Posts on Yesterday I was wrong

Capsper: I turned CapsLock into a ghost writer

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Does CapsLock annoy you? Ever wished it actually did something useful instead of SHOUTING AT PEOPLE BY ACCIDENT?

Capsper is push-to-talk voice dictation for Linux. Hold CapsLock, speak, release. Text appears wherever your cursor is. No cloud, no subscription, no Electron app phoning home. Just your GPU doing what GPUs were meant to do.

The pitch

~2 second latency between speaking and words appearing on screen. Runs entirely on your machine. Works on both X11 and Wayland. Single binary, no dependencies to manage, no Python runtime, no Docker container. You download it, run the installer, and CapsLock becomes useful for the first time in its miserable existence.

Chrome WebGL not working with NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti on Linux

Tue, 04 Feb 2025 14:30:00 +0000

After upgrading to an NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti (Blackwell architecture, released January 2025), WebGL stopped working in Chrome. Sites like webglreport.com showed “This browser supports WebGL 2, but it is disabled or unavailable.”

The system-level OpenGL worked fine (glxinfo showed full OpenGL 4.6 support), so the issue was Chrome-specific.

The Problem

Chrome was running with --use-gl=disabled. You can check this with:

ps aux | grep chrome | grep -oE '\-\-use-gl=[^ ]*'

The RTX 5070 Ti and driver 580.x are so new that Chrome’s GPU blocklist doesn’t recognise them, so it defaults to disabling GL entirely.

BlackMagic ATEM Mini Linux Software

Tue, 12 Jul 2022 14:56:42 +0000

https://openswitcher.org/

Ubunutu Background Noise Cancellation

Tue, 14 Jun 2022 19:35:09 +0000

https://github.com/josh-richardson/cadmus

A practical introduction to NTFs

Wed, 17 Nov 2021 22:19:46 +0000

I’ve been doing some NFT research for myself, but though I would share in case one else finds some value.

30 second intro to NFTs: https://niftygateway.com/whatisanifty

In depth description of an NFT (and lots more information): https://blog.opensea.io/guides/non-fungible-tokens/#What_is_a_non-fungible_token

So the next thing to understand is that in the world of cryptocurrencies there are many different ones. Bitcoin is probably the one you have heard about but there are literally thousands:
https://coinmarketcap.com/

The second biggest cryptocurrency is called Ethereum and it is also the largest market for NFTs (via https://opensea.io/ or https://niftygateway.com/)

Ubuntu + OBS Studio + Intel Hardware Encoding (VAAPI)

Sat, 27 Feb 2021 09:21:07 +0000

So I had installed the latest version of OBS Studio (26.x) from the official channels but when I went to the output mode it only listed software encoding. In the logs it mentioned FFMPEG-VAAPI but wasn’t using it as any recording was using 30%-50% CPU on a low powered laptop.

In Settings -> Output change Outmode to Advanced (from Simple) then on Streaming -> Encoder change that to FFMPEG VAAPI (Recoding should just be set to use Streaming Encoder which is the default)

Sortable UUIDs -> ULID and KSUID

Wed, 07 Oct 2020 07:40:34 +0000

https://github.com/ulid/spec

https://github.com/segmentio/ksuid

Fast ML model building

Thu, 11 Jun 2020 17:01:57 +0000

PyCaret -> https://pycaret.org/

Remote Working Links

Fri, 20 Mar 2020 20:13:03 +0000

Special thanks to Scott Muc and S+C. Please post more links in the comments and I’ll add them in

Guides / Playbooks

Leading in crisis: Setting up for remote success
https://www.thoughtworks.com/remote-work-playbook

Remote First in Tes Technology
https://engineering.tes.com/how-we-work/remote/

How to Work Remotely and Still Be the Best
http://www.toptal.com/freelance/how-to-work-remotely-and-still-be-the-best

Smart Home: 10 Tips for Working Remotely - Postlight - Digital Product Studio
https://postlight.com/trackchanges/podcast/smart-home-10-tips-for-working-remotely

A guide to distributed work
https://jakemccrary.com/blog/2017/10/31/a-guide-to-distributed-work/

remote - Digital Digressions by Stuart Sierra
https://stuartsierra.com/tag/remote

47 Insanely Practical Work From Home Tips from Our 100% Remote Team
https://www.groovehq.com/blog/work-from-home

Fix screen tearing on Razor Stealth (Late 2019) with Ubuntu 19.10

Mon, 10 Feb 2020 21:09:37 +0000

So I had my usual problem with screen tearing on Ubuntu 19.10 but instead of my usual switching to Metacity + Compton I wanted to try using Gnome Shell. However Gnome shell doesn’t support replacing the compositor.

First step is to allow the NVidia driver to support kernel mode setting:

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/zz-nvidia-modeset.conf

Adding

options nvidia-drm modeset=1

And then

sudo update-initramfs -u

Check with

sudo cat /sys/module/nvidia_drm/parameters/modeset

Then add a startup application

xrandr --output eDP-1-1 --set 'PRIME Synchronization' '1'

Finally switch from gdm3 to lightdm.

Webcam on Razer Stealth Late 2019 with Ubuntu 19.10

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 17:37:47 +0000

Probably the weakest element on the laptop is the Webcam which can output 720p@30fps. By default the low light performance is not that great but you can improve it considerably by trading frame rate for low light performance.

First install the Video 4 Linux utils:

sudo apt install v4l-utils

Now run the following command (the default is 0)

v4l2-ctl --set-ctrl=exposure_auto_priority=1

Now we have reduced the noise level considerably you can play with the sharpness levels 0-7 (the default is 3)

Suspend Loop Fix for Razor Stealth Late 2019 with Ubuntu 19.10

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 08:11:11 +0000

I was experiencing a loop where after suspending and resuming the laptop it would go back into suspend over and over again. To fix this just update /etc/default/grub and add button.lid_init_state=open to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash button.lid_init_state=open"

I also had to add the following to stop errors during the update

GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=true

Then update GRUB

sudo update-grub

Update:

I found that I actually needed to replace gdm3 with lightdm to fix a different issue and this also resolved the suspend problems

Power Management for Razor Stealth Late 2019 (GTX 1650) with Ubuntu 19.10

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 07:55:45 +0000

First install powertop and TLP . We use powertop to estimate power usage when unplugged and TLP to run as a service

sudo apt install powertop tlp

I then did a little tweaking in my /etc/rc.local

#!/bin/sh -e

# Temp disable bluetooth
modprobe -r btusb

# Autosuspend USB Razer Keyboard after 5 minutes 
echo '300000' > '/sys/bus/usb/devices/3-8/power/autosuspend_delay_ms'
echo 'auto' > '/sys/bus/usb/devices/3-8/power/control'

