zOMG

me

[sirpengi]

Lolbuntu

So two issues with Ubuntu Server today (10.04 LTS):

1) visudo -> uses nano

2) apt-get install git

Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree

Reading state information... Done

Package git is not available, but is referred to by another package.

This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or

is only available from another source

E: Package git has no installation candidate

Okay, why don't you tell me what the package that refers it is?

[sirpengi]

Virtual Machine clocks get behind

So, like any good web monkey I do my development in a virtual machine (using good ol virtualbox).  It's quite easy to suspend your session before you head home for the day and then reanimate it when you have to hack on it again.  An issue that arises from doing that is your VM's clock starts to get out of date!  The suspend feature basically dumps all the contents of RAM to disk, and restores it from disk before reanimating.  This includes the part of memory that stores the current time.

I got bit in the butt today with that because a series of git commits I did just today were dated two weeks ago, which put them at the bottom of github's commit message log (despite it being the HEAD of that branch).  There was quite a bit of confusion since I was seeing my recent commit in the command line git log but wasn't seeing it in the github log.  El. Oh. El.

So of course, ntp was born for the sole purpose of resyncing clocks.  But how to do that automatically?  I didn't want to put it in a cron job (unless I want it to run every minute or so), and there are no post-unsuspend hooks in virtualbox (or perhaps there are, but that would just be seriously complicated!).  So I figured, I always interact with my virtualmachine by SSH'ing in, so I might as well make a post login hook.  So away I go to edit my ~/.bash_profile

# .bash_profile # Get the aliases and functions if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then   . ~/.bashrc fi # User specific environment and startup programs PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin export PATH /usr/sbin/ntpdate pool.ntp.org

Great, now every time I reanimate the VM and I ssh in then it'll update the clock.  Problem solved!

Not so fast.  I also use tmux, and every time I create a new subshell the clock gets updated too!  That sorta sucks.  I don't create new subshells all the time but 1) it's pointless and 2) it slows me down by like half a second.  So now I have to figure out if I can fix this.  Luckily, some googling about brings me to a solution:

if [[ -z "$TMUX" ]]; then   /usr/sbin/ntpdate pool.ntp.org fi

This basically checks for the presence of an environment variable that tmux sets within its spawned shells.  Now the bash_profile script still gets run, but ntpdate doesn't if I'm within tmux. Yay!

[sirpengi]

Pacman, srsly?

[root@archy shuchen]# pacman -Syu

:: Synchronizing package databases...

testing 12.5K 17.1K/s 00:00:01 [#####################################] 100%

core 37.3K 50.4K/s 00:00:01 [#####################################] 100%

extra 467.8K 198.9K/s 00:00:02 [#####################################] 100%

community-testing 16.0K 32.3K/s 00:00:00 [#####################################] 100%

community 426.5K 194.9K/s 00:00:02 [#####################################] 100%

archlinuxfr 26.4K 58.9K/s 00:00:00 [#####################################] 100%

:: The following packages should be upgraded first :

pacman

:: Do you want to cancel the current operation

:: and upgrade these packages now? [Y/n] y

resolving dependencies...

looking for inter-conflicts...

error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)

:: package-query: requires pacman

:: pacman-color: requires pacman=3.4.3

[sirpengi]

I'm still trying to figure out how you can expect ANY behavior when you have no idea how it works in the first place.

I'm serious, how do you make a prediction when your model is incomplete? This isn't weather, the model's behavior is actually DOCUMENTED.

sirpengi: jonez: sara golemon explains it best: http://blog.golemon.com/2007/01/youre-being-lied-to.html

sirpengi: you MUST read this

sirpengi: before you write another line of php

jonez: and who is "sara golemon"?

sirpengi: one of the core developers of php

kon: lets write her some hatemail

sirpengi: no, you should write her a thank you card with chocolates for bringing light to how references work

jonez: yuck.

jonez: I really don't care that php is a hack under the covers.. I care that the code does what I expect.

jonez: I am not trying to "outsmart the engine" by using references.

sirpengi: no, you're not trying to do anything but use references when you don't need to

sirpengi: the only thing you net when you use references needlessly is hidden bugs

jonez: only because php is doing magical crap in certain cases.

jonez: there aren't any bugs in my code though :)

sirpengi: no, php ISN'T doing magical crap

jonez: the darn thing works :)

sirpengi: the article explains exactly how it works

jonez: yes, but I don't care how it works.

jonez: I care that my code does what I expect.

kon: :D

sirpengi: how can you expect to know what your code does when you don't understand references?

jonez: *rolls eyes*

[sirpengi]

I <3 Heff. Taken at a Fourth of July double-birthday celebration at the Gordon Biersh at Aloha Tower Marketplace.

[sirpengi]

Went out to First Friday tonight with a friend from the mainland. Mostly walked around and checked out the local scene (see what all the hip young people are up to). Didn't buy anything, drink anything, or spend any money except for parking. Here's me contributing to the economic recovery.

