David Edmondson

water on grass

2010-07-26T00:00:00+01:00

water on grass (at flickr)

Zendegi: Amazon.co.uk: Greg Egan: Books

2010-07-15T00:00:00+01:00

Zendegi: Amazon.co.uk: Greg Egan: Books: Remember the rules: If it's written by Egan, it's worth reading.

I know where you are

2010-07-15T00:00:00+01:00

I know where you are (at flickr)

Planet Solaris is no more

2010-07-06T00:00:00+01:00

After watching the frequency of collected posts and the subscriber list for a couple of weeks, I've decided to turn off Planet Solaris.

As before, this has nothing to do with any request from Oracle.

OpenSolaris news can be had from Planet OpenSolaris.

Thanks for reading over the last few years, it was fun.

Update: Stoyan Angelov decided to resurrect and curate things, so it's back.

Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age by Clay Shirky

2010-06-29T00:00:00+01:00

Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age: Amazon.co.uk: Clay Shirky: Books: Better use of our otherwise idle brain power?

emacs, convert dos to unix and vice versa « /home/edivad

2010-06-10T00:00:00+01:00

emacs, convert dos to unix and vice versa « /home/edivad: Saving a file with different line endings in emacs.

Today's Guardian (Phil Gyford’s website)

2010-06-09T00:00:00+01:00

Today's Guardian (Phil Gyford’s website): Excellent interface for reading today's Guardian content.

St. Ives harbour

2010-06-07T00:00:00+01:00

St. Ives harbour (at flickr)

testing ON changes with OpenSolaris installers - Liane Praza's Weblog

2010-05-27T00:00:00+01:00

testing ON changes with OpenSolaris installers - Liane Praza's Weblog: Using the distro constructor to generate ISO and USB install images for OpenSolaris.

The Early Days of a Better Nation: Red Plenty

2010-05-23T00:00:00+01:00

The Early Days of a Better Nation: Red Plenty: Enthusiastic review of Red Plenty.

eucalyptus

2010-05-23T00:00:00+01:00

eucalyptus (at flickr)

How to Manage the Automatic ZFS Snapshot Service - OpenSolaris 2009.06 Information Resources - wikis.sun.com

2010-05-20T00:00:00+01:00

How to Manage the Automatic ZFS Snapshot Service - OpenSolaris 2009.06 Information Resources - wikis.sun.com: Managing the automatic snapshot service in OpenSolaris. If installing using the text-mode installer, the package to add is service/storage/zfs-auto-snapshot.

RFC 3156 - MIME Security with OpenPGP

2010-05-18T00:00:00+01:00

RFC 3156 - MIME Security with OpenPGP: Information on how to generate and parse multipart/signed containing PGP.

twin stars

2010-05-07T00:00:00+01:00

twin stars (at flickr)

General Reference Filing with Org Mode

2010-04-15T00:00:00+01:00

General Reference Filing with Org Mode: Details of an interesting approach to collecting reference material - particularly the part about how to reference scanned documents.

Planet Sun is no more

2010-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Now that Sun Microsystems is a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle, I've decided to shut down Planet Sun.

To forestall any questions, this decision is not the result of any pressure or request from Oracle (or Sun) - no-one from the company has contacted me at all about Planet Sun.

Thanks for reading over the last five or six years, it was fun.

New Employer

2010-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Today I have a new employer, Oracle. How much effect this has on my day-to-day life remains to be seen - I'm not anticipating great changes. It does mean that I should re-iterate something that I haven't mentioned for a few years:

All views expressed on this blog are those of David Edmondson and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other entity, including Sun Microsystems and Oracle.

git ready » squashing commits with rebase

2010-02-18T00:00:00+00:00

git ready » squashing commits with rebase: Merging multiple commits into a single commit using git rebase -i.

How to delete a remote branch - Gitorious | Google Groups

2010-02-18T00:00:00+00:00

How to delete a remote branch - Gitorious | Google Groups: Cleaning up remote repositories that include now-defunct branches.

GuruPlug Server

2010-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

GuruPlug Server: Second generation SheevaPlug looks interesting - adds WiFi, Bluetooth, eSATA and (optionally) two gigabit ethernet interfaces.

DebianExperimental - Debian Wiki

2010-02-12T00:00:00+00:00

DebianExperimental - Debian Wiki: How to use the occasional experimental package.

ResourceSpace: Open Source Digital Asset Management (DAM)

2010-02-11T00:00:00+00:00

ResourceSpace: Open Source Digital Asset Management (DAM): PHP/MySQL based digital resource management solution originally developed for Oxfam.

notmuch

2010-02-08T00:00:00+00:00

notmuch: A new email client based around a Xapian index and tagging. Similar in intent to Gmail and sup, but emacs, vim and curses frontends.

iSCSI: Opensolaris target, Fedora initiator, with CHAP - For the good of all of us

2010-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

iSCSI: Opensolaris target, Fedora initiator, with CHAP - For the good of all of us: Configuring CHAP authentication for a Fedora iSCSI initiator.

