s5h.net

Some things just work really well. Flac/lame and mpg123 certainly do.

flac -d 03.\ The\ White\ Stripes\ -\ My\ Doorbell.flac -c | lame - - | mpg123 -

How quaint is that?

Bash is pretty awesome too of course, sometimes I think that bash, vim, mutt and screen are the heart of UNIX. Sure, the system would work without the above, but would it be the same? Windows would work the same without explorer, geoshell for example can cater for most of it, but it wouldn’t be the same. Remove office (outlook) and you’ve lost a large portion of it’s compatibility, remove rdesktop and again there’s other parts of functionality that people are accustomed to.

I had some fun today making a USB boot stick for my Advent 4211. Previously I thought the usb-creator from Ubuntu would have done this ok, but I think it’s only capable of making other Ubuntu boot images.

Anyway, the article on the Debian page does detail the process quite well and I have some working boot media.

Back on Jan 19th when my server died, I had to replace it with something quickly to get natted internet working quickly. Unfortunately the device which I got doesn’t allow for adding DHCP parameters so TFTP booting a debian image isn’t an option.

Well, the guy at Jessops left a memory card in the camera by mistake and threw in a remote control for gratis.

I didn’t get such a good deal on it like with the canon g10, but I did get a 70-300mm lens so that I can do that nature photography that I’ve been getting interested in. All in all, bag, d60, lens, less than a grand. Should I want something better in a few years then there’s a good chance that nikon will still be using the same fittings that they’re using now.

Spend a bit of time in Newbury with the camera straight after buying it and wondered around a bit to take photos of stuff. More getting used to it than to get something that’s impressive.

Yesterday however, before going to town I took a photo of a misc plant with the g10 and a close up filter. Looks nice to me, your views might differ.

Today’s picture (might have to remove this - not sure though).

and this one too perhaps

a view of Newbury Park Way

and something going on at the band stand in Victoria Park

Spend the weekend mostly working on and Apache module. It’s great fun getting this to work how I want and it feels like I’m making some good progress. Maybe it will change to world? Unlikely but I’ll give it a shot.

Do you like spiders?

After the latest phishing scams on facebook involving the .at domains, the next generation of the same scam seem to be using .be domain names.
The .be domain names that ve come to light so far are but not limited to

whiteflash.be
goldbase.be
sweeter.be
bestspace.be

These domains are all operating out of the same ip at 211.95.78.98.
This ip temporarily blocked the sites but the .be sites seem to be up and running again. Facebook is yet to curb these links as of 0130hrs IST, May 25th, 2009.

The latest message format is

Look at this
wwww whiteflash be

Anyway, there is no need to click on any of such .be or erstwhile .at links or put in your facebook username and passwords.

If you accidentally did that, then change you facebook password immediately. If it has already been changed by the rogue malware (there have been reports to this effect), then you can use the lost password link to reset your facebook password.

This article about fonts caught my eye today:

http://hivelogic.com/articles/view/top-10-programming-fonts

Well, here’s a nice photo of an ant, well hope you think so too. If you know how to make ants stay still, without putting sugar in the picture please let me know.

Some things make me angry. How about this. Nokia PC Suite, moving messages to archive folders, rather than just change the FAT position of the message, it has to copy the entire message to another folder.

Philips electrical goods, comprising five parts, guarantee for two years, most parts smaller than a AA battery. No bag to contain it all, packaging is throw away.

Grinds my gears.

Well, not much is going on tonight. It’s been rather quiet. There’s some crunchy tunes on Tim Westwood’s show, he might talk his mouth off quite a bit but his record budget is going well.

Here’s a picture from Saturday taken in Reading:

Here is something from today - ants again but perhaps from a better perspective:

Minimalist window managers rock. Why can’t every X11 application developer implement the –geometry option? I just got my .xinit sorted!

/usr/bin/urxvt -sl 65535 -ip -tint grey -sh 40 -highlightColor blue -fg white -cursorColor2 blue -geometry 80x24+0+0 &
/usr/bin/urxvt -sl 65535 -ip -tint grey -sh 40 -highlightColor blue -fg white -cursorColor2 blue -geometry 80x24+498+0 &

/usr/bin/urxvt -sl 65535 -ip -tint grey -sh 40 -highlightColor blue -fg white -cursorColor2 blue -geometry 80x24+0+636 &
/usr/bin/urxvt -sl 65535 -ip -tint grey -sh 40 -highlightColor blue -fg white -cursorColor2 blue -geometry 80x24+498+636 &


Perhaps I’ve over stressed the point in the above code snippet, but if I want something to be located somewhere on the screen each time I start X, then why deviate from the norm and ignore the –geometry?

Not much to post today, but here is an interesting view of something you might see every day:

Well, running out of things to photograph in the park now. Since the kids are back at school I think I’m free to make better use of the space, so one sunny day I’ll try and capture the whole delights of the park. For now, here’s some rather mundane photos. Things like framing, composition, and orientation could all be improved.