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ramdyne

a very bad book

ramdyne

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<html><body><p>Don't buy <a href="http://www.patrickrobinson.com/books/barracuda.html">Barracuda 945</a> by <a href="http://www.patrickrobinson.com/">Patrick Robinson</a>. The first half is approximately like a tech-thriller should be, but the second half is nothing more than a rant on the Clinton presidency. After the second time it's getting ridiculous, after the n-th time it is maddening.

Bad. Bad. Bad.....

The previous books hinted in this direction, but that was bearable because the story wasn't too bad, but this book brings stupidity to new levels.</p></body></html>

Stylorama

ramdyne

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<html><body><p>Well, here it is. A new look for my site. The stylesheet file itself is called <a href="http://www.ramdyne.nl/green_yellow.css">green-yellow.css</a>, but I'm calling it Spring, although it is more summer I think. Anyway, the old style is now called winter (<a href="http://www.ramdyne.nl/styles-site.css">styles-site.css</a>).

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It was partly inspired by a design from <a href="http://www.csszengarden.com/">css Zen Garden</a> called <a href="http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2004/03/sublime_discussion/">sub:lime</a>. The designer of this Garden entry had it <a href="http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2004/03/19/the_price_of/#000531">pulled</a> from the site after too many sites started copying it. I'm still not sure if I stole his design, or used it as an inspiration. I'm very bad in choosing colors, but not too bad in writing my own stylesheets and figuring out a nice structure of the site. So there.

The old design has been reworked to match the new structure of the HTML generated by Movable Type. There are some issues with long entries, which require some work on the image files to make them larger. Unfortunately, I'm not a desinger, so I'm very bad at using Potoshop or similar application.

To make switching styles real easy, I have used a piece of JavaScript from <a href="http://www.alistapart.com/">A List Apart</a>. The code is in a seperate <a href="http://www.alistapart.com/d/alternate/styleswitcher.js">.js</a> file, with an <a href="http://www.alistapart.com/articles/alternate/">explanation</a> in an article on the ALA site.

There's some small tidbits here and there, some were learned while creating the <a href="http://www.ikbepaalzelfwelmetwieikbel.nl/">Ik bepaal zelf wel met wie ik bel . nl</a> website at work.</p></body></html>

how the music industry killed itself

ramdyne

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<html><body><p>The Frontline show on PBS, a US TV channel, has a created a <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/music/" title="frontline: the way the music died | PBS">documentary</a> about the end of the music industry, whith a nice interview with <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/music/interviews/crosby.html" title="frontline: the way the music died: interviews: david crosby | PBS">David Crosby</a>.</p></body></html>

i know everything

ramdyne

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<html><body><a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/">Joel Spolsky</a> has written the foreword to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/078214327X/">Coder to Developer</a>, a book by Mike Gunderloy about the other parts of software engineering than just programming.

He describes how through his career he always thought he knew what software engineering was all about. In the long career I've had (as if), I've always have the opposite feeling. I know nothing and I will never be as good as this guy or that guy.</body></html>

the problem with open source

ramdyne

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<html><body><p>The last couple of weeks I'm having a problem with a daemon we're using the work. It is crashing a couple of times per day and so far I've been unable to find the bug. Today the itch got so bad I went looking for the bug, again, but did so on saturday. In the weekend!

That's the problem with Open Source, you can't easily hide from work anymore, because the sources are alway available. That's gotta be one of the few disadvanatges of Open Source software.</p></body></html>

really nice backpack

ramdyne

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<html><body><p>If you're looking for a backpack to carry your laptop, check out those available from <a href="http://www.tombihn.com/">Tom Bihn</a>. I've received my <a href="http://www.tombihn.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&amp;Product_Code=TB0104&amp;Category_Code=300&amp;Product_Count=2">Brain Bag</a> two weeks ago and I still haven't found anything wrong with it. I ordered the <a href="http://www.tombihn.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&amp;Store_Code=001&amp;Product_Code=TB0330">Monolith</a> laptop case to really protect my laptop and a <a href="http://www.tombihn.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&amp;Store_Code=001&amp;Product_Code=TB0302">Snake Charmer</a> for all the cables. The Brain Bag was a bit larger than I suspected, but there's no substitute for cubic inches ;-). If you don't want or need a big backpak, the <a href="http://www.tombihn.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&amp;Product_Code=TB0103&amp;Category_Code=300&amp;Product_Count=1">Smart Alec</a> might be something for you.

I know the backpacks might be a bit expensive, but so far the Brain Bag is worth every euro I spent on it. Just don't forget the taxes you need to pay when importing from overseas.

I must be becoming greedy. I'm now wondering if I might need the <a href="http://www.tombihn.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&amp;Store_Code=001&amp;Product_Code=TB0344">Freudian Slip</a></p></body></html>

how to enable coredumps on debian 3.0 (woody)

ramdyne

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<html><body><p>Have you tried to change the default core size of 0 in Debian? The current default setting disables the writing of core files (coredumps) all together. Which is a pain in the you-know-where, when you have an application which crashes now and then and you don't know how to reproduce it.

So here's the deal:

</p><ol>

<li>Uncomment the line in /etc/security/limits.conf

<code>

  • hard core 10000

</code>

You might want to change the "hard" into "soft", so anyone can change the

setting again to something reasonable.

</li>

<li>Uncomment the line in /etc/pam.d/login which says something like this

<code>

session required pam_limits.so

</code>

</li>

</ol></body></html>