2009-07-29 08:57:00
Given the fact that Marli can't currently provide the required care to Dana (due to her burnt hand), I've been working from home the past two days. With any luck Mar's hand will be healed by tonight and I'll get back to the office. In the mean time I've been scripting my ass off, getting more things done in two days than I usually do in a week. "I'm on a roll", as they say.
I had a list of five or six scripts that I wanted to write that work with FoxT's BoKS security software. Most of them are monitoring scripts that work with Tivoli (Nagios conversions coming up soon), with two sysadmin scripts to complete the set.
In order to test these scripts I'm setting up a test network, all with thanks to the wonders of Parallels Desktop. I admit that the 4GB of RAM in my Macbook is a bit anemic for running two Linux servers and a Solaris server, but it'll do for now. Maybe I ought to get a proper Powermac MacPro again. :)
Installing Solaris x86 in Parallels took a few tries, but I finally got it working, thanks to some tips found on the web.
* Give it a minimum of 512 MB RAM
* A small hard drive is fine, but don't set it to autoextend.
* Set 800x600 and 1024x768 as native display resolutions.
* Don't use the graphical/X11 installer, but go the console route.
EDIT:
This tutorial by Farhan Mashraqi was indispensable in getting the Realtek emulated network card to work under Solaris.
kilala.nl tags: work, sysadmin,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2009-07-27 19:37:00
Haha, this is priceless! Ever since Dana learnt to sit up she's been practicing. She's even made a game of it! Tonight she's been switching between lying down and sitting up, back and forth, back and forth, then waiting for mom and dad to notice it. Now, every time we're surprised to find her sitting she's grinning, we start laughing and then she starts cackling wildly :D
Dana's awesome ^_^
EDIT:
Haha... She's just -so- proud of herself, sitting up, moving around her playpen, hopping and wobbling. And every now and then there's this self-congratulatory snicker or laugh coming from her corner of the room.
kilala.nl tags: baby,
View or add comments (curr. 2)
2009-07-27 10:17:00
This morning I was leafing through an old Japan-picture book I'd gotten from Marli waaaaay in the beginning of our relationship. The book itself dates from 1993, though I reckon the photos in it are a bit older (say late 1980's). One of the two-page spreads is of the Dotonbori river in Osaka, at the famous Glico man crossing. Oddly I never made a photo of that famous sign *confused*
Anywho... I noticed that the area itself hasn't changed much in twenty years, but that the application of the river sure has! In the past it was an ornamental river, with fountains and lights and nice concrete sidings. These days it's used for water travel and frankly looks a bit meh.
Oh well... At least they recently fished the Colonel Sanders statue out of the river, which will hopefully alleviate his curse on the Hanshin Tigers.
kilala.nl tags: japan,
View or add comments (curr. 1)
2009-07-26 21:27:00
alias iddqd="sudo -s"
kilala.nl tags: geeky, sysadmin,
View or add comments (curr. 5)
2009-07-26 21:01:00
From here. Thanks to Kaijuu for reminding me of this webcomic. :)
kilala.nl tags: geeky, japan, comics,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2009-07-26 19:17:00
Holy crap!
Dana was puttering about in her playpen, while I was minding dinner and Marli was watching some TV (after returning from the hospital *). All of a sudden Marli gasps, pauses the TV and points at the pen.
Dana was sitting upright.
Which she'd done by herself.
Holy crap! ^_^
*: Donut worries... Marli burnt her hand on steam while stewing meat for dinner. It's a second degree burn, hence why we needed a trip to the hospital.
kilala.nl tags: baby,
View or add comments (curr. 7)
2009-07-26 12:55:00
Realizing that we'd actually never taken Dana out for a proper stroll, we checked this weekend's weather report and decided to go out. We've lived in Almere for about a month now and I was very eager to see a little bit more of the surrounding area. So off we went, to the Oostvaarders Plassen.
The Plassen are a rather famous reserve quit near to our house. They're right next to the Markermeer lake and stretch all the way between Almere and Lelystad.
Dana was quit happy in her stroller and getting out in the sun and wind did us all a lot of good. For some reason I really love going to lakes and the ocean, so I enjoyed getting up on the dyke what with the wide views and all.
*sigh* What a great way to spend the day. Now I need to rope Menno into going for a swim at the IJmeer beach before summer ends.
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2009-07-23 17:30:00
Here's a hearty "Thank you very much" to fellow Arsian Dilbert for passing on this website: Flash simulation of Enigma. It's awesome to see what actually happens on the insides of an Enigma machine when you type in letters and change the settings. Very nifty and it makes me all the more appreciative of what a cool piece of tech it is.