[sirpengi]

IRC makes me cry sometimes

hi, i have made a filter: http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/440142/ but it doesnt work. can you please help?

any help? lol

myrk: file returns an array with the line endings, unless you use the proper flags or manually trim them

myrk: you'll need to do that

myrk: otherwise it'll do a search and replace for strings that contain the word you want + followed by a line break

ok.

so what should i do?

add line break?

myrk: no, I just advised you to strip out the line breaks

how does adding them help?

sirpengi i dont think i have line breaks

myrk: and after you figure that out, read up on the docs for str_replace, because you can just pass the entire array in

rather than needlessly iterating

ok

but i tried that already

you have line breaks. I'm 99.99% certain

by line breaks you mean i have each word on a new line instead of a single line?

myrk: so you have all your words on one line in that file?

no...

then you have line breaks

should i?

oh ok

should i remove them?

no, but you need to strip them out of your $badwords variable

ok

myrk: or the easy way is to read the docs for file() and figure out the flags to pass so that the function will strip it out for you

so lets say the badwords file was: word word1 word2 word3 word4 is that correct?

:)

myrk: no, that'd be all words on one line with no line breaks

you'll need to get the file contents and explode or parse it somehow

so lets say the badwords file was: word;word1;word2;word3;word4 is that correct? lol

* sirPengi explodes

* myrk is sorry lol

[sirpengi]

At risk of turning this into a bird watcher photo blog (where all I do is take photos of the same 5 types of common birds) I've decided to put one of the gourds that my mother grows.

This is the gourd. I don't like eating it. But there exists people that do.

[sirpengi]

Another photo from the walk. This was in front of the Sheraton. One of their decorations.

[sirpengi]

I must have the worst job ever. All my co-workers are way too cool and my boss is super lenient/understanding of the usual programmer habits.

If you didn't catch the sarcasm there, I'll like to point it out right now. Well, part of my job DOES involve hacking our sites to work in IE6, so I may have the worst job ever after all.

And another dreadful thing—we had a company dinner last night at Nobu, this swanky Japanese-fusion place out at the Waikiki Parc. It was pretty good as far as fusion food goes. Note to self: I need to teach the company folks about having fish ala fish. Sauce and garnish is pretty good, but raw fish unaltered is the experience to level up to.

One thing at a time. I need to convince them to switch over to nginx from Apache first.

Well, after a whole lot of drinks and food, I decided I had to take a little walk around Waikiki before hitting the short road back home. I went around a bit and took a few photos. This one was the creepiest. Everything else was also too blurry or unrecoverable.

Another note to self: Lightroom does wonders. I've been playing with the public Beta and it's pretty sweet. Just today I first saw how it takes advantage of a dual monitor setup. I think that is precisely what sells it for me.

[sirpengi]

So we have curtains now. Curtains and internet—privacy and unlimited porn in other words...

Of course, it's not *really* curtains. Just $5 lengths of paper that are taped to the tops of our windows. Actually getting real curtains involves picking out mounting hardware, getting tools and screws to attach said hardware to the walls, picking out curtains to attach to the hardware, and probably something else to attach to something else that will cost me another $60. I must say I'm extremely happy with the faux-curtains we picked up from the local hardware store, however the wife keeps reminding me that we will still be getting actual curtains one of these days.

[sirpengi]

We went to the hospital today to get an ultra-sound, both to check and see that the spawnling is all healthy as well as to figure out which gender (if any) it was.

As it turns out, we’re having a boy! I’ll try my best to be excited about that—I wanted a girl. The wife blames it on my sperm, but I think it’s a matter of what the egg allows in. Those eggs, like women, are crafty.

[sirpengi]

Tumblr customization is pretty nifty

Tumblr just totally takes the cake when it comes to customizations. I've been playing around with it a bit today (my theme, though live, is yet incomplete) and I've been very happy with the level of creativeness allowed.

Also, I'm very surprised that things haven't collapsed down into the hellscape that is MySpace. I've yet to see a tumblr account in the wild liable to cause seizures and sporting disjointed flash widgets everywhere. Either Tumblr somehow deletes accounts that degrade that far, the demographic in Tumblr just isn't that into adding sparkles, or I just haven't been around long enough to see them yet.

[sirpengi]

He was chirping a-plenty today. I think we've seen him around more than once. It's been raining off and on lately, and the birds are always busy before and after the drizzling.

[sirpengi]

New Beginnings

So yet again, I am attempting this whole blogging thing. I'm not sure how many times I've done and quit this, but stopping the wheels in the middle of rolling is just asking for face-planted passengers.

There are a lot of things new in my life. Just got married this past december; have a child on the way; just got a new (full time) job (started April 1st of all days, and no - when I went in on the first day of work it didn't turn out to be a total joke); rental application just got accepted.

By all considerations this would be a ton of stuff. I figure I should keep some sort of log. If not for historical reference then to keep my sanity while everything around me changes.

Bring it on!