Alasdair on Everything » Solaris as an iSCSI Server with ZFS

2010-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

Alasdair on Everything » Solaris as an iSCSI Server with ZFS: Configuring CHAP authentication for a Windows iSCSI initiator.

stevenf.com - I need to talk to you about computers. I’ve been...

2010-01-29T00:00:00+00:00

stevenf.com - I need to talk to you about computers. I’ve been...: Nice contrast between New World and Old World computing.

Nothing Creative

2010-01-28T00:00:00+00:00

Tim says:

For creative people, this device is nothing.

Which seems like a very odd statement. By the same token, would art galleries, museums, theatre performances, music concerts, etc. all be classed as "nothing" for creative people?

Using OpenSolaris extras & support repositories : frontline

2010-01-26T00:00:00+00:00

Using OpenSolaris extras & support repositories : frontline: How to acquire a certificate for access to the OpenSolaris extra repository.

Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air: Amazon.co.uk: David J.C. MacKay: Books

2010-01-26T00:00:00+00:00

Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air: Amazon.co.uk: David J.C. MacKay: Books: United Kingdom focussed book on sustainable (rather than renewable) energy sources.

What time is it?

2010-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

Like many other people, I work with others who are spread around the globe. Figuring out when is a good time to call, what would be a sensible meeting time, etc. is always awkward - especially when the daylight savings rules keep changing.

Here's a small script called wwt that I use to help understand what the time is:

#!/bin/sh

# Which timezones to report
zones="UTC \
Europe/London Europe/Paris \
US/Eastern US/Central US/Mountain US/Pacific \
Asia/Shanghai"

local="${TZ}"
if [ "${TZ}" = "" ]; then
    local=`cat /etc/timezone`
fi

a="$*"

# If no time is specified, use now.
if [ "${a}" = "" ]; then
    a=`date`
fi

# Determine if the specified time makes sense and determine the 'fully
# qualified' version of the specified time, i.e. including the date.
o="--date=TZ=\"${local}\" ${a}"
d=`date "${o}"`
if [ "$?" -ne 0 ]; then
    echo "\"${a}\" makes no sense."
    exit 1
fi

o="--date=TZ=\"${local}\" ${d}"

for i in ${zones}; do
    t=`TZ=${i} date "${o}" +"%l:%M%p" | tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]'`
    d=`TZ=${i} date "${o}" +"%A %e %B %Y (%Z, %:::z)"`
    s="${i}#${t}#${d}"
    echo ${s}
done | awk -F\# '{printf("%16s: %s  %s\n", $1, $2, $3);}'

I use it in three ways: to find out what time it is now in various places (my local timezone is set to Europe/London, where it's now 11:54pm):

$ wwt
             UTC: 11:54pm  Tuesday 19 January 2010 (UTC, +00)
   Europe/London: 11:54pm  Tuesday 19 January 2010 (GMT, +00)
    Europe/Paris: 12:54am  Wednesday 20 January 2010 (CET, +01)
      US/Eastern:  6:54pm  Tuesday 19 January 2010 (EST, -05)
      US/Central:  5:54pm  Tuesday 19 January 2010 (CST, -06)
     US/Mountain:  4:54pm  Tuesday 19 January 2010 (MST, -07)
      US/Pacific:  3:54pm  Tuesday 19 January 2010 (PST, -08)
   Asia/Shanghai:  7:54am  Wednesday 20 January 2010 (CST, +08)
$

To find out what time it would be when it's 8am here:

$ wwt 8am
             UTC:  8:00am  Tuesday 19 January 2010 (UTC, +00)
   Europe/London:  8:00am  Tuesday 19 January 2010 (GMT, +00)
    Europe/Paris:  9:00am  Tuesday 19 January 2010 (CET, +01)
      US/Eastern:  3:00am  Tuesday 19 January 2010 (EST, -05)
      US/Central:  2:00am  Tuesday 19 January 2010 (CST, -06)
     US/Mountain:  1:00am  Tuesday 19 January 2010 (MST, -07)
      US/Pacific: 12:00am  Tuesday 19 January 2010 (PST, -08)
   Asia/Shanghai:  4:00pm  Wednesday 20 January 2010 (CST, +08)
$

To find out what time it would be when it's 8am in US/Pacific:

$ TZ=US/Pacific wwt 8am
             UTC:  4:00pm  Tuesday 19 January 2010 (UTC, +00)
   Europe/London:  4:00pm  Tuesday 19 January 2010 (GMT, +00)
    Europe/Paris:  5:00pm  Tuesday 19 January 2010 (CET, +01)
      US/Eastern: 11:00am  Tuesday 19 January 2010 (EST, -05)
      US/Central: 10:00am  Tuesday 19 January 2010 (CST, -06)
     US/Mountain:  9:00am  Tuesday 19 January 2010 (MST, -07)
      US/Pacific:  8:00am  Tuesday 19 January 2010 (PST, -08)
   Asia/Shanghai: 12:00am  Thursday 21 January 2010 (CST, +08)
$

It would still be nice if Google Calendar had decent timezone support, of course.

