Something Odd!

New look, new design. The site is now table free and as such probably won’t look too great in Netscape or older browsers. Hell, it might not even look great in MSIE (I know the logo above doesn’t display correctly in that browser). Get Mozilla and install it!

An Open Letter To Angelina Jolie – I recently read about your impending divorce from that guy you were married to. Divorce can be a difficult time in anyone’s life, so let me be the first to say, “Hey baby, what’s up? You want to ride in my van?” — and I mean it. I would really like to take you for a ride in my van. It’s white.

Google’s great, or more specifically, it’s great to find old stuff on the Internet. Unlike real life, if you remember saying something on a mailing list or webpage, but not sure when or where you wrote it, fire up Google and go searching.Someone mailed me asking if I had considered doing a Postfix version of my install-sendmail script. I had. *grin*

Spackle kicks ass. It’s a “flexible client/server architecture for the gathering and displaying of statistics, primarily suited to monitoring servers.” I had it collecting data on almost all our servers within a few hours. It’s also got a simplistic but capable web-interface for inspecting the data. The default collection of monitoring agents is Linux specific so YMMV if you’re using something else.
I did run into some trouble and attempted to mail the author but his mail server couldn’t resolve my work domain, which doesn’t surprise me anymore. Here’s what I suggested:

Add this line to spackle.sh somewhere:
export TERM=xterm
because of this error message when spackle.sh is run from cron, “Your terminal lacks the ability to clear the screen or position the cursor.”
Found the solution at http://www.flora.org/lynx-dev/html/month042000/msg00441.html
This occurs on RH6.2 but not in RH7.2, that link above has some info which might explain why.

Add full path to nc:
nc -> /usr/sbin/nc
nc is installed in /usr/sbin/ by default when I used an rpm of netstat.

Change bang line to
#!/bin/bash2
RH7.2 seems to use bash2 by default, 6.2 uses bash.

When I started reading this article I wasn’t sure why I opened it, but then it got into the juicy bits! It’s great that a Mac user can stand back and examine his community with a critical eye. It doesn’t happen often and they are usually harrassed by their fellow users. Yes, yes, there’s plenty wrong with Linux too, but we all know it’s “better” than the Mac any day! *grin*

Spice Up Your Life by Triad. Fire up x64 and hear the ol’ Spice girls in this demo! *shock*

Tab rollin’
Linux desktop applications – features a few apps I use and can recommend.
Developing a Linux command-line utility – Best practices and thoughtful coding make for solid command-line tools.
Free CIV, screenshots and Google directory – I’m not into these types of games but I’m impressed by the fact that they’re still working on it.
BottomQuark: The Smoking Gun of AIDS – Were well-intended medical treatments ultimately responsible for the rise of the HIV virus?
Son, he said… – There’s some truth in this, and I happen to know someone this piece describes perfectly!

EC approves car industry reforms – which could mean car prices go up in Ireland unless the government does something about vehicle registration tax (VRT).

Sky Television
On July 5th Sky Sports acquired the rights for the Republic of Ireland’s home internationals over the next four years.
Last Monday there was speculation that they would try and acquire the rights to the away games. They even offered 17m Euro as an opening bid!
At the weekend, it was reported they had acquired the rights to show Mass on Sundays. (I had a link for that but it required registration) Here at work we speculated on what might happen, Adam thought the following could become a reality:

Picture the scene… Everyone’s in the pub, the priest holds up the chalise and a little caption below says, “Carlsberg don’t do water, but if they did, it’d probably be the best wine in the world”.

And it just gets worse! Thank you Dorothy for this breaking news!

Sky has just won the rights to screen the World Origami Championships from Tokyo.
Unfortunately it’s only available on paper view.

ITV Digital did have the rights, but they folded.

Geoff Crammond is a genius. In 1989 Microprose released Stunt Car Racer to universal acclaim on the C64, Amiga, Atari ST, and Speccy. He’s gone on to produce his GP games but this is my favourite racing game of all time, bar none. Even 13 years after buying it I’m still coming back to this game. wow! Fire up Vice and play the classic C64 version to relive the stresses and strains of driving along a roller coaster of a track!