David Edmondson

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.

Debian on the SheevaPlug

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

Debian on the SheevaPlug: Installing Debian lenny on the SheevaPlug.

Saving The Planet @Home - Earth Notes

2009-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

Saving The Planet @Home - Earth Notes: Wide range of information about energy management and home generation with great practical details and ideas.

MacPorts

2009-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

Error: Target org.macports.activate returned: Image error: /opt/local/bin/mp4art is being used by the active libmp4v2 port. Please deactivate this port first, or use 'port -f activate mp4v2' to force the activation.

Something like this is what always happens when I try to port selfupdate; port upgrade installed. Sigh.

Getting rid of our home server

2009-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

With the appearance of devices such as the QNAP TS-219P, I wonder if it's time to get rid of the PC running Ubuntu which acts as my home file and CPU server?

When running through the functionality provided by the TS-219P I'm hard pressed to find many things that are missing. The most pressing is perhaps offlineimap, which I used to backup a couple of different IMAP servers that are otherwise out of my control. It's occasionally useful to be able to run mutt on the fileserver, but I wouldn't really miss that terribly.

It's a little worrying that QNAP doesn't use standard ext3, as this means that you are reliant on them to gain access to your data - one of the big reasons to avoid a packaged solution.

Even if the default software wasn't quite enough, it's possible to install Debian and have almost any software I care about.

flying boy

2009-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

flying boy (at flickr)

BigAdmin Feature Article -- Debugging on the AMD64 Platform -- Finding Argument Values

2009-10-23T00:00:00+01:00

BigAdmin Feature Article: Debugging on the AMD64 Platform: Finding Argument Values: Details on which registers are used for argument passing.

Parse the old format, dammit!

2009-10-20T00:00:00+01:00

As a result of playing around with Debian testing, I ended up with a version of awesome 3.x installed. It has done away with the old fashioned configuration file, replacing it (and various bits of the core) with a Lua interpreter and piles of Lua code. This is undoubtedly wonderful for developers and power users - I may even find the time to take advantage of it myself one day, but right now I'm stuck having to convert my old configuration file to Lua, which is a pain. This leads to what I think should be the first task when replacing traditional configuration files with an interpreter:

Write a parser for the old configuration file format using the new interpreter, so that users don't have to suffer!

Thanks.

Current Cost Ltd

2009-10-20T00:00:00+01:00

Current Cost Ltd: Reasonably priced electricity monitoring kit, comprising sensor and display, around £40. Connecting to a computer (using £8 USB to serial cable) allows uploading the data to Pachube and friends.

Internet Packet Size Distributions -- Some Observations

2009-10-13T00:00:00+01:00

Internet Packet Size Distributions: Some Observations: A little dated, but good summary of the data used.

Obsoleting Hotels - Nat Friedman

2009-10-12T00:00:00+01:00

Obsoleting Hotels · Nat Friedman: Alternatives to renting a hotel room - a short term apartment rental.

autumn colour

2009-10-12T00:00:00+01:00

autumn colour (at flickr)

General Dynamics MR-1 -- Amazing Compact Laptop | GPS World

2009-10-07T00:00:00+01:00

General Dynamics MR-1: Amazing Compact Laptop:

One minor feature or tiny key that works extremely well, considering that this is a Windows-based machine, is a single CTRL-ALT-DEL key. It is in a location where you won’t hit the key accidentally and it saves several keystrokes and time. Just one of those nice to have features.

The Other Hand

2009-10-05T00:00:00+01:00

The Other Hand: Via Roo Reynolds.

Talking Photography -- Viewpoints on the Art, Craft and Business

2009-10-05T00:00:00+01:00

Talking Photography: Viewpoints on the Art, Craft and Business

OSX -- Changing the “Web Receipts” Folder

2009-10-05T00:00:00+01:00

OSX: Changing the “Web Receipts” Folder: Create ~/Library/PDF Services, then add an alias to any folder there to have it appear in the PDF destinations list of the standard print dialog.

YouTube - Dan Bull - Dear Lily (an open letter to Lily Allen)

2009-09-28T00:00:00+01:00

YouTube - Dan Bull - Dear Lily [an open letter to Lily Allen]: Excellent.

Tor.com Store -- Book -- This Is Not a Game

2009-09-28T00:00:00+01:00

Tor.com Store: Book: This Is Not a Game

Mighty Mouse Repair Guide - How to Clean Your Apple Mighty Mouse

2009-09-25T00:00:00+01:00

Mighty Mouse Repair Guide - How to Clean Your Apple Mighty Mouse: The instructions work well. My only failure was that I removed the inner ring from the bottom of the mouse (upon which it normally slides around the table) rather than the outer ring. Don't do this! The only way I could find to re-attach the inner ring was to cut the old joins off and glue it back on. You should only remove the outer ring, which initially doesn't look as though it will budge.

Installing MacBook Core Duo Fan - iFixit

2009-09-25T00:00:00+01:00

Installing MacBook Core Duo Fan - iFixit: A job for next week.

TheBookYard -- UK Apple spare parts specialist

2009-09-22T00:00:00+01:00

TheBookYard : UK Apple spare parts specialist: Mostly sensible looking prices.

mxcl's homebrew at master - GitHub

2009-09-22T00:00:00+01:00

mxcl's homebrew at master - GitHub: Alternative to MacPorts and fink (via Simon Willison).

aaron.harnly.net - letterbox

2009-09-22T00:00:00+01:00

aaron.harnly.net » letterbox Widescreen view for Mail.app.