No Warranty Expressed Or Implied
Lisp, music, electronics, 3D   |   john at johnp.net, john at synchromesh.com   |   John Pallister   |   Wellington, New Zealand & Norfolk, England
(me)
2011: Jan ( 1) Feb ( 1) Mar      Apr      May      Jun      Jul      Aug      Sep      Oct      Nov      Dec     
2009: Jan      Feb      Mar      Apr      May      Jun      Jul      Aug      Sep      Oct ( 3) Nov      Dec     
2008: Jan      Feb ( 1) Mar ( 3) Apr      May ( 3) Jun ( 2) Jul ( 2) Aug      Sep ( 1) Oct ( 1) Nov      Dec     
2007: Jan      Feb      Mar      Apr      May      Jun      Jul      Aug ( 1) Sep      Oct      Nov      Dec     
2006: Jan ( 8) Feb      Mar ( 2) Apr      May      Jun      Jul      Aug      Sep      Oct      Nov ( 2) Dec ( 3)
2005: Jan      Feb      Mar ( 5) Apr ( 9) May ( 4) Jun ( 3) Jul (12) Aug (12) Sep ( 3) Oct (15) Nov ( 8) Dec ( 8)
2004: Jan ( 6) Feb      Mar ( 1) Apr      May      Jun      Jul ( 3) Aug      Sep ( 4) Oct ( 8) Nov ( 6) Dec     
2003: Jan      Feb      Mar      Apr (11) May (14) Jun (10) Jul ( 6) Aug ( 7) Sep ( 5) Oct      Nov ( 7) Dec ( 7)
2002: Jan      Feb      Mar      Apr      May      Jun      Jul      Aug      Sep      Oct      Nov      Dec ( 1)
RSS 2.0

08 Oct 2009 First post 2009: PyBlosxom is go!
Theo!

Well, I've finally got around to moving this blog to PyBlosxom. I've written my own plugin to generate the archives at the top of the page; I'm also now running on Nginx as a web server, which talks to Python Paste via FastCGI. So the blog is now dynamically generated. The next thing is to try and integrate the Disqus comments plugin.

The other thing I need to do is move the rest of my personal site(s) to this server.

I have lots of things I'd like to blog about; it's great to finally have this sorted out.

And yes, it's been another very busy year. Since my last post my third child was born (Hi Theo!), my oldest has started school (Hi Bethany!) and we've moved half-way around the world for a while... so stay tuned for more news (OK, maybe "news" is the wrong word).

[bits] # .

21 Mar 2008 2008: Second Post

OK, in an attempt to keep this weblog better updated, I'm just going to list a few things that have been happening lately.

Anyway, back to work now. Time for another coffee. (Arse, my MPEG video works in VLC and Windows Media Player but not QuickTime.)

Oh wow, there's this cool site called YouTube. I've put up the version with sound and no caption.

[bits] # .

05 Feb 2008 2008: First Post

Argh, so I did only manage one blog post for the whole of last year... Well, it was very, very busy. And this one looks like it's going to rush past just as quickly.

I've been thinking about Blosxom (that I use for this blog):

I have a lot of projects to tackle this year, and I intend to blog about them on the way. So what's the minimally sufficient structure? Hmmm...

[bits] # .

26 Oct 2005 Upgrading Subversion's Berkeley DB
The message:
svn: bdb: Program version 4.2 doesn't match environment version
The solution (via the Subversion Users mailing list):
$ svnadmin create --fs-type bdb newrepos
$ cd newrepos/db
$ rm *s __db.* log.*
$ cd ../..
$ cd oldrepos/db
$ for dbf in *s ; do db4.1_dump $dbf | db4.2_load -h ../../newrepos/db $dbf ; done 
$ cd ../..
$ svnadmin verify newrepos
$ svnadmin create --fs-type fsfs fsfsrepos
$ svnadmin dump newrepos | svnadmin load fsfsrepos
[bits] # .

18 Oct 2005 Jakob Nielsen says...
Someone linked to Jakob Nielson's thoughts on weblog usability. Apparently I need:
  1. An author bio
  2. An author photo
  3. More descriptive posting titles
  4. More predictive information in or around my links
  5. More links to older postings and "classic hits" (which might mean checking the logs to se whether anyone actually reads this blog)
  6. A navigable list of my categories
  7. A regular posting schedule
  8. Separate blogs for different topics
  9. Writing that will appeal to a future hiring manager
  10. My own domain name
I'd go along with at least the first six of these. I shall add "overhaul this blog layout" to my list of tasks.

I think that many of Mr. Nielsen's guidelines are worth reading. I should probably look at updating my homepage designs, also.

[bits] # .

06 Jan 2004 Happily Now Yern
Well, we had a great holiday down the south of the South Island. Milford Sound, Stewart Island, the Catlins, all lovely. And I even managed to get some useful work done while I was away.

It's good to see Chris Double posting to his blog again.

Bernadette and I are getting married in fifteen weeks time. We both hope to have lost a bit of weight by then. ;)

[bits] # .

14 Nov 2003 Swings and roundabouts
Well, you might've thought that five weeks holiday would've been enough, but despite (or perhaps because) of that, I've needed most of the last three weeks as well before I've felt sufficiently "reinvigorated" to want to do much work.

However, I'm now feeling much better. Not that I was feeling really down, but I was having some difficulty feeling positive about things for a while there. And then plink, suddenly I'm rearing to go...

I did resolve not to feel guilty about it, which helped. Plus I'm getting into the meditation a bit more, and I'm hoping that will help me cultivate my equanimity in future.

'You think I'm experiencing a mood swing, Slick?'
'Yeah.'
'I'm enjoying a mood swing.'

Shit, have I really been working for myself for almost four years? Fortunately I now find it fairly easy not to freak myself out about this fact, but I admit I dread having to describe to anyone exactly what I've been doing all this time.

But still, I am (fairly) happy with where I am now and how I'm doing. Obviously I would like to be further forward than I am, but then I was even more willfully naïve about the problems I had to tackle when I started than I thought at the time.

So I'm still short on the "actual working software" front, but I'm pleased with my design, I've learnt a lot, I'm working better now than I ever have, and in the meantime the IT world is slowly moving towards the point where something like the Ngake VR IDE application in all its glory could actually have something like a receptive market waiting for it. So there.

Which isn't to say that a bit of a break working with some other talented, motivated people on some suitably interesting project for a decent lump of cash wouldn't be worth a go for a while. Stay tuned...

[bits] # .

11 Sep 2003 Too close to the camel
I've tidied up this blog, mainly as a procrastination exercise. Note the "archives" at the top, and the use of CSS to make it look exactly like it did before. A pleasant distraction, until I had to break out my mouldy Camel book, which was a sign that it was time to get back to some real work. After lunch...

I also found some groovy PDF quick reference cards here: CSS1, bash, vim etc.

[bits] # .

07 Aug 2003 Put that baby to bed
I've finally released all the programs (and even some documentation!) to South Park, so that they can start their acceptance testing in earnest. Huzzah!

Now I'm free to do, ooh, all sorts of stuff:

At least I've got rid of the millstone that was the old ThinkPad 760 I foolishly bought; I hope David actually gets some useful benefit from it while he's overseas...

[bits] # .

10 Apr 2003 In other news...
I wrote my first SQL stored procedure today. I'm not sure whether this is a step forward or not... [ooh, programmer snobbery alert]
[bits] # .


powered by PyBlosxom powered by Nginx Python Paste