i summon one kim

I finally got around to upgrading Apachce::Gallery to version 0.9.1. The upgrade is relatively easy: just edit your templates to change variable expansions from $FOO to {$FOO}. If you are using a copyright image, you now have the option of using a text string in the config (rendered using a TrueType font of your choice). It’s worth glancing through the manual (use perldoc Apache::Gallery to see the manual).

If you are having a problem with new pictures not showing up, check the version of imlib2 you have installed. I had to downgrade to 1.1.2nb3 to be able to generate cached images again. There is possibly some glitch between p5-Image-Imlib2 and the new imlib2 1.2.0 code. I’ve filed PR pkg/29054 as a reminder.

I’ve upgraded the leafnode package to version 1.10.7 in order to get Xref: headers in the XOVER responses. There was a bug since 1.9.50 that inadvertently caused Xref: to be dropped out when creating the overview database.

If you think it is no more deja vu when reading an article again, this could be the reason. At least nn depends exclusively on overview data for the Xref: header contents when determining cross-posts you have already read.

I’m beginning to like OneNote a lot for making notes. The key features I like are:

• ability to flag any item for follow-up, and to get a summary of all such items
• ability to search all my notes (can’t do that with paper)

I started using it after reading some comments about it and looking at the tutorial videos. Yes, it is M$ stuff, but it is really nice. I haven’t found any Open Source products like it. (It also integrates nicely with Outlook…)

OneNote also supports collaborative editing over the network. It seems like a cool feature, but currently I have nobody to try it out with. Another way to share or centralize notes is to use regular Windows folder synchronization or SharePoint. I’d like to see if I can just use a DAV-capable web server to achieve centralization for myself.

Slashdot had a pointer to a very interesting article on Wired about the pirate distribution networks. It included a quote which reflects how I and many of my friends have felt about MP3’s for quite some time: they are the modern version of cassette tapes used for evaluating music, and eventually leading to album sales.

In fact, [Bruce] Forest believes the scene will eventually go legit, and he’s even started a company, called Jun Group, that uses the topsites to promote movies, musicians, and TV shows. “The topsites don’t care where their files come from, as long as no one else has them,” he says. Last summer Jun Group dropped a collection of live videos and MP3s from Steve Winwood on the topsites. “We got 2.9 million downloads,” says Forest, “and album sales took off.”

Source: The Shadow Internet by Jeff Howe, Wired, Issue 13.01, January 2005

The 30 second samples offered by online CD resellers are a very useful feature, but their quality does not compare to the real album. For me the recommendations of friends lending their purchases for some quality listening in my own home are the number one reason for getting into the music of an artist new to me. Imagine if you could just visit the artist’s website to listen to a “best of” collection or other samples.

After 10 years of NNTP access to mailing lists through news.gw.com, I have decided to discontinue the service. The HTTP access was consuming a lot of resources and not working reliably. Some people were abusing the NNTP access with constant polling for new messages. The basic gateway functionality didn’t handle cross-posting. I would need to migrate the gateway to a new server this year.

Given that I don’t see any opportunities for me to fix any of these problems, and that there are public services already at a much grander scale that do everything but just much better, there don’t seem to be any good reasons to keep news.gw.com running.

Personally I think I’ll be doing casual browsing of mailing lists via gmane.org. I recommend taking a look at it. They offer two different HTTP interfaces as well as NNTP (including posting, if I understand correctly).

Another long-standing nuisance resolved: the files in the Mailman package end up with incorrect permissions, resulting in a non-functional installation. Running check_perms -f will report the problem and fix the permissions. (See PR pkg/24041 for details.)

After some more learning about the bsd.pkg.install.mk machinery, I’ve committed a fix that makes sure files are installed correctly.

I’ve been getting segmentation violation deaths in the Postfix smtp client for quite some time. I don’t remember which upgrade introduced them — especially because the problem only exhibited itself on the busiest mail server I have, relay.gw.com. It handles between 50,000 and 100,000 transactions daily.

Yesterday I dug into the topic with the help of Google. Many of the threads discussing the “killed by signal 11” problem suggested removing TLS or SASL or both from Postfix, which was not an option for me. I also didn’t think they would be the problem, because both have been deployed before the errors started. (more…)

Half a year ago I mentioned greylisting as an option to fight spam. A few months ago NetBSD.org enabled greylisting and it made a huge difference in the amount of spam and viruses being forwarded to me. Now I finally got around to deploying postgrey on the Global Wire mail infrastructure.

Greylisting is so simple that it seems strange that it is as effective as it is. I’m certainly going to enjoy it as long as it keeps working. Unfortunately I don’t expect that to be more than a year…

For implementations of greylisting on different platforms, have a look at greylisting.org.

I’ve been wanting to change the colors on this site a bit, and I finally got started by adding the header background. The photo is courtesy of Laura Selonen, a very good friend of mine. Looking at her pictures from her walks around the neighborhood has made me want to use my camera more.