2006-08-29 11:40:00
As the title says, I'd love to congratulate my wiffums with her twenty-third birthday.
I love you baby :)
/me rolls in the birthday cake and starts handing out slices to the website visitors.
kilala.nl tags: birthday, family,
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2006-08-28 09:06:00
Blogging will be a bit slow the next few weeks.
I've finally re-found my rhythm at the office, meaning that I can steam on again without feeling iffy about the job at hand. I'm also quite busy at home: studying for my LPICs, cleaning, having friends over.
All in all, life's quite busy and I may not find the time to actively update the blog. We'll see :)
EDIT:
In the background I've got a collection of classic J-Pop music playing. Stuff from the sixties and seventies I believe... Stuff like "Kaze" by "Hashida Norihiko. It's remarkable how much this music sounds like the western music from that time. Or maybe it's not remarkable at all :)
I just thought I'd point out that even the stuff from back then sounds pretty good!
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2006-08-23 21:09:00
1. This world has too much emacs. Even when studying for my LPIC-1 exam it seems everyone feels the need to push the emacs editing style on me. Come on folks, a lot of people set their BASH to vi mode, or they use the arrow keys!
2. I just remembered the very first question I asked in high school. During our introductory hour to the school and our mentors I baffled the whole class (including the mentors) by blurting out: "What does it take to get expelled from this school?". o_O Sometimes I'm just -too-much- of a wise ass.
kilala.nl tags: other tech, school, childhood,
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2006-08-23 14:37:00
Damn! I'm really starting to hate Dependency Hell. Installing a few Nagios check scripts requires the Perl Net::SNMP module. This in turn requires three other modules. Each of these three modules requires three other modules, three of which require a C compiler on your system (which we naturally don't install on production systems). And neither can we use the port/emerge/apt-get alike Perl tools from CPAN, since (yet again) these are production systems. Augh!
kilala.nl tags: work, annoying, other tech, unix, sysadmin,
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2006-08-21 21:56:00
Twice this evening did I see people trying to post a comment to one of my blog posts and twice did they fail. I assume they got some error message, telling them what they did wrong, but they never tried posting again.
If anyone runs into any trouble, could you please warn me through e-mail? The contact info is in my profile. Thanks.
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2006-08-21 16:57:00
In recognition of the wonderful Ninja song by 7 Seconds of love my brother hacked together a Ceiling Cat spoof.
Apparently Ninja Cat gets off on watching you flip out! Like a ninja... Cause that's what ninjas do!
kilala.nl tags: internet, fun, geeky,
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2006-08-21 06:46:00
Fine, yeah... So I borrowed "Ceiling Cat" of of the Interweb. Who cares?
I love Ceiling Cat! He's so cute...
<3
kilala.nl tags: internet, geeky, fun,
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2006-08-20 16:14:00
The title says it all: people search for the darndest things on Google! I just hope the guy's employer knows that I'm innocent and that I have nothing to do with that Solaris cluster running on their Fire 12000 going down. Honest!
What do you think? Was it some bored IT worker? Or are terrorists visiting my website? XD
kilala.nl tags: holy shit, website,
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2006-08-19 21:04:00
Since a long while I've finally played Animal Crossing online again. I've had loads of people visit me, coming from Erik's daily Animal Crossing diary. His 250th entry is just around the corner! Awesome!
EDIT:
The fact that I'm now playing AC:WW online again, also brings back the matter I discussed earlier this year in April (2006-04-13 to be exact, see the Archives). The matter of the greatly varying ages of AC:WW players.
I know for a fact that Erik, me and many of the gamers on Ars Technica are well above twenty, but because of the game we regularly cross paths with kids half our age, or even less. So IMHO we have to tread lightly, as to not spook the parents.
EDIT2:
I wish I had the same hardware the guys doing N-DS reviews have. I have no clue how they make such beautiful screenshots, but I do know that I cannot make them :D
kilala.nl tags: games, animal crossing,
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2006-08-18 12:19:00
Man! I have no clue what's wrong with me, but the past two days I've been feeling -very- tired. Up to the point that staying awake and moving is a chore. It's a bit of a mystery really. I haven't touched a drop of alcohol for weeks and I've been sleeping alright too.
Weird... I'm affraid I'll have to cut my day short today and go home early. I'll just type up some documentation for my Nagios project, help out some people with nagios problems and then head home.
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2006-08-15 14:43:00
Yeah, I know you're reading this... I'm on to you...
Why did I only just now find out that you have a blog of your own? It's just that you don't update it. *kicks Menno* Do something about it :) I wanna have something my kids can read when they grew up. "Look, this was uncle Menni when he was still young".
kilala.nl tags: friends,
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2006-08-15 10:51:00
While working I'm letting my iPod randomly play albums that I recently added to my library. Among them is "Thematic" by Aaron Kwok, YACPS (Yet Another Canto-Pop Singer).