# VM writeback timeout
echo '1500' > '/proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs';

exit 0

Lastly switch from NVidia GTX 1650 to the Intel Iris Pro

Microbit via WebUSB on Ubuntu 18.04

Mon, 30 Dec 2019 21:09:41 +0000

Make sure you are running the latest firmware on the microbit

Create a new udev rule

sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/80-microbit.rules

With the following content

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="0d28", ATTR{idProduct}=="0204", MODE="0660", GROUP="plugdev"

Then if you want non-admin users to be able to use it (like your kids) run

sudo usermod -a -G plugdev non-admin-user

If you are admin you just need to unplug and replug the microbit (the udev rules run on hot-plug), if you are non-admin you will need to logout and back in to get the updated user groups

Ubuntu file limits 18.04

Wed, 17 Jul 2019 08:04:37 +0000

sudo nano /etc/systemd/user.conf

DefaultLimitNOFILE=65535

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system.conf

DefaultLimitNOFILE=65535

sudo nano /etc/security/limits.conf

* hard nofile 65535
* soft nofile 65535

Source

My side project to try and scale myself: Software Mastery School

Mon, 29 Apr 2019 18:10:48 +0000

So I’ve been working on a little side project for the last couple of weeks to try and create a video based training school to allow myself to scale and maybe not have to repeat myself as much when ever I join a new client.

So I decided to take my post on the Uncommon Sense and turn that into a mini course to try things out.

This was in some ways just an excuse to learn about DSLR filming (read buy some toys), non-linear editing, colour grading etc. Now it’s not perfect (the audio isn’t great as my shotgun mic wasn’t working) but it feels good enough to share.

Uncommon Sense

Sat, 09 Feb 2019 20:27:36 +0000

Just because something is compelling doesn’t mean it’s right
i.e. transitive dependencies or the easiest location to add feature X in your codebase

Plugins are a sign of bad composeability or lack of craftsmanship or both
i.e Ridiculous NPM modules that plugin your test tool into your transpiler into your bundler into your web server or equally insane Spring plugins. Maybe look at the unix way…

Libraries are overused and under understood
i.e most day to day problems are easier to solve from first principles than deciphering the README of some library.

Metacity enable thumbnail preview

Wed, 09 May 2018 10:43:40 +0000

gsettings set org.gnome.metacity alt-tab-thumbnails true

Stop screen tearing on Ubuntu by changing compositor

Mon, 26 Feb 2018 14:55:37 +0000

Install Compton (https://github.com/chjj/compton/)

sudo apt-get install compton

Disable existing compositor (I used Metacity with Gnome Flashback)

gsettings set org.gnome.metacity compositing-manager false

Add Compton to “Startup Applications”

compton --backend glx --paint-on-overlay --vsync opengl-swc

GitHub Get Public Keys for a User

Thu, 08 Feb 2018 10:58:49 +0000

https://api.github.com/users/danielbodart/keys

Will return

[
  {
    "id": 11647754,
    "key": "ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQDhoeoQelGjp0Oz3m64SV8AszPTyxlK1jJ8lYlW28WaSK5hu79BemIibekO06P2aA47vhI8hc4R90aqE0Ja1qG6A+jkezn2jeSzZZq7/dvoYFC0i96ljlJTKoOY5E0P4/259giTL1wtMbJrYfFutmVMBidHiOzA1dnLTrZthOuYGlanZL7oazfrz4Ht+ZdvoMoIFqU8yRnW/E903dn2DjH6Wk2dhsdP1QssbOtu3BNguhpcuVksrKw7hqrxCpiJW7Eo7z8yg6qP+KbzGF6G4UmA1/VDn5RFwNC7bvSShirYasEyAOrMHcUiCyvvvtT0a+SlsVfYbyH8wm5Ci38D9HK1"
  },
  {
    "id": 26992755,
    "key": "ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQDJDZbFgT04IDx5SECPFnHlJfwq/aHkhGr2sgSl0gqo3fOy48du/DPy4VH5cAk0qiLbT8dfzgMmkQm8EourUidZHORlbfbzzptMhWnbwEQbfXBuVyVa1Us5MV6Y0IV0TDOjNIALi6z3QTqJPtoOOfuRnDoumGCnl7bqxaKNrreoVm2vc7ep6yKuBR9HqDBJ6cN6KZ08IYFWjora1CscwsKC2EP6LWcnLsLVh2x4ZgJI0mDtnQ8hHedWmvQGhcyctKg1WdtcrrsVQESwlwDCiEVK9MypThYdZfVhh8d0JTApw37+QVkDW/oQeSMkKEyfss3wuOCCoGiJmurwM18Q/6V7"
  }
]

Should return them in the same order as https://github.com/settings/keys

Ubuntu Theme - Arc or Materia

Tue, 06 Feb 2018 14:59:20 +0000

# Install Arc soft fork
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fossfreedom/arc-gtk-theme-daily
sudo apt-get install arc-theme
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme 'Arc-Dark'

# Materia
sudo apt install materia-gtk-theme
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme 'Materia-dark-compact'

# https://github.com/daniruiz/flat-remix
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:daniruiz/flat-remix
sudo apt-get install flat-remix
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface icon-theme 'Flat-Remix-Blue-Dark'

Ubuntu Bash Git Branch Prompt!

Wed, 31 Jan 2018 09:04:22 +0000

# Git branch in prompt.
parse_git_branch() {
    git branch 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e 's/* \(.*\)/\1/'
}

export PS1="${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\W\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[32m\]\$(parse_git_branch)\[\033[00m\]\$ "

This is compatible with the default colour prompt in Ubuntu 16.04, put this in you ~/.bashrc.

Original version (non Ubuntu specific)

5 digit remote code for Sony BDP-S370

Tue, 08 Aug 2017 10:57:18 +0000

This worked with a cheap Phillips universal remote: 51029

Bitmain's new payment system is broken for LTC/L3+ miner. Support just say wait

Fri, 23 Jun 2017 06:02:59 +0000

UPDATE: Bitmain did eventually respond and fix mine and others orders but it took 8 days without any response in between.

Quite a few people have recently purchased L3+ miners using LTC. (Previous orders using BTC have worked fine). Bitmain are taking the money but not updating the order status.

Their support is not responding to tickets apart from just saying please wait longer (it’s been 4 days for me)

How to disable click on a Label with just CSS

Wed, 08 Mar 2017 11:34:17 +0000

pointer-events:none;
display:block;

Display block is required if the label contains other block level elements.

