Insipid Ibex

Finally upgraded (K)Ubuntu to 8.10. Thanks for breaking my xorg config, guys, by assuming that HAL could actually do a better job that my hand-picked settings. This is easily fixed by uncommenting all of the lines commented out by HAL, but it's amazing that it had to be done at all, since the HAL change made X flat-out stop working. Also, for some reason, ~/.xsession no longer works -- one has to use ~/.xsessionrc instead. Those wacky Ubuntites.

Upgraded E17 shortly afterwards, using the packages at

deb http://greenie.sk/ubuntu intrepid e17

The new version of E has compiz support (which has to almost entirely be disabled for it to run at E17's proper speed) and looks nice. The modules all seem to work, for once.

But it crashes!

The first one came immediately, and was fixed by wiping ~/.e, which contained all of my old config settings. Apparently E17 can't reliably be upgraded with an existing config. Thanks for moving to a binary config file, guys, so that this is actually a far larger problem than it should be. Really, how hard is it to use the binary config only at runtime, and compile from text to binary whenever a config change is made?

Some of the other crashes appear to be from the OpenGeu inclusion of compiz. After removing the calls to emerald and ecomorph from enlightenment_startup.sh, and stripping out the -evil command line option (which, along with -good and -psychotic, did not seem to make things stable), it's become pretty stable, if a little buggy. Dialog boxes occasionally do not disappear when closed, requiring a restart of E17.

Also, some E17 idiocies remain -- things that seemed to be oversights before, but now (having been a pretty stable WM for the past three years) appear to be truly asinine design decisions.

Specifically:

* There is no way to modify the properties of an application (short of adding it to iBar, or modifying the desktop file directly). A dialog exists for this (it's used by ibar and when creating a new application), so it can't be much extra work.

* One cannot cut/copy/paste between E17 widgets and X. This is nice to be able to do when, say, setting an icon file path (since the desktop files for KDE applications do not seem to be handled correctly by E17, and therefore have no icon files). Hope you like typing.

* The binary only config, mentioned above. Really, there is no excuse for this -- the rest of the industry learned that lesson in the 90s. Even Windows allows its abhorred registry to be read from and written to text files.

Aside from that, Ibex works well, and the upgrade was generally painless. The only sticky points were the Xorg conf file (their mistake), E17 (my fault for running it), and the patch I needed to add to get toshset supported by the latest kernel (the maintainer's fault, for not getting it merged after 2 years of reliable performance).

more ffox plugins

These are more for the UI folk:

Colorzilla:Look up a pixel's color value

Unicode lookup/converter : Character lookup utility

MeasureIt : Ruler widget for measuring distance in pixels

Vim links

People either love vi or hate it; if you hate it, sod off and take your parentheses with you.

It's good to have a printout of the vi reference card handy, and a cheat sheet or two saved locally:

Vi Reference Card (PDF)
Graphical Vim Cheat Sheet (GIF)
Vim Cheat Sheet

In support of the "learn a new vim command every day" effort, both Vim Tips and the Vim Cookbook have proved interesting, as has the piping feature.
Speaking of pipes, pv is quite an interesting utility. So is histring, but it doesn't seem to be available (or maintained) except in rpm.

Vim has a ton of plugins worth checking out, including:
FuzzyFinder
OmniComplete
TagList
RenameWithCScope
C Call Tree Explorer
SourceCodeObedience
VimDebug
MiniBufferExplorer
SnippetsEmu
AllFold
Fly
SessionManager
Alternate
RunView
Scratch*
VcsCommand
MultVals
GitCommit
GitDiff
GitFile
Git Branch Info
There is also NERDTree, but its moderate utility does not justify its horrible name.

Most languages have syntax and snippet plugins, such as:
C
Python
Ruby/Rails
Perl
SQL
x86 and x86-64 asm
XML/HTML


Finally, to forestall the inevitable requests, here is a sample .vimrc .

DNS

DNS timeouts have been pretty bad lately; decided to take action and make resolve.conf actually be usable. Of course, it gets overwritten every time DHCP is used to configure an interface, so the name servers have to be added to dhclient.conf .

