 7

2009-12-30T16:31:00.000+02:00

Ok - so I haven't used Windows in a while. So I couldn't find the damn hosts file in the new version of Windows...Well, aparently I'm not the only one and a quick google turned up several helpful sites.In a nutshell: Click Start – search for “Notepad“, right-click and select “Run as Administrator“. This should launch notepad with elevated privileges. Now, open the host file from the File menu,

Random Speedtest - all is still well in ADSL land !

2009-12-27T22:17:00.000+02:00

Python: Convert datetime to unix seconds

2009-12-23T06:56:00.000+02:00

A quick solution:$ pythonPython 2.6.2 (release26-maint, Apr 19 2009, 01:58:18)[GCC 4.3.3] on linux2Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.>>> import datetime>>> tt = datetime.datetime( 2009, 12, 23, 6, 0, 0 )>>> print int( tt.strftime('%s') )1261540800>>>$ date --date="2009-12-23 06:00:00" +%s1261540800For a practical implementation, see http://sites.google.com/site

Getting started with screen (quickly)

2009-12-09T12:44:00.000+02:00

Screen is a wonderful tool.I use different configuration files for different scenarios, for example I regularly work on a set of database servers and I like to group them in a config file (for example ~/screen-dbservers).The top part of the config files contain the following:hardstatus alwayslastlinehardstatus string '%{= kG}[ %{G}%H %{g}][%= %{=kw}%?%-Lw%?%{r}(%{W}%n*%f%t%?(%u)%?%{r})%{w}%?%+Lw%

My fav font for the terminal

2009-12-09T07:03:00.000+02:00

Been working on gnome-terminal with the "Inconsolata" font for some time now - really cool!On Ubuntu, just "sudo apt-get install ttf-inconsolata" and then in gnome-terminal change the default profile (or another profile if you wish) to this font. Mine is set at "Inconsolata Medium 12".

Ubuntu: Convert a VMWare image for use in VirtualBox

2009-11-11T06:34:00.000+02:00

This is a very short summary of how I did my conversion. Perhaps it can be useful to some one else.Preparation1. Follow instructions from the VirtualBox site to add the Ubuntu repositories. Also add the GPG key as per instructions on the same page.2. Run the following command:$ sudo apt-get update$ sudo apt-get install qemu virtualbox-3.0 dkmsConversionI had my vmware disk image split in 2GB

Got a mac

2009-10-20T06:38:00.000+02:00

Just got a second hand eMac - and I already love it! First order of business: mounting ISO images. Found this top from osxdaily.com:$ hdiutil mount sample.isoI suppose this is in a terminal - will check tonight :-)

WOW - Facebook and Twitter for free...

2009-09-22T22:10:00.000+02:00

FNB Connect now has a special for their ADSL users: surf Facebook and Twitter for free every day from 19:00 to 23:00. Cool :-)

Amazing stuff...

2009-08-31T13:09:00.000+02:00

Here's an interesting product called "d3o" that provide amazing impact protection.Some movies:First, the official d3o movie:And here's a Discovery channel clip:Can't wait to play with it myself :-)

The story of the Seacom cable

2009-08-28T13:53:00.000+02:00

Found this video on the SEACOM site. Interesting background.

FNB Connect Speed Test

2009-08-18T21:23:00.000+02:00

Ah... This is how ADSL should be :-)

Disrict 9 Trailer and some related info

2009-08-17T18:32:00.000+02:00

TrailerAnd here is a look at two other short clips:"Alive in Joburg" on which District 9 was based:And"Tetra Vaal":

[Perl] Check if DB table exists

2009-08-06T08:21:00.001+02:00

Building on the script of yesterday, I have created a subroutine that will create a table if it doesn't exist. It also uses a DB connect retry for up to an hour in cases where the DB is not available.The input arg's of the sub:The table nameThe table create definitionHere is the script:sub CheckTables { my( $tblname, $tbldef ) = @_; # Connect to DB my $cont = 0; my $

[Perl] Waiting for a DB connection to become available

2009-08-05T16:01:00.000+02:00

While working on Hadoop, I found that connecting to a DB to get or insert data presented a problem as you often need more connections then what's available. My solution right now is to "wait" for a connection to become available - without using any fancy queuing mechanisms: # Connect to DBmy $cont = 0;my $tries = 0;my $dbh1;while( not $cont ) { $tries++; eval {

"Telnet" to HTTPS hosts

2009-07-22T06:36:00.000+02:00

Fairly easy using openssl:$ openssl s_client -connect localhost:443And then issue your telnet commands as per usual...

