Advogato blog for robertc

24 Jun 2009

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:07:01 GMT

[edit: a home has been found]

Free to good home, one Intel 510T 22 port switch. (There are a couple of dead ports but its otherwise fine - no glitches or anything).

I've just replaced my home ethernet switch - I was using 5 ports, and most of my wired machines have gigabit now. Yay.

So, if you need a 22 port network switch, let me know. If I don't hear from anyone, it'll go into next months local recycling pickup.

This will be a 'come pick it up' arrangement, unless you're going to be at the same place I am for some other event - in Sydney, if thats not obvious.

21 Jun 2009

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:56:30 GMT

What is it with pc vendors that they make selecting machines by fairly useless things like model number (e.g. shuttle), or a hacky fugly hierarchy (e.g. auspcmarket) easy, but by attributes (e.g. '2 ethernet ports, no fans, small chassis') terribly hard.

They should take a leaf out of the way people ask each other for recommendations. auspcmarket /kindof/ does that with the systems hierarchy - but only for a few categories.

What I want I guess, is a menu of tags/attributes I can search for on a vendors site (and/or review sites like CNet's and, google shopping and so on). Doing a google shopping search for my interesting attributes above is a pretty epic fail.

8 Jun 2009

Mon, 8 Jun 2009 00:58:33 GMT

Latin (As in church latin, not latin character encoding) in Ubuntu Karmic will work better than it did in Hardy/Intrepid. I had missed one of the packages that want hard coded locale data when I did the initial enablement patch.

For reference, when adding a locale:

xlib (wants to know what locales are actually UTF8 and what compose sequences to use)
gdm (wants to know what locales to display)
glibc-locales (has the actual definition

25 May 2009

Mon, 25 May 2009 11:53:29 GMT

I'm leaving UDS early due to a loss in my family - I have to travel now to get to the funeral.

Folk that I had specific meetings/planned discussiongs lined up with I have tried to contact in person, and this post is intended to act as a catchall for anyone I didn't find.

7 May 2009

Thu, 7 May 2009 06:15:41 GMT

My desktop machine blew up, so I got a lovely fresh install of Jaunty. And, X and Gnome still disagreed by default about my actual screeen size... it was unreadably small with the default fonts. I've posted the following instructions before - these are basically unchanged except that the location of the fonts dialog has moved.

Tip for folk that would like X to show fonts (i.e. the GDM log in screen) in the correct size: Teach X about the dpi setting!

Step 1: run xdpyinfo and look for the dimensions: line. There will be something like this:

dimensions: 1280x768 pixels (266x161 millimeters)

resolution: 122x121 dots per inch

Grab a ruler and measure the screen you have. If it matches the millimeters reported by X, then skip step 2.

Step 2: edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and locate your Monitor section:

Section "Monitor"

Identifier "Generic Monitor"

Option "DPMS"

DisplaySize 265 160

EndSection

Add in a DisplaySize like I have there. Now logout of your GUI and restart X - you can run /etc/init.d/{g,k}dm restart from the console, or do what I do - just hit ctrl-alt-bkspace so it restarts. Your login screen should change appearance slightly - either the fonts and regions will get bigger if your dpi was set too low, or vice verca.

Step 3: (For KDE users, someone please tell me what it should be, for GNOME read on)...

Run xdpyinfo again and find the Resolution: line. Ignore the fact that it may not be square, grab one of the two numbers ( I suggest the higher)..

Go to System, Preferences, Appearance, and the Font tab. Select 'Details'. There is a Resolution field there. Put in the single number you chose. Changes should take effect immediately.

Applications I know of which benefit from having this set correctly:

xpdf, gnome-* (panels are readable etc etc), firefox.

2 Apr 2009

Thu, 2 Apr 2009 00:43:58 GMT

Launchpad has just upgraded their bzr server to bzr 1.13. This makes the signficant performance improvements in bzr 1.13 available when pushing and pulling from branches hosted on launchpad. 1.14 has further improvements in the client, so if pushing to launchpad is slow please consider upgrading your client to 1.14 (which about to enter beta).

29 Mar 2009

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 04:59:44 GMT

This has irritated me for a while in configure.ac. You've probably seen this pattern before:


AC_INIT([foo], [0.0.1])
MAJOR=0
MINOR=0
MICRO=1
MY_VERSION=$MAJOR.$MINOR.$MICRO
AC_SUBST(MAJOR)
AC_SUBST(MINOR)
AC_SUBST(MICRO)
AC_SUBST(MY_VERSION)

I finally hit my annoyance threshold for this, and the answer is pretty obvious. (If its not, or you think there is a simpler one, give it a shot - I'd like something more pithy).


AC_DEFUN([MAJOR], [0])
AC_DEFUN([MINOR], [0])
AC_DEFUN([MICRO], [1])
AC_DEFUN([MY_VERSION], [MAJOR.MINOR.MICRO])
AC_INIT([foo], [MY_VERSION])
AC_SUBST(MAJOR)
AC_SUBST(MINOR)
AC_SUBST(MICRO)
AC_SUBST(MY_VERSION)

Its not a big deal to be duplicating version numbers, but not duplicating at all is nicer.

11 Mar 2009

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 06:25:25 GMT

Certain amount of hyperbole, but still a great perspective on software-as-a-service vs service-as-a-service in Iceland.

Microsoft Skull-fucks Iceland’s Economy, Contracts Syphilis

Entertaining too :)

9 Sep 2008

Tue, 9 Sep 2008 04:32:25 GMT

Customer service... and vodafone. Something fundamentally missing here.

Vodafone's website is slow - 50% of the time you can't even login. 15-20 simple page clicks.

Ringing customer service - you get a IVR system that is intensely frustrating. It can't handle simple things like "Your website sucks" (it asks if you want to inquire about iphone 3g's). 10 minutes later and it actually offers a menu. Finally, some way to get through to a human.

Having stopped doing paper bills, you have to sign up to this website; several thousand words of legal terms and conditions later - 99% unrelated to paying bills - and you can't configure it to email you, unless it also SMS's you. WTF. Customer service don't know why this is required. And the website doesn't tell you its required, it just refuses to accept the form unless it's ticked.

Seriously, someone setup a viable, flexible, mobile provider in australia, with good international roaming - give me a ring.

1 Aug 2008

Fri, 1 Aug 2008 03:19:54 GMT

Well, advertising for the win right?

Was looking up a song I vaguely remembered via youtube, and I noticed that > 30% of the search results are taken up by a single advert for a film (Liam Neeson in Taken, ironically) which sits at the top right, leaving the rest of the column blank.

SHEESH