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2008-09-26 things going on
It's been a while since I've updated this journal. Some things never change though. My head is still down and I'm still working away on things computer related but just don't have so much time to do the updates.
To combat my lack of nerding, I've thought long and hard about how to get portable computing. Perhaps something like the Samsung Soul , which as you can see has HSDPA (nice broadband data), or perhaps an iPhone - but why should I have to pay a premium to apple?
Last night while browsing I found the Advent 4211. It looks like it can provide all the connectivity that I'd require, bluetooth (perhaps restricted drivers?), 802.11, rj45, etc etc. If it can't do bluetooth then what the hell, I have a cheap USB dongle that can. My phone itself can't do HSDPA, but I can get a dongle for that too (at a pinch). Perhaps I'm getting closer to in car DAB if HSDPA is available on the M4 corridor.
Looking at the screen res, I'm going to get a bit of claustrophobia at 1024x600, but with some virtual screens it should be ok. There's also VGA for external display if I want to play movies from this.
This blog will move sites soon. For a long long time, the computer in my bed room has been providing a gateway/email/webserver happily, but it's about time that gets a spring clean and move to a server elsewhere... this is ongoing ...
One of the itches that I've had to scratch is that of system monitoring. There's a simple system monitor now available for download. It's all written in perl with sqlite backend which is created on demand.
2008-09-19 training
Been on HP blade training the last couple of day and guess what - there's been no mention of HPUX - what a disappointment. It's like HP have completely forgotten about their very own OS.
In other news, I'm giving away my bulky laptop to my parents as I've not used it for anything useful in the past 12 months. When trying to install windows xp on this laptop it just barfs, after much time looking into the cause and blowing the ext partitions away it seemed to "just work".
2008-09-11 perl use lib
Something that I've found really handy today is the "use lib" statement in perl. If you're thinking of making a self contained application that's shared among users, then declaring a location for libraries in user space is very useful. This can be defined using "use lib '/somewhere';" and all is good.
Shoving libraries in ./Name/Module is all well and good but it can be limiting.
The use lib statement is useful since it allows some logic for locating the library since not everything in this world is compatible and things can change between releases.
2008-09-06 ice hot fun
Pulled into the Basingstoke leisure centre with Mandy to watch the Basingstoke Bisons play against the Coventry Blades. The Bisons were a bit rough against the Blades but it's all good fun.
2008-09-04 apache as squid?
Some time ago I would make programs to do conditional URL rewriting for squid and I can't say I've had any major problems with it as a HTTP proxy. Some people might have different views but I honestly can't say I've had any reason to dislike it like this.
Lately I found out about mod_proxy allowing Apache to work as a proper HTTP proxy. Well, it's dead handy.
Simply compile apache with mod_proxy and mod_proxy_http (or any other protocols you're interested in). Then add something like the following to your httpd.conf file:
<IfModule mod_proxy.c> ProxyRequests On <Proxy *> Order deny,allow Allow from 192.168.0.0/24 </Proxy> ProxyVia On </IfModule>