sigsegv

mod_perl

perl.com: Installing mod_perl without superuser privileges [Apr. 10, 2002]

Spent the last couple of days trying to install apache, mysql and various other mod_* modules onto my powerbook. Looks like I won't have time to write any MT plugins. Oh well!

For someone who grew up on Linux, Mac OS X has some quirks with packages I'm used to installing on Linux. With apache, I'm used to setting the prefix flag and having everything install into that directory. This turned out not to be the case with Mac OS X. I had to set the additional --sysconfdir --datadir and --localstatedir to get it to install completely in my home directory.

pretty pictures of Provence

GIRL: a page by alex

Some really pretty pictures I found today while exploring various weblogs.

true crime, rising sun

I'm getting terrible at video games or video games are becoming terrible. I use the excellent service provided by Gamefly to rent many video games. I've started renting video games because of the general dissatisfaction with video games I've bought in the past. Renting games allows me greater freedom to experiment with as many games as I want to. Within 10 minutes of playing "True Crime: Streets of LA", I sealed it up in the return envelope ready to be shipped back. The control systems were crap, it was unintuitive to fire my weapons, driving the vehicle was next to impossible. I hate games that require you to go from point A to point B without instructions on how to get there. "Medal of Honor: Rising Sun" was back in the envelope within 20 minutes. I died a couple of times in a mission and each time was brought back to a previous save point which was pretty far back. I want to replay the part I died at, not the preceding 10 minutes until I succeed. "Halo" does a great job of doing this.

I know video game companies face a dilemma. Make a game too easy and the hard core / early adopter gamers get bored to fast and start to bitch on the comment board. Make a game too hard and you won't appeal to the majority of players out there. It just frustrates me when I give up on a game so quickly. Oh well, Champions of Norrath and FFX2 seem at the right level for me. I'll play those instead.

little posts vs big posts

I've been playing around with consolidating little posts into big posts. I'm wondering if I should post little posts individually. Combining the little posts into a larger post amounts to the same thing. Consolidating posts also requires more effort on my part. I'll experiment with making little posts for the next week.

more on gmail, ffx2 and changing tires

Google has been pretty generous with me and given me a bunch of invite codes. Since my mom is visiting me right now, I decided to give her a gmail invite code. She currently uses YahooMail. Yahoo is pretty good (definitely better than hotmail) but its interface is still bad. The prototypically clean interface of Google was superior I thought. Imagine my surprise when Mom mentions that she prefers the YahooMail interface. What did she find confusing? The email threading for one. I thought that was a great part of the GMail interface. Just goes to show that if somebody has been using something long enough it becomes hard for change to using something else. Another reason why switching operating systems is hard for most people.

Still on the subject of GMail. Interested in getting a GMail account? Gmail Machine is running a lottery. If you hit the right number, they'll give you one. Here is another interesting site GMail is too creepy. Food for thought. It does not mean if you are paranoid they are not out to get you.

After my TV died last week, I had to buy a new TV. Finally I can play FFX2. Bought it last December but the text on my old TV was always too fuzzy to read the text. It's not a bad game. The story is linear, formulaic but still endearing to watch. The multiple endings is the worst idea in video gaming history. It is a crappy way to treat gamers who will invest 80 hours in the game only to discover they missed doing something at the start. If I hadn't bought the guide book and had not read that I needed to find the moogle during the first mission, does that mean I need to replay the entire game again? I have a limited amount of time to play video games every week and this just sucks. Come on Square Enix, what were you thinking?

Yesterday I learnt how to change a tire. Lets say it was a little embarrasing that I didn't know how to change a tire. On the other hand, its not happened to me in the past. I figured out where to put the block. Just could'nt open the lug nuts. Called roadside assistance (with my insurance company). Some guy decided to help me out after seeing me have problems.

audiobooks, bass playing

Audible is having their summer sale til Jun 21. Everything above $9.95 is being sold at $9.95. That's a tremendous offer. When I discovered this, I picked up a couple of audiobooks I wanted to listen to for a while, Naked in Baghdad,Defying Hitler,No Ordinary time, Truman. There are a couple more books I want to pick up. Audiobooks are a nice compromise between reading books or not reading at all. They allow me to use my ~40 minutes of commute time for something useful. Ideally I would read books onboard the bus but I like to rest my eyes before and after work.

