When I moved from my shared server to the small UML box that this site now calls home I copied a lot of my logs over. I’ve never really done any in-depth viewing of my log files but after finding a new toy to play with (more about that in a separate post) I decided to have a little nose around. It seems that in between October 1st 2004 and December 31st 2004 (a total of 92 days including Christmas Day and New Years Eve) www. Read on →

I’ve had a findbig files script up on my miniprojects page for a while now, it’s not exactly a difficult script to write but it deals with a couple of less obvious cases (exclude lists) that most of the similar scripts on line don’t cater for. While the script is something thats easily down-loaded and run, if you have anything beyond a handful of machines you need to actually think about how to incorporate it into your checks and how you should run it to get the most return from the least effort. Read on →

Every February there are two excellent tech events, the UKUUG LISA/Winter Conference and FOSDEM; my event of the year. Due to prior commitments I’m not going to able to make it to the Winter Con this year which means I’m all the more excited about FOSDEM. I’m heading over on the 25th and returning on the 27th with a bunch of the London Perl/Linux people, so if you’re about come and say “hello”. Read on →

Carly Fiorina was (oh how I like the sound of that) the CEO of Hewlett Packard, she was the woman that ushered in the Compaq merger (of which most techs mocked and laughed at), sold off their best assets, allegedly undertook some pretty shoddy deals to get it all going and then, while laying off thousands of staff bought herself and her upper echelons cohorts half an air force. And now she’s been asked to step down and get the hell out of the way while the company still has a chance in hell of getting out in the market and actually making some money. Read on →

I’ve finished reading Pragmatic Version Control Using Subversion and it’s a blinder. Whether you’re new to version control in general or just Subversion itself this book is highly recommended. Clear, concise and crammed full of useful, important and dare I say, pragmatic, advice and information. An excellent book in it’s own right and a worthy addition to the Starter Kit Series. My full Pragmatic Version Control Using Subversion book review is also now online both here and over at London. Read on →

Author: Mike Mason ISBN: 0974514063 Publisher: Pragmatic Programmers Reviewed by: Dean Wilson When it comes to version control systems, CVS has long been the workhorse of the Open Source and Free Software movements, but with the release of Subversion it’s time to put the old nag to rest; and this book tells you what you need to do it. When it comes to software development the Pragmatic Programmers are widely recognised as masters of their trade, but with the release of their award winning Starter Kit Series they’ve begun to gain a reputation for writing, editing and finding book authors that are as talented as they are. Read on →

I’ve recently read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell and I found the section on Implicit Association Tests (IAT’s) to be really interesting. The short version is that the tests display a number of words that you have to put into one of two or four categories, depending on how long you take to assign them the test can make some guesses as to your implicit associations. It’s well worth having a play with some online implicit association tests. Read on →

While I’ve spent a fair amount of time running around on Linux it’s typically been in a mixed Unix environment (Linux, Solaris and HPUX mostly) so my tool-set was comprised of portable applications and scripts. In my current job I’m working with an almost entirely Debian server environment, the few Redhat machines are living on borrowed time as the bosses want them gone. While this may put a crimp on my cross-platform skills it does give me the chance to delve deeper into the “Debian way”, and to be fair it looks like it’s got a lot of neat tools. Read on →

"Sometimes it’s better to want something that to have it.“ Some of my friends are slightly too observant for my liking and have been mocking some of my phrases of choice. It’s been pointed out to me recently that I use the above as an excuse phrase, think of a shoulder shrug, in order to let myself off things I’m either not sure I can attain or I’m not willing to invest the required time and effort into. Read on →

The day time job is eating up a little bit too much time at the moment so I’m just going to post a couple of links that look interesting and would typically be gifted with my witty rantings :) Ward Cunningham (now an MSoftie) is probably involved in PatternShare, a site that lets you look through a number of patterns from different authors. It’s probably worth keeping an eye on this and seeing how it develops Read on →