Len

Today I’ve decided to install an updated version of a complicated perl webapp (won’t name it). After compiling libraries, installing packages, installing cpan packages, recompiling, matching version, checking for compilation errors I realized almost 4h had passed and I was still at the dependencies. 1h later the application was installed but still a bug had to be found. So I began searching on the web again. Then it struck me. How much time did I loose in my life compiling, installing, searching for bugs and incompatibles versions? I think it was too much. So I decided to enjoy my weekend and closed the computer. 30 mins later I was opening it again …

In my stupidity innocence I just hoped that deploying the application on the new JBoss (from 4.2.2-GA to 5.1.0-GA) should be just a simple matter of changing paths in ant. Here are some problems I encountered and was able to fix. (more…)

I was asking myself today about jobs and young people searching for one. I found so many false patterns. We live in a world where nobody goes to the biology or physics university because (s)he dreams to eradicate a disease or grow food or invent teleportation. They go there because they failed to join the commerce academy as their most intense dream is to work in a bank. They dream to have a work car and a work phone and a secretary. They dream to be managers.

And that dream is such a waste, such a trap. The manager is most of the time filling the shoes of the guy with the drum or the whip in the old sea movies with a ship full of slaves paddling.  It does not have more freedom, just more money. And money is nothing else than another trap. As we forgot to wish for things we need but for the money which is implied in the process. And as such we forget to think of smarter ways to acquire those things. And we forgot that our time should be more precious that the money as that time, that minute we spend waiting for the bell is the only minute we’ll ever get. And how could it be difference since we learn to wait for the bell since school, in preparation for what’s to come.

I try to look and find some meaning in all those ties and suits and cars and I cannot find nothing. All those eager people enrolling each day for a life full of false desires. Nobody asks. Stop, stop to learn, to enjoy life.  Work is just a mean not a purpose. It took me so long to understand that. And the price is still not payed in full.

Logout messages

If you are opening a terminal to a different server or do a su in a terminal then on logout you will be required to enter your password in order to confirm the logout action. Since the polkit-gnome-authorization does not work with the new polkit version which ships with ubuntu and the polkit-auth command does not seems to work either I’ve found after some research that the solution resides in editing the /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.consolekit.policy file as follows: (more…)

Since my migration to thunderbird I did not had many things to complain but one of the remaining things was the date format. I am expecting to have something like DD/MM/YY or at least DD MMM YYYY. I did not imagined this could be something else than configuration somewhere. Or not…

After some digging I found out there is no way to configure the date string but the only way to change the date is to change the locale the application is using. The first step was to see the installed locales:

locale -a
C
en_AG
en_AU.utf8
en_BW.utf8
en_CA.utf8
en_DK.utf8
en_GB.utf8
en_HK.utf8
en_IE.utf8
en_IN
en_NG
en_NZ.utf8
en_PH.utf8
en_SG.utf8
en_US.utf8
en_ZA.utf8
en_ZW.utf8
POSIX

then to check each locale date format, for example:

len@black:~$ LC_ALL=en_DK.utf8 locale -k d_fmt t_fmt
d_fmt="%Y-%m-%d"
t_fmt="%T"
len@black:~$ LC_ALL=en_GB.utf8 locale -k d_fmt t_fmt
d_fmt="%d/%m/%y"
t_fmt="%T"

the remaining thing was to convince thunderbird to use this locale. I’ve done this by creating /usr/bin/mythunderbird script:

LC_ALL=en_GB.utf8 $(dirname $0)/thunderbird

now the dates are much better:

Thunderbird dates config

This ubuntu installation was the bit of fun expected after a few tiresome weeks so I grabbed the cd while still hot and started the installation. As usual the install went smoothly except the fact that I probably mistyped my usual password so I had to modify the /etc/shadow afterward to log in.

I was not expecting many changes but there are some graphical changes, the gdm seemed changed and after login I was greeted with a “DISK HAS MANY BAD BLOCKS” message since now there is a tool (palimpsest) which reads the S.M.A.R.T Hdd data. I had a bad sector re-allocated in the past and verified the SMART status without any error so this is probably a bug:

root@black:/home/len# smartctl -l selftest /dev/sda
smartctl version 5.38 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%     10048         -
# 2  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%      8033         -
# 3  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%      6872         -

Another change is the lack of pidgin which has been replaced by empathy. I decided to give it a try but it was a bit of a disappointing. The interface is uglier and it crashed when trying to set a photo in yahoo. I can understand that empathy supports facebook chat and msn audio but this is not high on my priority list so I reverted back to pidgin in 10 mins.

I did not tested the ubuntu one net storage yet but migrating the data was as easy as usual. This time I did not have to migrate evolution since I’m quite happy with thunderbird in the month or so since I am using it. All in all I was having everything configured in under 30 mins.

My new Bamboo1 tablet from Wacom worked as it did in Ubuntu 9.04 and I installed the configuration applet from here but I’ve had the same problem with relative mode. This time the mode configuration was not even active. Pressure is working but only in absolute mode.

In conclusion I had the bit of fun expected combined with the short thrill of thinking I’ll loose all my data :)

Ce vrei sa te faci cand vei fi mare, puiule?

Vreau sa ma fac functionar, mami

Cum asa puiule?

Da mami, la o companie de renume, la o multinationala, la o banca

Si ce face un functionar, puiule?

Pai se duce de dimineata, sta acolo toata ziua si pe urma se intoarce. Nu trebuie sa faca nimic, ia un salariu bun, are o masina mare.

Ai inteles puiule. E bine. (more…)

This is a very short example I managed to do in not a very long time which does the following things:

• opens an openoffice draw document
• modifies a field
• exports it as ps (using print to file)

Ah, and it does that from an external python program.

(more…)

The geek’s alphabet: a, b, c

• ls -a
• gpsd -b -N -D2 /dev/ttyUSB0
• ping -c 10

(more…)

Facand de curand ordine pe aici am dat peste harta blogosferei si am incercat sa-mi confirm raspunsurile la 2 intrebari:

• cum a evoluat numarul de posturi?
• cat de mult se vorbeste in ele despre biciclete?

Rezultatul:

Bloguri si biciclete 2008 - 2009

(more…)