Posts

2010-04-29
Query CERN LDAP from the shell

Here's one for the shell nuts:
2010-04-20
Howto: Timelapse video from photos

It's amazing what shell tools can do: Flickr accepts HD video (720p, or max 1280×720) up to 30 FPS, so I tried to create one within those limits from the high resolution photos from today's sunrise. Turns out to be incredibly easy with free tools on Linux:
2010-04-16
Use SVG in SchemaSpy

SchemaSpy PNG images take a lot more space than their equivalent SVG counterparts. To replace the PNG images with SVG you can use schemaspy2svg (Bash and DOS batch scripts).
2010-03-29
EIF replies

In response to Glyn Moody's Open Source and Open Standards under Threat in Europe (Update: sorry, the link is dead), here are the open replies to the key people (I'll post as they are sent).
2010-02-04
Automatic backups to remote machine

Update: SSH public key authentication isn't supported on the system I want to backup to, so I've changed the procedure to create a cron job on the server instead of the client.
2010-01-22
BASH / Bourne Shell which outputs its own documentation

I love Python docstrings - It's a great application of the DRY principle. The excellent Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide has an example which does something similar, but it embeds the documentation in a variable in the middle of the code. This makes it less readable and findable than ordinary comments, and leads to duplication if you want to have the same documentation as a comment for other developers. Here's a very simple solution, which I'm sure can be improved to fit your documentation style. It simply prints all non-empty lines from the start of the file:
2010-01-12
BASH prompt galore

Here's the latest result of trying to make a BASH prompt which might be useful if you use chroot, ssh, su or git:
2009-12-27
The difficulty of bug reporting

This can be pretty hard: Say the GNOME screensaver password prompt sometimes won't accept your password, no matter how many times you try. How do you check that you haven't mixed up your password with one of the other 500 that you have to remember if you're not using a password bookmarklet or a password manager or you change passwords every month (You do use different passwords, don't you?)? How do you make sure that you're typing all those special characters right, especially since you're using multiple keyboard layouts? Does the "Leave a message" function show you the same string that would be sent to the password checking routine? Is it possible that any other software is at fault, mangling or interrupting your input? How do you even find out which software you're typing the password in? Could a buggy keylogger be involved? Is there any debugging output, and where can you find it? Is Caps Lock or Num Lock on (EEE laptops don't have those handy LEDs)? Are encodings in any way involved? Where should the bug be reported? Should I ask in the official mailing list before submitting one? If so, what's the address and do I have to be a member to post? Is there some alternative forum which is more used? Is the list even active anymore? The bug is still marked as unconfirmed (although I've had to killall gnome-screensaver for months), so I guess we'll have to see...
2009-12-27
Software bloat can be a good thing

Remember Mozilla? Not the foundation, but the browser + news reader + email client + kitchen sink that spawned Firefox, the lean and mean browser accused of arriving at just the same kitchen sink stage while taking over the world. I think there's at least one (maybe more) very important software development lessons to be learned here:
2009-12-27
Overselling Linux

Shortly after starting college I heard about the wonderful strategy / ideology of open source (hey, I'm from the sticks, OK?). As I recall, I'd never seen a machine running GNU/Linux before. Being an over-the-top Windows tweaker (Windows 98 broke completely about every two weeks), all that control sounded like gravy to a fat f***.