Aaron's work is a bit generic, I guess... Nice to listen to in the background as the light poppy sounds won't disturb your thoughts much. I -was- surprised though when at first I heard a cover of the song "Sway" come through my headphones, followed later by a cover of "Endless Rain" o_O
As some of you may know, "Endless Rain" was originally performed by Japanese heavy metal band X-Japan. Not exactly what you expect from a gaylord like Kwok.
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2006-08-14 22:32:00
You read it here first folks!
Cailin @ 9th of Aug: You are what you search.
Paul Boutin @ 11th of Aug: You are what you search.
Mr. Boutin's done a little bit of research, based on the leaked AOL logs. His research allows him to categorize web searchers into seven groups. Anywho, I thought it was a nice coincidinc that we used the exact same title for our posts.
kilala.nl tags: internet, other tech,
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2006-08-14 16:15:00
If I were a rich man... I'd be in Tokyo with the rest of the guys, instead of trying to stay away from the #mangadvd IRC channel.
Reading about their travels in Japan (and more importantly the great food they're having) is making me slightly envious and I really wish I could be there. Especially after eating a serving of crappy, instant noodles at my desk ;_;
Oh, okonomiyaki how I long for thee!
A trip to an onsen would be nice as well ^_^
kilala.nl tags: japan, okonomiyaki,
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2006-08-13 18:28:00
It may sound weird, but I'd not picked up Animal Crossing to play for such a long time because I was feeling guilty. Guilty that I'd left the town for long and that I hadn't been around to visit my animal "friends". Well, tonight I figured I'd wager a look and I'm happy that all my worrying was for nothing.
Anchovy was the first animal I ran into, while clearing away some weeds, and he mentioned that he'd been worried about me. That it'd been so long and that he was afraid I was working too hard.
You have to admit that Nintendo really made an awesome game. To put in such sweet little gems requires some real good thinking.
In other news, now that I've tweaked the site left-and-right to play nice with search engines, I'm gonna leave it alone for a while. Of course I'll still keep on blogging, but I won't be putting in any expansions RSN.
The next few weeks I'll dedicate to studying for my LPIC-1, as promised.
kilala.nl tags: games, animal crossing,
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2006-08-13 10:27:00
It's official: I've been bitten by the Nana-bug.
I've gotten my hands on the movie that was made a few years ago and it follows the anime's story quite closely. The two Nanas are extrapolations of their anime selves: punkrock Nana looks less glamorous and much more grungy, while romantic Nana is even more cutesy and expressive. I don't mind though :)
But I am in a dilemma though! Should I really be watching this movie?!
Since it follows the anime's (and manga's) story so closely, I'm setting myself up for a boat load of spoilers. And, given the nature of the narrative, it looks like punkrock Nana is going to die at the end of the story ;_;
Now, as you know I really don't mind a tearjerker, but I -would- prefer to have that moment after reading through 10+ TPB's, or after watching 20+ anime episodes, instead of after 1.5 hours of a movie.
What to do... What to do...
EDIT:
Ok, I just spoiled it for myself by reading the Wikipedia page on Nana. I'm happy that punky Nana doesn't die and am confident that I can safely watch the movie. I'll still be able to enjoy the anime&manga.
kilala.nl tags: japan, anime, movies,
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2006-08-12 23:39:00
I'm going to love, and love again and leave behind my wretched old self in the darkness forever.
That's what "Queen of falling in love at first sight" Nana promises herself in her junior year at Art School. To her that seems to be the one and only solution to her broken heart.
I was introduced to the story of Nana by the manga, when I got the first TPB of the series with my Aniway sub renewal. Later I found out that an anime and a motion picture had been made.
Tonight I finally broke down and sated my curiosity about the series. I downloaded fansubs for the first two episodes (the show's really new and hasn't been licensed AFAIK) and I love the TV series as much as I did the manga. I'm definitely going after this series!
I mean, it's got just about everything that I love from a good story: love, drama, tragedy, angst, coming-of-age and a "normal", daily life setting.
Oh... And the opening song is pretty awesome as well.
If you're curious, I can heartily recommend that you check out the fansubs. Now, I'm not dumb enough to link to rips of copyrighted materials, so you're going to have to look around for yourselves ^_^ Might I suggest a website that starts with "fansub" and ends with ".tv"?
kilala.nl tags: japan, anime, movies,
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2006-08-11 09:48:00
While on my way to the office I heard something interestingly stupid on the radio.
In the Netherlands, if you get hurt/wounded in such a way that you are (partially) incapable of doing your job, you still get paid by your employer. That way people have less of a chance of getting into monetary problems.
