Bagel Belly Blog

Antics

I've been getting to know Ant quite a lot more, especially since Jeremy joined Luminas and started implementing the things we've never had time to do before now, like re-using Cocoon's xpatch task to add site-specific custom configurations to a copy of Cocoon.

It's easy, however, to fall into bad habits or lazy scripting. 12 paths to build.xml nirvana is a useful and timely reminder of best practice...

Diary of a switcher #5

Remember how Mail was driving me nuts?

I finally figured out what was going on. Two things that make IMAP an unhappy bunny: clock drift (yes, our server was about 30 minutes behind) and a missing list of subscribed folders. The former I fixed for now (must install a time sync package). The latter was fixed by doing the following on the server:

find Mail > .mailboxlist

... and then by editing out any incorrect concatenated directory names.

Now email is working fine, it's fast, and better yet, I've finally been able to successfully synchronise the local and remote mailboxes so I have a copy of all my mail at this end. Hurrah!

Mail woes

I'm trying to sort out a mailserver so that it will accept authenticated connections - so that we can send email from wherever we happen to be, without having to rely on local infrastructure.

Documentation for authenticated SMTP seems to be really sparse for Exim. This document is interesting but seems more focused on configuring the mailserver to talk authenticated to other servers. Not quite what I'm after. Even Google has failed me so far. Strangely, all mailing list references seem to be dated around 2001. Did all Debianites stop using Exim after that?

Update: This post on the debian-user mailing list gave a solution that seems to work. Secure Mail Relaying with Exim and OpenSSL was also pretty good.

Buggy documentation

PostgreSQL on Mac OS X, about half-way down, has a section "PostgreSQL and Perl". In it, they say: sudo /sw/bin/fink install dbd-pg-pg. That should be sudo /sw/bin/fink install dbd-pg-pm.

Four hours later, I now know that.

Update: Actually, that web page is a fine example of how not to write a web page. Nowhere on it is the date it was written, the date it was last updated, or the email address of the author. So there's no easy way to provide feedback to get that stupid mistake fixed. I'll email webmaster@apple.com and hope for the best.

Another interesting thing is that viewing the source of the page reveals two comments:

<-- googleoff: index -->
<-- googleon: index -->

What's the significance? Does this affect how google indexes the site, or is it purely for the site developer? Interestingly, it doesn't show up in Google...

Diary of a switcher #4

I needed to get Perl's DBI database abstraction layer installed on the iBook in order to run various import scripts. PostgreSQL on Mac OS X helpfully told me to use fink, the OS X equivalent of the wonderful Debian package management system, so this was my first foray into the curious world of Debian-on-Mac.

This is what I learnt: tcsh sucks. I hate it. I'm really glad Panther allegedly ships with bash as the default. bash sucks less, as long as you set up the correct paths. I've forgotten how to drive dselect, as I've been using aptitude on Debian for too long.

Other than that, fink seemed to do the job:

Setting up dbi-pm560 (1.35-2) ...

Setting up dbi-pm (1.35-2) ...

Hurrah!

Maelstrom

This article on Wired reminds me of "Descent into the Maelstrom" by Edgar Alan Poe ... one of my favourite short stories. Worth reading both, if you have some spare time.

While we're talking classics, Tim Bray has some recommended reading. I've been working my way (slowly) through A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance, so maybe some more Socrates would be in order.

Diary of a switcher #3

Mail is driving me nuts. Insane. Crazy. Bonkers.

I have it set up to talk to my IMAP server (UW-imap), and I have a ton of Rules set up to move the 500+ messages I receive a day into the right mailbox. These rules painstakingly recreate the maildrop sorting I had set up under linux. Without it, I very quickly get drowned in email!

Unfortunately, every now and then, Mail decides that rather than saving something to, say, Mail/lists/cocoon/dev (for the dev@cocoon.apache.org mailing list), it will save it to Mail/listscocoondev .... ie, it ignores the folders and creates a new mailbox out of the concatenated directory path.

