Adam Monsen » Fun

Auto-update bind 9 zone database serial numbers

adam — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:45:46 +0000

This post is helpful for configuring emacs to automatically update the “Serial” in bind zone databases. I wanted to do the same in Vim, but the solutions in the comments of that post didn’t work for me. Here’s a version that does. It’s yours for free under the Affero GPL v3 (or any later version, at your preference):

function s:BindZoneSettings()
    function s:UpdateBindZoneSerial(date, num)
        if (strftime("%Y%m%d") == a:date)
            return a:date . a:num+1
        endif
        return strftime("%Y%m%d") . '01'
    endfunction
 
    function s:ReplaceBindZoneSerialLine()
        :%s/\(2[0-9]\{7}\)\([0-9]\{2}\)\(\s*;\s*Serial\)/\=UpdateBindZoneSerial(submatch(1), submatch(2)) . submatch(3)/g
    endfunction
 
    autocmd BufWritePre /etc/bind/db.* call ReplaceBindZoneSerialLine()
endfunction

Get Back at those Fat Cats!

adam — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 22:15:51 +0000

If you have an iPhone or iPad, check out the game Fat Cats!

Does the FSF need better top-down social skills?

adam — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 03:36:06 +0000

Larry Cafiero and Joe Brockmeier are two big voices for technological freedom. They’re both pretty fired up about RMS’s f-you epitaph of Jobs.

Generally you want the figurehead of a public foundation to be, uh, attractive. Intellectually, maybe even physically. Right? Not only does the cause itself have to make sense, these people need to attract other people to their cause. And they usually “say the right things”, smile, wear a suit, whatever. But I always thought these requirements only applied to other causes (besides Free Software).

Certainly RMS lacking those traits didn’t keep me from FLOSS. I heard about RMS and the proprietary printer a while back, and that’s all it took to get me hooked on FLOSS. I could identify immediately because I write software, and proprietary code is a pain. His cause just makes sense, even if he doesn’t. But I’ve been justifying his abnormal behavior because, well, he started something new! Something important. He knew it was important, and dedicated his life to this thing that many, many folks never even know exists. Something that affects all our lives, every day, more and more. Software must support our Freedom, or we are not free.

So he won me over, but I’m a nerd. I’m used to eccentrics in my field. Truth wins, period. And I still don’t know if it matters if RMS is a polished, smiley, public-friendly dude or not. Would Free Software be farther along today if RMS were kinder, more respectful, or somehow a better “public figure”? Would DRM have never been allowed to exist? Would the government pass laws that software for implanted medical devices be Free?

Link Checker Wishlist

adam — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 14:00:06 +0000

Link checkers spider through your website and make sure that links work. I want an awesome link checker. Ideally, it would espouse as many of these attributes as possible:

easy to learn
easy to configure/customize

example config: don’t hit URLs on other servers

sensible default behaviors

example: respects robots.txt and ‘nofollow’ link attributes

scriptable / embeddable

useful from command line
useful from within CI servers like Jenkins

recurses (parses HTML, follows links)

and smartly avoids checking the same pages twice

fast
thrifty with memory
pluggable

example plugin: run jslint on all JavaScript
example plugin: validate HTML 5
example plugin: validate CSS
example plugin: compute accessibility score
example plugin: JUnit XML output
example plugin: OpenDocument spreadsheet output
example plugin: Excel output
example plugin: CSV output
example plugin: JavaScript engine
example plugin: follow hashbang URLs

beautiful source code
FLOSS

offline HTML 5 validation

adam — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 18:05:18 +0000

I’m liking Henri Sivonen’s Validator.nu service. I’ve got it running locally, and it works well. I can use it as a web service and validate HTML from within Vim, using quickfix to rapidly resolve errors. My Jenkins CI server uses the same validator via phpunit tests.

Warning: it took me a very long time to get it running locally. Technically easy (just run a build script), but it downloads tons of libraries and files before it can do its job.

Swimming in the deep end

adam — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 20:46:51 +0000

A coworker forwarded me an inspiring article from the Harvard Business Review. I was interested after the first paragraph, and was looking excitedly looking forward to finishing it along with a cookie. But I could not!

I’d get a couple more sentences in before being distracted. I would dutifully stop, blink, then rewind a couple sentences, then repeat. Over and over. The dreaded technology loop!

Hmm, I’d rather read this as an ebook. I wonder how I could convert it. I wonder who else has read this article. Do I have any new emails? Maybe there’s some news on Lybia I should be aware of. What other stuff has this dude written that I should read first? Man, an ebook of this would be nice. Maybe I should just print it?

Come on brain, read! Think! And remember, dangit!

I felt like I was learning to read for the first time. I had to work very hard to actually make it through the article. Then I stopped to think about what I had read, and realized my reading comprehension was for naught.

