Hacker's Diary
A rough account of I did with Emacs
recently.
- May 31
- Originally, we'd planned on some booziness
in The Hague; however, Bob's work intruded (small networking
problem, some company called KPNQwest...) and that plan was
scratched.
Put together some PHP to make a
file browser of sorts. Plus points: generates on-the-fly
thumbnails of image files. Minus points: chews CPU like a chewy
thing, and is wildly insecure.
Off to the bar. And back home to watch Dogma.
- May 30
- Woo! Hacking! Got my GL mojo workin' after
some fiddling with the X configuration and the like. Eventually I
discovered that the principal problem revolved around the fact
that the DRI stuff was only offering 16 or 32 bpp operation, and
the X driver didn't want to do 32bpp. Grr. This needs to be fixed,
obviously.
Went back to Amsterdam - mainly to check on what my flight options
are as a result of the Aer Lingus strike. They rebooked me for a
Sunday flight, using FinAir to bounce me via Helsinki. No,
really. Spent a few hours wandering around Amsterdam after that,
and I took some photos this time.
Back to O'Brien's in the evening, where Bob & I met up with
Pat Connolly.
- May 29
- Took the train into Amsterdam to see what
the place was like. When I got there, it was windy, and trying to
rain, and I was wandering in a pretty typical European city, and,
well, if the weather's like this at home I won't go into
town. Still, I figured I should at least look around; I wandered
down a major shopping street, somewhat akin to Grafton street, and
about half way down it (at Dam Square) I got fed up and headed
back to the station and to Haarlem where I vegged at the house
until Bob & Gemma arrived home, after which we went off to
O'Brien's.
- May 28
- I pretty much spent the day vegetating at
Bob & Gemma's place, after the rampant movement of the
preceding days. And of course we went to the
pub. Bwahahah.
- May 27
- Bob had thoughtfully taken a day off,
so... we went to the pub. Hee hee hee.
- May 26
- Met Bob's visitors as they had breakfast and
left (driving back to Germany). Bob's quite enamoured with this
notion, I think. Get in a car and drive to another country. It's
something of a novelty for us I(re|s)landers. The only other note
I have for today is "BEER!" and given that I went to
O'Brien's almost every single day, that's probably what happened
today. Oh, Bob did take me for a walk around to show me
approximately where things were. Alas, his well-intentioned use of
different streets (to get me familiarised with the area, he said)
only served to confuse me. Aie!
Hmm, I seem to remember Gemma berating us for our somewhat drunken
arrival, too, but not in a harsh way. More of a "You
guys!" sort of way.
- May 25
- JoeV arrived over just in time for the start
of the F1, which made it somewhat reminiscent of our F1 breakfasts
in Dublin last year, although with less people and no Denny's
sausages. The Giant Chin, bless him, actually won the race,
although I don't think anyone really understands why. Post-race, I
took a train to Geneva and found my way onto the flight for my
trip to Amsterdam. The flight was uneventful, and I was greeted by
Bob at the airport. This is the first time I've actually been in
Schipol and left the airport, believe it or not. He dragged me
onto a bus which took us from Schipol to Haarlem, where he's
living, and dragged me into an Irish bar called O'Brien's before
we even got to the house. Hurrah! Lovely Guinness, followed by a
confusing trip through the streets to his residence, and a couch
(he has other visitors using the spare bed, but they're gone
tomorrow). Followed by sleep-of-the-dead.
- May 24
- Morning: JC and I took the train to Berne so
I could look for a gift for my bro's birthday. I had a scheme, I
have, and we only had to visit four shops for me to find what I
was looking for. In the fifth shop, we met Grigor who was looking
for some software to, uh, back up copy-protected CDs. It's our
right as Europeans, you know. Well, at least until the EU gets
around to licking WIPO's arse and putting the EUCD into force.
The rest of the day happened: bluuurrrrrr. Oh, before the
shopping, we stopped at the Pickwick to watch the
qualifying. Rather surprising eventual lineup, including the Giant
Chin on pole. Feh.
