Yenya's World

Aisa

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:23:00 +0100

In today's mailbox:

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Image Scaling

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 08:57:00 +0100

It is not very often when there is a software bug which is present in nearly all different implementations which do not even have common ancestor in terms of source code.

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Web Comics Dying?

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:26:00 +0100

Is it just an unfortunate coincidence, or are several web comics sites slowly dying?

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Playing with 6to4

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:31:00 +0100

We have finally got some time to work on native IPv6 inside a faculty network (which includes rewriting the iptables configuration to be protocol-neutral). In order to test it, I have enabled 6to4 at home.

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iPhone

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 19:28:00 +0100

Tell me again why should anybody bother to buy iPhone, when Apple is actively hostile to the application developers, and the device cannot do Bluetooth, does not have audio tracks in a portable format, accessible as a mass storage, and the manufacturer does not want you to customize the device?

DHCP Relay

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:05:00 +0100

With our new WiFi access points, we run multiple SSIDs, each on its own VLAN. Unfortunately, we are observing an interesting problem: even though the DHCP server can see the WiFi client requesting the address and replies back, the reply sometimes does not reach the client. It vaguely depends on the number of clients on the particular WiFi AP. Today I think I have found what causes this problem.

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Thesis Proposal

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:26:00 +0100

OK, I have managed to defend my Ph.D. thesis proposal and to pass the doctoral exam. Now I "only" have to write the Ph.D. thesis itself as outlined in the proposal.

Wikipedia Warning

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:24:00 +0100

Warning: idling at Wikipedia can be dangerous, as it can destroy your image of completely innocent things forever.

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Digital Slot Cars

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:16:00 +0100

We have got a new slot cars set for Christmas. I had one when I was a child, and I quite liked to play with it, build and tune my own cars, etc. Several years later, we had an 8-track slot cars simulator in our SGI computer lab. Well, today's state-of-the-art slot cars systems are completely different beasts to what I used to know.

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Fedora 12

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:26:00 +0100

I have been using Fedora 12 on my laptop for a week now, and on my primary workstation for three days. So far I have walked through Bugzilla and checked that most of my bugs are still present in F12. But apart from that, there has not been any unpleasant surprise so far. The new KMS code and X server for Radeon cards work as expected, so I am looking forward to install F12 also to my dual-seat workstation at home. So far it is OK. Well, except ...

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Database Woes

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:14:00 +0100

Using the SQL database for keeping one's data gives an excellent environment, maintaining the data integrity, providing the transactional behaviour, providing the remote access to the data, and so on. Even the locking properties can be something which one can get used to. That is, in the ideal world.

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The GDM Fiasco

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:47:00 +0100

A short trip to the history: for GNOME 2.22 (two years ago, in the Fedora 9 timeframe) someone decided that it would be nice to completely rewrite the GNOME display manager. So far so good, but they have decided to include this partially rewritten piece of crap without many important features (a display manager without XDMCP, WTF?) to the official GNOME and thus Fedora releases.

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Footwear Waterproofing

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:03:00 +0100

This year's Tmou with its almost start-to-finish rain has made me to think again about my approach to waterproofing my boots. I have about eight years old Hanwag Alaska Nubuk leather boots with Gore-Tex membrane (which is definitely not functional anymore after these years). So the leather is now the only barrier between the outer wet conditions and the inside of the boot.

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Framework?

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:59:00 +0100

When teaching, the questions from the audience provide an important feedback to me - a notion of whether I was successful in passing the information to the audience, and what to improve or explain in a different way. There are, however, rare occasions when the question just makes me think "WTF?".

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Terminal Font

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:16:00 +0100

Today I have read an announcement of the Anonymous Pro font, which should be optimized for text terminals and for the programming environment. As this clearly matches my use case, I have decided to try it.

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