Why couldn’t I take in the information? Because I was reading a computer screen. When I’m upright at the computer, hands on keyboard & mouse, I’m in computer mode, not reading mode. Great for doing stuff. Sure, I can learn stuff too, but nothing more than a tweet-sized tidbit. And the only pieces I can reliably hang on to are pointers to the “real” information online, somewhere. It’s a useful state of being for some activities, not completive thought.

This is exactly the phenomenon described by Nicholas Carr in The Shallows.

I find myself doing this all the time lately.

me: “Check out the supermoon!”
Eva: “What’s a supermoon?”
me: “No idea. Just saw the headline. It’s probably bigger or something.”
Eva: “Huh?”

Eva and I did an experiment for while where, for one day a week, we didn’t use the internet. At all. For a whole day. Try it! I dare you.

Oh yeah, the article. It’s 6 pages long. How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen.

Are you stuck in The Shallows at the computer? Are you able to read long articles on a computer screen? How do you recalibrate your brain when you need to think deeply about something? How does your reading comprehension and ability to concentrate change when you read newsprint? A book on an ebook reader? A printed novel? A Web page? How does your writing change when you use a computer vs. when you write with a pen and paper? Do you ever actually write with a pen and paper?

Have a Cheap, Quick Breakfast Yum

adam — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 06:08:42 +0000

Bachelors, health nuts, frugal folks, check this out.

Grrrraaaaaains!

Some rainy night, do this:

Buy a bunch of bulk spelt, red winter wheat, and barley from the bulk section of your grocery store.
Add 2/3 cup of each grain to a large pot (2 cups / 500 mL total grains).
Add 8 cups (2 L) water.
Bring to and keep boiling uncovered for 45 minutes.

Throw it in the fridge. Heat some up in the morning and dress it like oatmeal. I like honey and whole milk. Try stuff like fresh/dried fruit, brown sugar too. Freezes well.

45 minutes means the wheat and spelt will be chewy. That’s how I like it.

Beeeeans!

Add 2 cups (500 mL) raw pinto beans to a crockpot.
Cover with 3-4 inches (8-10 cm) water.
Cook on low for about 8 hours overnight.

Dress with like sliced fresh raw tomatoes, salsa, cottage cheese, sour cream, salt and pepper. Leftovers keep well for up to a week in the fridge, or freeze ‘em.

YUM!

Thanks Forest M and Pam W for the inspirations!

Odds & Ends

These grains/legumes/whatever are so tasty on their own. Seriously, why the heck do we need raisin bran and corn flakes?!

What’s your favorite breakfast?

For more fun, check out oat groats, amaranth, quinoa, and kasha.

Suggestions/corrections/feedback welcome. Yes Patrick, even your lovely trolling is welcome.

Mifos opportunity: i18n

adam — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 21:42:07 +0000

We need help with i18n (and support of L10n) in Mifos. Are you interested in becoming the Mifos i18n champion? It’s a great volunteer opportunity! The work should be intermittent, and basically at your leisure. One of the really fun parts is working with the folks at Translatewiki.net… they added a bunch of messages from our “questionnaire” module, and after a few days it was completely translated to Interlingua, Macedonian, Dutch, Norwegian, and Finnish! There’s an army of talented translators ready to help.

Here are some example tasks for the i18n champion:

Make sure messages in Mifos are translatable.
Document messages and resolve issues mentioned on our Translator Helpdesk.
Hang out in #mediawiki-i18n (an IRC channel on Freenode), answer Mifos questions when they come up, or add them to the Translator Helpdesk.
Work on specific i18n issues: MIFOS-3859, MIFOS-3821, MIFOS-2018 and others.
Improve and refine the Mifos i18n/L10n guide.

Update

A day after I sent out this call for help we got two volunteers! Thank you, Stanley Kwok and Jasmine Sandhu!

Mifos Manual as an ebook

adam — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 14:00:27 +0000

I learned about ebooks last week. Very cool! I’ve found them much more readable than PDFs or Web pages. Maybe it’s the ebook readers… they sure help me focus on the content.

Since we used FLOSS Manuals to write our manual, it’s easy to generate an ebook using Objavi. Here’s the Mifos Manual as an ebook. Looks pretty good on the iPhone (lately I’ve been using “Stanza”). Probably looks even better on a Nook, Kindle, or iPad.

Recent books I liked

adam — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 14:44:03 +0000

Steig Larsson‘s Millenium Trilogy – had to read these after watching Eva completely submerged in them

What the World Eats – mentioned by coworker Van

The Gone-Away World – mentioned by DadHacker

Confessions of an Economic Hitman – recommended by cousin Mel

Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book – recommended by uncle Paul