Send data via UPD or TCP without Netcat on Linux/Mac

Thu, 09 Jun 2016 14:29:39 +0000

I only just found out about this…

# Send data via TCP to host 127.0.0.1 port 12201
echo "hello" >/dev/tcp/127.0.0.1/12201

# Send data via UDP to host 127.0.0.1 port 12201
echo "hello" >/dev/udp/127.0.0.1/12201

Now is there a way to listen via the same /dev/tcp|udp end point?

Rebuilding FFmpeg with NVENC and AAC on Ubuntu

Tue, 07 Jun 2016 21:11:42 +0000

This mini guide will show you how to rebuild the exact version of FFmpeg that comes with your version of Ubuntu and just add support for NVidia GPU encoding via the NVENC API and ACC via libfdk_aac.


# Download and unzip the NVIDIA Video Codec SDK from https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-video-codec-sdk
wget https://developer.nvidia.com/video-sdk-601
unzip nvidia_video_sdk_6.0.1.zip

# Copy the headers files from the SDK so FFmpeg can find them
sudo cp nvidia_video_sdk_6.0.1/Samples/common/inc/*.h /usr/local/include/

# Make sure "Source code" is enabled in System Settings... -> Software & Updates
# Download the build dependencies for FFmpeg
sudo apt-get build-dep ffmpeg

# Install libfdk_aac
sudo apt-get install libfdk-aac-dev

# Download the source for the exact version of FFmpeg you already have installed (not as root)
apt-get source ffmpeg

# Go into the ffmpeg source you just downloaded
cd ffmpeg-2.8.6

# Find out the exact command the ffmpeg was originally built with
ffmpeg -buildconf

# Copy the single line "configuration:" and pass it to ".configure" but add "--enable-nonfree --enable-nvenc --enable-libfdk-aac" on the end
# Mine looks like this:
./configure --prefix=/usr --extra-version=1ubuntu2 --build-suffix=-ffmpeg --toolchain=hardened --libdir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu --incdir=/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu --cc=cc --cxx=g++ --enable-gpl --enable-shared --disable-stripping --disable-decoder=libopenjpeg --disable-decoder=libschroedinger --enable-avresample --enable-avisynth --enable-gnutls --enable-ladspa --enable-libass --enable-libbluray --enable-libbs2b --enable-libcaca --enable-libcdio --enable-libflite --enable-libfontconfig --enable-libfreetype --enable-libfribidi --enable-libgme --enable-libgsm --enable-libmodplug --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libopus --enable-libpulse --enable-librtmp --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libshine --enable-libsnappy --enable-libsoxr --enable-libspeex --enable-libssh --enable-libtheora --enable-libtwolame --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libwavpack --enable-libwebp --enable-libx265 --enable-libxvid --enable-libzvbi --enable-openal --enable-opengl --enable-x11grab --enable-libdc1394 --enable-libiec61883 --enable-libzmq --enable-frei0r --enable-libx264 --enable-libopencv --enable-nonfree --enable-nvenc --enable-libfdk-aac

# Now build it
make

# And finally install it over the original
sudo make install

Detect Packet loss between you and a destination

Mon, 21 Mar 2016 11:58:35 +0000

mtr bodar.com

Docker Hub Automated Build Link (GitHub / BitBucket)

Sun, 13 Mar 2016 14:00:12 +0000

https://hub.docker.com/add/automated-build/github/

Just because it’s hard to find and seem to break all the time in their docs!

Current Bash script directory

Mon, 07 Mar 2016 15:52:46 +0000

DIR=`dirname $(readlink -f $0)`

Linking Nvidia GPU temperature with a motherboard PWM fan in Linux

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 06:57:48 +0000

So I have a closed loop water cooler on my GPU and I replaced the stock single speed fan with two Noctua PWM fans (doing push/pull) connected to my motherboard. Even though the fans can be seen by lm_sensors and fancontrol the Nvidia GPU does not appear as it’s proprietary driver.

I knew nvidia-settings could be used to query the temperature (and the pump speed if you care) so I wrote a script to tie it all together:

Gnome Flashback - Title Bar not changing Theme

Mon, 08 Feb 2016 21:37:37 +0000

gsettings set org.gnome.metacity theme "Arc-Dark"
# For good measure...
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme 'Arc-Dark'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences theme 'Arc-Dark'

Window Decorations on Gnome Flashback not changing

No ERB/Ruby? Just use built in envsubst for templates

Wed, 03 Feb 2016 11:31:52 +0000

template.txt contains:

Hello ${NAME}

Then you could run:

export NAME=Dan
envsubst < template.txt

And the result would be “Hello Dan”

GitFlow hmmmm

Fri, 08 Jan 2016 15:39:57 +0000

After reading Atlassian worflow comparison and Vincent Driessen original post about GitFlow I have come to realise a couple of worrying things:

I incorrectly assumed GitFlow was the same thing as GitHub flow (fork project, do work then pull request)
This model appears to be popular but it seems totally archaic to me
- Requires lots of merging especially if you refactor at lot.
- Doesn’t do CD
- Requires lots of manual work
- Master and develop seem the wrong way around to me
- How many branches?
I use pull requests but don’t use feature branches which the Atlassian article implies requires feature branches

Pretty Print clipboard JSON

Wed, 06 Jan 2016 13:47:04 +0000

alias json='xclip -o | jq -C "." | less -r'

Ubuntu + Evolution + Exchange

Tue, 10 Nov 2015 10:53:21 +0000

By default Ubuntu does not install the EWS (Exchange Web Service) plugin for Evolution

sudo apt-get install evolution-ews

Then go into Evolution and choose the following settings:

Server Type: Exchange Web Service
Username: WINDOWS-DOMAIN\username
Host URL: https://webmail.company.com/owa/

Now click “Fetch URL” and it should ask you for a password and populate the Host and OAB Url correctly.

It will then try and launch Evolution but for me I had to restart for it to correctly work and then it asked me a couple of times for my windows password.

Launching 10second.build

Tue, 27 Oct 2015 12:45:32 +0000

Related to my QCon talk and original blog post, I’m soft launching my 10second.build project.

AMD ATI Graphics tearing in Chrome on Ubuntu 15.04

Wed, 14 Oct 2015 13:09:39 +0000

I had to switch to using proprietor AMD drivers as the open source ones don’t support audio via display port, but after switching, Chrome was tearing and just going completely black.

The chrome GPU page reported no hardware acceleration enabled.

