numbersix

Stephen Fry on England

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:00:26 +0100

"This country is run by idiots. We know that because we sat next to them at school." The man is a genius, and if you haven't listened to his podgrams then you've missed out.

Magnets

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:39:30 +0100

Amazing magnet shop - http://www.supermagnete.ch

Desktop Backgrounds

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:42:21 +0100

Ever on the lookout for fresh desktop background images I came across these recently: http://www.mybestdesktops.com/ http://www.caedes.net/ Both examples of good, non-commercial, non-clutter sites where the default looks like one of those mobile phone ringtone ads in the back of a glossy magazine.

Prevent DS_Store files being created on remote volumes

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 15:33:55 +0100

Apple have written an article detailing how to stop .DS_Store files being created on remote volumes: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1629

vi - search replace with command

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:51:53 +0100

To search for a string, and then perform a vi command : :g/string/command for instance: :%g/endofline$/join will search for the string "endofline$" and then append the next line to any line that matches. Vim documentation: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/

Matias - Tactile Pro

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:44:26 +0100

I've been using the Matias Tactile Pro keyboard for a while now. Wondefull old school clacky feel to it. However one of the feet broke. Quick email to the guys at Matias and they are sending me a replacement. Now there's service. Thanks guys!

Odile Kinart

Thu, 29 May 2008 22:31:00 +0100

I love these sculptures: http://www.okinart.com/

smpatch access to remote servers

Fri, 02 May 2008 15:12:58 +0100

The more recent versions of Solaris come with an online patching utility smpatch. This requires access to various servers on the public Internet. I cannot find any definitive documentation on exactly which servers are accessed, the documentation only suggests updates.sun.com, but this is patently not the whole story. There seems to be a system of redirects and load balancers in place that mean a bunch of other servers might be queried as well. This makes creating outbound firewall rule sets difficult. So far I have made up the following list. The /24 networks are not entirely necessary, but I'd rather be a little generous here than having to add IPs to my rule set every time I want to patch. Access does seem to be restricted to port 443.

72.5.124.61
80.231.19.70
80.231.19.71
195.176.255.0/24
198.232.168.0/24

Shell - Test for argument

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:28:55 +0100

I always forget this and spend ages finding out how to do it. How to test for an argument passed from the command line to a shell script, and not get "argument expected" error: if [ -z "$1" ]; then echo argument expected exit 1 fi The secret is the quotes around the $1.

Facebook

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 19:33:12 +0100

Some interesting things you may not know about your favorite social networking site: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook

For Dad

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:40:28 +0100

In awe I watched the waxing moon ride across the zenith of the heavens like an ambered chariot towards the ebon void of infinite space wherein the tethered belts of Jupiter and Mars hang forever festooned in their orbital majesty. And as I looked at all this I thought...I must put a roof on this lavatory. - Les Dawson

"Console session already in use"

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 11:21:30 +0100

Sun machine, trying to connect to the RSC and you're getting the message "Console session already in use". You know the other connection is not important. Some versions of RSC allow:

console -f

to force a connection. If this doesn't work, try:

resetrsc

Burn DVD from VIDEO_TS directory

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 16:52:02 +0100

Found out how to make a real DVD from a VIDEO_TS folder.

makehybrid -udf -udf-volume-name "name of dvd" -o name_of_iso.iso path_to_directory_containing_VIDEO_TS

It is important that the directory containing the VIDEO_TS directory doesn't have any other files in it, otherwise the DVD player seems to treat it as a data DVD. This from : http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20070612161317338&query=burn%2Bdvd

Edward Tufte

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 09:19:39 +0100

Fascinating stuff : http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/

vim - turn off matching bracket highlight

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 11:27:58 +0100

vim highlights matching brackets which is nice until it starts becoming a pain. This in your .vimrc will turn it off:

let g:loaded_matchparen= 1

From here : http://groups.google.com/group/comp.editors/browse_thread/thread/42daad5f97aa6f13/9e140069098c7560?lnk=raot You can still bounce between the matching brackets by pressing %.