building a RHEL4 kernel with kdb support
Sometimes I have a need to reproduce bugs on other platforms. When that platform uses a heavily patched kernel, it makes it hard to debug. Below are some notes I took while building a RHEL4 kernel with kdb support.
xen on debian
I decided to try out xen on my development / test box. I will write a bit more about what I did, but first here are some links:
Upgraded look
I switched to Dave’s perl version of my blog. The old blog is still available here. One of the cool additions from his mercurial tree was support for Markdown. Which makes generating html easier. When I make changes to the source, I will publish my changes in my mercurial tree. Thanks Dave!
Flattered by a copy
Dave had recently rewritten my PHP blog in "a real language" (perl). I think I will be switching to his version soon. Still waiting on him to export the HG tree
vim7 from source
I found a bug in vim6.4 (my comment block was too big and the line after the comment block was not left-justified) and wanted to see if vim7 had a fix.
Perl, Catalyst, CPAN, and Debian
I've decided to give Catalyst a try. I am not a big web-head, but occasionally I want to put stuff up on my site... and would like most of the work to be done for me, but not so much of the work that I cannot control what is happening. I was not ready for a new scripting language so Ruby on Rails and Turbo Gears were out. Catalyst is available from CPAN -- the real reason why anyone would be crazy enough to use perl. But running CPAN stuff on Debian is a pain in the ass, more so then Debian taught me is an acceptable level of ass pain, because perl stuff in Debian tends to lag behind CPAN; even in testing.
last.fm
I just *heart* last.fm. It really is the LAST radio station you will need to tune into... well, unless you're in the car or on a bus or something silly like that. Last.fm is a streaming internet radio station that learns to what you listen to. It also allows you to listen to stations tailored to other people, or listen to particular types of music, or artists similar to the ones you like, etc, etc etc.
carcassonne and zombies
So, did you hear? Carcassonne was invaded by Zombies! My group of board game geeks have been playing Carcassonne for a while, and recently have started playing Zombies!. Jean, aka Strogg, and I have brainstormed how Zombies! could work in Carcassonne. See that here. In a bit more detail, here are the rule changes to Carcassonne: the dragon is removed from the game. it is replaced by a bag of zombies; each time a volcano is placed it is occupied by a new zombie; when a dragon tile comes out, starting with the player that placed the dragon tile, players in clock-wise order move 1 zombie each until 6 movements were made (a zombie can be moved multiple times); when a zombie enters a tile with a follower, the follower is returned to the player and a new zombie is added on that tile; while the zombie that infected the meeple can move again, the new zombie will not move until next turn; zombies may not enter a tile with a fairy, any tile surrounding a cloister, the city of Carcassonne, or a tile visited/occupied by a zombie this turn; if at the end of any turn, there are more zombies then followers in any city or on any road, all followers in that feature are returned to their owner (they flee!); note that deeple (double meeple) count as two as usual and builders count as one; if a road or city is completed with a zombie on it, that city is worth one less point for each zombie; this road or city also does not cause an exchange of the thief or king card; zombies also reduce the points scored on a farm, but for each zombie on a farm the player scores one less city; a player that scores on a cloister may elect to remove any zombie from the board, up to 8, at the cost of a point being scored by the cloister; this can also be done at the end, with uncompleted cloisters, for helping farmers; except for the end game, the last zombie may not be removed in this way; a player can chose to return an monk on an unfinished cloister, and return a zombie to the bag; this can be done at any time, even before scoring occurs on another player's turn;
Election Humour
Martin, Harper and Layton are flying on the Executive Airbus to a gathering in British Columbia when Martin turns to Harper and says, chuckling, "You know, I could throw a $1000 bill out the window right now and make someone very happy." Harper shrugs and replies, "Well, I could throw ten $100 bills out the window and make ten people happy." Not to be outdone, Layton says, "Well I could throw a hundred $10 bills out the window and make a hundred people happy."
ldap on debian
I've started writing a debian authentication from ldap tutorial. Here is the unfinished text: Ldap Authentication on Debian I've seen a much more ass kicking one on Planet Debian recently from Edd Dumbill. Here is a link: Turn your world LDAP-tastic, and Visual LDAP administration tools - a recent fallowup