Via Ars Open Forum
kilala.nl tags: geeky, internet,
View or add comments (curr. 1)
2009-07-23 17:14:00
Today I came very close to being
<- this guy.
Luckily I decided against it and closed the window before pressing the "post" button. Of course I then negated any claim I had to "being adult about it" by posting about it over here. ^_^;
kilala.nl tags: internet,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2009-07-20 18:40:00
That's a few more quiet days than usual. Since we've moved into the new house I've been spending less and less time behind the laptop and more with Marlijne and Dana. Seeing how my office is way in the attic and they're usually downstairs, I've been less "involved" with computers. Especially since I finished work on the website update.
Life is coming along nicely. We broke our speed record by moving in and unpacking -everything- within three weeks. All 140 boxes were flat and gone almost exactly a month after the 18th of June, which is pretty damn impressive. Last time we still had untouched boxes after half a year! The bathroom's also 99.9% complete, with only three tiles that need to be installed (back order from Spain) and a faucet that needs to be replaced (DOA).
Work's been quiet, what with the season and all. The boys and I finally have enough time to handle projects that usually wouldn't get to see the light of day. Unfortunately I find it hard to focus on the task at hand, due to a lack of real deadlines (and thus pressure). That's pretty ironic: I finally have time to do what I want and now I can't get enthused by the idea. *shrug*
Dana's doing fine, though we're going to see our GP in a few days. She's recently started making this bronchial wheeze that we want to get checked out.
kilala.nl tags: life, website,
View or add comments (curr. 3)
2009-07-11 14:46:00
*looks around* *frowns* *ponders*
Heeeeeeeeey! o_O
The office in the attic doesn't have a radiator! How did I manage to miss this, despite living here for three weeks already?!
I wonder what the place is going to be like in winter without any central heating. I mean, sure, the first floor is heated and the furnace is up in the attic, but is that going to be enough? If it gets really cold I'll just forget about the nice expensive desk and build a kotatsu instead. That'll keep me warm...
kilala.nl tags: house,
View or add comments (curr. 2)
2009-07-10 15:30:00
It's been a long while in coming, but it's finally here. I started work on version 7.0 of Kilala.nl back in December and have since then spent about 40 hours on the new code (I kept on getting interrupted). Any which way, the new code's now gone into production and I'm quite happy with how it turned out. There are absolutely no visual differences, so everything will look the same. The back end however is completely different.
If you happen to run into any weirdness, please contact me (see here) or leave a comment describing your problem.
Here's the changelog:
* Improved file-level security (Unix file permissions).
* Cleanup of unused functions, grammar and redundant code.
* Cleanup of variables, global and otherwise.
* New, CSS-based dynamic menubar (IE5 and 6 fall back to the old style).
* Added new "article title" field for menus, instead of using the first tag.
* Consolidated all tags to one field, as opposed to "tag1", "tag2", ..., "tagN".
* Improved input validation for security reasons.
* Removed reliance on old "top sections" like Work and Play from code.
* Removed old "top section" directories and secured through 301 redirects.
* Integrated the search functionality into index.php.
* Integrated the tags functionality into index.php.
* Finally fixed the automatic refresh/redirect after posting a comment :D
* Consolidated four RSS PHP scripts into the one rss.php file.
The next round of improvements will focus solely on more coding grammar and optimization of CSS and PHP code. That'll be version 7.1 or something.
kilala.nl tags: website,
View or add comments (curr. 11)
2009-07-10 12:57:00
Slowly but surely Dana's hips seem to be getting better! We spent the morning at the hospital for x-rays and checkups and people seem to be mildly enthusiastic. Her range of movement is excellent and the problematic side of her hip appears to be closing. Two months ago the opening angles were 21.4 and 27.1 and now they're at 21.4 and 25.6 (I believe), so there's definite progress! /o/
The doc also mentioned that the core structure of her thighbone's developing well, so that's a good sign too. We'll need to go back for another checkup in two months.
View or add comments (curr. 2)
2009-07-10 12:53:00
Apparently you'll need to do it twice; at least in this new house...
* The movers damaged a few things, so they'll have to come back for restoration.
* The new dish washer was busted, so they had to bring a new one.
* There new toilet bowl for the bathroom was the wrong model and was replaced.
* One had ordered too little tiles of one colour for the new bathroom -> back order.
And today I found out that the lovely desk I bought is actually NOT height-adjustable by crank. The website said it is, but that was an error. So that thing's going to go back and I'll have to search for a completely new one. Meh.
kilala.nl tags: life, house, meh, annoying,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2009-07-09 16:56:00
Well damn! You know that scene in Jurassic Park that makes all the IT geeks cringe? The one where the young girl gets behind a computer, exclaims that "This is Unix! I know this and proceeds to save the day? Yeah? Turns out that it actually -was- Unix!
