East of the Sun, West of the Moon

2005/8/24

Mailman

Filed under: Projects,Software — Erwin @ 7:27 pm

Installed Mailman today, with some twists because of the local (server) setup, but I think I’ve got it sorted out. Just one thing left: I run the corresponding website on port 8000, just like this blog right now, so that it can be accessed directly and I don’t have to play redirection games. But Mailman insists on using the default port (or more to the point, it leaves out the port-number entirely) for one particular self-referring link and I don’t know enough Python to figure out why it does that let alone how I can fix it.

<…rambling analysis deleted…>

Gah, I suppose I should learn to search the web before investigating these things (although I think I learned a few things along the way). The hack around this is that you add the port in the DEFAULT_URL_PATTERN which is now http://%s:8000/mailman/. Ugly, but I guess that’ll do for now.

Today’s wrap-up

Filed under: Family — Erwin @ 2:07 am

Today, like yesterday, was long and tiring. After doing various things from 8 to 5-6pm the kids get home and still need to be forced to do their homework. That shouldn’t take very long, but… they’re talented in that respect, 15 minutes of homework can take 1-2 hours with these two. Of course that somewhat conflicts with, say, dinner and the fact that their bedtimes are supposed to be before 9pm. Ugh.

We’re looking into finding someone that might pick them up after school and, unlike the after school program actually get them to do some if not all of their homework before M picks them up from there after 5pm. That way those 2 hours won’t be totally wasted and we may actually have some time to do something else afterwards, like go swimming!

Installed the new version of Adium X that was released today, now browsing through the rest of VersionTracker‘s newsfeed to see what else there may be of interest.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a slightly more regular day. *crosses fingers*

2005/8/22

Lost & found

Filed under: News — Erwin @ 6:40 pm

Thankfully Lydia‘s (stolen) bag/rucksak/backpack was found. Hopefully not too much of the contents disappeared but that is unknown at this very moment.

Archives

Filed under: Site,Software — Erwin @ 6:29 pm

As promised last month I sat down to put together a custom version of the monthly archive overview and today I activated it, then struggled with CSS for a short while, and now it seems to work as intended.

Enjoy!

GenCon 2005

Filed under: General — Erwin @ 3:39 pm

As already mentioned the reason for my absence was GenCon, plus two days of driving (it’s about 10 hours to drive from here to Indy).

I’d never been there before so when M and I walked to the convention center to get our passes and have a first peek at the hall, I was suitably impressed with the size of it all. Walking around the aisles multiple times in the 3 days we were there provided us with various sore bodyparts.

Of course all the stereotypes were present and accounted for, gaming geeks/nerds of all kinds, both genders, many of them dressed up in some costume, many of them just badly dressed ;) , but a surprising wide range of ages. It was amusing to see what looked to be a grandparent with her grandkids visiting the con, alongside 20-30-40-somethings.

I saw more dice than you could ever want or need, in every colour, size and texture possible. Sadly the one that M set her sights on (used by one of the WotC people) turned out to be a custom job so she may never be able to get her hands on one like it.

Because my work is mostly on the inside (games and servers) I did not feel very comfortable actually talking to attendees passing by our booth, slightly worried I’d be asked questions that I couldn’t answer and of course Murphy’s Law would have it that right at the point the person who could answer it would be on a break. Compare this to M who, having acquired most if any knowledge of the company and the games we offer through osmosisme, was quite comfortable talking to people, handing out flyers and other freebies.

More on this later, I’m going back to catching up on email and newsfeeds and anything else that looks vaguely important.

2005/8/21

Home Sweet Home

Filed under: Technology — Erwin @ 8:06 pm

Aaah… a proper 19″ monitor and a real keyboard to type on. Nothing beats being home in that respect. ;-)

2005/8/19

Hello World

Filed under: Technology — Erwin @ 9:39 pm

Clearly my laptop was not prepared to be taken on a roadtrip and perform any other duties than be a fancy note-taking device (I’d call it a notebook but that might confuse matters more).

  • The Orinoco Silver PCMCIA card that it uses is, using the default Linux modules, not capable of listing the access points, so if there are several, some of which are locked, some of which might be free, I can’t just try them one by one.
  • It also does not seem to play well with the Apple USB-wifi gadget that it’s connecting to right now. Perhaps that one does 802.11g? Oh well.
  • The Firefox proxy detection appears to leave something to be desired
  • The DHCP client I’m using is not set up well to pick up the DNS servers (if any) to be used.

The connection out does not seem to let me ssh to my computers at home, so the only email I have read is my gmail account. The rest will follow on Monday. ;-)

Now back to the business at hand, as I pay more attention to the group roleplaying an expedition from Miskatonic University into the Sahara desert in the late 1920s.

2005/8/16

Busy days ahead

Filed under: Family — Erwin @ 1:45 pm

Today we’re packing and other preparing. Tomorrow M and I will be driving to Indianapolis to attend GenCon. Largely related to the company I work for but also to meet some people I’ve been working with for years (online) but never or seldom meet.

Not quite sure how well the internet situation will work out, so best/worst case will be that you won’t hear from me until next week. ;-)

2005/8/15

See you in 5 years, then

Filed under: Family — Erwin @ 2:21 pm

I thought it might be worth a shot to try this site (optoutprescreen.com):

Thank you. Your 5 Year Opt-Out Request has been received. Your request will be completed within 5 days. However, because your name has been provided to businesses that have not yet mailed their pre-approved offer to you, you may continue to receive certain pre-approved offers for several months.

While your name will be removed from the pre-approved credit or insurance offer lists that Equifax, Experian, Innovis and TransUnion provide to businesses, you may continue to receive mail from sources that do not use credit reporting companies to compile their lists.

Emphasis mine, by the way.

The only reasons I picked 5 years and not permanent are that:

  • I’m cynical enough to assume that permanent does not work in practice and that my name will eventually end up on their lists again.
  • I’m happy with the creditcards that I have right now but may want to see what they’re offering me in a few years, because I assume that the kind of offers I get is vaguely (!) related to my creditscore which, compared to US citizens is very young and as a result not as good as it could be.

The next few weeks/months will tell if the flood will turn into a trickle, at least.

Catching up

Filed under: Software,Technology — Erwin @ 12:21 pm

I would be interested in a hybrid that can do 250 Mpg:

University of California, Davis engineering professor Andy Frank built a plug-in hybrid from the ground up in 1972 and has since built seven others, one of which gets up to 250 mpg. They were converted from non-hybrids, including a Ford Taurus and Chevrolet Suburban.

Frank has spent $150,000 to $250,000 in research costs on each car, but believes automakers could mass-produce them by adding just $6,000 to each vehicle’s price tag.

Unfortunately I’m not willing to invest in a new car when we’re still paying for the previous one and don’t really need a second vehicle. So I hope that by the time we are actually looking for one, their performance has improved even more. :-)

It’s an indication of why patents can be a pain, although it’s also an indication of how Apple dropped the ball in protecting its own technolog and products:

In a ruling issued last month, a patent examiner rejected Apple’s attempt to patent some of the user interface concepts behind the popular digital music player, noting that Microsoft developer John Platt filed for similar claims five months before Apple did.

John Platt filed it in May 2002 while Apple released the iPod in October 2001. You figure out if that makes sense, hm?

That’ll have to do for now, work called a long time ago. ;-)

Now playing: Björk – The Modern Things (from Post)

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