B10[mg]

Every geek knows the problem. When you're at parties, and tell people you work (or have worked) as a UNIX system administrator, these people will reply with something like "Ah great, see, I have a computer problem. Whenever I boot, I get this error on the screen". Usually, you try to be helpful and ask for a little more detail on the problem, but that usually doesn't go anywhere else than "Oh, I don't know exactly, I always click on OK."

Not only unknown people bug you with this, also your entire family, friends of them and anyone remotely connected will assume you can do magic over the phone, and you are always looking forward to assist them in trivial problems.

I often wonder if people react the same if I had a different profession. Let's say I'm a professional painter. People will -probably- still come up to me and ask if I can help out, but at least they assume they will have to make an appointment, and pay me some for the effort.

Oh, well, because I've heard these complaints before, I know I'm not the only one and it'll probably never end. Phone calls while I'm having dinner isn't the biggest annoyance anyways. The biggest problem with such people is the total lack of interest in what they are doing.

Not too long ago, I received a call from a certain family members, asking how to resize pictures, so they could be printed. I kindly requested him to save their pictures (they came as an email attachment). After spending 5 full minutes on that task, I instructed this person to open the infamous Windows Explorer and go to the directory this file was just saved in. "Uhh, how would I know? And no, I also don't know the file name".

Where does this come from? If I ask people to file a certain piece of paper, and ask them half a year later where it can be found, the right folder is taken from wherever in no time ...

Maybe it's time for me to wear appropriate clothing to parties, and ask all of my family members to buy me this as a birthday present?

Will they ever get the hint?

During my last trip to Indonesia, I had the pleasure to stay at the awesome estate called Golden Pearl. 1700m² of land with a private pool and total tranquility.

Very highly recommended if you ever visit Lombok (also try the optional food, it's the best you will ever find).

http://www.goldenpearllombok.com/

During my last trip to Indonesia, I had the pleasure to stay at the awesome estate called Golden Pearl. 1700m² of land with a private pool and total tranquility.

Very highly recommended if you ever visit Lombok (also try the optional food, it's the best you will ever find).

http://www.goldenpearllombok.com/

http://www.mailinator.net/ changed its layout, so a patch to WWW::Mailinator was needed.

Not that interesting, but yeah, I've uploaded version 0.02 to CPAN.

Sometimes, people want you to write scripts and have trouble installing it on their webserver for they don't have, nor know how to use SSH access.

A shell (over a SSH connection) is usually really handy for debugging, especially if you're not sure if the required Perl modules are all installed; if you're not sure where the script dies...

Yesterday, I had one of those instances where SSH access would be really nice, but -for security reasons- I would have to fax the company a copy of my passport and fill out some forms to get SSH access. Instead of that, I went to look for a different solution and found it in Gamma Web Shell.

The software contains a single Perl script that worked quite well and straight out of the box. It simulates a real shell, which works for most basic UNIX commands. Enough for me, for this particular problem.

Check it out, if you ever need a Web Shell.

Because I want to keep this blog in the spirit of Nanoblogger (static HTML, generated by BASH), it's quite tricky to use a counter for the comments. I've tried it before with SSI, but that made the page load really slow.

Now I have implemented a JavaScript/AJAX way to make the same possible and it seems to work quite well. Users without JavaScript (blessed be they), don't get the counter, but the rest of the site functions well (hopefully). Users with JavaScript enabled should see a comment counter everywhere now.

One of the things I really dislike, is the never ending admin panel that is always required by freelance programming projects. The user always wants to edit his/her database by some easy interface. It's not all that hard to create, yet painfully boring.

I was relieved to find Class::DBI, making this boring job a little easier, for you can forget about the silly INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE SQL commands. Yet you still have to write a lot of code to put it all together.

Jason Purdy now created CGI::Application::Plugin::BREAD, which is supposed to make all of this even easier.

BREAD is -of course- an acronym, that stands for Browse, Read, Edit, Add, and Delete, exactly what we wanted!