So I went to Chrome Flags page and forced GPU acceleration and rasterisation

Override software rendering list -> Disabled
Enable GPU rasterization -> Force enabled on all layers
Smooth Scrolling Linux -> Enable

Previous Talks from WisdomStockholm speakers

Fri, 09 Oct 2015 14:03:15 +0000

Failures are opportunities in disguise - Johan Ernst Nilson

The Art of being Kind - Stefan Einhorn

Designing For Generosity - Nipun Mehta

What is Happiness? The Story of Bhutan - Dr Julia Kim

GDProblem - Lorenzo Fioramonti

Random Links from Wisdom Stockholm Part 2

Fri, 09 Oct 2015 13:16:21 +0000

The Limits to Growth
The Limits to Growth is a 1972 book about the computer simulation of exponential economic and population growth with finite resource supplies.

EdX
EdX offers free online courses and classes. Find the latest MOOC from the world’s best universities including MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, UT and others.

Impact Hub
Part innovation lab, part business incubator, and part community center, It offers a unique ecosystem of resources, inspiration, and collaboration opportunities to grow impact.

Random Links from WisdomStockholm Part 1

Fri, 09 Oct 2015 11:01:36 +0000

The Spirit Level (Book)
Why do we mistrust people more in the UK than in Japan? Why do Americans have higher rates of teenage pregnancy than the French? What makes the Swedish thinner than the Australians? The answer: inequality.

Kennedy on GDP
Great speech by Kennedy on what’s wrong with GDP as a measurement

The Lost Generation
Another moving video

Growing unequal - OECD report

Divided we stand - OECD report

Random links from Operability.IO conference Part 2

Wed, 30 Sep 2015 12:32:22 +0000

The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Have bought the book, looks very applicable to me at the moment.

War Games - Simulate worse case scenario
Haven’t found a good link for this with regards to IT

Service recovery paradox

Logging Stuff

FluentD
Loggly
LogEntries
PaperTrail

Monitoring
DataDog
Ruxit

Evans Phoenix - Structured Logging

Operational Features

More Unikernel
Haskell Unikernel
Rump Kernel

Security
Bug Crowd
Hacker One

Notary
Sign those curl | sh installs

GRSecurity patches to Linux

Random links from Operability.IO conference Part 1

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 14:38:55 +0000

These are my random links from the excellent 2 day conference Operability.IO. These are all links mentioned in different talks.

Worse is Better
Much to the shock of my collages I had not read about this before. Now I have!

OSV / Capstan
I’ve been using hyper.sh which is very similar except it uses Docker images inside the hypervisor. OSV looks very interesting especially the REST API for inspecting a running image.

MirageOS
This is a unikernel for compiling OCaml to Xen hypervisor

Bash Environment Variable Regex Replace

Tue, 15 Sep 2015 14:19:14 +0000


HOST=tcp://server:443/
echo ${HOST//tcp/https} # prints https://server:443/

How to connect to CloudFoundry's Loggregator directly via WebSockets

Wed, 22 Apr 2015 10:50:19 +0000

Firstly make sure you can run the standard CloudFoundry cli:

cf logs [APP_NAME]

Then turn on tracing:

export CF_TRACE=true

You will see a HTTP request and then it will switch to a secure WebSocket:

WEBSOCKET REQUEST: [2015-04-22T11:27:22+01:00]
GET /tail/?app=[APP_GUID] HTTP/1.1
Host: wss://loggregator.[YOUR_CF_DOMAIN]:443
Upgrade: websocket
Connection: Upgrade
Sec-WebSocket-Version: 13
Sec-WebSocket-Key: [HIDDEN]
Origin: http://localhost
Authorization: [PRIVATE DATA HIDDEN]

As you can see the Authorisation header is hidden, but fear not if look in ~/.cf/config.json under “AccessToken” thats all you need ("jq .AccessToken ~/.cf/config.json"). Combine this with wscat and you are good to go:

Yesterday's code...

Mon, 02 Feb 2015 10:35:10 +0000

Absolutely love this

Intel Graphics Installer on Ubuntu 14.10

Tue, 13 Jan 2015 09:52:26 +0000

So if you just downloaded the latest Intel Graphics Installer and just found that it doesn’t support Ubuntu 14.10.

Fear not you can trick it into installing by doing the following:

First backup

sudo cp /etc/lsb-release /etc/lsb-release.backup

Then edit the file

sudo nano /etc/lsb-release

And put the following in there

DISTRIB_RELEASE=14.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=trusty

This will allow the installer to proceed but you will also want to add the public key so updates work correctly:

wget --no-check-certificate https://download.01.org/gfx/RPM-GPG-KEY-ilg -O - | sudo apt-key add -
wget --no-check-certificate https://download.01.org/gfx/RPM-GPG-KEY-ilg-2 -O - | sudo apt-key add -

Original articles:
“Distribution not supported” when trying to install Intel Graphics Installer in 14.10
Intel Linux Graphic Drivers

Updated power savings settings for Samsung Series 9 (NP900X3C-A05UK) and Ubuntu 14.10

Sun, 21 Dec 2014 10:58:02 +0000

Here is my updated /etc/rc.localfor Ubuntu 14.10

#!/bin/sh -e

# Sleep so all services have started before we change settings
sleep 5

# Set Intel Audio to power save 
echo '1' > '/sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save';

# Temp disable ethernet port
modprobe -r r8169

# Wireless Power Saving for interface wlan0
iw dev wlan0 set power_save on

# VM writeback timeout
echo '1500' > '/proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs';

# Temp disable bluetooth
modprobe -r btusb

# Adjust backlight to start much lower
echo 800 > '/sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness'

# - NMI Watchdog (turned off)
echo 0 > '/proc/sys/kernel/nmi_watchdog';

# - SATA Active Link Power management
for i in `find /sys/class/scsi_host/*/link_power_management_policy`; do echo 'min_power' > $i; done;

# - USB Autosuspend (after 2 secs of inactivity)
for i in `find /sys/bus/usb/devices/*/power/control`; do echo auto > $i; done;
for i in `find /sys/bus/usb/devices/*/power/autosuspend`; do echo 2 > $i; done;

# - Device Power Management
echo 'auto' | tee /sys/bus/i2c/devices/*/power/control > /dev/null;
echo 'auto' | tee /sys/bus/pci/devices/*/power/control > /dev/null;

# - CPU Scaling (power saving scaling governor for all CPU's
for i in `find /sys/devices/system/cpu/*/cpufreq/scaling_governor`; do echo 'powersave' > $i; done;

exit 0

Getting the generic signature of a Java 8 lambda

Mon, 01 Sep 2014 21:02:03 +0000

Posted to StackOverflow

This is currently possible to solve but only in a pretty hackie way, but let me first explain a few things:

When you write a lambda, the compiler inserts a dynamic invoke instruction pointing to the LambdaMetafactory and a private static synthetic method with the body of the lambda. The synthetic method and the method handle in the constant pool both contain the generic type (if the lambda uses the type or is explicit as in your examples).

