I just reimaged my laptop, and discovered that the “apropos” command had nothing in its database. (You use “apropos” to look up man pages related to a topic. It looks through an index to find appropriate pages to list, and the periodic maintenance tasks had not created the index.) OK. No problem. Google is my [...]
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Posted 12 March 2009
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This is the sort of thing that’s second nature to a command-line geek, but I thought it was cool enough (in its little way) to share.
The problem: I have a process that runs on a remote server for quite a while. I wish to be alerted when it completes. As long as it’s running, it [...]
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Posted 18 September 2008
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“Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management” by Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby is a strange book; while not having any ideas that are really NEW to anyone who’s read the other management books I’ve recommended, BCD still manages to impress and be worth reading. It does this by having lots of small, practical advice [...]
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Posted 20 August 2008
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This should, of course, be subtitled “Books Not To Read If You Are Me.” These aren’t necessarily bad books (in fact, both of them are good books) but they weren’t that useful to me or to people in exactly my situation. Take this with as much salt as you feel appropriate, depending on what you’re [...]
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Posted 15 August 2008
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I just finished reading two different books on software development and management; both are highly recommended.
First, and best is Peopleware, by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister. This is another one of those must-read books. I’ve been telling everyone that I can’t believe I’ve been allowed to have the job I have without reading it. If [...]
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Posted 11 August 2008
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I’m attempting to set up Duplicity as a backup tool, running from cron over ssh, to backup my home directory to another server.
I of course already have passwordless SSH set up to connect to that server, and use ssh-agent to store the passphrase for my SSH key, as described in another entry. However, I could [...]
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Posted 03 July 2008
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I must say, this article by Steve Yegge has done quite a bit to refine my thoughts about hiring geeks. (The beginning is a little long-winded. Push through. It’s worth it.)
On the other hand, I’ve met exactly ONE of the type he’s talking about in my career. Not sure where that leaves me as a [...]
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Posted 17 June 2008
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It generally works pretty well, but I found the following problem, and Google was no help:
Building the VMware VmPerl Scripting API.
Using compiler “/usr/bin/gcc”. Use environment variable CC to override.
Unable to compile the VMware VmPerl Scripting API.
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The VMware VmPerl Scripting API was not installed. Errors encountered during
compilation and installation of the module can be found here:
/tmp/vmware-config4
You [...]
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Posted 11 June 2008
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In much of the web, being called an Apple Fanboy simply means you’re debunking myths thrown about by Mac-haters. And the Macalope is great at that. And if that is being an Apple Fanboy, then I am guilty. There’s a lot of hate thrown around there just because Macs are “cool” and some people have [...]
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Posted 01 June 2008
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I just finished “Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software” by Michael T. Nygard, from The Pragmatic Programmers. This isn’t the book I thought it was when I bought it, but it’s still a really valuable read. “Release It!” focuses on (and most of the author’s experience seems to be) massive, web-scale e-commerce sites, generally [...]
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Posted 24 May 2008
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