i summon one kim

Frequent visitors (if there are any) have noticed that the colors on the site have kept changing. The rest of you must have just been wondering why the SSH Tutorial is in a different color each day.

I was really taken by the visual impact of the Borderline Chaos template submitted to the WordPress 1.5 Themes competition. It has nice strong colors, and its layout was begging to be implemented with CSS only. I didn’t want to use a background image, which means the sidebar background does not reach to the bottom of the page, but I don’t think it has to. I wanted better contrast in the sidebar boxes, which led to rather bright backgrounds that caused me to abandon the colors (especially after some feedback from my friends). I also wanted to have the main content (the articles) appear first in the output, and while that doesn’t require the sidebar to be on the right, I just like it better that way.

I think the current colors are here to stay for a while now. I should look up whose flag is white, blue and green.

There are (at least) a couple of things I didn’t do carefully enough in the past when it came to maintaining this website: I didn’t always preserve old URL’s (I try hard now), and when the basis for the current look was established, many documents were pushed aside to an “old” folder for later evaluation. Of course, “later” tends to become “never.”

I was looking at the referrers again (warning, slow link¹) and I’m always curious when there is a link to the front page of the site. This one was from Rob Jenson‘s site, on a page about system administration. There was not only one link but two, one of them broken!

I dug up the old anonymous document called Computer Administration Vocabulary for Computer Users, polished it up to XHTML and gave it a new home on my site. I still find it quite funny, but I remember putting it aside before, thinking that someone might actually think it reflects my real attitude towards my work. Stranger things have happened…

I’ve spruced up my blog header with another sample from Laura‘s recent photos. Observe the world through someone else’s eyes — check out her public gallery.

Theoretically I guess I could try and use my own photos, but I don’t take that many, and I’m much more of a tourist photographer than anything else. I also like it when I find ideas by other people that attract my attention, which keeps happening with Laura’s photos. I’m not sure I’d pay attention to all those things if I tried to walk around finding subjects to photograph. Of course, I’m also quite privileged in that she allows me to browse her “raw material” as well.

As for spring outside my home, well, at least it is getting warmer. Otherwise it has been ugly: all this rain makes the days so dark. No chance of walking around this weekend, with or without a camera.

Ray vei minut syömään ja kyseli tietokonejuttuja siinä samalla. Hän oli valmistautunut, ja tarkisti aina välillä muistilapulta, mitä kaikkea piti kysellä. Yhtäkkiä naapuripöydän täti keskeytti: ”Anteeksi, mutta en voinut olla kuulematta” ja alkoi selittää oman tietokoneenkäyttönsä ongelmia…

— Mistähän johtuu, että kun lähetän sähköpostia, niin se aina tulee virheellisenä takaisin, mutta jos vastaan viesteihin, niin aina toimii?
— Hmm, no siinä osoitteessa on varmaan jokin kohta, joka huomaamatta menee väärin.
— No siis se on se vee vee vee, öö…
— Hmm, tuo ei kuulosta sähköpostiosoitteelta.
— No niinpäs onkin, no voi voi, ja minä olen vaikka kuinka monta kertaa… … …

Onneksi olimme jo saaneet syödyksi, joten Ray maksoi laskun pikaisesti ja yritimme hipsiä pois. Mutta kyllä se täti vielä ennätti vaihtaa muutaman sanan:

— Oletko sinä semmoinen tietokoneguru?
— No minä olen IT-puolella töissä.
— Käytkö korjaamassa ihmisten tietokoneita?
— Juu ei, en minä — ihan vaan läheisten ystävien koneita joskus vähän…
— Jaa, niinkö. No voi… No mutta mulla oli vielä joku asia…
— Et kai kuitenkaan tullut listan kera?

Täti alkaa kaivamaan kassia: ”No kyllä sen piti olla jossain täällä…”

Antoine Reilles submitted a package for the Little Brother’s Database (lbdb) in PR pkg/29164. I’ve had lbdb in my reminders for quite some time, but never got around to packaging it. I tweaked Antoine’s package a bit, and now I have committed it to pkgsrc as databases/lbdb. Thanks, Antoine!

The Little Brother’s Database provides a lookup interface for mail addresses for several data sources. It can retrieve data from its own database, Emacs bbdb, abook, LDAP and even MacOS X addressbooks, and provide the results to external programs such as the Mutt mail reader.

I announced tcsh 6.14 today. The major “new feature” for me in this release is working UTF-8 support. Anyone using multibyte character sets should be much happier now. It has been great having a number of people work on the code — there are over 70 fixes in this release.

I have been practising release engineering for tcsh by cutting the last 3 developer test versions. I have automated the release procedure a bit more to minimize the chance for errors from having to type in detailed commands repeatedly. Let’s see if I can push out another release a bit closer to my desired goal of every 6 months.

I have also installed an issue tracker to make it easier to produce change logs and make sure that issues are not falling through the cracks. I hope it will also provide a searchable long-term memory on past decisions on what will get included in tcsh and when.

Naturally right after announcing the release I updated the pgksrc package for tcsh, so you can install the package right now by updating your pkgsrc tree.

I like to look around in the recent referrers of my website. Today I saw a referral from GeoURL, to my surprise. I had already given up ever seeing anything but “we’ve gone away” on the front page, with the “near” lookups just returning an error.

Well, they are back! I need to work that little box back into my layout now. For the time being: have a look at the sites near me, courtesy of GeoURL.

Joskus asioita tulee vitkuteltua ja vatkuteltua ihan turhaan: viimeisen viikon olen pähkäillyt, että mistä saisin muuttolaatikoita. Katselin kaverin kanssa keltaisia sivuja, juuhooli¹ oli ihan liian kaukana, eikä muuttotarvikkeista tai pakkaustarvikkeista löytynyt mitään sopivalta kuulostavaa. Tuttavalla on muuttoliike, ehkä se olisi hyvä paikka aloittaa? Mutta montako laatikkoa tarvitsen — en viitsisi tutulle soitella monta kertaa sitä mukaa, kun laatikoita tarvitaan.

Olisi pitänyt vaan lähteä tien päälle ja katsella kauppoja. Siellähän se vastaus on: toki niittikaupasta² löytyy laatikoita moneen tarpeeseen. Samalla ostin sitten teippipyssyn,³ jos se vaikka säästäisi hermoja.

Vähän samantapainen ongelma on ollut teevalojen⁴ kanssa. Niitä olen toki yrittänyt jo etsiä ruokakaupasta (ja siis tiesin niille täkäläisen nimenkin), mutta meni jonkin aikaa, ennenkuin yritin sänky- ja kylpykaupasta.⁵ (100 kpl maksoi $4.99 plus verot. Ainoa pakkauskoko. Näitä riittänee tuliaisiksi.)