Appolo 11 Guidance Computer Simulator - Links

2009-07-21T14:23:00.000+02:00

Just a collection of links:Virtual AGC and AGS Home Page: http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/Virtual AGC Software (Linux RPM): http://code.google.com/p/virtualagc/Comparing the Apollo AGC computing power with an IBM XT: http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/07/20/how-powerful-was-the-apollo-11-computer/A little history: http://linux.com/news/software/developer/29068-apollo-11-story

ssh-copy-id: ERROR: No identities found

2009-07-20T16:18:00.000+02:00

From time to time when I run the ssh-copi-id(1) command I get the error "ssh-copy-id: ERROR: No identities found".The solution is simple: create a private and public key pair.$ ssh-keygenGenerating public/private rsa key pair.Enter file in which to save the key (/home/user/.ssh/id_rsa):Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):Enter same passphrase again:Your identification has been saved in /

Copyright law 100 years ago - it seems we are going backwards

2009-07-19T09:23:00.000+02:00

I am amazed how backward we are going in terms of freedom. Have a look at this article for one example involving copyright law. We spend the last how many 100's of years fighting for freedom just to give it up again. Very sad.

IT Security: interesting interview with Joanna Rutkowska

2009-07-19T04:53:00.000+02:00

Over at Tom's Hardware is a very interesting (and long) interview with Joanna Rutkowska - a security specialist best known for her Windows Vista exploits (for research - of course).I especially like her strategy (look at page 6) is to run various virtual machines, each with it's own security settings depending on it's task. There is however two major drawbacks on this approach: 1) You need a

Transformers

2009-07-17T12:56:00.000+02:00

make your own here

To the girls

2009-06-12T07:49:00.000+02:00

Discover Kate Ryan!

Python signal handling

2009-05-31T22:25:00.000+02:00

Signals are one of the most under estimated tools on POSIX systems. Windows is supposed to also handle (some) signals, but I've never used it and don't plan to either. These notes are therefor based on Linux and similar behaving systems.I used signal processing a lot in Perl coding but since I'm still learning Python I thought it might be a good idea to check it out. As it turns out, it's

Python: what day is tomorrow?

2009-05-28T08:48:00.000+02:00

Easy yes? Well - sort of. It's easy if you want to know tomorrows date. It's not so easy if you want to work out the next date from "any" other date.This is by no means perfect - it's work in progress, but for now it works for me:The simple solution to calculate tomorrow (from the Python Cookbook):import datetimetoday = datetime.date.today( )yesterday = today - datetime.timedelta(days=1)tomorrow

Difference between Windows 7 32bit and 64bit

2009-05-25T19:28:00.000+02:00

Interesting to see there's about 600MB+ difference between the two ISO images... What gives?

Getting VMWare keyboard to play nicely in Ubuntu

2009-05-12T11:48:00.000+02:00

I always found it a bit annoying and finally got the stage where I could no longer take it! If you use VMWare server/workstation on Ubuntu you may find that the arrow keys (amongst others) do not work as expected. For example, one of the arrow keys will pop-up the start menu if your guest OS is Windows.Lucky for Ubuntu users the fix is simple: echo 'xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true' > ~/.vmware

Windows 7

2009-05-05T17:25:00.000+02:00

From ScreenshotsSo I finally installed Windows 7. It's a relatively old beta build - but it appears to be running smoothly.For those interested, Microsoft has the RC1 available until somewhere in July 2009. It will work full functional until 1 March 2010 at which time it will shut down after 2 hours.Now to see what works and what breaks :-)

Bash scripts and directory names with spaces

2009-04-30T16:43:00.003+02:00

As a rule I avoid directory names with spaces, but from time to time you have to deal with these oddities in your bash scripts. Here is a quick script that demonstrates how to work around this problem...To test, create a directory like "/tmp/some dir". Change into this directory and run the script. You should see something like this: 1 $ /tmp/test.sh 2 Attempting to go back to '/tmp/some dir' 3 /

URL Shortening - Problems and solutions

2009-04-13T09:21:00.002+02:00

Background read to understand the problem: http://joshua.schachter.org/2009/04/on-url-shorteners.htmlSome of the main problems for web users:The real URL are hidden, so the user never knows exactly where they are going. For example: http://service.tld/?abc could point to an undesirable site or just as well to a reputable news site - you never know up front.A lot of spam houses make use of URL

New playlist

2009-04-10T19:33:00.002+02:00

On Youtube I created a play list of the three parts about the Toyota Hilux that To Gear tried to "expire" - but failed... Brilliant series...You can also try this link if the above embedded object doesn't work...