Update: Steve pointed out that the date for Europe/Paris was incorrect in the second two examples. Given that he was right, I fixed the script.

Always Innovating: Introducing the Touch Book

2010-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

Always Innovating: Introducing the Touch Book: Interesting ARM based laptop/touchpad device. The keyboard is optional and can be detached, though it includes a big extra battery. USB attachment internally is novel, if a little Heath Robinson.

pvaneynd - java studdenly started failing

2010-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

pvaneynd - java studdenly started failing: Java uses PF_INET6 sockets even for IPv4 addresses. This began failing when some stack defaults were changed. Here's the incantation to revert the behaviour: sysctl net.ipv6.bindv6only=0.

Sorry for the blog spam

2010-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Sorry about spamming with around fifty updated entries today. I switched from ikiwiki to jekyll and couldn't see an easy way to avoid it.

git-config(1)

2010-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

git-config(1): Useful for lots of things, but in this case for the (recently updated) rules about whitespace (see core.whitespace).

SoftwareTime - Home

2010-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

SoftwareTime - Home: Microsoft Windows software to restrict the amount of time someone spends on the computer.

Disable Safari's ability to handle PDF files - Mac OS X Hints

2010-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Disable Safari's ability to handle PDF files - Mac OS X Hints: I almost never want this, so it's nice to be able to turn it off.

Panasonic Lumix GF1 Field Test - 16 Days in the Himalayas

2009-12-29T00:00:00+00:00

Panasonic Lumix GF1 Field Test — 16 Days in the Himalayas: Beautifully written and presented review of the GF1 (via Tom Armitage).

Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!

2009-12-29T00:00:00+00:00

Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!: Colourful introduction to Haskell, soon to appear in paper form.

Five cscope tips

2009-12-29T00:00:00+00:00

Five cscope tips: Nice tips from meem.

Silly Scripts

2009-12-24T00:00:00+00:00

It's always been the case that small shell scripts are one of the things that makes using Unix a joy. Here's last week's invention, called num:

#!/bin/sh
#
# ln -s num 2
# ln -s num 3
# ln -s num 4

count=`basename $0`

loop=0
while [ $loop -lt $count ]; do
    eval $*
    loop=`expr $loop + 1`
done

Dnsmasq -- Using the same IP for the wired and wireless interface of a laptop

2009-12-21T00:00:00+00:00

Dnsmasq: Using the same IP for the wired and wireless interface of a laptop: Convenient when a machine is occasionally connected via a wired interface (good when doing large backups!).

Captain Jack's Back

2009-12-20T00:00:00+00:00

Captain Jack's Back (at flickr)

sub-urban

2009-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

sub-urban (at flickr)

Ubuntu 9.10 -- Karmic Koala

2009-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

Ubuntu 9.10: Karmic Koala: Workarounds for Karmic, including how to have ~/.xsession read when logging in via gdm.

Real World Haskell

2009-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

Real World Haskell: If I'm going to have to learn a configuration language for a window manager, then I might as well make it something more interesting than Lua.

Dreaming in Code

2009-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

Dreaming in Code: Still haven't got around to this.

using adium for irc

2009-11-19T00:00:00+00:00

As part of an effort to reduce the number of applications I need to remember to start, learn, look at and keep up to date, I starting using Adium for IRC. Annoyingly, all of the message styles are more oriented towards instant messaging, where conversations typically have only a couple of active participants. For a higher volume conversation the styles waste a lot of screen space and/or look very garish. Anyway, here's my solution - a more minimal and muted style:

It would be useful to add a little highlighting (of messages in which one is mentioned, for example), but I'm reasonably happy with this so far.

Books, Television and Film

2009-11-16T00:00:00+00:00

The Other Hand by Chris Cleave was somewhat outside my usual subject matter, read after seeing a recommendation by Roo Reynolds. Recommended, both for the story and the way it is told.
Oceanic by Greg Egan. Egan is on my list of "if it's printed I'll read it" authors. This is a good collection of short stories with his usual flair. The science can be hard, but it's worth it.
Defying Gravity was an enjoyable programme, sadly cancelled after the first series - just as things were getting interesting.
Moon starring Sam Rockwell. Simply superb. Watch it.

xVM Dependencies on Installer/LiveCD layouts (Community Group xen.install-depedencies) - XWiki

2009-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

xVM Dependencies on Installer/LiveCD layouts (Community Group xen.install-depedencies) - XWiki: Includes details of some extra options when using AI. In particular, livessh=enable is very useful.

Rubénerd Blog / Notes on using NetBSD’s pkgsrc on Mac OS X

2009-11-04T00:00:00+00:00

Rubénerd Blog / Notes on using NetBSD’s pkgsrc on Mac OS X: Potted instructions, including details on upgrading.