Where did I download that file from?

Mon, 21 Jul 2014 15:05:26 +0000

Assuming you used Chrome and a modern Linux file system…

$ attr -g xdg.origin.url Downloads/google-chrome-stable_current_x86_64.rpm 
Attribute "xdg.origin.url" had a 74 byte value for /home/dan/Downloads/google-chrome-stable_current_x86_64.rpm:
https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_x86_64.rpm

Compiling RunIt on Fedora 20

Wed, 30 Apr 2014 10:40:53 +0000

I had dowloaded RunIt. Then ran

package/compile

It errored with:

./compile runit.c
./load runit unix.a byte.a -static
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lc
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [runit] Error 1

To fix I needed to run

sudo yum install glibc-static

Bash function to switch Java versions

Thu, 27 Mar 2014 10:39:13 +0000

setjava() {
	if [ "$1" = "-q" ]; then
                local quiet=true
                shift
        fi

	local jdk=~/Applications/Java/jdk1.$1
        if [ ! -d "${jdk}" ]; then
                echo Jdk not found: ${jdk}
                return 1
        fi
	export JAVA_HOME=${jdk}
        export PATH=${JAVA_HOME}/bin:${PATH}
        if [ -z "${quiet}" ]; then
                java -version
        fi
}

export -f setjava

I have symlinks for all major versions of Java so that in IntelliJ and the command line I can upgrade minor Java versions just by changing the symlink:

How to "login to windows for first time" or change password from Linux

Wed, 26 Mar 2014 09:51:33 +0000

smbpasswd -r YOUR.DOMAIN.COM -U YOUR_USERNAME

This will mean you don’t need to find a windows box every time your password expires if you only use say Outlook webmail in a windows environment.

How to list Active Directory controllers from Linux command line

Tue, 25 Mar 2014 12:26:39 +0000

nslookup -type=srv _ldap._tcp.dc._msdcs.YOUR.DOMAIN.COM

Error: Invalid or corrupt jarfile

Mon, 17 Feb 2014 16:18:18 +0000

I was creating a Jar via the Java API’s and I couldn’t get it to run my main class:

 $ java -jar foo.jar
Error: Invalid or corrupt jarfile foo.jar

Running it via the class path worked fine:

 $ java -cp foo.jar Bar
Hello world!

So now I knew it was something to do with the manifest file but it wasn’t being caused by

The 65535 file limit (See Zip64 and Java 7 ).
The 72 bytes limit per line
Missing newline at the end of the Main-Class (Displays “no main manifest attribute, in foo.jar”
A blank line before Main-Class (Displays “Error: An unexpected error occurred while trying to open file foo.jar”

So after scratching my head for a while I tried comparing a working jar with the failing jar:

Shortcuts to position screens on ultra wide screens

Sat, 08 Feb 2014 11:49:10 +0000

left (Ctrl+Super+Left):

wmctrl -r :ACTIVE: -e 0,0,0,1280,1032

right (Ctrl+Super+Right):

wmctrl -r :ACTIVE: -e 0,1280,0,1280,1032

Git Config

Thu, 30 Jan 2014 09:03:09 +0000

My .gitconfig contains

[user]
        email = dan@bodar.com
        name = Daniel Worthington-Bodart
[color]
        ui = true
[alias]
        ci = commit
        co = checkout
        st = status -sb
        nuke = !git checkout -f && git clean -f -d
[push]
        default = current

Wat? Scala (Infix Operator Precedence and Associativity)

Thu, 05 Dec 2013 14:36:20 +0000

Nat Pryce pointed out these gems:

Scala Reference 6.12.3

Precedence:
“The precedence of an inﬁx operator is determined by the operator’s ﬁrst character.”

Associativity
“The associativity of an operator is determined by the operator’s last character”

This actually made me cry.

Wat? Scala

Wed, 04 Dec 2013 22:13:47 +0000

As I got quoted recently in “Scala — 1★ Would Not Program Again” I though I finally should write up a little Wat moment we had recently:

So does anyone know “wat” the following Scala code returns? (Value and Type)

List(1,2,3).toSet()

A Set<Int> containing 1,2,3?

Nope how about I give you a clue, there are 2 bugs in this one line:

A type inferencing bug where it chooses Set<Any>
A bug where the brackets are used for both calling the Set.apply method and constructing Unit, notice there no space between the “toSet” and “()”

Yup you guessed it, it returns:

Ubuntu 13.10 - Reset Gnome Panels

Sat, 16 Nov 2013 09:57:39 +0000

dconf reset -f /org/gnome/gnome-panel/
killall gnome-panel

Excel Integration the old school way: Web Queries (IQY) and Data Queries (DQY)

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 15:08:06 +0000

An alternative approach to just doing CSV export (which is fast and more cross platform/app) is to use web queries (.iqy files that point to fairly HTML) or data queries (.dqy extension but point to the DB)

Pro

Supports refreshing data / live data model
Web based integration
Very easy to do
Works with all versions since excel 97
They support linking back into you app via urls (IQY only) so we had cells that said edit that took you back to the web app.
Auto sorting, pivoting is a doddle

Cons

Ubuntu - Disable System Program Problem Detected

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 20:09:09 +0000

echo 'enabled=0' | sudo tee /etc/default/apport

Mercurial settings

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 12:50:56 +0000

[extensions]
hgext.bookmarks =
rebase =
hgext.purge =
color = 

[ui]
username = Daniel Worthington-Bodart <***@*****.com>

[merge-tools]
meld.executable = meld
meld.args = $local $base $other -o $output

[auth]
google.prefix = code.google.com
google.username = **********
google.password = **********
google.schemes = http https

[alias]
pull = pull --rebase
nuke = !$HG revert --all --no-backup ; $HG purge

Setting the Default Schema with Oracle JDBC Driver

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 11:19:24 +0000

If you use C3PO you can make it do it when it checks the connection out.

As properties:

c3p0.preferredTestQuery=alter session set current_schema=animals
c3p0.testConnectionOnCheckout=true

As Java code:

ComboPooledDataSource dataSource = new ComboPooledDataSource();
dataSource.setPreferredTestQuery("alter session set current_schema=animals");
dataSource.setTestConnectionOnCheckout(true);

Downside is this will happen every time the connection is taken out of the pool

If you are using a JDBC connection yourself you could just do:

Class.forName("oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver");
Connection connection = getConnection("jdbc:oracle:thin:@//server:1521/instance", "username", "password");
connection.createStatement().execute("alter session set current_schema=animals"));

I also posted it to StackOverflow

Why Functional Programming in Java is NOT Dangerous

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 22:13:24 +0000

This is a quick post in response to Elliotte Rusty Harold article titled Why Functional Programming in Java is Dangerous.