It's intermittent. And when I re-apply the sorting Rules to an erronious mailbox, it quickly moves them to the right place. What gives? Why not do that in the first place? Is it doing it for a laugh? To see how annoyed I get?

Computers. Pah. I'm off to become a gardener.

More blogs

One application that stands above the rest from my ongoing switch to OS X has to be NetNewsWire. This fantastic piece of software is how every application should be: intuitive, fast, and it fits a niche perfectly.

I've been using it to replace the cumbersome nntp//rss setup I had been using. The improvement has already allowed me to double the number of blogs I read, which has got to be a good thing... learning and rediscovering lots: new mt-blacklist, knowledge navigating, O/R mappers, thunderbird 0.3, LDAP servers (on my TODO list), anti-W3C, Grid computing, learning to program well, RSS feeds for online comics, upgrading an iBook to Panther (hmmmm...).

MT-fu

Phew. The second post I made to this blog using Kung-Log succeeded in frying my MovableType installation. For some reason, the post was uploaded without a correctly-formatted date, and then all attempts to delete the post from the blog failed.

I decided that was probably a good enough excuse to upgrade MT to a proper database back-end, and it was useful to figure out how to export/import too.

So, things should be back to normal ...

Update: I've lost blogtimes and amazon lists and code beautifier in the upgrade ... I'll get them back when I have a spare minute.

Testing Kung-Log

Back on the Mac

I'm back on the Mac because Mozilla refused to behave (screwed up fonts making pages unreadable, and Firebird refuses to open my bookmarks).

It's a learning curve. Today I learnt how to set JAVA_HOME so that Java applications run properly. I also learnt that it takes 26 minutes and 39 seconds to build a clean copy of Cocoon 2.1 from CVS on an iBook. I'm definitely going to need the extra power of the Powerbook!

I also just had a very retro experience, using an image editor I haven't used since 1992. My first real experience of Macs was when I started my computing degree - most of the labs were running Mac LCII computers. It's strange that progress means I'm back where I started...

Free as in Freedom

"I still reckon it's disappointing how many free software hackers now run a non-free OS" -- Edd Dumbill.

This is something I've been thinking about more and more over the last few weeks whilst waiting for the Powerbook to arrive. Should I install Debian on it, or just use OS X? My conclusion at the moment is that I don't have the patience any more to put up with tweaking linux until it works, and the ongoing maintenance involved to make it stay that way. I don't have the patience to put up with all the annoying little things that don't quite do what they should.

But still, the non-free argument is a compelling one. How can I stand up for Free Software when I'm not using it myself? This got me into trouble with the Free Software purists of the AFFS a few months back, when I mentioned my mail client of choice was the notoriously free-but-not-Free Pine. (Even though it's given away, Pine's licence is slightly too restrictive to qualify - so it doesn't meet the four freedoms requirement to be Free.)

The way I see it is this: if my decisions on software use are motivated by a balance of Freedom and the ability to just get the job done, I'll have much more time to advocate Free Software. A lot of Free Software evangelists seem to think that Free Software alternatives must be used regardless of whether they are really fit for the purpose or not. Sorry, not me. Being Free is not enough - it has to work as well.

New toys ...

Ok, I promise I won't rant about the wonders of Mac OS X. This morning we took delivery of two HP iPAQ h5450s which we're using to develop an application for the BBC.

First impressions are .... mixed. The hardware is gorgeous - matt silver, fantastic screen, bluetooth AND 802.11 wifi. They are fairly heavy but have a nice solid quality about them. They almost look like they should be mobile phones, with the little protruding rubber blob on the top-left.

But ... the biggest downside has to be the WinCE - sorry, Pocket PC operating system. Maybe I'm just biased against all things Microsoft by now, but I find it clunky and unintuitive to use. The confirm/quit button in the top-right is in the wrong place. I haven't found a way to synchronise it with either the linux laptop or the ibook. And so on ...