Easily mirror a site with wget

2009-04-02T17:17:00.001+02:00

$ wget -nv -t 0 -c -nc -4 -x -nH --user-agent="" -r -l 5 -k -p -np http://site/path/For those like me that can never remember :-)

Modern Software on old OS

2009-03-28T10:54:00.003+02:00

In a bit of useless experimenting I thought I would try out some modern 32bit software on old Operating Systems.I started with my old original copy of Windows 98 - installed under VMWare...It's been a very interesting experiment indeed. My biggest problem interesting enough was browsing the web. I used the original IE (IE5) that shipped with Windows 98 as well as Netscape Communicator 4.79.

A Python Quicky - a function to handle user input (command line)

2009-02-26T07:39:00.002+02:00

This is perhaps more a note to self, but of course others are welcome to use and improve on the function.#!/usr/bin/pythonimport tracebackimport redef UserInput( question="> ", input_type="numeric", regex="^\d{1}$", action_on_fail="retry", help_on_error="\tYou need to supply exactly 1 numeric digit from 0 to 9. Press CTRL+C to quit." ): quit = 0 userinput = "" while quit == 0: try: if

Memcached Functions for MySQL (UDF's)

2009-02-04T12:52:00.002+02:00

Tangent recently updated their libmemcached_functions_mysql UDF (now version 0.8), and it's looking good. I had some issues getting it to work on 64 bit Linux, so here are some notes (Centos/RHEL 64Bit).Before you begin you will need all the usual development RPM's including "rpm-build", "mysql-devel", "gcc-c++", "libevent-devel" and "libevent".Next obtain the various sources:http://danga.com/

Apache and PHP - File Upload Limits

2009-01-29T12:49:00.001+02:00

If you can not upload a file using Apache and PHP, it's likely that some of your PHP configuration values are set too low. Here are the important ones to check:upload_max_filesizepost_max_sizememory_limitmax_execution_time max_input_timeHope that helps some one :-)

Sharing 1 KB and Mouse between 2 PC's

2009-01-25T14:35:00.002+02:00

Ok - I have known it existed for some time, but never bothered using it...It a very useful Open Source tool called Synergy which allow you to share a singe keyboard and mouse between 2 computers - and the two computers could be running different OS's, but why would anybody run anything else then Linux these days?Well - I have now a desktop and a laptop - both running Ubuntu GNU/Linux.I have used

Compiling mydns on 64bit platform (Linux)

2009-01-20T12:39:00.002+02:00

MyDNS is a very small yet cool DNS server running of a MySQL back-end. To compile it on 64bit Centos I just had to do:$ ./configure --with-mysql-lib=/usr/lib64/mysql/ --with-zlib=/usr/lib64/This was purely to find the required libraries.After that the rest of the build process works as documented.

Top Gun Music

2009-01-17T22:44:00.004+02:00

In South Africa we are watching Top Gun on DSTV this month - still one of the best movies for me.Here is the soundtrack (well - one version at least):Discover Cheap Trick!Where are those days?

mod_python just got cooler - for me at least

2008-12-29T22:44:00.007+02:00

Ok - for some this might be old news, but I thought I share it in any case. one reason is for all that still needs to discover this cool feature, and the other reason is that this is my way of documenting features like this - because I forget :-)So here's the deal: Have a simple mod_python script that can handle both GET and POST requests - but also have the ability to modify your handler without

FNB Connect ADSL Speed Test

2008-12-19T14:23:00.002+02:00

All I can say is WOW :-) If you have a ADSL account already, you can easily convert - just visit the FNB Connect home page.

New cool stuf from Google...

