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Fri 26th Jun 2009 @ 08:28 2009: Mojibake
I had not come across the term Mojibake before, but apparently it refers to the misrendering of characters for which the appropriate encoding is not available.
Ironically, Wikipedia's article on Mojibake includes a disclaimer that you may experience mojibake while reading the article!
Tue 23rd Jun 2009 @ 20:37 2009: Linux memory usage and cacheing
Given a machine with 4Gb Ram and 20Gb swap:
# free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3920344 3865076 55268 0 39116 3620044
-/+ buffers/cache: 205916 3714428
Swap: 20972728 276 20972452
It might appear that although the machine is not swapping significantly, 3865Mb of the available RAM is in use, with only 55Mb free, and the server is about to suffer serious performance problems.
However, the first "Mem:" line reflects the current allocation including buffers and cache. Looking at the final field of the "Mem:" line, we see that we have 39Mb used for buffers and a whopping 3620Mb allocated to cache.
The second line, "-/+ buffers/cache:", allows for the buffer and cache allocation, showing the actual allocation of memory, ignoring buffer and cache allocations, which are not significant in terms of the actual available memory.
This shows that we have only 205Mb RAM in use, with 3714Mb free - a much healthier situation than initially imagined.
Linux can allocate a lot of memory for cache, but the cache, whilst potentially useful, can be discarded in an instant if that physical RAM is actually required. This does seem to be a tunable thing; RedHat seems to use as much physical RAM as possible for cache, whereas a Debian machine I checked on only seems to be using about half the available physical RAM for cache.
So - if a Linux machine seems to be using most of its RAM, check how much of that is cache/buffers. It might not be anywhere near as bad as it first appears.
Sun 21st Jun 2009 @ 23:31 2009: We apologise for any interruption to this service
$ whois steve-parker.org
[snip]
Created On:20-Jun-2000 13:48:46 UTC
Last Updated On:21-Jun-2009 21:18:03 UTC
Expiration Date:20-Jun-2011 13:48:46 UTC
Ahem, the steve-parker.org domain expired on Saturday lunchtime, and was not renewed until Sunday evening. Any emails sent to this domain this weekend may not have got through. Email systems may spend a few days retrying before they give up, so I may get your email in a couple of days.
Thanks for pointing out the problem, Andrew!
Things have been rather frantic chéz Parker in the past few weeks, and the domain renewal got forgotten :-( There is no excuse for such a thing. I should probably read my secondary email rather more regularly - for what should be obvious reasons, domain renewal notices don't get sent to my @steve-parker.org address but a separate address hosted elsewhere. I really ought to watch that more closely!
It was on my calendar, honestly:
Sun 21st Jun 2009 @ 01:08 2009: James Allen
I must give a plug to James Allen; he wasn't the best F1 commentator we had, but his blog is a mine of on-the-scene information.
Also, he has the bottle to make his predictions on the Saturday before the race. I really must follow this up with a comment of how accurate his predictions have turned out to be; his Silverstone prediction is here.
Sat 20th Jun 2009 @ 00:15 2009: Yellow Lines
I've been walking past this spot quite a few times recently.
Thanks for the clarification. Let's see... I can't park on the left or the right of the street?
Would parking right in the middle of the road be okay?
Thu 18th Jun 2009 @ 23:11 2009: Win AUD$10,000
Debian Developer Martin Krafft aka madduck has it right: this $10,000 IE8 competition is a sign of:
- proof, that Microsoft still rulez the browser market?
- a pathetic admission that they lost?
- an advertising about standards-noncompliance?
Sun 14th Jun 2009 @ 17:14 2009: Chris Moyles talks up Church
Chris Moyles talks up Church
Chris Moyles saw Kings Gate church on TV recently and was clearly touched - listen for yourself
Mon 8th Jun 2009 @ 12:06 2009: Hutchinson (aka 3) 3g USB Dongle
I have got one of these 3 3g USB dongles, which works under Debian GNU/Linux Squeeze and Lenny with the following configuration. Note that the "ppp" package is required.
/etc/ppp/peers/3g:
/dev/ttyUSB0
3600
noipdefault
debug
defaultroute
persist
noauth
nodetach
usepeerdns
connect "/usr/sbin/chat -vf /etc/chatscripts/3g.chat"
/etc/chatscripts/3g.chat:
TIMEOUT 3
ABORT BUSY
ABORT 'NO CARRIER'
ABORT VOICE
ABORT 'NO DIALTONE'
ABORT 'NO DIAL TONE'
ABORT 'NO ANSWER'
ABORT DELAYED
"" ATZ
OK ATQ0V1E1S0=0&C1&D2
OK ATDT*99#
CONNECT ""
You can then run "pon 3g" to dial up, and "poff 3g" to disconnect. Easy! It is actually faster and easier than the Windows client, which requires you to launch the dialler software, and then press the "Connect" button.
Tech details: Huawei E156G HSDPA USB Stick.
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