Then we went to the Pickwick, where I made familiar-greeting
noises at one of the barmaids, causing JC and Anita to stare at me
(hey, I am Pheromone Boy after all). Post-food, we hiked
off down a few streets to a rather tidy nightclub (cinema seats!
evil!) where Treekillaz" were having
a CD launch party & gig. Boy was that fun. Especially the
"je suis avec l'orchestre" stunts like free beer, free
Zippo-clone lighters, chatting with the band, and so forth. We
walked home at some unknown hour, with me occasionally muttering
"bastards!" because Final Dawn was still stuck
in my head. Go buy Oxygently, you'll
understand.
- May 23
- Joe phoned up sick, so I headed into Berne
on my own and managed to avoid getting lost. Woohoo! I am
TRAVELLER! See me TRAVEL! *cough* JC told me approximately where
to find the Pickwick, which I approximately found, ordered myself
a brewski, and slurped it while I waited for JC to finish up with
that nasty work stuff. JC arrived, then various other people,
including Anita, Marc, Grigor, and Ade, whereupon we all drank
more and then scooted off to an Italian restaurant for food. When
in Berne, er, eat as the Romans do? Whatever.
On the way home after food (we skipped the previously-planned
cinema trip in favour of not rushing dinner) I phoned my brother
to wish him a happy birthday, during which call he discovered I
was in Switzerland. Compare and contrast with his calling me last
year when I was in San
Francisco... oh, turns out I forgot to mention that in the SF
diary. Basically, I got a phonecall at 8am one morning. I
answered, groggily. My brother. He asked what I was doing in bed
at (+timezones) hours. I told him I was in San Francisco, to his
surprise.
- May 22
- Joe's place, barbeque, is my note. Now, I
know I went to Joe's place with Joe, and I went to Joe's place by
myself, and damned if I can place these in the correct sequence,
so I'll describe both here. The barbeque was at JC's, by the
way.
Heading over to Joe's place, with Joe so I'd know where to go, was
basically a bus ride followed by a bit of walking, neither of which
I payed a lot of attention to. Joe's gaff is an apartment in a
horrendously pink apartment block. Nicely sized, balcony, lots of
sunlight. It's near the river; we geeked about a little, then
Elisabeth, Joe's SO, turned up, and we walked down by the river and
eventually wound up at JC's place in time for a barbeque.
Now, I try to figure out the correct chronology.
It may be that the lasagne happened on the 19th, the barbeque #1
on the 20th, and the above on the 21st. In which case, the entry
for today should read as follows:
Today, I discovered just how small the locality is, by getting
lost. No, really. First, I took the wrong bus over to Joe's place,
fetching me up in the town centre. Then I took the right bus back,
but got off at the wrong stop. After some phoning for directions
from Joe, I got myself back on track and eventually turned up at
his front door. He very kindly offered me a laptop to geek on, and
logged into Nerdsholm for the
first time in ages. I caught up on email, chatted with the t.b
folk, and eventually decided to head home. I got to the bus stop
just as the bus I was intending to catch disappeared around the
corner, so I decided to walk a bit because the next one wasn't due
for 45 minutes. I then proceeded to get halfway lost, but relied
on my sense of direction. Which turned out to be a good idea,
because the only time I disregarded it, I wound up walking in the
wrong direction for a few minutes until the nagging voice saying,
"other way! other way!" became too irritating to
ignore. Eventually I wound up at JC & Anita's front door, and
crashed out.
Dammit, I've just remembered that I made a third trip to Joe's
place, and I have absolutely NO recollection of where it fits
in. I walked over by the river route we'd taken when going to JC's
for the second barbeque, and it was after the lost-on-bus trip,
but, er, right. I'll put this down to the fact that I was on a
one-beer minimum for every single day of the
holiday.
- May 21
- "Here, you! Tourist! Assemble this
barbeque!", said JC, approximately. So I did, and then sat in
the grass reading Ender's Game (no, I have never read
this classic of Sci Fi, yes I enjoyed it) while JC cooked. Dinner
was excellent, and vegging happened
again. Hurrah!