Lets look at the some of the points made:

Lazy evaluation
JIT / JavaC can’t optimise
Recursion

The example that Elliotte uses comes from Bob Martins article done in clojure

(take 25 (squares-of (integers)))

Lets show the same things written in Java with TotallyLazy (Disclaimer: I wrote it) :

range(1).map(squared).take(25);

You could write the same thing with most functional libraries for Java, as pretty much all of them have lazy Lists or lazy Sequences. In fact the clojure example is doing exactly the same thing: integers returns Seq. If you tried to make it return a PersistentList you would have exactly the same OutOfMemoryError exception.

Samsung Series 9 (NP900X3C-A05UK) Ubuntu/Linux: Wake up when I open the lid

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 17:59:38 +0000

So one of the last things that wasn’t perfectly working was coming out of suspend when I opened the lid. First thing you need to so is find the name of the LID switch:

ls /proc/acpi/button/lid/
LID0

Mine seems to be LID0 or LID1. You can then check it’s current state by doing:

cat /proc/acpi/button/lid/LID0/state
state:      open

Now all you need to do is add this to the wake up list

sudo -s
echo LID0 > /proc/acpi/wakeup

That’s it,

Samsung Series 9 (NP900X3C-A05UK) Ubuntu/Linux setup for power management and keybindings

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 08:35:32 +0000

UPDATE: Ubuntu 14.10 settings

Ubuntu 12.10 works pretty well out of the box (for me it was just power management and keybindings that needed work), see Ubuntu wiki if you have any other issues . Using powertop I was able to understand what needed doing. What follows are my settings:

/etc/rc.local

#!/bin/sh -e

# Temp disable ethernet port
modprobe -r r8169

# Disable wake up on lan if I do use ethernet port
ethtool -s eth2 wol d;

# Temp disable bluetooth
modprobe -r btusb

# Adjust backlight to start much lower
echo 11 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness

# - NMI Watchdog (turned off)
echo 0 > '/proc/sys/kernel/nmi_watchdog';

# - SATA Active Link Powermanagement
echo 'min_power' > '/sys/class/scsi_host/host0/link_power_management_policy';

# - USB Autosuspend (after 2 secs of inactivity)
for i in `find /sys/bus/usb/devices/*/power/control`; do echo auto > $i; done;
for i in `find /sys/bus/usb/devices/*/power/autosuspend`; do echo 2 > $i; done;

# - Device Power Management
echo auto | tee /sys/bus/i2c/devices/*/power/control > /dev/null;
echo auto | tee /sys/bus/pci/devices/*/power/control > /dev/null;

# - CPU Scaling (on demand scaling governor for all CPU's
for i in `find /sys/devices/system/cpu/*/cpufreq/scaling_governor`; do echo ondemand > $i; done;

exit 0

On the keybingings the only keys that didn’t work were some of the Fn Keys

Gnome 3 / GSettings Sucks: Export/Importing your Keyboard shortcuts

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 10:11:03 +0000

Previous to Gnome 3 I had a nice simple flat file for my keyboard settings, that I just unzipped into .gconf and all was good. Now Gnome is copying the very bad idea of a registry from Windows, you have go through the gsettings API or tool.

Locate the keyboard shortcut schema “org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings”

Now lets “export” them

gsettings list-recursively org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings > keybindings

Now unfortunately there does not appear to be a way to import that file, so I just hacked the file. Adding “gsettings set” to the front and quoting the values.
So

Blog Memory: Accessing Vigor 120 Modem when bridged with Buffalo WZR-HP-AG300H (DD-WRT)

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 19:26:49 +0000

I found this article http://ip6.com/projects/?p=363

So I just changed the IP address to match the default that the Vigor modem uses:

ifconfig eth1:1 192.168.2.9 netmask 255.0.0.0
iptables -I POSTROUTING -t nat -o eth1 -d 192.0.0.0/8 -j MASQUERADE

It’s not perfect but it’s a start.

My Speakerconf 2012 slides

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 21:55:14 +0000

http://presumptions.bodar.com/

My QCon Video is available here

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 08:38:02 +0000

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Crazy-Fast-Build-Times-or-When-10-Seconds-Starts-to-Make-You-Nervous

Meld and Mercurial 3 way Merge is Mental

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 08:29:55 +0000

By default Meld’s 3 way merge combined with Mercurial merges into the left panel. To make it merge into the middle panel add the following to .hgrc file

[merge-tools]
meld.executable = meld
meld.args = $local $base $other -o $output

My QCon talk...

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:16:40 +0000

Prezi
The original blog post / rant

TotallyLazy mentioned in "Functional Programming for Java Developers" book

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 14:24:48 +0000

In Chapter 6 “Where to go from here” on page 58 Dean references TotallyLazy for those not wanting to take the scala / clojure route.

java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.apache.log4j.FileAppender

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 11:34:16 +0000

Hopefully this will stop someone from wasting a day of their life…
If you pass in the following when you start your Java application:

java -Dlog4j.configuration=file:///some/path/log4j.properties

And that file contains a class that is not on the class path

log4j.appender.myAppender=biz.minaret.log4j.DatedFileAppender
log4j.rootLogger=error, myAppender

Then due to the log4j static initialisers you will not see an error for the class in question but instead:

Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.apache.log4j.FileAppender
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:202)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:307)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:248)

Unfortunately for me this was caused by a transitive dependency changing in Maven. Damn you Maven/Log4J

Crazy fast build times (Or when 10 seconds starts to make you nervous)

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 11:12:34 +0000

Firstly this is not just my effort but my team and organisation.
Secondly the usual rules apply, this is expert advise and what works for me will very probably cause your whole production stack to blow up and kill people.
Lastly this is long so skip to the bit you care about or come along and chat at QCon London 2012

Well lets answer the obvious questions:
“Can this work for real apps or just fun stuff?” Yes real apps old and new.
“Does it need to be greenfield?” No but it takes a long time (months) to get builds down on old codebases.

