Monthly Archive for April, 2007

Red Hat education

I spent all of last week on the Red Hat Rapid Training and Certification course trying to learn more about linux.

I certainly learnt a hell of a lot, and the 4 day course was a lot of work and very tiring. The exam however made all that seem relaxing. I have never sat a full day exam before, and it is not exactly a peacful exercise. Unfortunately I cannot say much about the exam as I have signed a non-disclosure agreement about it, but parts were easy and some parts were hard.

As it turns out some parts were very hard as I did not get enough marks to qualify for Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) - I did get enough for Red Hat Certified Technician (RHCT).

I am really a Debian user at heart, but the Red Hat course showed how similar the two can be, though there are certain parts that have differences. The biggest difference is probably that when you install a new server program/package in Debian, it comes with a fairly normal config file and starts up running. In Red Hat the config will be fairly restrictive and the service will not be started for you, nor will it be set to restart on reboot.

I have no plans to move away from Debian though, but the Red Hat experience was really informative and the course certainly got me setting up things I would probably never have done otherwise…

M3 closed after pedestrian struck

No wonder it took my twice as long to get in to work. Even on a motorbike the traffic was insane!
BBC NEWS | M3 closed after pedestrian struck

Syncing ratings between Bibble and Picasa

I use Bibble to manage my RAW digital photos. As such doign slideshows is rather limited as Bibble does have a special mode for them and RAW’s are slow to convert. So I export some smaller JPG’s for use in slideshows/screensavers etc. and as such I have a folder of raw images, and a folder of jpg image, both with the same structure and more or less the same images in them.

Picasa does a wonderful job for showing of photos to friends, and is really nice for flagging up favourites however I want those ratings to be transferred back to Bibble. So i started writing a script to do it…

Bibble uses a config file per image that holds rating information, whereas Picasa uses a file per directory. I started parsing the config files by hand, but realised that this was going to be tricky for writing the files back with new ratings (particularly if the files don’t exist yet). So I headed over to CPAN to look for an existing perl module to do this for me… It turns out that the config files are both a very simple .ini format that is handled quickly by Config::Tiny. so I installed the debian package for that (perl modules are packaged in Debian usually with a naming structure of lib<module-name>-perl, so the package I wanted is called libconfig-tiny-perl).

This package allowed very quick reading and writing of the ratings in the config files. I thought I was done then. The files were being updated as desired, but Picasa refused to show the new ratings… Playing around led to me changing an image and suddenly Picasa found the new rating from the config file. I guess Picasa cache’s the ratings data but if the date/time on the file changes then it reloads it, so after changing a rating in the picasa config I had to “touch” the associated image to get Picasa to reload the data (there is a perl module called File::Touch for that too!)

Marwell Zoo


Snow Leopard

Originally uploaded by antonpiatek.

I spent the best part of today at Marwell Zoo. Photos are available in flickr or in my gallery

I have not normally been particularly pleased with the photos from my 75-300 lens as it is a fairly cheap one, however today it was excellent (although slow to focus at times).  The only problems were reflections from glass or wires from the fences of the enclosures.

MOO | Upload your images directly to MOO

One of the reasons I wanted to start using Flickr was so I could get some Moo Cards. Now Moo will allow you to Upload your images directly, so you don’t need a Flickr account to get the cool cards!

Nutrition

In the beginning God covered the earth with broccoli, cauliflower and spinach, with green, yellow and red vegetables of all kinds so Man and Woman would live long and healthy lives. Then using God’s bountiful gifts, Satan created Dairy Ice Cream and Magnums. And Satan said “You want hot fudge with that? And Man said “Yes!” And Woman said “I’ll have one too with
chocolate chips”. And lo they gained 10 pounds. And God created the healthy yogurt that Woman might keep the figure that Man found so fair. And Satan brought forth white flour from the wheat and sugar from the cane and combined them. And Woman went from size 12 to size 14.

So God said “Try my fresh green salad”. And Satan presented Blue Cheese dressing and garlic croutons on the side. And Man and Woman unfastened their belts following the repast.

God then said “I have sent you healthy vegetables and olive oil in which to cook them”. And Satan brought forth deep fried coconut king prawns, butter-dipped lobster chunks and chicken fried steak, so big it needed its own platter. And Man’s cholesterol went through the roof. Then God brought forth the potato, naturally low in fat and brimming with potassium and
good nutrition. Then Satan peeled off the healthy skin and sliced the starchy centre into chips and deep fried them in animal fats adding copious quantities of salt. And Man put on more pounds.

God then brought forth running shoes so that his Children might lose those extra pounds. And Satan came forth with a cable TV with remote control so Man would not have to toil changing the channels. And Man and Woman laughed
and cried before the flickering light and started wearing stretch jogging suits.

Then God gave lean beef so that Man might consume fewer calories and still satisfy his appetite. And Satan created McDonalds and the 99p double cheeseburger. Then Satan said “You want fries with that?” and Man replied “Yes, And super size ‘em”.

And Satan said “It is good.” And Man and Woman went into cardiac arrest.

God sighed and created quadruple by-pass surgery.

And then Satan chuckled and created the National Health Service.

THE FINAL WORD ON NUTRITION:
After an exhaustive review of the research literature, here’s the final word on nutrition and health:

Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.
Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.
Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than us
Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.
Germans drink beer and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.

CONCLUSION:
Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.