www.lewiz.org

.. an exciting place to be!

Having just skimmed through the June-October 2006 status report there are three very exciting new developments:

• Nss-LDAP and nsswitch updates.  FreeBSD are writing a new nss-ldap PAM module, which is good to hear.  As part of the work nsswitch is being updated: one of the changes is a nameservice caching daemon.  The aim is to get nss-ldap included as part of world, which is good news all round.  Maybe passwd(1) will finally be able to talk the LDAP lingo!
• DTrace support is coming along nicely.  From what I understand Sun have been a big help with this project, which is also good news.
• ZFS.  zvol is supposedly complete and now that Sun have open sourced the test routines work will hopefully speed up.  ZFS is something that just can’t be ignored: sure, it has its teething problems, but these will go away with time and we’ll be left with a highly redundant and reliable filing system.

FreeBSD 7 should certainly be interesting.  In terms of “features” it lacks behind Solaris, maybe, but with DTrace and ZFS I think it will give Linux a run for its money.

The guy is a genius.  Or, at least… whoever writes the lyrics and composes all of the stuff is.

Great stuff.  Get Swinging The Blues, Dancing the Ska now :)

Play.com.  And you’re done!

I am incredibly surprised that Microsoft won’t be supporting MSN Music purchases on their Zune media player.

BBC News are carrying the article, which suggests that not even replacement files will be provided.

Logos from all of the Metro/Subway systems I’ve used:

I was tasked with updating the database that backs our lab tools about two weeks ago.  The work was relatively straightforward: update hostnames in the database so they used the DNS suffix, rather than NIS+.  For example: a host v4v-t1000a-gmp03.eu (a T1000 in our lab) should become known as v4v-t1000a-gmp03.uk.  Obviously the suffixes were different for the various labs: some .singapore, .germany, etc.

All in all things went very smoothly: I tested the queries out some time and and then ran them on the production Sybase database at 7PM today.  A bit of a last minute update needed to be incorporated: changing the name of a logfile associated with each host to use the new hostname.  Again, this went fairly well.

With that out of the way I’m fairly sure this was my longest day of work so far.  In order for me to catch the bus I leave the house at 7:40AM, and I’m taking the view (for now) that if I drive to work, I may as well leave at the same time.  At this time in the morning, the time between leaving home and walking into the office is about ten minutes: i.e. I get to work at about 7:45.  This leaves plenty of time for me to mess around, eat some toast, make fun of Chris, read and reply to email, etc. before the real work begins.

I left more or less on time today, which was good.  But obviously with the database changes scheduled for 7PM and taking about 45 minutes (including plenty of time for checking things were working before committing the transaction), not to mention sending out reminder emails to the engineers around the world… my day was quite a bit longer.

It’s odd really, but I can’t really concentrate on anything when I get home.  I could sit down and watch a film, but it’s not always possible to find the time in the living room (sofas beat desk chairs in comfyness tests :).  So most times I just sit about and do… well, nothing.

A project is what I need.  I enjoy nothing better than a good project: not too difficult, but definitely not too easy (I just think “I can do this by doing x, y and z” and promptly lose interest) either.  If only I could come up with a good one to work on during my “work from home day” due to start in the new year…

Not sure how, exactly, but I had the idea to go out and watch a film this evening.  I checked out what was on at MovieTickets.com and settled on Borat—pretty much only because there was nothing else.

I have to admit I was pretty impressed with it—although it pokes maybe a little too much fun the way of the Jews, Christians and the Kazakhstani people themselves.  Especially the Jews.

On the way I had a little car trouble: if I sit at a set of traffic lights with my foot on the clutch sometimes the engine revs will vary quite a bit, sometimes even cutting out.  Not an encouraging sign for a “new” car.  I spoke to my Dad and he seems to think it could be the battery on the way out (it’s very very cold here right now).  I’m going to try and stick it out until February, when I’m due for a service.

I’ve yet to decide whether to catch the bus or drive to work tomorrow.  In fact, I’ve yet to decide what to do at the weekend.  Now I can get about, the possibilities are quite literally endless!

It’s been quite a bit of time since my last entry.  A lot has happened.

Obviously the “big thing” is that I’ve now got a little car.  It’s a nice blue car.  A 1.2L Fiat Punto with a 53 plate (it’s actually an early 2004 car though).

I headed home early on Friday afternoon and made the lengthy train journey to Manchester Piccadilly, where I had a great evening out at the cinema (The Departed) and then on to Pizza Express with Vlad.  Saturday morning I’d hoped to make a quick trip into the CompSoc office to set up a new UPS we bought on eBay, but unfortunately I couldn’t get into the building out of hours (what with not being a student any longer and all).

In the end Vlad and I spent the next couple of hours chatting over a couple of drinks, before we headed to New Medlock House (where I lived in my final year) to meet my Dad and Uncle, who had driven the car from Liverpool.  I dropped Vlad off and then drove back to my parents’ house near Leeds—the M62 isn’t exactly an ideal first drive.

Didn’t do too much at home—out for a meal and then visited my grandparents on Sunday morning.  I set off pretty early on Sunday afternoon for the drive back to Blackwater—again a pretty interesting first “solo” drive.  Fortunately I had no problems or diversions, thanks to the wonders of TomTom!

I’ve been travelling in to work on the bus for the past week and a bit.  I got pretty annoyed with James when he started rushing me one morning, so I decided I’d just catch the bus instead.  For the most part this is great: I have to get up pretty damn early (my alarm goes off at 7AM now, instead of 8AM; but I always spend an extra ten minutes in bed waking up), walk the ten minutes to the bus and then enjoy the 30 minute drive to Sun by reading a book.  On the way back it goes more or less direct to Blackwater station, which is about 15 minutes, at the most.

So, today I drove myself to work for the first time: I was up at the same time as normal (for the bus), so in the end I got to work a little before 8AM to give myself some time to sort out an engineer’s V880 before a big shake up in the GMP02 lab.  The drive (both ways) went pretty well, really.  I had a drive around on Monday evening for the hell of it, but got pretty annoyed with myself for driving too fast: not speeding, but going around roundabouts and corners too quickly.  It wasn’t so fast that I was about to lose control and crash; it just wasn’t a comfortable maneuver in general.  Fortunately everything felt much smoother on my commute today: it’s obviously because I’m getting more used to the car’s quirks :)

I downloaded (illegally, if it matters) a Jack Johnson CD called In Between Dreams and decided almost immediately (30s into track one) that it was a CD that I wanted to have.

I headed over to play.com, searched for Jack Johnson, picked two of the three albums he has (my decision of which two was made even easier by the fact that one was not in stock), selected buy and proceeded through the checkout process.

Total time between starting track one and completing the transaction: easily under two minutes.

If this doesn’t show off both the highs and lows of the Internet, I don’t know what does.

I’ve seen some really amazing films in the last week or so. Kiki’s Delivery Service was awesome, and just now I’ve finished watching Yojiro Takita’s When the last sword is drawn. Absolutely superb.

Set at the beginning of the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate it details the life of a samurai forced to desert his clan to provide for his family.

Definitely one to watch.

Woo! Here’s a photo of my new car:

Not sure exactly when I’ll be getting it… but it looks cool to me :) It’s a 2004 1.2L Punto with five doors. Says it has twin airbags, ESP, engine immobiliser and even electric windows with central locking. No air con, but that’s not a big problem :)

I’m just waiting for my parents to trundle it down to Camberley so I can drive it about. Should be fun!