- May 20
- Yet more vegetation; today being a Swiss
bank holiday, there was no urge to get up and about. But after a
while we wandered into town via bus, and Anita and JC gave me the
$2 tour of the place. The old town is kinda nice, if you're into
historic preservation and all that, but the bulk of Biel was
rebuilt in the 1970s as a "city of the future". Watch
the advertising clip for Sheffield at the start of The Full
Monty and you'll get the idea. Biel pretty much hasn't
changed since they did the remodeling, so the whole place feels
terrifically retro, and not in a particularly good way.
Part of the day was spent in the Pickwick, a bar not far from the
train station. Quite a nice bar, and a good way to spend idle
time. Eventually we wandered back to the house, had a delicious
lasagne for dinner (yay Anita!) and then vegged until late. Oh,
and more beer. Beer!
- May 19
- Biel, day 1: vegetation. That's it. Hey, I'm
on holiday. JC had warned me beforehand that Sunday tended to be
pretty much a non-event, and I can't say I have a problem with
this concept. It's aided by the fact that the entire country
pretty much shuts down, too. So basically we spent the day
lounging around watching TV, movies, and drinking
beer. Beer!
JC and Anita's place is a house; it is kinda old, and full of
STUFF. Especially swords. Aie!
- May 18
- Hangover, followed by hasty packing,
followed by flight to Amsterdam, followed by flight to
Geneva. Whee! Expect the next fortnight of diary entries to be a
bit spotty and vague.
The flight was delayed on takeoff by bogons related to (a) the
continuing failure of the UK to keep their ATC system running for
more than a month at a time (b) a sympathetic ATC failure in
Belgium and (c) the fact that one of the flight attendants took
ill and had to be replaced before we got off the ground. The fact
that I knew the attendant in question is completely unrelated, I
swear.
Once we'd gotten underway, some MORON behind me with an onward
flight to Zurich whined at the nearest flight attendant about
wanting confirmation that he wasn't going to miss his flight. When
asked how this should be done, he said that the pilot could put a
call through to Schipol.
No, really.
The FA pointed out that as of May 15, Aer Lingus regulations
forbid contact with the pilot or other flight deck crew unless
there is an emergency on board. Our MORON was not fobbed off by
this, making loud protestations about how he made 100 flights
every year and that he'd never heard anything so ridiculous and so
forth.
Around about this time I thought about asking the FA if she could
do anything about the terrible whining noise coming from behind my
seat, but I restrained myself.
Eventually, the FA broke protocol and talked to the pilot. The
pilot then proceeded to tell us all - via the intercom, obviously
- that due to the various ATC cock-ups, all European flights were
delayed and chances were that if you had an onward flight it would
be as late leaving as we would be arriving. Whiny Moron still
wasn't happy and demanded to be seated up front where he could
have a customer rep come fetch him as soon as we hit the
ground. Personally, I'd have been in favour of throwing him out
the door as the plane touched down, but apparently it's dangerous
to have the door open at that speed.
We arrived in Amsterdam without further incident, and unlike Whiny
Moron I'd allowed a good time buffer between flights to allow for
such eventualities as delays and misfiring ATCs, so I had time to
get myself confused about the easyJet procedure (what? I don't
need a ticket?) and ended up having to drag myself through
security and passport control and all that when I could simply
have gone straight to the transfer desk. Well, I'll know better
next time. I spent the rest of the time noodling with Boxman, a
Sokoban variant for the Pilot, although I did
briefly and gneefully hook up to the 'net via cellphone (if I'd
had an 802.11b card, I could have gotten free wireless access,
apparently). I'm sure my next bill will be amusing.
The flight to Geneva was uneventful, and arrived in about twenty
minutes early. Anita and JC met me, we had a brief consumption of
beverage moment, and then piled into Anita's car and she drove us
to Biel.