Well, yesterday a judge ruled that companies are allowed to cut their employees' paychecks if they get wounded/disabled as a result of a "dangerous sport" that they practice. The fellow in question had gotten injured while playing indoor soccer and the judge ruled that he really should have known better.
So there you have it folks. Better cancel your winter holiday in the Alps.
kilala.nl tags: annoying, politics, netherlands,
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2006-08-10 13:48:00
While working on the $CLIENT-internal package for the Nagios client (net-SNMP + NRPE + Nagios scripts + Dell/HP SNMP agent), I've been learning about compound RPM packages. I.e., packages where you combine multiple source .TGZs into one big RPM package. This requires a little magic when it comes to running the various configure and make scripts. Luckily I've found two great examples.
* SPEC file for TCL, a short SPEC file that builds a package from two source .TGZs.
* SPEC file for MythTV, a -huge- SPEC file that builds multiple packages from multiple source .TGZs, along with a very dynamic set of configure rules.
kilala.nl tags: work, other tech, unix, sysadmin,
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2006-08-09 16:57:00
An article linked to on Slashdot about search engines keeping track of your searches led me to look at my own Google history. I found out that it went back 'till October of 2005 O_O
Now, I'm not ashamed of who I am, but I will readily admit that I wouldn't like my search history to fall into someone else's hands. Okay, so maybe I'm slightly ashamed about some aspects of "me" :3 So I turned off the history service and cleared out all its contents.
Maybe you want to do the same for the search engines that you're using. I only use Google, so here's the page that tells you all about their Personalised Searches.
kilala.nl tags: internet, other tech,
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2006-08-09 15:05:00
Heheh...
I've known about Google's ability to guesstimate a website's translation into a foreign language for quite a while now. It's semi-useful when I try to surf websites from China and/or Japan. However, it never dawned on me that it also works the other way around.
That is, until I decided to follow the Google search that a Japanese visitor of my website had used. Lo and behold! You could translate my site into Japanese :D
I've no clue whether the results are even remotely close to what I wrote in english, but I have to admit that it's hilarious to see my website in kanji and kana.
kilala.nl tags: website, japan,
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2006-08-09 07:35:00
After months and months I've uploaded the notes that I took at the various lectures at SANE 2006. They might be usefull to -someone- out there. Who knows. Be aware though that portions of the notes are a mishmash of dutch and english :) The notes can be found as .PDFs in the menu on the left.
kilala.nl tags: work, conference, studying, sysadmin, summary,
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2006-08-08 22:24:00
My buddy Dirk recently gave me a whole bunch of useful tips on improving my website's standing with the web's search engines. In the next few days I'll be implementing all of them. This may make the site look a bit wonky at times, but it'll get better.
And hopefully it'll attract some new customers as well :p
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2006-08-08 22:04:00
Great! Just great... >[
Thanks to my Stat Counter web site statistics, I've just found out that my page is ranked -third- on the dutch search engine Ilse if you search for the word "realdoll".
Great... What have I done to deserve this? I've only used the word once in my blogs!
Oh wait, make that three times I've used the word "realdoll".
Fsck... Four times...
kilala.nl tags: website, holy shit,
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2006-08-08 16:52:00
Because I've got all kinds of things lined up for me to do, I'm going to put them into order. That way both you and I will know what to expect. Here's my priorities:
1. Make the requisite changes to my website, so that it plays nicely with search engines. This shouldn't be more than an evening or two of work (barring any reruns of Doctor Who on BBC3).
2. Study for my two LPIC1 exams.
3. Revive the manga and anime section of the website. This needs regular updates, so I'm going to have to think of a few nice things to add to this. I'm thinking "reviews"... It's also meant to give me a couple of days off between studying for my four exams.
4. Study for my two LPIC2 exams.
5. Move other parts of the website into the mySQL database as well.
6. Improve the PHP code that gets data from the database. It could be much cleaner, safer and efficient.
7. Build some form of CMS for myself, so I don't have to work in the database manually.
So there you have it boys! The next few months of my life lined out for ya.
Parallel to da plan I will keep on expanding the Sysadmin section with new stuff I discover every week. And I will try to fit in a week or two of vacation somewhere along the line. I have a big bunch of video games that I finally want to finish!
kilala.nl tags: website, work, studying,
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2006-08-08 15:36:00
Thanks to Jimmy for posting a link to Nouptime.com in #mangadvd. Their package deals look awesome and I'm almost sure that I'll be moving my virtual web hosting to them. I just need to make sure that what they promise is 100% guaranteed, because I really want to be sure of my downtime...
Some of the customer feedback sounds promising though:
I ordered their Ultimate Package 3, and the free ice cream is not a joke! I can't get enough. Although I must add, the one they sent me last Sunday melted before it got here. But what can you do?
kilala.nl tags: internet, geeky, fun,
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2006-08-08 11:04:00
Recently I've been trying to learn how to build my own packages, both on Solaris and on Linux. I mean, using real packages to install your custom software is a much better approach than simply working with .TGZ files. In the process I've found two great tutorials/books:
* Maximum RPM, originally written as a book by one of Red Hat's employees.
