Mon, 09 Mar 2009
Speakers - Always Repeat the Question
If someone in the audience asks a question that you plan on answering
then please repeat it, with your own wording, before you respond.
This gets us two things - the person asking probably won't have a mic so not everyone will hear what he said, they will when you repeat it. Secondly - by repeating with your own phrasing - you'll get basic confirmation that you understand what's being asked rather than answering the wrong question; which wastes everyones time and leaves the asker frustrated.
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Posted: 2009/03/09 21:06 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry and same date
Puppet Scripts - extract-report-issues
I spent a little while digging through the default puppet log types the
other day and after reading through a batch of activity logs I whipped up
extract-report-issues,
a script that can be run on the command line (or daily via cron) and
displays a list of errors and warnings from the specified glob of hosts and
log files. By default it does all hosts for the current day, we've got it
running nightly so we can work through the issues each morning. It's worth
noting that sometimes in the output the same failure occurs more than
once. This is because puppet retries certain operations - such as retrieving
a resource.
There is actually a lot of useful information in the puppet reports. To start with I've added a todo item for a script that notes persistent errors (the same issues over two or three runs) that I'll hopefully get to this month. Maybe.
If you're running puppet in production you owe it to yourself to turn on reporting and set up some processes around it. While puppet makes it easy to perform action at a distance you still need to close the loop somehow.
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Posted: 2009/03/09 20:57 | /tools/commandline | Permanent link to this entry | This entry and same date
Who Watched the Watchmen? Me!
On Friday night I was as predictable as most of the people in my
feedreader and was camped down at 5PM for the evening showing of Watchmen - and I enjoyed
it.
It's been a good few years since I read the original graphic novel so I'm not as likely to pick out little errors and omissions (like the Silk Spectre looking for a lighter in the book and just being nosy in the film) but I thought the story was a very good, and close, adaptation. The fight scenes were well done and extremely short, sharp and brutal and the film utilised its 18 rating well.
I'm interested in how easy to follow the film will be to someone who's never been exposed to the source material. There were lots of little bits and pieces that might not fit together that easily. I thought the pacing was decent, I was never bored and didn't get too fidgety.
Now, spoilers
I thought the idea of using Dr Manhattans power as the basis for the destruction was an acceptable alternative to the novels ending. Trying to stick to the novel would have required a lot more leg work and slowed the pace. I was a little surprised at how most of the heros seemed to have some degree of super-strength but that's artistic license. As for the killing of Rorschach I can see why they did it that way and increased the drama but I didn't like it. The original handled it much better and without all the over the top responses.
Although I missed the giant squid I'll still give it 8/10 for fans of the novel, 6/10 for others.
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Posted: 2009/03/09 20:28 | /movies | Permanent link to this entry | This entry and same date
Wed, 04 Mar 2009
First Steps in Github
I finally decided to set up and start using a github account and my early
impressions are that it's quite slick and very userfriendly.
Apart from an annoyance where I couldn't see my pushes for a little while (I think I fell afoul of some caching) setting up an account and adding new repos was simple. Pushing from my actual dev machine just worked and I've now been bitten by the github bug. I feel the need to push code...
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Posted: 2009/03/04 22:22 | /tools/online | Permanent link to this entry | This entry and same date
Tue, 03 Mar 2009
Personal Git Milestone - First Accepted Patch
It's been a day for nice little technical surprises. On the tube ride to
work this morning I started flicking through Cisco Routers for the
desperate (2nd edition) and found a quote on the first page from the
1st edition book review I did a couple of years ago.
I also had my first fully git workflow patch accepted by upstream. It was only a couple of lines of code but it means I'm gradually getting comfortable with the git toolchain.
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Posted: 2009/03/03 22:12 | /misctech | Permanent link to this entry | This entry and same date
Mon, 02 Mar 2009
Mozilla Ubiquity - Puppet Types
I like Ubiquity. It
puts a lot of the sites I used on a regular basis close to hand without
making me dig through my bookmarks (or del.icio.us account). In a
small burst of productivity, and to avoid real work, I decided to put a
command together for the Puppet Type docs at Reductive Labs.
If you have the Ubiquity plugin installed you should be able to install a copy of the command from the Ubiquity Puppet Types Command page. Writing a simple command like this one was surprisingly easy (especially using command-editor) although I don't (yet) know enough jQuery to add some of the other features I want.
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Posted: 2009/03/02 22:55 | /tools/firefox | Permanent link to this entry | This entry and same date
Sun, 01 Mar 2009
London PM Moose Talks - Feb 2009
I wasn't able to get to the actual talks but luckily the Moose talk slides are now all
online (apart from Moose for Ruby programmers which has instead been
expanded in to a blog post). By all reports it was another excellent night
and I'll have to keep the evening free for the next one.
Now I've read the slides and heard so much positive feedback I think it's time I tried Moose for a couple of projects. The initial install is still a little daunting due to the sheer number of modules it pulls in (although my main dev machine has most of CPAN installed anyway) but the benefits it seems to bring (I especially like the look of MooseX::Getopt) may be well worth the trade off.
If you're not familiar with Moose have a look at the slides, it's great to see a lot of the Perl6 promise here to use right now.
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Posted: 2009/03/01 23:03 | /events | Permanent link to this entry | This entry and same date
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