http://www.strangeparty.com A blog about life, linux and photography Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:20:19 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Just a quick post to say I am now a married man, and have just got back from my honeymoon. I have been away long enough to have pretty much forgotten what my day job is... http://www.strangeparty.com/2008/09/03/married/ I stumbled across a quote from Douglas Adams on Australians which I thought was amusing, and probably very accurate: As a result of all this hardship, dirt, thirst, and wombats, you would expect Australians to be a dour lot. Instead, they are genial, jolly, cheerful, and always willing to share a ... http://www.strangeparty.com/2008/07/29/douglas-adams-on-australians/ I have been really busy recently, but have taken some photos over the past few weeks, so thought I'd share a few of them This little toadstool was taken with a flash each side to light it up, triggered with cactus radio triggers (flashes set to about 1/16th power i think, ... http://www.strangeparty.com/2008/07/13/theres-always-time-for-a-photo/ I thought it's about time I mentioned the photos I have been taking recently Some are random (as seen below) I also snapped a close-up of some ants and other insects (aphids?)) eating at the stem of my sunflower. I was quite surprised at the detail I got, though admittedly it was ... http://www.strangeparty.com/2008/06/22/recent-photos/ UserFriendly has 2 fabulous comic strips on Bank scams by phone (the kind where someone phones you up and pretends to be your bank in order to get secure information by asking you to "confirm" some details) Cartoon 1, Cartoon 2 Its a shame that they don't let you hotlink the images ... http://www.strangeparty.com/2008/06/15/bank-scams-by-phone/ Theres an interesting buzz at the moment on a new BMW concept car which has a shell made of some sort of rubber fabric. Theres a short articlt on Top Gear And theres a wonderful video on Youtube http://www.strangeparty.com/2008/06/11/bmw-gina/ I use the k2 theme for this wordpress blog. I used to write my own, but k2 is much, much neater. I also use the openid plugin for wordpress. (I wrote about openid's before) To get the two to play together, you need to turn off live commenting. In my case, as ... http://www.strangeparty.com/2008/06/05/wordpress-k2-openid/ Bert Stephani (Confessions of a Photographer) has done two very interesting posts as part of a workshop he ran titled "The Decisive Photograper" - Live Shoot Outdoor and Live Shoot Indoor make for fantastic reading if you want to know more about balancing a portable flash with natural light ... http://www.strangeparty.com/2008/06/03/the-decisive-photograper-bert-stephani/ I suppose it was only a matter of time given the current prices of petrol in the UK Petition to: Reduce Fuel duty to bring fuel prices back to an acceptable level [petition.pm.gov] http://www.strangeparty.com/2008/06/01/petition-to-reduce-fuel-duty/ A while ago I bought a PICkit2 programmer, including 16f690 PIC. I installed piklab and sdcc (in Debian repositories) and got it working pretty easily. I did play with the programmer that came with it (mplab, windows only), which upgraded my firmware. piklab cannot use the new firmware, so if ... http://www.strangeparty.com/2008/05/31/pic-microchip-programming-under-debian/ When I first bought my iPod classic, Amarok hadn't yet got support for the new SHA1 hashing that was being done in the song db. Then it was only in cvs, and while I remember compiling from source I don't think I ever got round to running that code. Of course ... http://www.strangeparty.com/2008/05/29/ipod-classic-with-amarok-on-linux/ A few weeks ago, when the weather was excellent, I went to Mottisfont Abbey trying to make the most of my National Trust membership. In case you want to go, the following point on the map is a little more accurate than on the national trust page (the rough ... http://www.strangeparty.com/2008/05/27/mottisfont-abbey/ Background I have a fileserver box, which currently has 2x200GB disks in lvm to give me a 400GB virtual disk. This arrangement gets good use of space, but if one disk has a failure, then the whole filesystem is trashed and cannot be recovered. The solution is to start using raid. Before ... http://www.strangeparty.com/2008/05/24/software-raid1-and-lvm-on-debian-etch/ I stumbled across this post on the Official Gmail Blog: 2 hidden ways to get more from your Gmail address It is an absolute must read if you use Gmail http://www.strangeparty.com/2008/05/22/get-more-out-of-gmail/ I stumbled over these photos the other day, and decided I really liked them. I couldn't remember if I had posted them up here, so decided to post them anyway http://www.strangeparty.com/2008/05/20/random-photos/ Deadman.org: Advancing in the Bash Shell - well worth a read to improve your bash http://www.strangeparty.com/2008/05/17/advanced-bash-on-the-command-line/ On the last bank holiday I went to Micheldever to get photos of the bluebells, for which Micheldever woods is quite well known for. A map of the woods which was quite helpful is available from the forrestry commission This is something I plan to do every year http://www.strangeparty.com/2008/05/16/micheldever-bluebells/ I started writing this, and then never found time to get round to finishing it - All I can say is late is better than never... There are plenty of sites giving all the technical details of the new Canon 40D, personally I like dpreview.com, so I will not spend too ... http://www.strangeparty.com/2008/05/15/canon-eos-40d/ I am sure you have all ready about the OpenSSL exploit that was recently found in Debian: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2008/msg00152.html It is worth noting that the exploit affects any keys that were built on a debian box after sarge (so etch, lenny, current sid). This also means that any box that has those keys ... http://www.strangeparty.com/2008/05/15/openssl-expoit/ http://www.strangeparty.com/2008/05/01/macbook-air-paraody-for-lenovo-thinkpad-x300/