2008-12-10T07:00:00.002+02:00

Well, they are up to the usual stuff again... this time it's something called Native Client. Although this sounds like ActiveX and Java Applets, it does have another twist (as one of the coments pointed out): "Google Chrome + Native Client + Gears == the future of application deployment and runtime."Resources:Blog entryDeveloper home page

State of OpenSource Hardware in 2008

2008-11-29T22:24:00.001+02:00

There's a nice summary over at MakeZine

Linux on the iPhone

2008-11-29T22:22:00.000+02:00

The Linux 2.6 kernel now runs on the iPhone :-)iPhone Linux Demonstration Video from planetbeing on Vimeo.

Why do people still use Internet Explorer ???

2008-11-26T11:41:00.003+02:00

Many people probably just don't know there are other browsers... Perhaps they don't know how to get/install other web browsers... Whatever the reason, they are missing out!Since Chrome is currently only Windows based, I will gladly settle for my Firefox 3 browser, as it didn't do that bad at all.Well done Google!Follow up: Also be sure to check out Lunascape - a triple engine browser!

The snake bites it's tail

2008-11-25T14:03:00.002+02:00

I have finally hit some sore points in my Python programming experience I don't like at all:Point nr 1: How Python handle NULL values. I am of course not the first to hit this little problem... This is particularly confusing when dealing with databases. A DB query could return one field in one row of which the value is NULL, or, no rows could be returned at all. In both cases you will have a "

Started a new dedicated Python site

2008-11-07T10:27:00.001+02:00

Check it out on http://sites.google.com/site/pythonbits/Will be adding more and more stuff there over time.

RFC 1123/822 dates in Python

2008-11-03T20:39:00.003+02:00

Quick solution:import datetime...datetime.datetime.utcnow().strftime("%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S GMT")References:RFC 1123RFC 822 (paragraph 5.1 in particular)

Low latency sound recording - Linux RT Kernel

2008-09-20T21:29:00.003+02:00

Here is a nice intro on how to set-up near real time components in the Linux kernel. In this specific demonstration the author demonstrates how to get less then 3ms latency on audio recording - something Operating Systems for home users can not generally do.Also make sure to read the comments from Dave Phillips at the bottom of the page...

Python tip: base conversions

2008-09-20T11:55:00.003+02:00

Sometimes you may require to convert between base systems, for example from Octal to BASE10, as may be required when you use the os.mkdir or os.makedirs functions.Here is a simple script demonstrating a possible implementation:#!/usr/bin/pythonBASE2 = "01"BASE8 = "01234567"BASE10 = "0123456789"BASE16 = "0123456789ABCDEF"BASE62 = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"def

Fix for mod_bw when getting an error "undefined symbol: apr_atomic_cas"

2008-09-19T07:09:00.003+02:00

I downloaded the Apache module mod_bw to see if I could simulate some "slow" connections. To compile the package you need to run the following command as root:# apxs -i -a -c mod_bw.cThat will install the module correctly, but when you add the configuration option to your vhost configs you might get an error "undefined symbol: apr_atomic_cas". When that happens, open the file mod_bw.c and change

Why you can't trust Wikipedia...

2008-09-12T22:32:00.002+02:00

It's amazing how wrong data can be on the WWW, yet most people belief everything they read :-) Wikipedia is often criticized for it's inaccurate information, yet it is used in many academic references.Take this entry on the DNA Computer on Wikipedia as an example: the author claims that the "field was initially developed by Leonard Adleman of the University of Southern California, in 1994."But,

Oracle install HOWTO

2008-09-10T21:44:00.001+02:00

I finally completed the detailed Oracle install HOWTO as described in an earlier post.

Oracle 11g Enterprise on Ubuntu

2008-09-07T21:06:00.003+02:00

Took me the whole of 1 day and lot's of reading :-)I first tried to play with Oracle in VMWare, but it was DOG SLOW !!! To give you an idea, my Laptop is a dual core 2.4GHz with 4GB RAM, and it becomes virtually unusable after running in a CentOS VMWare session, where the session was allocated 1.5GB RAM and some RAW disk.The thing is I don't want to mess anything up, so if I can't use a Virtual

Unbuffered IO in Python

2008-08-27T18:58:00.004+02:00

I was looking around for a while on how to get unbuffered IO in Python, and eventually discovered the following entry in the man page: -u Force stdin, stdout and stderr to be totally unbuffered. On systems where it matters, also put stdin, stdout and stderr in binary mode. Note that there is internal buffering in xreadlines(), readlines() and