Playing a musical instrument is kind of like running. In order to get any good you need to practice/train consistently. That is my problem. Not enough practice time. Not enough playing with other people. If I really want to get better, I need to put in 30 - 45 minutes a day into it. I enjoy playing and wish I had more time.

my reasons (taken from the list)

The Occupational Adventure (sm): Why DID you take that job, anyway?

I like the company
I have the potential to do very well at this type of work
Stepping stone in career path
I like this type of work
It would be challenging work
I’ll have an opportunity to be recognized as a high performance achiever
It would be fun work
I always wanted to do this kind of work
This was my dream job

Over time my reasons for working there have changed but not overly so. Where do I work? Give a guess, it's one of these

Using tinderbox

I use tinderbox for writing little snippets of text under a title (or sometimes no title at all). It's nice having a place to store small random ideas (or bits and pieces of ideas) and see the juxtaposition of these ideas next to each other.

When I'm ready to make a post, I can combine these notes to come up with a post or sometimes post a complete note. Like this one for example.

I like Six Apart as a company. They offer services I like. TypePad being one of them. They appear to listen to their customers and are willing to make changes.

With these licensing changes to MovableType, I considered paying $100 to get an unlimited personal edition license then getting it hosted somewhere (I've heard good things abouth Prohosters). Pricewise, it'll come to about the same amount but I'll have greater control over my weblog. On the other hand, I like that the day to day administration of my weblog is handled by someone. That leaves me to spend precious free time focusing on more interesting things.

On the subject of weblog software, Drupal, Plone and Wordpress appear good alternatives to MovableType. All are available under free (as in libre and beer) licenses. I tempted to get my Linux box running and having a bakeoff between the 4.

Since getting myself a GMail account, I've been amused by the extent people will go to get one. Google will eventually release GMail to the general public so why the rush to get one. While reading about the furor over GMail, I found Oddpost. It looks really interesting except they require IE 5.5 for Windows. That is a real pity because I don't have a Windows machine readily available to me when I'm at home.

A new version of Firefox, 0.9 is out. I use OmniWeb 5 and Firefox interchangebly though I feel that Firefox is the best damn browser out there, despite the cool new ideas that OmniWeb has originated. Also check out Thunderbird, a companion email client to Firefox.

The sound on my TV has gone kaput. I'm half heartedly looking around for a replacement. Why half heartedly? Whenever I come home, I always have a bad habit of switching on the TV even when I don't watch it. This always distracts from doing other stuff, listening to music, reading, writing. It's been nice to have some peace and quiet for the last two days.

Jun 6th was the 60th anniversary of D Day. All I ever learnt about that period in history was mostly from reading books by Stephen Ambrose. I've read D Day, Band of Brothers and intend to read Citizen Soldiers sometime soon. Dramatic, heart breaking, gut wrenching stuff. The history channel is currently showing the Band of Brothers mini-series which does a better job than the book. When I watched it last summer, I was moved by the sacrifices those soldiers made and in the process the tightly knit bonds they formed with one another.

Thanks to my friend Dave, I managed to get a gmail account. I've not used it much but I can understand why people would be impressed with it. Besides its oft advertised 1GB of storage, it offers a very clean simple webmail interface. Its aggregation of emails in a thread was pretty impressive. I can see it being useful especially when lots of emails are flying around in a thread. I suspect that other email clients will be incorporating this feature in their next release.

My Tinderbox care package arrived this week. A collection of the various presentations and materials used for the recent Tinderbox weekend in Boston. I've glanced through a couple of the tinderbox files on the CD and was just blown away by what people have been doing with it. Mark Bernstein's draft provided me a short but interesting read this afternoon. I'm looking forward to the completed work.

I would give my left nut to get all that cool gear Apple has released this last weekend. Can somebody tell them to stop having so many great products?

Be careful of how you post stories even if you're trying to promote your subject.