Danie Roux

interested in being interested

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Entries Tagged as 'general'

The Internet and the walled gardens

July 11th, 2007 · 2 Comments · general

Coding Horror saying what I’ve wanted to say for a while now.
To add to that:
Facebook allowed me to reconnect with some long lost friends. I’ve had some valuable conversations with these friends - on Facebook.
Those conversations are not a part of my normal email archive or flow.
I need my data to be my data.

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URL to the hosted talk gadget from Google

June 26th, 2007 · No Comments · general

So Google now allows us that make use of “Google Apps for your Domain” to use the Talk Gadget. Didn’t make my day, but it at least brighten up the time before coffee.
If you need the URL to get to your talk gadget for your domain, this is it:
http://hostedtalkgadget.google.com/a/yourdomain.com/talkgadget/client
Replace “yourdomain.com” with your domain. If you […]

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27-3 Dinner

April 7th, 2007 · 2 Comments · general

Missinglink made a video of the talk I did at the 27-3 dinner.
This is the video. You can view the slides I used online.
Big thanks to Dave Duarte for making the show notes I probably should have!
Update: The video should be available again.

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Collaboration as a central theme of computing has arrived

March 14th, 2007 · No Comments · general

Or so I believe, with the introduction of QWAQ forums.
I was going to do a talk about something pompous like “why is collaboration not a pervasive part of computing” at the next Jozi 27 Dinner. This would have let to an introduction to Croquet and why I believe it is the perfect platform to make […]

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Input not an X.509 certificate

February 11th, 2007 · 1 Comment · general

For the benefit of anyone getting a “java.lang.Exception: Input not an X.509 certificate” when trying to import a signed certificate using keytool:
I was trying to import the certificate that Thawte signed for me into the Java based keystore. Currently my best guess is that keytool was written by an intern with way not enough coffee […]

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strace, I love you

February 10th, 2007 · No Comments · general

Quick post:
Use
strace -e trace=network
to quickly figure out where a process is connecting to.
This traps only system calls that the process makes regarding networking. Very useful to make sure that your process believes the same things about servers and ports that you do.
(Turns out the process needed to be told that 443 is not 8443)

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Recovering your deleted photos from your digital camera

February 4th, 2007 · No Comments · general

PhotoRec can recover your deleted photos from your digital camera or memory card.
All memory cards1 use the FAT32 file system from Microsoft. This filesystem does not physically delete files, but just marks them as deleted.
I needed to a tool to quickly let me recover or undelete all those photos. An “apt-cache search dos recovery” in […]

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When suggestions go wrong

January 16th, 2007 · No Comments · general

I have been slowly adding my books to LibraryThing. I quite like it and I’m hoping that it will help me discover some new books and authors. Based on what I own, LibraryThing makes suggestions of other books I might like.
But LibraryThing has another, unusual, feature which they call UnSuggester:
“Unsuggester takes ‘people who like this […]

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Simple demonstration of Haskell FFI

January 1st, 2007 · 1 Comment · general

Breaking down Haskell FFI (Foreign Function Interface) to a very simple, working example.

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Getting all your mail out of Gmail

December 22nd, 2006 · 2 Comments · general

Google Apps launched a few weeks ago. This week I wanted to transfer my email from the old email account (the one that ends with @gmail.com) to the new one. I thought it would be as easy as POP’ing1 all the email from the old account with mutt and then bounce it straight onto the […]

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