tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55961078575419394462010-04-16T07:40:57.813-07:00grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-38697704946870267832008-12-08T09:50:00.000-08:002008-12-08T09:51:52.114-08:00

Gnome terminal is known for being a resource hog. When it reached 130 megabytes for a recently-opened terminal I looked into it. Thanks to Gnome Live memory reduction this was fairly easy. Using cat /proc/nnn/smaps I could see Korean and Japanese fonts using lots of memory. I don't usually need these... Try searching for "batang", "kochi" and "uming"- I've removed these from my Ubuntu.

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-82955512584088003952008-12-05T07:42:00.001-08:002008-12-05T07:42:58.917-08:00

"With some 12 million Lebanese overseas and only 3.5 million in the country, remittances make up a vital third of the economy" according to the BBC. According to Wikipedia, these are people of Lebanese descent, not actually Lebanese citizens!

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-61297047526681389882008-04-29T06:28:00.001-07:002008-04-29T06:28:51.703-07:00

In inner London, 53.4% of pupils do not speak English as a first language. Surprised? Jim Knight del.icio.us Tags: politics, schools, uk, england, london, english, education (UK Schools Minister): "The evidence is clear that children with English as a second language make exceptional progress and are rapidly closing the gap with native speakers." Is "exceptional progress" really correct?  Is

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-21835776594439785752008-01-16T05:46:00.001-08:002008-01-16T05:46:26.081-08:00

London buses are very good (when they work) but it seems very hard to find a map mashup with bus routes. Is it so very hard? All one should need is a list of bus routes, their stops and the co-ordinates... Tube travel is catered for very well, but I think there's a demand for better bus information! del.icio.us Tags: gis, travel, gmap, googlemap, map, tube, underground, london, bus, tfl

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-41630819206896064742007-12-01T06:48:00.001-08:002007-12-01T06:48:02.073-08:00

Great post at Alban's blog about how to use inotify with Rails Autotest.  Much faster test responses. del.icio.us Tags: rails, autotest, test, tdd, ruby, inotify, linux

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-82326976405900030952007-12-01T06:45:00.001-08:002007-12-01T06:45:37.793-08:00

Another rant about Outlook.  Windows in general doesn't seem to handle networking very well- many applications block because Explorer is doing something with the network. Outlook should be cleverer.  It may start up in "on-line" mode, but it should not block with "Not Responding" for up to a minute before it realises yes, this is a laptop and no, it's not connected.  To anything. del.icio.us

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-79832526370589040762007-10-23T14:30:00.001-07:002007-10-23T14:30:46.837-07:00

del.icio.us Tags: www, ssh, firewall, proxy, socks Rather a buzz-word heavy title, but if you need to sort out decent web access from behind a firewall/proxy, use: ssh -ND 9999 user@server.net The web browser should then be configured to use the proxy "localhost:9999".

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-90899959379323809022007-10-13T14:51:00.001-07:002007-10-13T14:51:28.408-07:00

Just had a seemingly odd Rails test error: Loaded suite /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake/rake_test_loaderStartedE/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/sqlite3/errors.rb:94:in `check': SQL logic error or missing database (SQLite3::SQLException) Simple enough to fix- it turns out my primary key (the "id" column) in the test fixtures weren't unique. If you get this error, check your fixtures!

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-74370315994942652842007-10-09T13:49:00.001-07:002007-10-09T13:49:03.582-07:00

Like this person del.icio.us Tags: x, firefox, ubuntu, I'm also finding running firefox on a remote box just opens a window on the local box... Hmm...

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-69520390189738671542007-10-01T13:28:00.001-07:002007-10-01T13:28:29.798-07:00

Running into a problem with httpclient? - this link del.icio.us Tags: rubyonrails, rails, http may explain the problem.

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-66422079701020112362007-09-04T04:08:00.001-07:002007-09-04T04:08:16.381-07:00

Outlook has many good points. But it simply doesn't tell the truth when it comes to synchronising its folders. If there is a network problem, it will happily sit there saying "Sending... complete." while it hasn't even managed to make a connection yet. When I first open Outlook, it kindly informs me "all folders are up to date".  Then, as soon as I open e.g. the inbox, only then does it decide

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-32169919754104006522007-08-31T05:48:00.001-07:002007-08-31T05:48:14.762-07:00

Brilliant- starting to get some ID3 tags automatically inserted into my ogg/mp3 files, ripped years ago before tags were common.  Foobar2000 can tag automatically, once you select the "view by directory structure" option. del.icio.us Tags: mp3, ogg, vorbis, foobar, foobar2000, id3, tagging

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-26627046443506493872007-08-28T07:05:00.001-07:002007-08-28T07:05:39.540-07:00

I've been through Heathrow Terminal 4 quite a few times recently.  Every time it has taken less than 25 minutes to get from arrival at T4 (by the great Woking Railair bus) to past security. Is this abnormal? From the press, I should be stuck in huge queues and have my bags lost. But that's BAA's fault, even though it appears to be BA's problem. Touch wood, so far BAA and BA have worked