There are saving graces. The "biometrics" fingerprint scanner is pretty cool, and makes a nice replacement to typing in passwords. And being able to browse the web full-speed when connected to our local wireless hub is fantastic - there's something strangely beautiful about seeing the Cocoon 2.1 samples displayed on a pocket device!

Diary of a Switcher #2

Somewhat at a loss for where to really get started, I've turned to O'Reilly for a plethora of useful resources. Here's some links I found handy:

• I've switched from Windows, so now what? ... useful to know that CTRL-click gives me the ""right mouse button" menu. Incidentally, it's really nice that you can configure mouse speed on a per-mouse basis - so the trackpad is slow and the usb mouse is fast, for example. This article also explains the mystery of the Home/End keys.


• Switcher stories ... "it may be the case that there's an even larger wave of switchers from Linux and other Unix platforms" -- so very, very right. "Everything works. I'm not sure the power of that simple statement gets my mental state across. Everything *JUST* works" -- so very, very right.


• Utilities for Switching on the Cheap -- useful since the hardest thing is going to be going from the world of Free (as in beer) software to the Mac world where it seems you pay for everything...


• Ease into the Switch -- lots of great hints on how to deal with the Dock, amongst other things.


• Top 10 Mac OS X tips for Unix Geeks -- essential reading.


• To p Mac OS X hints part one and part two -- all good stuff.


• Implementing BIND on OS X -- ah-ha! Now all I need to do is figure out how to add extra network interfaces or associate extra IP addresses with an interface. On linux, this was done as eth0:0, eth0:1 etc....


• Just in case it all goes horribly wrong ... iBooks love Linux.

Diary of a switcher #1

Following on from ordering a powerbook and my debian machine going wrong, I've had an ibook on my desk.

I'm not using it exclusively (some tasks I don't have time to transfer, like the complicated virtual host and dns setup that let me run many sites at once and develop them in the same context they'd be in on live servers). But I have used it in anger several times already. In preparation for the arrival of the powerbook, I thought I'd make some notes on my experiences. I plan to do this when the powerbook arrives too, in the hope that one day I'll look back on my time as a linux user and laugh at the self-inflicted pain.

So, things I've done on the ibook that I could never do on the debian laptop:

• Just print. Plug the printer in, open a document, and print. No configuring of the printer. No problems with documents stuck in the print queue that I can't remove. No super-slow printing either - the documents flew out of the printer. I didn't know it could print that fast. Suddenly I no longer hate the super-slow noisy printer. I'd buy a roomful of OS X machines just for the ability to simply pick the printer from the drop-down list of local printers. Wow.


• Instant on. I open the laptop, it's ready for business. I close it, it suspends and stops acting like a noisy furnace. That's what life should be like - no waiting for computers to boot.


• The screen. I love the 1400x1050 screen on my laptop. But the iBook's 1024x768 is astoundingly sharp, bright, and a pleasure to stare at. That's kinda important if you're going to be staring at it all day, every day. I didn't realise how average my laptop screen was until I tried the iBook for a time.


• Photoshop. For the first time in three years I was able to edit a photoshop document again. This document has been my testbed for seeing how well the gimp has progressed, and thus far it's not capable of opening and printing this particular file (excessively high resolution, multiple layers, quirky fonts). The iBook had no problems (other than lack of memory).

To be fair, it's not all perfect. There's some things I don't like:

• Slooooooooow. The powerbook should fix that.


• The keyboard sucks. I've seen toy computers with better keyboards than this old iBook. Heck, the dummy computers they have in furniture stores have better keyboards. The powerbook should fix that.


• Mouse. I've got a usb one plugged in, but that shouldn't really be necessary. And why does OS X turn off using the trackpad for clicking by default?


• The Dock. Everyone else has already talked about how it's broken by design, so I'll spare you from reading it one more time. Oh, oops ;-)

Enough already

I've had enough of Debian. I want it GONE, NOW. Apple, where's my damn powerbook?

I have been running Debian GNU/Linux for several years now. The rationale behind using it is that keeping it up-to-date is really easy (apt-get update;apt-get upgrade), it's rock solid in comparison to Windows, and when it does go wrong, it's possible to track down and fix the problem.

