Plantagenet Penguinista

If you were, you’ve gotta like Unix (in this case, Linux) ’coz that’s what it’s all about. Case in point is an app I’m working on (supposedly enhancing, in practice damn near rewriting) written in C which stores data into flat files. No indexes. It just writes a gazillion struct whatever; records straight into the data file. The current problem is that as data tots up, it gets very slow since it processes each data file serially when reporting, & if there’s cross-references it serially scans the related (thankfully small) data file for each record, to fetch the required text. There’s a background problem in that multiple users running the same app (which must be done on the same computer) have no clear way of avoiding collisions, with the inevitable result that the second (or successive) user requiring access to a record must wait until the earlier user(s) have finished with it & if the first user crashes the unlock() never happens so they wait forever (have to reboot the “s

Fire up machine unused for about a year, currently running Jaunty version of Kubuntu. Hmmm... do-release-upgrade & 25 minutes later we’re running Karmic. In MS-Windows-equivalent terms, we’ve just upgraded from XP to Vista in 25 minutes, seamlessly, without having to agree to any (or any more) mind-bendingly-control-freak licensing terms or click  [ OK ]  on a thousand tedious dialogue boxes (if I had written that S/W, there would exist a  [ Maybe ]  button there between that &  [ Cancel ]  plus an  [ It’sAllOK ]  button, AKA  [ JustGetOnWithItNow ]  ). Next month, this machine will become Lucid.

Here we have an application, written for SCO Unix so writing printer output to a specific device interface in a format intended for a particular brand of dot-matrix impact printer. Impact printers are so yesterday, & SCO Unix is so last decade, what can we do...? Get it to write into a temp file instead, with obvious <FLAGS> where a change in font size or intensity or whatever is required, then spool the result. That's a step forward, now it will work on nearly any printer (thank you, CUPS ), kind of. Second level, feed it to htmldoc on the way to the spooler. Now stuff like <B>bolding</B> works! However... these 132-column-wide reports not look so hot on an A4 page... No worries, print on A4 Landscape, then pdf90 that (from the pdfjam toolset) to spin it out & make it good.

...a spotless townhouse in South Perth for $50,000.00 off from a reluctant seller simply by waiting for one day after the neighbouring townhouse sold, then placing a proposal for $5,000 higher for a limited time as per advice from my brother-in-law. Total elapsed time: one week from 4sale sign up. Yes, the real estate market may be about to fall into a deep hole, but the place is securely hers now. This is far from the most awesome thing she’s had happen over the last handful of months. Go, team!

My first PC: 486DX2 66Mhz, 16MB of RAM, 320MB of hard disk in two drives, removable storage 1.4MB 1.5" floppy disk at $2 each. PC I’m finding a home for now (discards from TAFE & high schools intended for a primary school, this one was missing several drivers for devices under MS-Windows XP but runs Kubuntu just fine): Pentium4 2×3000MHz, 1024MB of RAM, 80,000MB of hard disk in one drive, removable storage 4400MB DVD burner with blank discs at $0.30 each or 2048MB flash stick at $6 each. Smallest PC from the set (ditto for drivers): Pentium3 1000MHz, 256MB of RAM, 20,000MB of hard disk in one drive, removable storage 770MB CD burner with blank discs at $0.30 each, plus 4400MB DVD reader, or 2048MB flash stick.

Free your heart from hatred; Free your mind from worry; Live simply; Give more; Expect less.