99 Bottles of Beer in Totallylazy

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 09:18:02 +0000

import static com.googlecode.totallylazy.Runnables.printLine;
import static com.googlecode.totallylazy.lambda.Lambdas.n;
import static com.googlecode.totallylazy.lambda.Lambdas.λ;
import static com.googlecode.totallylazy.numbers.Numbers.decrement;
import static com.googlecode.totallylazy.numbers.Numbers.range;

public class BottlesOfBeer {
    // Run with -javaagent:enumerable-java-0.4.0.jar -cp:totallylazy-598.jar:enumerable-java-0.4.0.jar
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        range(99, 0).map(λ(n, verse(n))).each(printLine("%s of beer on the wall.\n"));
    }

    private static String verse(Number number) {
        if (number.equals(0))
            return "No more bottles of beer on the wall, no more bottles of beer.\n" +
                   "Go to the store and buy some more, 99 bottles";
        return String.format("%s of beer on the wall, %1$s of beer.\n" +
            "Take one down and pass it around, %s", bottles(number), bottles(decrement(number)));
    }

    private static String bottles(Number number) {
        if (number.equals(0)) return "no more bottles";
        if (number.equals(1)) return "1 bottle";
        return number + " bottles";
    }
}

Slow TrackPoint on Dell Precision M6500 under Ubuntu 10.10

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 00:12:32 +0000

If you have a Dell Precision M6500 with a Synaptic TouchPad + TrackPoint) (rather than an ALPS version) and you are running Ubuntu 10.10 you may find the TrackPoint / TrackStick / Nipple is being detected as a standard PS/2 Generic Mouse and this is causing the movement to be very slow.

You can check this by typing:

xinput list

If you see something like this:

Virtual core pointer                    	id=2	[master pointer  (3)]
↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer              	id=4	[slave  pointer  (2)]
↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad              	id=11	[slave  pointer  (2)]
↳ PS/2 Generic Mouse                      	id=12	[slave  pointer  (2)]

As you can see the TrackPoint is not listed and as such you wont see it in any of the configuration screens.

Off topic - a very addictive little game for Windows, Mac and Linux...

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:38:50 +0000

http://www.hemispheregames.com/osmos/

Very chilled out…

Crazy Talk - Holistic Web Testing - Some forces...

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:36:30 +0000

So given the above, the forces I am trying to balance are

Make it easy for people to do the right thing, hard to do the wrong thing.
Make it valuable (Finds more bugs than false alarms)
Make it resilient (Allows me to refactor like the true crazy person I am)
Make it fast (Magnify it’s value rather deminishing it)
Make it good enough (Give me enough confidence to do more crazy stuff but don’t become dogmatic)
Allow people to do what they are good at

Next I’ll talk about how the default setup I use to do, in-memory, out of container testing.

Crazy Talk - Holistic Web Testing - Whys and Values...

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:22:35 +0000

Now for some web specific whys/values I do the in-memory acceptance testing…

Semantic Html is my golden hammer
Progressive enhancement is my swiss army knife
I love JavaScript but try to never write any but if i must I make sure it’s generic. I try very hard to make sure no else writes any either and if they do I just refactor it till it deletes itself.
I love AHAH and barely tolerate AJAX / JSON
REST is my natural state not something I read about

All of these forces / values / beliefs drive me to solve the problem of web testing in a very different approach from most people. It is about an alternative holistic approach to web architecture, testing and productivity.

Crazy Talk - Holistic Web Testing - Some values...

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 12:20:59 +0000

(Previously on TWSDEV)

As the “crazy” guy behind the in-memory / out-of-container acceptance testing on a number of java/.net projects, I think it’s important I explain to people the “Why” and the forces / constraints I am trying to balance. But first I want to quickly lay down my beliefs and values:

I believe in testing as much as possible (UI included)
I believe tests must add more value than they cost (Measure it!)
I value tests that are fast and are resilient to change more than tests that take a long time to run and are brittle.
When refactoring a feature I value acceptances tests and integration test over unit tests.
When designing/exploring a new interface / object interaction I value unit tests over acceptance tests to help guide me.
I believe that QA’s are so much better at finding bugs than DEVs but worse at writing code / abstractions

A fan with no blades?

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 01:20:31 +0000

Wow Dyson have done it again: http://www.dyson.co.uk/technology/airmultiplier.asp

Interestingly they talk about the fact they had to do “Hundreds of iterative tests” to get the design right:

http://www.dyson.co.uk/insidedyson/default.asp#Air_Mult_Tech_Dev

The Crazy Talk Series - An introduction to an alternative web architecture and construction method

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 09:22:19 +0000

If you have met me or worked with me in the last 15 years or so, you will know that I am pretty mad about the web as a platform, HTTP as a protocol and HTML as a state engine. Add to this the last 6 years or so practising agile techniques while building highly scalable websites and you tend to find that I have fairly unusual views in the field about how to build and architect web applications.

Google Chromium Team rocks!

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 03:49:08 +0000

So I noticed an issue with Google Chromium and it not updating the cached entry with new headers on a HTTP 304 response. So I logged the issue last weekend and bang! 6 days later the issue is resolved and I have a new version of the browser on my desktop.

Not only was the process super fast but I watched the fix being discussed then applied. I looked at the code change and the unit tests being updated all as it happened. Needless to same I am very impressed.

Using a fullscreen editor to update my blog

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 03:36:25 +0000

So after rediscovering the distraction free editors to write reports, it seemed mad not to use the same environment to update my blog. I really like the fact that the editor only supports plain text and didn’t want to reduce the readability of the plain text by having lots of unneeded markup all over the place.

What I needed was a simple tool to convert my semi structured text into html and then I could just upload that to my blog. Ideally the tool would be a command line tool so I could easily automate the two steps.

Fullscreen Editors

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 12:27:04 +0000

So many moons ago I was reading about a fullscreen editor for Mac called WriteRoom. The basic premise is that it is a very limited editor that actively aims to block out all distractions from writing. It achieves this by:

Running fullscreen (so no desktop distractions)
Supporting plain text only (so no styling distractions)
No toolbar
No menubar
No statusbar
A few simple shortcuts to do what you need

Anyway I have been running Ubuntu for a number of years, and had often ran Nano fullscreen in a Gnome Terminal but was curious what might now be available. So a few moments googling and this was the list:

Html Contracts - How semantic html can help your cross functional team

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:48:45 +0000

One of the pain points we see on web projects is the divide between client side and back end development. This pain might show itself in a number of ways:

Small changes in the HTML cause lots of tests to fail
Small changes to visual layout require large changes to the HTML which then causes the above
Developers say the work is done but it can’t be signed off as it looks terrible or doesn’t work in certain browsers
CSS or QAs want developer to add ID attributes to lots of elements so they can target them more easily

Now ideally all your developers should be poly skilled and understand javascript / CSS / HTML just as well as they understand java / C# / ruby but often the reality is not quite so rosy.
So if we are working in a world where we don’t have the ideal but still need to get the job done what can we do to reduce the pain?

So how about truly private fields in C#?

