Tech Debug

I was trying to use someone elses script for logging dansguardian events to an RDBMS.The script was chewing up 99% of my CPU! I got chatting to a friend and a perl coder about this, and got some ideas. He showed me about the perl debugger using the -d switch. Awesome. I finally got my perl script working. Installing the DBI package on OpenBSD was a snap with pkg_add (pkg_add -v p5-DBD-Pg-1.

According to the Download Squad Google’s Gmail has just integrated IMAP. This in conjunction with the recent storage space is the second big thing for google in the mail arena in recent days. I applaud them for this move as the POP3 access they previously offered was great for desktop PC’s but difficult for mobile devices. I can confirm that it appears to be only in select accounts, because as of now, I still only have POP access.

Having had aircon installed today, my headless web server did not recover from the scheduled power outage. It was stuck in a stupid “Press F1 to Boot” screen, and as such Tech Debug was down for the majority of the day. Now I have it all back online it is time to consider two things: A UPS A secondary Web/DB server running OpenBSD Does anyone know they best way to have a failover apache+mysql+postgres OpenBSD server?

Daniel Miessler discusses the benefit of using Quicksilver, one of the mandatory mac applications, for searching the web – instead of using your browser. So you are in any app and you want to search for something online? Use Quicksilver. I blog from Textmate, so if I need to search for something on google (or elsewhere) – Quicksilver does it for me. Its a very simple process to use as described by Daniel on his blog entry.

I was logged into Gmail today and noticed it states You are currently using 92 MB (2%) of your 4044 MB. This is close to a doubling of the email capacity for normal accounts. I’m not sure if this applies to all users, or gets applied progressively, but it is a fantastic number to see at the bottom of your inbox. In comparison, Windows live (aka hotmail) offers 1GB to their users, albeit in the form of a “Skydrive“.

You’ve got a household full of PC’s and you’ve stopped yourself from getting a Mac because you don’t want to deal with incompatibilities. Eight years ago that would’ve been understandable, but today Mac OS and Windows can work together in harmony on the same home network. Here’s a primer on how the two systems inter-operate. I have been using Macs now for 5 years, and the compatibility issues that one would have been there are practically gone.

I’m coming to appreciate IBM’s Rational Clearcase, aside from the price point of course. But work have a license for it, and I have to use it. Don’t get me wrong, CVS is fantastic for tracking your small projects or larger ones with average complexity. I still use CVS for my own code, BUT clearcase has these features built in that you just start to take for granted. Here is a list of the ones I think make it a cut above CVS on a time intensive and complex project:

I’ve recently re-installed OpenBSD and had to set-up my squid intranet password changing tool again. The app I use is chpasswd Version 2.2.3. I had some trouble with getting it working in the default apache chroot jail, and found very little information out there on this app in a chroot jail. Here are my notes I recorded and and steps I took. Hope it helps someone else, but YMMV: Download chpasswd to /tmp

An album I purchased on iTMS recently had a nasty clicking sound in one of the songs. Its was part of the intro track to an Opera, and really hits you in the ear each time you hear it unexpectedly. I had only just got around to reporting the issue, but iTMS staff rejected the issue due to the timeliness of my report – about 3 months after the purchase. I wrote back advising that this was a “premium cost” iTunes Plus track, and there is still an issue with the track they are selling, no matter the time frame.

Some guy was on the train today reading his “Face to Face with God” book, an he kept glancing over my way. No doubt noticing my copy of Morning of the Magicians that I was reading. As he got off the train, he starts saying a bunch of Jesus stuff and handing out these cards – and as he passes me I say NO THANKS! But he forces it on me.

I’m a twitter user, and this morning came across an enterprising web-site called Melbourne Transport. They use the twitter handle @MelbTransport to publish line and train alerts for Melbourne’s Connex train services. This appears to be the outcome of someones frustration with the dreadful SMS alerts services that Connex provide. Connex have their own SMS alert system, which states “From Monday to Friday, between 6am and 8pm, we provide instant text messaging to mobile phones with up-to-the-minute information on any train that is more than 15 minutes off schedule”.

I found myself writing down example commands in clearcase (V6), so I thought I would share them. If you have ever needed to find files like you do in UNIX, but want to be clearcase specific, then these commands will give you a quick headstart on using the cleartool find command: How do I list all files and file versions going into a specific build that is labelled? Assume your label is TR1_PRE_RELEASE

Do you use MQ? do you have performance problems when using persistence? An interesting article on understanding this on a Solaris platform. Koops has always been an informative source on getting my MQ performance under check, and again he comes to the front of the pack on analysis of performance issues. read more | digg story

With the news of the death of an Australian soldier in the middle east, I would like to quickly examine the dangers our troops face. I served an extended period of time in the Australian Defence forces, and have had family members deployed to conflict zones including Iraq, so I have some understanding of the situation, albeit limited. The risk to the soldiers is huge, but the training and leadership that the Australian military has, some of the best in the world, minimises those risks as best as it can.

I upgraded to WordPress 2.3 recently, but it stuffed up my feed. By default it set the feed content to be cut off. This is now fixed, so sorry for any inconvenience. On the whole, wordpress 2.3 seems to work rather well.

I got myself some Iron Maiden tickets for their Somewhere back in time 2008 tour. The latest news about the Aussie events is that the Melbourne and Sydney concerts sold out in Record time. Sydney’s Acer Arena sold out within 25 minutes of going on sale and Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena sold out within 15 minutes, leading to promoter Paul Dainty immediately putting on sale second shows in both cities and commenting; “Sales for the tour have been phenomenal with over 40,000 tickets being sold in the first hour.