Google on IPv6 network

2008-08-10T18:55:00.001+02:00

Not really important, but just out of interest, google is now reachable via IPv6:$ host ipv6.google.comipv6.google.com is an alias for ipv6.l.google.com.ipv6.l.google.com has IPv6 address 2001:4860:0:1001::68No I just need to find an IPv6 ready ISP in South Africa :-)

Editing your web pages in OOo

2008-08-09T12:22:00.004+02:00

So you have played with OpenOffice.org (OOo) and you now want to start editing web pages... Well - it's seems to more easy with ODF@WWW.There is also some talk on Linux.com about this new handy tool and how to get going.

Office 2007 Compatibility pack for Office 2000

2008-07-28T20:08:00.002+02:00

If you are still a MS Office 2000 user, you might have been frustrated when people send you Office 2007 files, since you can not open these - unless of course you install the compatibility pack...I tested on MS Windows 2000 Professional with Service Pack 4, and all is working as advertised.

The $200 tablet

2008-07-23T05:44:00.002+02:00

Here is an interesting project that has drawn a lot of attention yesterday..."The machine is as thin as possible, runs low end hardware and has a single button for powering it on and off, headphone jacks, a built in camera for video, low end speakers, and a microphone. It will have Wifi, maybe one USB port, a built in battery, half a Gigabyte of RAM, a 4-Gigabyte solid state hard drive. Data

Nice qoute

2008-07-17T19:51:00.002+02:00

Sometimes I can just not belief the brilliant quotes people come up with...Take this one from a recent Slashdot article..."And anyone who likes to bitch about MySQL deserves an Oracle bill... Or they could use Postgres...":-)

SSH and Virtual User Authentication

2008-07-07T21:37:00.003+02:00

I was searching around for a solution on how to authenticate users via OpenSSH on a Linux system, if the users live in a DB. It appears that not a lot of information is available on the topic on some of the more obvious search terms, but after some digging the solution was actually straight forward.Of course I'm running Debian stable, so the following solution should work for all Debian based

Monitoring when a process dies - near real time

2008-07-01T09:47:00.002+02:00

I recently had a question on c.o.l.s about real time process monitoring. Although there is still refinement required, I have my fav solution here:#!/bin/bashPROG=$1N=0while :do if [ ! -x $PROG ]; then echo "$PROG is not executable" >&2 exit 1 fi if [ $N -lt $SECONDS ]; then N=$SECONDS elif [ $(($N - 5)) -ge $SECONDS ]; then

Dell XPS M1530 with Ubuntu and Vodafone 3G

2008-06-26T17:08:00.004+02:00

Well, let me first say that Ubuntu absolutely rocks on the M1530. The only thing that took me a while to sort out was the on board 3G modem, so here is a little run down of the steps I took to get it working.I assume for now you have installed the Vodafone 3G dialer.Step 1: Add the following line in /etc/fstab:none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=46,devmode=664 0 0I did a reboot

WindowMaker Debian Menus

2008-06-01T16:31:00.002+02:00

After two or so years on KDE I decided to go back to WindowMaker. This is mainly for the benefit of performance and less clutter. There is one frustration though - menus :-)When you install WindowMaker on Ubuntu, the "menu" package is not automatically installed, so you have to manually add it afterwards with "apt-get install menu". After each application you install, it's a good idea to update

tkcvs problem on debian/ubuntu systems

2008-05-31T23:57:00.002+02:00

As many have discovered, there is a annoying bug in the Tcl version shipped with Debian/Ubuntu (which may not be the case with the latest Ubuntu - I am still one release behind on my day-to-day laptop). In any case, here is my fix:In the file /usr/share/tkcvs/cvs.tcl search for the line "set juliandate [clock scan $date -gmt yes]" (around line number 143).Add a line just before it, so that your

Dynamic Code Execution in Python

2008-05-03T15:59:00.003+02:00

Some might remember my earlier experiments in dynamic code execution in Perl. Here is a simple recipe to demonstrate a similar concept in Python: 1 #!/usr/bin/python 2 3 import new 4 5 def importCode(code, name, add_to_sys_modules=False): 6 # code can be any object containing code: a string, a file object, or 7 # a compiled code object. Returns a new module object initialized 8 # by

Adding to the search path in Pyhton

2008-05-03T14:58:00.002+02:00

Simple, really:import syssys.path.append("/home/you/your_modules")And that's it.