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-88808959008142953202007-08-21T09:38:00.001-07:002007-08-21T09:38:45.147-07:00

del.icio.us Tags: railway, train, steel, engineering, metal, hardware, tools, drills, hss, derby Just reading about Mushet and his work on what eventually became high speed steel (HSS), used in most drill bits these days. According to the wikipedia article: "In 1857 Mushet was the first to make durable rails of steel rather than cast iron, providing the basis for the development of rail

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-67632297139092588002007-08-17T02:05:00.001-07:002007-08-17T02:05:08.656-07:00

According the the Skype heartbeat blog there are ongoing problems with Skype login.  Appears to have been going on for 24hrs now. Not good! del.icio.us Tags: skype, broken, login, voip

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-41065855921878223682007-08-07T12:07:00.001-07:002007-08-07T12:07:43.229-07:00

del.icio.us Tags: aws, amazon, s3, sqs, ruby, rubyonrails, rails, browser, editor, viewer Amazon's Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) is a very useful service, especially in conjunction with their Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). However, while there are several browsers/viewers/editors out there for S3, there do not seem to be any for SQS. Keep an eye out for sqs.grcm.net (no, nothing there

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-80712643486965102812007-08-06T02:29:00.001-07:002007-08-06T02:29:17.914-07:00

Many years ago, OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) was the new thing.  It is a very good paradigm and is still used in many places today.  However, it should NOT be used by MS Internet Explorer for opening Powerpoint presentations (or Excel docs) in a pale, useless version of Powerpoint/Excel.  Why can't it just open Powerpoint if I want it too!? del.icio.us Tags: rant, excel, powerpoint, ms,

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-45201618992448485382007-08-02T02:23:00.001-07:002007-08-02T02:23:53.501-07:00

"Woody" has written here about the new(-ish) Windows Live Writer for offline blogging.  I have to say it is excellent.  The UI is a little bizarre - nothing like any email or Usenet program I've used before; most of these conquered the UI problems 20 years ago. Far better than Qumana: more reliable and it seems to make sense of the proxy configurations I am forced to use.  If only it was open

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-446882110872067352007-08-02T02:19:00.001-07:002007-08-02T02:19:10.186-07:00

The BBC reports del.icio.us Tags: london, houses, property, prices, value, interest, economy (correctly, I believe) that house prices in the UK ie London are overpriced by 20%.  They give several examples of other countries in a similar situation. There are dire warnings of what will befall... but... have any countries had such a fall yet???

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-18954429368535978722007-07-29T08:50:00.001-07:002007-07-29T08:50:25.019-07:00

I don't know why VMWare can't just do it like Xen- but time synchronisation in VMWare is not perfect. So, it's important to run an NTP client in each VM.  However, by design, if NTP finds there is a large difference between "real time" and the VM time... e.g. every single time you Resume a VM, it will correct the time- but slowly.  Very slowly.  So slowly you'll probably never see it. So,

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-64000316000829348872007-07-27T04:18:00.001-07:002007-07-27T04:18:16.780-07:00

From Wikipedia "It is estimated that the slam-door trains could achieve 60,000 miles (96,000 km) without breakdown; the Desiros an estimated 13,000 miles (20,800 km) but this is gradually improving" on the South West Trains lines. They are probably more comfortable, but that's quite a difference in reliability! del.icio.us Tags: train, desiro, swt, wikipedia, railway

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-6237274476840386442007-07-27T04:00:00.001-07:002007-07-27T04:00:06.750-07:00

There's an article on Slashdot about Intel's threading library which has recently been released under a different licence.  The licence allows more use in the outside world. However, Slashdot, the bastion of technical gurus, seems to be descending into a haven for amateur lawyers- 90%+ of the articles are about the nuances of GPL v2 licencing which have been discussed myriad times before- very

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-12146758715610764572007-07-25T03:12:00.001-07:002007-07-25T03:12:29.925-07:00

I recently bought a Spong coffee grinder from Ebay.  They follow a design from the 1840s and changed little over the years.  I believe they were last manufactured in the 1970s. The grinder is of the burr type- this is the best to ensure consistent coffee. Some grinders come without the adjustment screw on the back.  This presses against a flexible metal flap which adjusts the grind size. 

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-26121656746861982922007-07-24T05:37:00.001-07:002007-07-24T06:51:09.846-07:00

Google spreadsheets are VERY useful for organising things like skiing and dinner parties. But why doesn't the chat thing work properly in Firefox?  You'd have thought they'd have checked this sort of thing... When you chat enough to require scroll bars to see the bottom of the chat pane, the bars come and go without warning. del.icio.us Tags: spreadsheet, office, google, error, firefox

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5596107857541939446.post-30863400141503302152007-07-24T02:17:00.001-07:002007-07-24T02:17:49.499-07:00

Standing on the tube this morning, I couldn't help but overhear two women discussing the lack of good content on the television at the moment.  They were so distraught they had resorted to asking one's boyfriend to spend his time downloading "Lost" episodes from the internet. Have they really nothing better to do than watch endless television?? del.icio.us Tags: television, tv, lost, tube,

grcmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05038097923392371250noreply@blogger.com0