* Creating Solaris packages, a short HOWTO by Mark.
kilala.nl tags: work, other tech, unix, sysadmin,
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2006-08-07 22:58:00
Right. It looks like things are back to normal.
A few blogposts are now lost forever, but they have been recapped in a "fake" post for the 2nd of August. It combines all the stuff I remember from the last week. Better than nothing is what I say!
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2006-08-07 13:49:00
My brother just tipped me about an event that I wouldn't mind visiting next year! It's called Assembly and is held annually in the Helsinki's Hartwall Areena.
Basically, it's a huge mix-up of LAN party + programming + graphics + music + party + seminars + other geeky stuff. From what I've seen so far it looks like an awesome event and I really wouldn't mind driving up there with a few mates from Snow next year.
And I just have to say that I -love- the picture on the left. Everyone gets a seat and a desk in the normal stadium arrangement, making for a very interesting layout.
kilala.nl tags: finland, conference,
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2006-08-07 08:51:00
A few weeks ago I mentioned that I had started listening to Canto-pop, like Deep Ng and A-Mei Chang.
Just this morning I found a funny review of Deep's CD "Deep: inside" (it's at the bottom of the page), which features lines like the following:
Ng isn't doing anything different, and every song has a safe, sure-fire pattern that will attract young girls with expendable allowances. [...] Great joy, however, comes from repeating the name Deep again and again. Deep. Deep Ng. Deep Ng ah!
Apparently that review site takes pleasure in listening to obscure CDs, because on the same page they're reviewing a CD by Steven Seagal o_O WTF?
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2006-08-06 07:20:00
FSCK FSCK FSCK!!! X_X
I had just finished adding the code that would allow you guys to add comments to my blog posts and I'd finished testing the code. So I went to clean up all my test posts from the comments database. I press "Empty" in PHPmyAdmin, return to the front page of Kilala.nl and what do I see?
Nothing...
AAAUGH!!!
I'd emptied the wrong database! I didn't pay enough attention and deleted all my blog posts ;_;
So for now both this page and the Archives for 2006 will be empty. I'll spend the better part of tonight fixing my stupid fsckup, but things'll be empty all day. Stupid thing is, I don't make regular backups of this database yet, so I'll lose about a month of blogposts, simply because I don't have them in normal HTML (as part of my "old" site). So any which way you look at it, a whole bunch of blog posts are lost forever.
/me hangs head in shame
kilala.nl tags: website, snafu,
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2006-08-02 00:00:00
In what archeologists will come to call "The Great SNAFU of 2006" I accidentally deleted all of my blog posts (as you can read in the blog post after this one). Because I could only find 95% of all blog posts, I'm missing out on a whole bunch of things. A shame really.
I'll try to recall summarize what has become lost, so it won't be completely forgotten.
Website news:
I added two new sections to my personal section. They're about my beliefs and my likes/dislikes. These lists will grow in the next few months, allowing one to form a decent picture of my character.
Professional news:
Aside from the fact that I'm expanding the Sysadmin section with loads of stuff on SNMP, I also visited the Megabit festival. To sum it up quickly: wet, quite small and IMHO not very interesting. I'm hoping they'll have more luck next year. It was nice to see Willow again though.
Fun stuff:
I was wondering why stuff like this never happened in any of the real Transformers cartoons. I was also plugging the Perry Bible Fellowship which in actuality is quite a cruel and funny webcomic.
And I told you about the latest Apple themed Lego playset by Pod Brix
Finally, I told you about a cool USB hub I saw on Akihabara news. Recently they even put up a .WMV HD movie clip showing how the hub works and all the cool features it has. Shiny!
That about sums it up really.
kilala.nl tags: snafu, website,
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2006-08-01 17:23:00
Boy lemme tell ya: making a nice SNMP configuration so you can actually monitor something useful takes a lot of work! :) The menu on the left has been gradually expanding with more and more details regarding the monitoring of Solaris (and Sun hardware) through SNMP. Check'em out!
kilala.nl tags: work, other tech, unix, sysadmin,
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2006-08-01 11:49:00
Busybusybusy, that's what I've been. I've been adding all kinds of new stuff to the Sysadmin section, telling you everything you'd like to know about monitoring Solaris and Sun hardware through SNMP.
I don't have much interesting to tell to the non-admin people right now :) Better luck at a later point in time.
kilala.nl tags: website, work,
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All content, with exception of "borrowed" blogpost images, or unless otherwise indicated, is copyright of Thomas Sluyter. The character Kilala the cat-demon is copyright of Rumiko Takahashi and used here without permission.