You learn something new every day...

2008-05-01T14:49:00.003+02:00

I could never figure how to grow/shrink vertical splits in Vim - sad, but true. It never really bothered me, as I rarely used vertical splits, but now that I know how to resize the windows, I used it more and more.So, to grow/shrink the vertical split: +W and '<' or '>'That's it :-)O - and I found a simple short way to toggle line numbers::se nu!

Google App Engine

2008-04-08T18:55:00.002+02:00

I just had a look at Google App Engine. Interesting to say the least. Although I think it has value, I can't see serious business orientated people using it just yet, as there is always the question about data ownership. Businesses prefer to have complete control over their data, and if you are willing to trust a third party with your data you would then at least ensure all the correct legal work

Some Centos and SELinux woes...

2008-04-05T21:12:00.003+02:00

I discovered that custom compiling Apache and PHP leads to an interesting situation in Centos with SELinux. When you try to start Apache, you will get an error like this: "cannot restore segment prot after reloc: Pemission denied".This has to do with SElinux. I found some help on the web, and what you have to do is:Open /etc/sysconfig/selinux and modify the line that reads "SELINUX=enforcing" to

Perl goodies: Executing perl code in your Perl script with timeout

2008-03-28T15:44:00.004+02:00

Here is the scenario: You are implementing a program that requires scripting. Since you already know Perl, you decide you program needs to execute Perl code. Here is a short recipe you can follow, that also include a little time out checking. 1 #!/usr/bin/perl 2 3 use strict; 4 5 my $code = "my \$wait = int(rand(20)+1); print \"Sleep time: \$wait\\n\"; print \"Params: \"; print \">\$_ \" foreach

How to synchronize a Windows Desktop and a Linux Laptop (user's documents)

2008-03-20T15:13:00.003+02:00

I guess it doesn't matter which way around you look at it, but the main thing is that you have a mix between Windows and Linux on two clients, and you need to keep your documents in sync between the two.Recently I wrote a Perl script to this from the Linux system, assuming you mounted the Windows folder in question (typically your "My Documents" folder).However, perhaps it will make more sense

Root DNS Servers Prepare for IPv6

2008-01-04T09:20:00.000+02:00

Ars Technica has the story. They touch briefly on the history as well as the technical challenges that form part of the switch. There is also a slashdot discussion.From what I understood, the IPv4 addresses would run dry somewhere early in 2009. That date is based on the fact that no additional measures is taken to recover IPv4 address blocks, which I thought was a bit odd. But in the light of

SQLRelay Perl Performance Results

2007-12-27T09:53:00.000+02:00

For those who have worked with SQLRelay before, you already know the power of this tool. For those who don't, I suggest you have a look at this great database tool.I have compared the basic performance of the two primary Perl interfaces: 1) the SQLRelay supplied interface and 2) the DBI bindingsGranted - I know that DBI has more overhead, but I wanted to know what the performance difference

Toshiba Builds 100x Smaller Micro Nuclear Reactor

2007-12-20T08:59:00.000+02:00

This is rather interesting - I wonder if it could be legally implemented anywhere :-)Story: http://www.nextenergynews.com//. Discussion: http://slashdot.org/Here are the basics specs:200KW40 year life spanCompletely self sustained (sealed) unitNo additional cooling required

Perl 5.10 is out

2007-12-19T06:47:00.000+02:00

Perl is 20 years old, and a new version was released on the birthday.Well - at this rate I don't know if Perl 6 will ever get going. One thing I noticed is that some of the new commands in Perl 6 is making their way into the Perl 5 source - I think this is a could thing as it will make the transition to Perl 6 (when it eventually becomes available) much smoother.The change log can be found here..

Alternatives Energy Sources

2007-12-16T08:24:00.000+02:00

Right now, South Africa is in the middle of a huge energy crisis - there is just not enough electricity to go around. The result is wide spread regular power outages, which has effected businesses, education, health care and just about every other industry you can think about.The problem also hit home, in that I could see how it effected my wife's small business which she runs from home. We have

At last - a simple to use online charting tool

2007-12-09T01:10:00.000+02:00

The Google techies have done it again: a great practical tool to create charts.Check it out at http://code.google.com/apis/chart/Here is a sample chart:The above chart was generated using the following URL: http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chd=s:hW&chs=250x100&chl=Hello|WorldIt's really that simple!Have fun.