Thu, 21 May 2009 02:58:55 +0000

UPDATE: Jim pointed out that you can access the field via reflecting over the delegate. (See comment) Damn this is a bit like how java does anonymous access to private fields of the parent class. I wonder if you could use this for some nasty security violations as people tend to think local variables are safe from reflection.

After the crazy !@$% with JavaScript yesterday I said to Christian, I bet we can do this with C# lambda. So the challenge was set….

Truly private fields in JavaScript

Thu, 21 May 2009 02:50:55 +0000

So I was chatting with Christian Blunden about JavaScript, and he asked if it was possible to have private fields in JavaScript.

Now the language doesn’t have a key word but I knew that you could use function scoping to achieve the same affect as I had seen the same thing done using the E programming language.

So after 5 minutes here is what we came up with:


function Purse(money) {
	this.getMoney = function() {
		return money;
	}
	this.setMoney = function(newMoney) {
		money = newMoney;
	}
}

This will create a truely private field that can only be accessed via the methods.

Pairing with Resharper (Switching Keyboard Layouts in Visual Studio)

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 05:01:53 +0000

So at my current client we have a bunch of Devs that are fairly recent converts to Resharper and a bunch of old hats who know IntelliJ or have used Resharper since Version 1. We are pairing but we know different keyboard layouts and don’t want to decrease productivity by making one lot relearn the other layout. So with some searching around I found out how to create new layouts and using a simple macro switch between them.

Lean and the fishing industry

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 04:06:54 +0000

This could be just verbal diarrhea, but I was watching Autum Watch last night and it struck me that the issues with over fishing and the fishing industry as a whole have a lot to do with all the waste inherent with manufacturing processes that use economies of scale to maximise profits. There is waste all over the industry:

The wrong fish get caught and killed then thrown overboard
Same again for fish the wrong size
Then fish go off or get damaged as they try and increase efficiency by doing bigger catches
Then fish don’t get sold because of changes / floods in the market (another trawler comes in at the same time)

I’m sure there are a lot more and I’d love to know the ratio of fish that make it to one’s plate with number caught. Anyway people tend to think that the only alternative is some tree hugging world where you actually catch the fish yourself. Toyota have shown that there are alternatives that are highly profitable, consumer driven and extremely effective. So the question is could Lean be applied to the fishing industry? Could we have a pull system? And what size buffers or queues would we need for it to work?

The implicit back link

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 03:52:54 +0000

A little while back I was chatting to someone about SEO and the power of outgoing links. In the bad old days your client would ask you to build a web site that had no links leaving the site or put some horrible confirmation page asking you that you are leaving!

Whats interesting here is that by not having any external links you are reducing your interconnections with other sites, and so reducing your ranking in search engines. Not only do most search engines allow you to search for linked pages but each additional connection in either direction will increase the weighting that matching symbols (words) in those documents have the same implied semantics. This is just like a neural network where each additional connection re-enforces the bond further increasing the chance of a pattern match.

Plaxo revisited

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 03:32:03 +0000

So I got some helpful feedback on my last post from John McCrea who is VP of Marketing for Plaxo. So I logged back into Plaxo and had a little hunt around and after about 5-10 minutes found my addresses.

My initial reaction was Doh! what an idiot I was, but then after a few minutes reflection I started to think about user interface design and intuitive learning. When I showcase new functionality to my users, they will often give feedback about how easy a feature is to use or find. Often as developers or familiar users of a system we don’t see that something might not be named or located in the most natural place.

Early morning rant...

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 23:36:20 +0000

I’ve been an occasional user of Plaxo (just the address book) for the last 3 years, using it to keep a few important addresses up to date. Anyway today was the first time I had used it since they launched Pulse, and guess what all my contacts have gone!

Now that’s not very clever for a social networking site and reminds me what Duncan Cragg would say about Web 2.0 and making sure all you data is public, readable in some open format and ideally distributed over the interweb. If fact this really goes back to why “data bases” were created in the first place: data lives longer than applications: well not in Plaxo’s case.

Gave my first public presentation...

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 12:17:53 +0000

Well Kiran and I both gave our first public presentations at the OverTheAir mobile conference at the Imperial College.

Kiran talked about Agile & Mobile development and I talked about Progressive Enhancement

More Ubuntu 7.10 notes for Dell D630

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 12:03:06 +0000

So the wifi seemed to work pretty well out of the box but I noticed after prolonged use it would just suddenly freeze and the only way to make it come back was to reboot. (You couldn’t even reload the module or restart networking stack).

You can tell if this will be a problem for you by running iwconfig: if you have lots of Invalid misc errors and the signal and noise levels are fixed at -60dBm then you will want to switch from the ipw3945 module to the iwl3945.

Notes on installing Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 64bit edition on a Dell D630

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 16:35:48 +0000

I had to start the install CD in safe VGA mode and have not got the slash to display yet.

To get sound to work you don’t need to recompile your kernel or go back to an earlier version just follow method G one this page:

Gutsy Intel HD Audio Controller

sudo aptitude install linux-backports-modules-generic

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base

In the editor, add the following line at the end of the file:

What I would love to do

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 06:34:11 +0000

Smart Contracts
http://www.erights.org/smart-contracts/index.html
http://www.waterken.com/dev/IOU/Design/

We may end up getting RESTful smart contracts for free due to all the goodness in the current design. This could lead (my client).com to an unheard of level of security and possible make it the most high profile public implementation of smart contracts to date. Watch this space

Auto Save Enhancement

We currently auto save on page transition but for JavaScript clients we could do this on any change. Imagine a world were your browser behaves like IntelliJ and you never loose any data you type in.

What we will be doing in the future

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 06:33:42 +0000

Decoupling Resource selection from Representation selection in our Urls

This will allow resources (domain objects/documents) to be selected (think SQL WHERE clauses) and presenters re-used by the client editors without specific coding by developers. So a url like “/video/skins/latest” could return all videos tagged with skins or possibly any resource tagged with video and skins. What we are aiming for is totally dynamic / fluid urls with uses we never imagined.

What I have been doing for the last few months

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 06:20:32 +0000

So I thought I would start my first post with what I have been working on for the last couple of months. Naturally I have removed all references to my current client.

What we have built already:

RESTful Web Site and Web Components

So just like REST exposed your web service api/end points on to url and embraced simple message / state transfer we are going a step further and making all our web components (think html widgets) be exposed by an addressable url. Composition of components can then be done done either server side or client side. And is therefore not language specific so one could compose a widget that comprised of other widgets written in ruby, python and C# etc. In fact the widgets don’t even need to be on our server or written by us - think mashups on steroids.

Finally setup my technical blog

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 06:14:11 +0000

Okay, after 4 years of people asking me, I finally setup a technical blog.