RIP David Eddings

I just read on Brandon Sanderson’s blog that David Eddings, the author of some fantastic fantasy books, has recently passed away.

I started reading fantasy novels early on in high school. After reading the Lord of the Rings, the Belgariad series by David Eddings were instrumental in forming my enjoyment of this genre of books.

Unfortunately I lent my Belgariad series to someone and never got them back. I also never finished the Mallorean. It’s high time to raise your glasses to David (and his co-author/wife Leigh) for a story that started many of us on our journey of a lifetime.

Time to buy a new set of the Belgariad and after 21 years re-read them.

Leopard, Apache2 and MySQL

I’ve just cloned this blog to a development version on my Macbook Pro. The Mac has Apache2 installed by default, so I just had to get mysql working.

Downloading MySQL and installing on Leopard is a breeze with the native package.

I migrated my database (dump/restore) and recreated my wordpress user, but still kept getting this error:

Error establishing a database connection

The user could log into the database from the console as shown:

lantrix@lexx:~ $ mysql -u wordpress -p
Enter password: 
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 19
Server version: 5.1.34 MySQL Community Server (GPL)
 
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.
 
mysql> use wordpress;
Reading table information for completion of table and column names
You can turn off this feature to get a quicker startup with -A
 
Database changed
mysql> show tables;
+-----------------------------+
| Tables_in_wordpress         |
+-----------------------------+
| sk2_blacklist               | 

So what is the problem?

Google provides an answer, with a log lived post from My Macinations providing the solution. It’s all to do with correcting your php.ini with the proper MySQL socket location.

Now, back to testing my new version of the Twitter Tags wordpress plugin. #hashtags now work!

Server Migration Complete

Thanks for your patience whilst I’ve been offline, and stick around!
I’ve moved off a vm infrastructure back to a real server that I’m in control of.

awk oneliner to find large files

A mega geeky awk one-liner today. Tested on Solaris under bash, so YMMV.

Have you ever found that a filesystem is filling up fast, and dont know what is causing it? This one liner (which can be placed in a cron job if you like) is best run as a super user.

It will:

1. Search for all files in the current dir and subdirs that are modified in the last 3 days;
2. list them, filtering just the filesize and name/path;
3. sort/order by the largest file; and
4. Email you a copy of the report.

find / -type f -mtime -3 -exec ls -l {} \; 2>/dev/null \
| awk '{print $5 " " $9}' \
| awk '{printf "%12d\t%s\n", $1, substr($0,index($0,$2),80)}' \
| sort -r >/tmp/largefiles.txt && \
( uuencode /tmp/largefiles.txt largefiles.txt ) \
| mailx -s 'Large Files Report' -r mail2@youremail.com `cat /tmp/mailrecipients` &

Nice. If you just want to see the response on stdout then try this:

find / -type f -mtime -3 -exec ls -l {} \; 2>/dev/null \
| awk '{print $5 " " $9}' \
| awk '{printf "%12d\t%s\n", $1, substr($0,index($0,$2),80)}' \
| sort -r

Have fun.

Philips VOIP321 no longer works with Skype 3.8.0.188 or later

I’ve been having a conversation on a Skype bug reporting forum, and it came to a conclusion that the Philips VOIP321 Skype Phone is just not worth purchasing. I’m an owner of a Philips VOIP321 phone, and until December 2008 it worked fine. However the latest Skype update has put an end to product useability.

Since Skype Version 3.8.0.188 (Release date: November 19, 2008) and all later versions (including Skype 4 Betas as at Jan. 2009) the software Philips supply no longer works with Skype and the VOIP321 phone.

The latest VOIP321 driver from their website suffers the same issue, even though it states “The VOIP321 USB Phone Driver V 3.8.3 which can be downloaded from Philips web site is compatible with Skype software version from V2.0.0.x until V3.8.0.x”. This is plainly no longer correct with the latest stable release of Skype, V3.8.0.188.

Skype developers are unable to do anything about it as they see it being a Philips driver problem. Phillips wont update their driver (Quoting support staff “… no more development/fixes are being incorporated into the VOIP321.EXE file”).

The solution to getting this beast working again:

• Uninstall Skype 3.8.0.188 (or later non-working version)
• Visit the Old Apps website where you can (without support from Skype) download a previous version and use it.
• I found that Skype 3.8.0.154 3.8.0.139 worked fine for me with the VOIP321 hardware under Windows XP
• Reinstall the older version.
• Launch the newly installed older version of Skype
• Remove the VOIP321.exe application from the Skype menu: Tools > Options > Advanced > Advanced Settings > Manage other programs Access to Skype
• Reboot your Windows Computer

If you don’t own one of these yet, don’t waste your time on Philips Skype phone devices. Their driver support is lacking when Skype is updated and they EOL their product too soon. You buy a product for a few hundred dollars and it becomes useless 12 months later. Phillips would probably rather sell you a newer bit of hardware.

Should they update their driver at this point I will be the first to commend them. I forgot to mention: Phillips Skype phones (where your PC is required) are Windows Only. No Mac or Linux support or drivers are offered.

My next purchase will be a wifi or wired ethernet Skype phone, and not Philips.