Passing packets from kernel land to userland - libipq and C

2007-11-11T10:32:00.000+02:00

Based on my earlier entry, I got the C sample code working. Hopefully you will know what to do from the remarks in the code:/* * This code is GPL. *//* * Compiling: $ gcc -I/usr/include/libnetfilter_queue -L/usr/lib/libnetfilter_queue_libipq.so -o libipq_test_01 libipq_test_01.c -lipq * * You will require the following iptables rules BEFORE running this program: * *

Passing packets from kernel land to userland - libipq and Perl

2007-11-10T08:17:00.000+02:00

I have been looking at packet sniffing for various applications for a while now. Problem is that my needs are more "real time/in-line" than "post capture processing" (ala libpcap and friends).So here are some notes on my progress. Consider this part 1.Since I am using Linux exclusively, I had another look at Netfilter. I discovered basically two tools I could use:libipq, andlibnetfilter_queueThe

Debugging Perl CGI Scrips from the Command Line

2007-10-29T09:28:00.001+02:00

For many Perl CGI developers it's always a pain to debug CGI scripts from the command line. Here is a quick way to help you: $ export HTTP_COOKIE="user_id=abc123"$ export QUERY_STRING="month=jan&year=2001"$ export REQUEST_METHOD="GET"$ ./your-script.cgiThat's it. At least for GET requests. For POST data you need to do the following: Put all your POST data in a file:recipient=John@Doe.com&Fullname

Is Heaven for Christians only?

2007-10-09T06:18:00.000+02:00

I have just read the comments of Desmond Tutu on News24.com. Obviously he lost the plot :-)I am not saying that Christians in general always did the right thing during the ages - but in the end we only the Bible to guide us to the truth, and truth is that no one that denies Jesus Christ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.The comments of the Nazi's and the KKK also has me confused. I can perhaps

New blog in SA...

2007-09-27T05:34:00.000+02:00

I have started another blog on an SA site to start educating SA people on FLOSS.I think too many South Africans are still unaware of the potential for Open Source software, so I hope this little extra information can get some more people thinking.

New project submitted to Freshmeat

2007-08-29T07:33:00.000+02:00

I have submitted a new project to freshmeat.net and will upload the files to the project page once it is approved.The project focus on a simply yet fast program to process tcpdump(8) dump files. The extracted data will be stored in a DB.I started the project mainly as a preparation phase (R&D) for another project I'm working on. Perhaps some body else can find this little tool useful as well.

Intel Carrier Grade Platforms Certified for Sun Solaris

2007-07-17T09:34:00.000+02:00

Intel Corporation today announced availability for Sun Microsystems’ Solaris Operating System on Intel-based telecommunications rack and blade servers just months after a broad agreement between the two companies. The systems are carrier grade rack mount servers that are Network Equipment-Building System (NEBS) Level 3 and European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) compliant, and

Nice Perl Music Video

2007-07-12T05:22:00.000+02:00

Some XHTML surprises

2007-07-10T08:05:00.000+02:00

I haven't played with raw HTML (or XHTML in this case) in a while. It's been even longer since I did a basic site with frames. Anyway, I discovered that the new XHTML (strict) specs does not allow you to use the "target" element in the HREF tag anymore. So I search around for a solution, and thanks to many people contributing on this topic all over the web, I finally used the advice from

First ever cell phone add

2007-07-10T05:40:00.000+02:00

Three Hurt As Door Falls Off Helicopter

2007-06-26T07:23:00.000+02:00

It seems that sometimes crew still take changes at air shows. Why do they fly over the people?Other sources: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/article2706646.ece

Converting All Your MS Outlook PST Files To Maildir Format

2007-06-14T07:05:00.000+02:00

I have contributed my first article to the HowtoForge.The problem I had was that I wanted to convert my old PST files from MS Outlook 2003 to something I could use in a "normal" e-mail client, like KMail or Thunderbird.One of my colleagues suggested an IMAP server - and the result was that I documented everything as I went along.You can read it now online.