It's still an alpha release, yet it's already very promising! Just try this application and see for yourself. First you'll need the package:

package MyBREADApp;

use base 'CGI::Application';
use CGI::Application::Plugin::BREAD qw( bread_db );
use Class::DBI::Loader;

sub setup
{
  $self = shift;
  my $loader = Class::DBI::Loader->new(
          dsn                     => "dbi:mysql:mysql",
          user                    => "webuser",
          password                => "webpass",
          namespace               => "WHATEVER",
          relationships           => 1,
          additional_classes      => [ 'Class::DBI::FormBuilder' ],
      );
  $self->bread_db( $loader );
}

After that, you'll make the cgi, like this

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use MyBREADApp;

my $webapp = MyBREADApp->new();
$webapp->run();

Point your browser to the freshly created cgi script and be ready to be amazed. This is really all code necessary to do all described above.

As stated above, it's still an alpha release, so don't use this in production environments (yet). In the future, templating options will be added, making this truly a killer module.

Ten years ago, I first went to the wonderful Republik Indonesia and loved the beautiful flora and fauna, nice weather, friendly people and awesome food. I visited Lombok and Bali and was most certainly not the only tourist who enjoyed staying at the islands. Streets were full of vendors, little markets and a lot of tourists.

Bad things hit the archipelago since then, leading to a decrease in the number of visitors.

This year, I visited the same islands again (and included Java in the trip), and was really shocked to see the drastic decrease of tourists.

Bars, restaurants and hotels. All were close to empty. Streets were deserted and within two days, you'd recognize the tourist that were there by face.

Of course that's not a real big problem for me. I'd rather see crowded streets, bars, beaches and restaurants, but I can live without and can enjoy the serene environment. It is -of course- a really big problem for the Indonesian people. No tourists means no money coming in the country; means no money circulates in the country; means basically: bad.

So, support the fine Indonesian people by paying them a visit. The plane ticket to fly there might be expensive, but realize that life over there doesn't cost much if you're used to the extreme high European costs of living. I assume that three weeks vacation in Spain cost the same, if not more, than three weeks in Indonesia. And you can see the wonders of the Prambanan Temple Compounds, the Borobudur Temple Compounds, Mount Rinjani and Agung, and of course many other sights.

After my vacation, I created the stylesheet based on pictures I had taken in Egypt. I liked the idea of doing it again after my latest vacation to Indonesia, so here it is. (I'm too lazy to really change the layout, colors, etc. though ;)

The images on this site now are taken at the Prambanan temple complex, a truly impressive place (and in my humble opinion even nicer than the famous Borobudur, which is located rather close).

The top picture is taken in one of the temples and is of the statue of Ganesha, a Hindu God. The image at the bottom of the page displays an overview of the temple complex.

Hopefully soon I can make some more styles (although I cannot go on vacation just whenever I want to...). In the meanwhile you can switch styles by clicking the links at the styles section of this page.

After my vacation, I created the stylesheet based on pictures I had taken in Egypt. I liked the idea of doing it again after my latest vacation to Indonesia, so here it is. (I'm too lazy to really change the layout, colors, etc. though ;)

The images on this site now are taken at the Prambanan temple complex, a truly impressive place (and in my humble opinion even nicer than the famous Borobudur, which is located rather close).

The top picture is taken in one of the temples and is of the statue of Ganesha, a Hindu God. The image at the bottom of the page displays an overview of the temple complex.

Hopefully soon I can make some more styles (although I cannot go on vacation just whenever I want to...). In the meanwhile you can switch styles by clicking the links at the styles section of this page.

Not too long ago, I proudly mentioned the uptime my server had. Almost a full year and no problems, God bless FreeBSD.

The statistics gave me confidence. I could leave it alone for three weeks, right? Well, ermm, no. Not even two days after I stepped on the plane to Jakarta, Indonesia, my server crashed. Of course I rather see my server crash, than the airplane, but still it sucked pretty bad, for I couldn't update my blog; couldn't email etc. etc.

After I came home, I hoped the server would just have suffered a power failure and was hanging on the BIOS or something, but no. It didn't do anything!

The inspection I carried out on it, made me believe the motherboard was to blame and had died on me (missed me, I bet! ;) Easiest thing: get a new one, a new processor, a new harddrive and try all over.

So, I present to you: the new server! ... please be gentle