There are quite a lot of reliable servers to choose from:

OpenDNS
TechFAQ public dns server list
dnsserverlist.org
dnsserverlist.org organized by round trip time

The last two are particularly useful: dnsserverlist.org recommends three DNS servers based on your current IP, and provides an option for sorting their list by round-trip-time.

"Permanent" DNS servers can be added by editing /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf and adding 'prepend domain-name-servers' lines:

prepend domain-name-servers 216.224.112.14;
prepend domain-name-servers 67.198.198.213;
prepend domain-name-servers 69.111.95.106 ;
prepend domain-name-servers 208.67.222.222;
prepend domain-name-servers 208.67.220.220;
prepend domain-name-servers 4.2.2.1;
prepend domain-name-servers 4.2.2.2;
prepend domain-name-servers 151.197.0.38;
prepend domain-name-servers 151.202.0.84;
prepend domain-name-servers 151.203.0.84;

Remember to list these in reverse-order: the last server prepended will be the first line in resolv.conf.

The ultimate solution, of course, is to set up a local caching DNS server.

Unfortunate words

leverage: To utilize or exploit in an unspecified, hand-wavy, and generally unplanned manner.
We leverage the core compentency of our acquisitions in this sector to maximise ROI throughout the project lifecycle.

pundit: A cheerleader in the sport of politics.
Pundits are claiming that the candidate's gaffe is an opportunity to appeal to blue-collar voters, in stark contrast to his opponent's overly intellectual demeanor.

punditry: The presentation of half-considered opinion as research- or poll-backed fact. Generally considered the province of pundits and journalists.
(See above)

blogosphere: Amateur hour in the world of publish-or-perish.
Lo, it is easier for a shark to stop swimming, than for a blogger to refrain from banal commentary.

Productive Programmer

Just tore through Neal Ford's Productive Programmer (978-0-596-51978-0), ended up with mixed feelings about it.

The first part of the book is pretty decent, with pointers to some good tools. This is also a weakness: the book is not going to be a timeless classic, and will likely be of half utility in two to five years.

The second part has good advice, but is mostly a rehash of agile methodologies. Agile has (or rather, has appropriated) a lot of good ideas, but it is ultimately a methodology, and methodologies lead to two things: zealotry and incomplete projects.

The advice given tends towards the obvious ("use the command line", "learn keyboard shortcuts", "make macros and scripts"), and UNIX is presented as something used by Other People.

In fact the book seems to assume that the reader is encumbered by the two most enfeebling technologies out there: Windows and Java. Windows is inescapable as a platform, but one always has the choice not to code like a Windows programmer (excuse me, "developer"). Java seems to be the language of choice in... well, in companies that I have no interest in working for, so nothing lost there. Buying into the Windows Way or the Java Way means you've created a lot of your own problems, and if this book helps you solve some of them, more power to you.

For the non-Windows-and/or-Java Way programmer, stick with the classics by Brooks, Hunt/Thomas, Kernighan, Plauger, Bentley, Fowler. Maybe some Beck, but you have to be careful with evangelicals.

Free as in...

Finally got sick of building custom Linux kernels just to change CONFIG_HZ from the inane default of 250 to something that makes the 10ms timer in my (proprietary) device driver work reliably (instead of firing 83 times a second). Switched to hi-resolution timers, and immediate encountered this:

FATAL: modpost: GPL-incompatible module my_module.ko uses GPL-only symbol 'hrtimer_cancel'


Turns out, after reading stuff like http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT9161119242.html and http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT5041108431.html, that the lunatics have taken over the asylum: specific kernel subsystems can be restricted so that only GPL modules can call them.

This is ludicrous: why should GPL code care who calls it? This has nothing to do with distribution; this is *usage*.

Not to mention entirely unlike the "free as in speech" ethos that the FSF claims to support. "Free speech" generally doesn't imply "say anything you like, just don't say it in kernel mode!".

Between this GPL nonsense and the changing of the CONFIG_HZ default value in a minor release, the Linux kernel is proving itself quite unreliable. I may have to move this entire product over to FreeBSD.