I’m busy working away at the first release of the source running this site. As you probably know it’s based on b2 modified to use the Smarty template system.
Right now, the install.sh script works nicely, it copies the files into the destination dir, changes permissions on some files and tells you what url to load to finish installation. The only thing missing now is a server capable of running PHP scripts!
I’m doing an apt-get upgrade and it’s sucking down 23MB of rpms from heanet, and over dialup that takes a while. Should have php support back afterwards though!
Author Archives: Donncha
Unix: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
While searching using a popular search engine for Bash help I found a few goodies:
- Unix: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly – short article on the short-comings of Unix, from a user-friendly perspective. While I agree that “info” is horrendous, the much more useful “pinfo” is much better. Instead of using arcane key combinations to navigate you can use your cursor keys to move about. Of course, in Gnome, you can (or used to be able to) view helpfiles through their help system. I’m sure the same exists in the KDE world. There is already a searchable database of commands. You access it through the “apropos” command, although I never use it so that might indicate how useful it is.
- Shell scripts in 20 pages – A guide to writing shell scripts for C/C++/Java and unix programmers which is a good summary of shell scripting when you’re already familiar with programming in other languages. Recommended!
Graffiti Proof Spire
Yes, the spire is completely graffiti proof! *grin*
XFree 4.3.0 is out!
Here’s a summary of new features. While it looks nice, I don’t think I’ll be upgrading it manually unless RPMs come out, I’m getting lazy! Still this feature alone is very welcome, ” Support for the RandR extension has been partially integrated into the XFree86 server, providing support for resizing the root window at run-time.”
Before you Windows users exclaim that Windows has done that for years be aware that X is a whole lot more than just a GUI!
eBook Reader for 7650: ReadM Rules
Russell Beattie once again comes up with the goods. I had downloaded an ebook reader already but ReadM looks so much better. Go over to Russell’s site to get the lowdown on it!
BTW – the ReadM site is down because it’s too busy, you can download the program here though.
Simon Plays Quasar.
Simon Willison played Quasar for the first time! Ah, this brings back memories!
It used to be quite easy to play a decent game of Quasar in Cork City where I live. 2 places in town offered it and for a few years they even maintained their guns and arenas. Not so now. Guns were too expensive to maintain, half the time they didn’t work, and the rest of the time they worked but didn’t fire straight.
I haven’t played a game of Quasar in years! The ducking and running^h^h^h^h walking fast and twisting your body around so your opponent couldn’t hit you. You wouldn’t believe how fast an experienced Quasar player can instinctively twist around so they only present a profile to an attacking opponent! (Limiting the area you can be shot – front, back and gun).
Before I started working fulltime (and sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day) I was a reasonable Quasar player, and saw the look of disbelief on newcomer’s faces when their gun is suddenly telling them they’ve been shot. Of course I was at the receiving end of shots more often than not..
I dread to think how I’d feel after a game of Quasar now, sometimes I could barely stumble out of particularly tough games..
PHP News Sites
I really have to actively look for more PHP development websites. Here’s another: PHP Developer
A Look at PHP5
Here’s a review of the upcoming PHP5. *Loads* of new stuff and it’s going to practically be a whole new language to learn. I can’t wait to start working with the new OO features it’ll have. It should make implementing patterns much easier. I wonder what effect it will have on the “home grown” self-taught PHP industry that’s out there? Those that will learn, will stick with it. The others? They’ll spend their time maintaining their PHP4 applications!
DivX Digest – Movies – Misc Movies
Nice list of movies.
darkstat – network traffic analyzer
After a brief search of freshmeat.net I found darkstat, a nice, easy to install package. It listens on a port for a browser, and displays nice graphs and other information in a web page. Well worth a look!