- May 17
- Spent most of the day tooling around,
wandering into town late in the evening in time to get stuck in
rush-hour traffic. D'oh. Met up with some folks in the evening for
a few beers. And a few more beers. And so forth.
- May 16
- More fun and games with Oracle Reports on what turns out
to be my last day in the office. Not only does it use an entirely
different Locale system to what everyone else has, it also
requires configuration to map said Locale system to X fonts. Well,
thankfully I'm done with that.
- May 15
- Something on the production system stopped
about ten minutes after I left the office. This is worrying for
the office, as I finish up there on Friday. The DBA and I poked
around for a bit, couldn't find anything obvious, and just reset
the pager alerts to see if it happens again.
- May 14
- Discovered a slightly bigger Emacs upgrade problem: you now
have to tell it explicitly that you want to masquerade your mail
address. Fortunately, I kept copies of everything I'd sent since
Saturday, because the mails got lost in a loop between me and my
ISP.
- May 13
- More banging my head against Oracle today. Worse, over
something I'd solved before; Oracle Reports server doesn't
just need an Xserver to run, it needs a window
manager.
ISP gone to hell in a handbasket again. Sigh. Maybe it's time I
finally got around to doing that smarter dialup script I was
thinking about, that round-robins the ISPs if one starts flaking
out.
Comment from Ashraf on Friday's events: "I tried to phone
you; you answered the phone, and all I heard was girls
laughing.".
- May 12
- Lots of grumbling about today's F1. Rubens
Barrichello had it in the bag, and was ordered to leave Schumacher
pass him within metres of the finish line. Even Schumacher wasn't
happy about it, but Brawn and Todt made lots of handwaving
gestures about the good of the team and so forth. Feh.
Redid my pilot-link
patch again, this time to cope with the RedHat 7.3 changes. The bits
are in the patches
section.
- May 11
- Booked flights for my impending two-week
holiday. I'm going to Switzerland and Holland.
- May 10
- Mild Beerfest to celebrate (?) my departure
from the company. Which isn't actually happening until
next Friday, but details details.
- May 9
- 7.3 update complete. Yay! Now to find out
what's broken. Cursory inspection reveals that I now have Emacs 21, for which I've already
had to repair a piece of code.
- May 8
- Downloading bits for RedHat 7.3 for
Klortho.
- May 7
- Hmm. IOL map toy has broken due to
server-side changes. I guess people were abusing
it... after some hours (!) of prodding, I got it working
again. Whee!
- May 6
- Books: Finished A Heartbreaking Work of
Staggering Genius. While I was reading it, I buzzed through
Life After God, which gave me a nice counterpoint:
Douglas Coupland can write in a way that I can identify with
without resorting to irritating literary tricks like
stream-of-consciousness writing. Dave Eggers appears to be stuck
with the latter. Heck, I used write out stuff like his in college
as a form of antidepressant; it never struck me that anyone would
have the neck to assemble a few hundred pages of it and call it a
book. I've started (re)reading Foucault's Pendulum, one
of two books Donal sent
me for my birthday last month.
Installed Spam Assassin
[sic] on my mail server in response to the recent flood of Klez.E
crap I've been getting. Negative: it doesn't configure very well
outside the default directories. Positive: the Debian install doesn't
automatically insinuate itself into your MTA, so I'm not
interfering with the rest of the MX domains on the
server.
- May 5
- Sun! Sun! Sun! as Steve Martin said in L.A.
Story. I spent the afternoon strolling around Dun Laoghaire
with Ralph and his kids, Rebecca and Ciara.
Tooled around with Wine for a
bit. It started the installer for Mobil 1 Rally Championship, but
bombed out at the patch installation. I poked and prodded it a
bit, but nothing continued to happen. I'm amused by the Guru
Meditation crash dialog, though.
- May 4
- Ow. See previous.
- May 3
- Beer.
- May 2
- Mooched around with mapping again. Still
nothing new to show for it.
- May 1
- May Day. Protestors failed to deface
McDonalds. Woo woo.
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