Many people have suggested I use autodie. I have never been interested in the functionality it provides, and don’t use it. I think there’s primarily two reasons why that is. I might know a way to address one of them, but it’s tricky. (more…)
Author Archive
Why I Dislike Autodie
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012About Lifehacker’s Headphone Picks
Monday, October 8th, 2012A friend sent me a link to an article from Lifehacker, where they picked their Five Best Headphones. My friend knew that I like headphones. I try not to be too into audiophile headphones. I only own one pair of headphones worth over $1,000, so I’ve not gone completely overboard. Trust me. Or don’t and go over to Head-Fi and read what all the nice people there have to say about headphones.
I replied to my friend, discussing that article on Lifehacker, and he suggested I publish it as there was a ton of additional information in it. So, here it is, a reply to Lifehacker’s article: (more…)
Remember to store errors!
Monday, August 20th, 2012In Perl, when you get an error, there are magic globals that the interpreter sets to the value of that error. If you’re going to do any other work before reporting the error, save those variables! Work almost got this right… (more…)
Fix for Bowlfish 2.1 on a Soekris net6501
Sunday, August 19th, 2012Bowlfish assumes that after it boots, the single hard disc in a system will be wd0a. Not true on a Soekris net6501 when using a USB volume. It’s sd0a. You need to update /etc/fstab to mount / from sd0a instead of wd0a. You can do that with a site.tgz file, or just mount and edit the disc before you boot. Or mount -o rw,noatime /dev/sd0a /mnt on the booted system, make the change to /etc/fstab, and then mount -o rw /dev/sd0a. (more…)
Quirk installing Bowlfish 2.1 for OpenBSD 4.9.
Sunday, August 19th, 2012I use a tool called Bowlfish to build OpenBSD images which run with the drives mounted read-only. This lets me use cheap Compact Flash or USB drives in a Soekris single board computer instead of a real disc or a more expensive SSD.
Bowlfish has been a lifesaver and has worked perfectly for years. The current version, however, didn’t. I was shocked. Then I fixed it! (more…)
Anti-documentation in Perldoc
Saturday, July 28th, 2012Found a section that annoyed me in perlsyn today, in the documentation for the foreach loop: (more…)
What is Shinto?
Wednesday, July 25th, 2012I wrote about a visit to a Shinto shrine last week, and hadn’t touched the topic here before, and thought I’d change that. Since I’m wordy, there’ll probably be several parts. This one is to discuss what Shinto is, at least, what my understanding of Shinto is. I feel like it’s a new topic for me, and one that I don’t know much about, but I’ve been reading about it steadily for months now, so I’m probably better informed than I give myself credit. (more…)
Teaching Perl…
Wednesday, July 25th, 2012I’ll be teaching a very informal class on Perl to a couple of folks I know. We’ve got two days scheduled, and I’ve suggested they get chromatic’s Modern Perl as a ‘textbook’. I plan on covering what variables are, how program flow works, functions, and objects via Moose. I’ll also discuss installing Perl on Windows and Linux. What am I forgetting? (more…)
Road Trip Wrap Up
Wednesday, July 25th, 2012I got home last night from my long trip, safe and sound. The end of the trip had an extra hassle or two, but they are overcome and will only cost a little to fix…
Quick review: The Dark Knight Rises
Saturday, July 21st, 2012Saw The Dark Knight Rises with Mom and Dad. In short, very well done movie. I enjoyed the ending, which had a twist that caught me and then was satisfying. It left enough hooks for a sequel but doesn’t require one. A satisfying Big Summer Action movie and conclusion to this Batman series. (more…)