Yesterday I removed the jetty debian package, since I use the version of jetty bundled with Cocoon. Having two copies running eats up valuable memory. During the process of removing jetty, I also did an upgrade to make sure various security fixes were in place.

Afterwards, my desktop started misbehaving: various programs wouldn't start (including the calculator crashing ... I mean come on, the calculator? Please! How hard is it to have a working calculator?!?!). So, I restarted X. Except X wouldn't restart, it failed to run the window manager 5 times and then bluescreened - I kid you not - saying X had been disabled.

It turns out the problem seems to have been a dodgy font. fontconfig was crashing when trying to rebuild my font directories - when I removed an offending directory, it was fine. I finally got my desktop back up and running this morning.

But now mozilla doesn't want to work. It hangs on startup, an strace reports it's repeatedly calling gettimeofday. So I had no browser, until I reinstalled galeon and imported all my bookmarks. It looks horrible, with no anti-aliased fonts, but hell, I'm just happy to have a working browser at this point.

And, just to add that extra bit of entertainment, my apache web server configuration got trashed, too. I'm always nervous when a new Apache package comes down the line, because Apache's automagical configuration routine NEVER gets it right. So I keep backups of the key files. Lots of them. But still:

WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU DEBIAN PEOPLE?

DO NOT OVERWRITE MY CONFIGURATION FILES OR I WILL CARVE YOUR EYES OUT WITH A BLUNT SPOON.

They seem to have split httpd.conf into httpd.conf and modules.conf, which seems like a good idea.

But the change broke which page is loaded as the default one, meaning suddenly instead of web pages I'm getting directory indexes. Hello? Security hole!

Apache's URL rewriting also seems broken in some obscure way ... I haven't worked out what has happened yet, but it's stopped images being served from the site I'm working on at the moment.

All I want is for my laptop to just work, to get out of my way and let me get on with the mountain of things I need to do. Looks like this one is a dead duck, so I'm going to switch a few days early and use the spare iBook we have floating around.

I feel a bit better now I've got that rant out of my system. Better to shout and scream here than to go find a Debian developer and beat him to death with a baseball bat, eh?

Update: From The Register: PC rage turns the air blue ... likely to have an extreme reaction to computer-induced stress, including "swearing, shouting and even violence" ... check, check, check.

Soon...

... but not soon enough.

I'm going to be a switcher, just as soon as Apple get round to shipping my new laptop. It was ordered a couple of weeks ago, but it's going to take 4-6 weeks to be delivered. I'm sick of carrying at least 7.78lbs (3.2Kg) of laptop around, and of fighting with software suspend, and of constantly having to tweak linux, and of not being able to sync with my phone.

Yes, Sylvain, you should buy a real computer :-) And you too, Russell!

Cool URLs don't change

Something I've been known to rant on about: good url design. A great list of resources from Andreas.

Stopping spammers

I've been fighting a running battle with comment spammers in this blog and the luminas blog. I've just installed mt-blacklist to try and put a stop to it, and it seems to work. I'd recommend all other movabletype comment-spam victims do the same, as we can then benefit from the network effect and use each other's blacklists.

GetTogether summary

We're now back from Belgium, and just about recovered from the three days of hectic talks, beer, food, socialising, and business.

David's presentation went down a storm, as you can see from the feedback on the luminas news blog.

Public face of AFFS

Alex, the well-known public face of AFFS, now has a blog and is hacking in trackback and RSS feeds following my complaints that what he really had was only a bl ;-)

To help him debug, I'm sending him a trackback ping....

Belgium tomorrow

So, tomorrow David and I spend a day travelling in order to join Matthew, Marcus, Steven, Sylvain and a whole host of other Cocooners for the Cocoon GetTogether.

Once again I'll be travelling on the Eurostar, marvelling at the fact that I can get from London to Brussels almost as quickly as from Norwich to London. If all goes to plan I should be checked into the hotel by 6pm, and sipping my first Belgian beer by 6.15 :-)