FSN (for File System Navigator) to be precise, which was a 3D user interface made by Silicon Graphics for their IRIX operating system. Well I'll be damned!
Rest assured though: the stuff shown in Hackers is still fake ^_^;
kilala.nl tags: movies, geeky, sysadmin,
View or add comments (curr. 5)
2009-07-06 07:23:00
My sister and her boyfriend got me A wild sheep chase, by Haruki Murakami. It's entirely too good for my own good as it makes me want to play hooky from work, to read the book cover-to-cover in some darkened coffee bar.
EDIT:
So I never played hooky, but I -am- almost through the book. In the mean time, here's a few choice quotes.
I skipped the thirty-one years between 1938 and 1965 and jumped to the section entitled "Junitaki Today". Of course, the book's "today" being 1970, it was hardly today's "today". Still, writing the history of one town obviously imposed the necessity of bringing it up to a "today". And even if such a today soon ceases to be today, no one can deny that it is in fact a today. For if a today ceased to be today, history could not exist as history.
Unconsciously, I brought a cigarette to my lips, but before lighting up I remembered the gasoline fumes and returned it to the pack. So I sucked on a lemon drop instead. The result: the uncommon taste of lemon gasoline."
"C'mere, Kipper", said the chauffeur, picking up the cat. The cat got frightened, bit the chauffeur's thumb, then farted. (A sort of "you had to be there" moment)
kilala.nl tags: reading,
View or add comments (curr. 2)
2009-07-06 07:14:00
Yesterday we celebrated our house warming and my birthday with our friends and family. We received some outstanding pressies, all of which we are very grateful for. All the potted plants and the new cushions add a really nice touch to the living room... Some extra colour, that's it :)
The house held up well, both to our visitors' scrutiny and the rigors of playing host to a small party. Obviously everyone loved the huge photograph of Dana making a silly face that adorns our upstairs hallway and the living room layout felt familiar and probably a bit like coming home to some (it's near identical to our old house). All in all things went swimmingly. Unremarkable, but swimmingly.
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2009-07-02 22:19:00
I'd taken the day off today, thinking that after my morning's schedule I'd get some programming done at home. Things turned out a little bit different.
First off, this morning we had the second Open Coffee Almere meeting and it was a great success! The first meeting had only five or six people turn up and today we counted fourteen! That's awesome! One of our already-regulars was pessimistic and only expected three ^_^ A bunch of us managed to pry ourselves from our seats twenty minutes after the "official" end of the gathering, so you can assume we had a good time.
It was great meeting all these new people from Almere. First off it's a great opportunity for me to get to know the town, but there might actually be a few business opportunities around the corner :)
In the early afternoon I made two trips to the city dump to get rid of refuse from our bathroom. Ten bags of tiles and gypsum and all manner of crap needed to be brought there by car because the city's dumpsters aren't allowed to pick stuff like that up from your domestic address. Oh well, at least I got to flex my meager masculinity in a sleeveless shirt ^_^;
I did get a bit sunburnt today though, so if I keep it up a bit I may actually get a -little- tan this year :)
Today is also officially the day on which we've finished moving in. <Mario Kart>New record!</Mario Kart> We managed to unpack and store -everything- in three weeks. That's brilliant! Last night I also finished the cabling of the house, with Marli's help. Cat5e now runs up to the attic, hooking up my office and the printer to the home network.
Yep... Today was a good day!
kilala.nl tags: life, work, open coffee, awesome,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2009-07-01 09:59:00
Since moving to Almere our lives have changed noticeably in a few ways.
For starters there's a short-term change, which luckily will only last two to three weeks: we need to go to the local swimming pool to take a shower. A contractor's currently renovating our bathroom and it'll take him about fourteen days. :/
Then, there's the big stuff...
Since moving in we've started separating our household garbage. In Utrecht we used to dump everything into trash bags, resulting in three to four bags of crap each week. These days we have separate boxes for paper, glass, plastics and chemicals/metals in our store room, resulting in only one bag of "misc" trash actually making it to the truck. Of course, it does mean weekly trips to the recycling station, but that's only half an hour each week.
Speaking of cleaning, the move has turned Marli into a veritable house mom! We used to share things pretty evenly, but now she's really taken charge! I'm very proud of her and also happy in the fact that I can focus more on other things now.
What else? Oh yeah, cooking! With the house came a Whirlpool induction hob. We had it serviced yesterday because it was a bit flaky, but I have to admit: cooking on induction is an absolute win :) I thought I'd be pining for a gas hob, but no. It's fast, it's responsive and there's less heat spreading into the kitchen and the rest of the house. Lovely.
kilala.nl tags: life,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
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.