Author: arved

KDE 3.4.0

I finally updated my Desktop to KDE 3.4.0. After an update I always try to reproduce the bugs, I reported. Please vote for my bugs, so that they get fixed soon :-).
I like the integration of akregator, until now it looks like Kmail catched up with Evolution and Konqueror is finally able to display http://www.derstandard.at/ like Firefox

Apple USB Extension cables & iBook RAM upgrade

The Apple USB Extension cable that came with my Apple USB keyboard uses a slightly different plug, so I can’t use it with my Logitech USB Mouse 🙁
And I finally upgraded the RAM on my iBook, it has now 640MB RAM. If anybody needs Samsung 128MB RAM PC2100S CL2.5, please write me an email.

Busy & Easter upcoming

There have been only three Entries in this blog in March. I have been busy working at $JOB1 and $JOB2 and not so busy at university.
At university i am currently struggling with alpha Assembler *uerks*. At $JOB1 i configured radius-bases Mac-Address Authentication on Cisco IOS Acccesspoints for the first time and at $JOB2 i am working on polishing our $SOFTWARE for the upcoming OpenSource-Release, which is scheduled for April (stay tuned).
Unfortunately last week the spring started in Vienna (on Thursday 20�C) which does not increase productivity in front of the Computer screen.
My girlfriend decided that I will spend Easter at her family’s like last year instead of fighting with Prolog.

Dragons

16:24 <@lesi> krion: extract xterm source and grep for dragons ;)

This is frightening. From main.c:

/*
*                               W A R N I N G
*
* If you think you know what all of this code is doing, you are
* probably very mistaken.  There be serious and nasty dragons here.
*

New Term

The new Term at University started last week. Because I am working fulltime again, I have only joined two courses, Compiler Construction and Prolog Programming. The first Assignment in the Compiler Construction course is programming Assembler on the Alpha.
This is a good reason to boot my two alpha systems again. I am trying to install the Compag C Compiler, but this is no simple task, because it requires the Linuxulator. Unfortunately the default linux_base ports for i386 linux_base-7 and linux_base-8 are both not available for alpha, because RedHat stopped distributing binaries for the alpha platform several years ago. linux_base-6 is available for alpha, but is a) marked FORBIDDEN because of several unpatched security vulnerabilities and b) was accidently broken several months ago. Obviously nobody is using the linuxulator on alpha anymore, because nobody complained.
The other alternative linux_base port available is linux_base-debian, but i think this one is still experimental.
If I succeed installing a linux_base I will have to fix bsd.port.mk to change the default for the alpha architecture.

Winter

This blog has been very quiet recently. I am now healthy again and I have been busy catching up work. Additional I am mentoring a new FreeBSD developer again. Simon Barner is my third mentee.
Last week it had snowed a lot in Austria. And today is the coldest day this winter. I spent the weekend here:
DSCN3912.JPG
This is the farm of my girlfriends family.

Performance limit

It looks like i have reached a performance limit of MT. Starting with the last entry commenting is incredible slow. The cause is neither the perl version, nor the Blacklist nor the nofollow plugin. Attaching to the perl process with truss(1) I see endless pread(2) calls on the Berkeley DB files.
Anyone got an idea, how to improve performance?
Now I could setup a MySQL database, but I doubt that would be faster, and there are many larger Blogs that use Berkeley DB.
Or it may be time to say good bye to MT and switch to something else.
Unfortunately there not many advanced systems that use neither PHP nor a seperate Database Server.
This sucks!

news.individual.net goes $$$$

Via isotopp: news.individual.net now costs 10 EURO/year.
I registered ca. 7 years ago and still use the account as a backup for my providers newsserver (although mostly for lurking).
Now the alternatives are: a) Pay 10 Euros b) VPN or Tunnel to my universities news server c) news.arcor.de (I have not found out where to register for free access) d) Usenet is dead.

ill–

My Operating System was infected by the latest virus circulating in Vienna. For the first time in my life i visited a doctor, but unfortunately she could not help much. Now I have been at home for nearly a week and I am still coughing, my nose is running and my headache prevents me from working.