tcpip: (Default)
Diary of a B+ Grade Polymath ([personal profile] tcpip) wrote2006-07-11 11:22 am

Hotels, gatherings and the usual affairs...

[livejournal.com profile] caseopaya has been staying at the Crown Plaza hotel during the Melbourne Boat Show, allegedly a 4.5 star place which overlooks the Yarra. Personally, I think the place is pretty average to say the least. A very bland building, average food, a billing and card service that's obviously broken. At least the view is good.

Tuesday night managed to attend the LUV monthly meeting, where [livejournal.com profile] kattekrab presented a discussion on Open Document Format (hooray), Jacinta Richardson spoke on the OSDC conference and Rusty Russell, spoke about anti-circumvention legislation; this is very important

Friday night attended a documentary film hosted by Earthsharing on the Narmada Dam project and the attempted relocation of indigenous people who preferred to face the rising dam waters rather than move.

Attended [livejournal.com profile] damien_wise's wonderful birthday dinner with fine conversation and fine company on Saturday night; following eve after my Cybernoia game (which was dealing with multiple levels of virtual reality, not including the game itself) dined with the gaming crew as [livejournal.com profile] horngirl who was in town for a flying visit from Canberra. Yesterday managed to catch up for a quick beverage with [livejournal.com profile] severina_242.

Went to a service industry networking group bright and early on Wednesday morning. Find myself thinking "I don't need a personal trainer, I don't need an immigration specialist, I don't need a home loan broker... But they all need websites and IT systems administration." There is an advantage in belonging to a ubiquitious industry. The disadvantages can be truly frustrating. Then [livejournal.com profile] imajica_lj told me he has encounted a similar experience among managers twice!

Gideon Levy says the right things about the Gaza seige (hat-tip to [livejournal.com profile] angel80. Meanwhile four out of five Israeli's want their government to assasinate Hamas leaders. A little closer to home, my old bose Jose Ramos-Horta has become Prime Minister of East Timor. John Martinkus has a few questions on what is a sort of coup. Damien Kingsbury gives the event a weak cheer.

[identity profile] zey.livejournal.com 2006-07-11 02:01 am (UTC)(link)
Re that WTF, I'd go with the suggestion on that page of binding a popup box to the About screen, bound to something like the V key. That way the silly manager "gets his way" and the tech support droids can still get version info out of the app when it's needed.

[identity profile] tcpip.livejournal.com 2006-07-11 02:11 am (UTC)(link)

Unfortunately that's a workable solution.

Managers are stupid :/

[identity profile] zey.livejournal.com 2006-07-11 02:22 am (UTC)(link)
Actually... cancel that. Just bind the V to change a blank label to a version string. Too many apps have too many pointless popup dialogs.

[identity profile] zey.livejournal.com 2006-07-11 08:11 am (UTC)(link)
Or, if management cottons onto that... a variation on the colour band coded numbers on resistors ;-).

[identity profile] tcpip.livejournal.com 2006-07-11 08:38 am (UTC)(link)
--- .-. / -.-- --- ..- / -.-. --- ..- .-.. -.. / .... .- ...- . / - .... . / ...- . .-. ... .. --- -. / -. ..- -- -... . .-. / .. -. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .

[identity profile] zey.livejournal.com 2006-07-11 09:28 am (UTC)(link)
N cvgl ahzoref qba'g rapbqr jryy va Ebg13

[identity profile] tcpip.livejournal.com 2006-07-11 09:33 am (UTC)(link)

OK, what the hell is that?

[identity profile] zey.livejournal.com 2006-07-11 09:35 am (UTC)(link)
# echo "N cvgl ahzoref qba'g rapbqr jryy va Ebg13" | /usr/games/rot13
A pity numbers don't encode well in Rot13

[identity profile] tcpip.livejournal.com 2006-07-11 09:48 am (UTC)(link)

Ahh... For a brief moment I thought it was Klingon in Western Latin character set ;-)

[identity profile] zey.livejournal.com 2006-07-11 09:55 am (UTC)(link)
It's that stray apostrophe that does it :-).

dude ...

[identity profile] imajica-lj.livejournal.com 2006-07-11 12:28 pm (UTC)(link)
it's rot13 ...

... and yet inevitably end up with root.

[identity profile] imajica-lj.livejournal.com 2006-07-11 04:31 am (UTC)(link)
Another imajica classic is having to add the line:

alias "rm -rf /" = "/bin/echo" "No you don't want to do that."

to /etc/skel/.profile


Re: ... and yet inevitably end up with root.

[identity profile] tcpip.livejournal.com 2006-07-11 08:55 am (UTC)(link)

Tell me you seriously haven't had to do that....

And what is a manager doing with root anyway?

Re: ... and yet inevitably end up with root.

[identity profile] imajica-lj.livejournal.com 2006-07-11 12:31 pm (UTC)(link)
> Tell me you seriously haven't had to do that....
Yes, as a matter of fact I have.

> And what is a manager doing with root anyway?
"It's my company, so I NEED root access."

Sad isn't it.

Re: ... and yet inevitably end up with root.

[identity profile] tcpip.livejournal.com 2006-07-12 12:18 am (UTC)(link)

"A little bit of knowledge..." Evidently they knew that root access existed. I suppose that's to be commended.

Well, as long as they didn't use it as a user account, right?

Maybe sudo would have been the way to go...

[identity profile] decrypt-era.livejournal.com 2006-07-11 08:45 am (UTC)(link)
Gideon Levy says the right things about the Gaza seige

Related topic, an article on kidnapping.

[identity profile] tcpip.livejournal.com 2006-07-11 08:58 am (UTC)(link)

Arik Diamant is a brave and honest human being. A credit to the species.
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[identity profile] damien-wise.livejournal.com 2006-07-11 04:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Glad you had a good time...I might have an eclectic mix of friends, but they do rock. :)

BTW: I was enthusing abount Ubuntu with a mate over lunch today and it got me inspired. He said it's very Debian/Gnom-ish...like that's a problem. ;) Is aptget the best widget of all time, or what?

[identity profile] tcpip.livejournal.com 2006-07-11 11:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Glad you had a good time...I might have an eclectic mix of friends, but they do rock. :)

Indeed! You clearly have an army of minions at your command (and you probably didn't realise it)


BTW: I was enthusing abount Ubuntu with a mate over lunch today and it got me inspired.

Good! I'll send you a brief later today...

[identity profile] decrypt-era.livejournal.com 2006-07-12 09:41 am (UTC)(link)
I'v been hearin bout this Ubuntu thing for awhiles now,
this finally sent me to check it out.
The idea rocks!
I'v been using Debian as my main OS since 99,
usually th testing distro,
but there's quite often something broken on my system
because i lack th time to find out how to fix it,
so Ubuntu seems just what th doctor ordered.
This'l at least double Debian's userbase,
if not quadruple it!

[identity profile] tcpip.livejournal.com 2006-07-12 10:10 am (UTC)(link)

Ubuntu has a few nice methods for getting around proprietory codecs and the like. Plus, the community support is enormous. It really is "Linux for the Desktop" user.
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[identity profile] damien-wise.livejournal.com 2006-07-12 06:13 pm (UTC)(link)
You clearly have an army of minions at your command (and you probably didn't realise it)

I wouldn't describe them as minions, but they are a nice/thoughtful/generous bunch. Between cluelessness and poor perception on my part, I probably don't notice all the time...still, I'd like to think I don't take 'em for granted. Guess I'm lucky. :)

PS: have asked Ubuntu folks to mail me disks.