February 2012
2 posts
4 tags
Open source efforts of january
I’m hoping this will be a returning post of mine, I’ve started a bit during the chrismas holidays and inventoring what open source projects I used the most and could most easily contribute to. The first aim was actually just to get involved in something that used git, so I could have some practice before switching to it entirely at work. But I realised this should be more continous...
2 tags
November 2011
3 posts
3 tags
Tracking redmine ticket overview with munin
I got frustrated over the overview in time with graphing plugins for redmine. The ones I tried only showed me a growing curve of added tickets, it didnt show any progress or positive feedback.
I wanted the positive feedback, so I created a quick script which took the atom ticket-list and parsed through it and counted all tickets depending on status:
Just add it to the munin plugin-folder,...
3 tags
Logging incoming udp-messages with node.js
Last week, I realized I needed a quick way to set up logging of incoming udp-messages. My first idea was using netcat which is kind of a swiss army knife when it comes to network data. It worked, but for small scale mostly.
$ nc -l -u -p 4711 » udp-stream.log
This makes netcat listen on port 4711 and append the output to the log file. However, after each connection, the daemon is closed...
Google chrome segfaults after upgrade on debian...
GAH! Frustration, google chrome, my thrustworthy companion everyday stopped working today. Segfaulted.
It happened after a reboot, it might have been that I hadnt restarted chrome for a week or two or something like that. The battery went dead which made it hard-reboot. After boot, chrome segfaulted, likely because the version got updated(not entirely sure yet).
I realized that there was a...
October 2011
6 posts
3 tags
Init.d-script for StatsD and Debian
I just deployed StatsD together with Graphite and Carbon according to http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2011/02/15/measure-anything-measure-everything/ .
Seems to work nice so far, havent finetuned it so much yet though. Although, I didnt find a decent init-script for StatsD and Debian, so I modified one for RHEL found at https://gist.github.com/1071989 to this Debianized...
RFC: Chrooted ssh account with lamp-webhosting
I’ve been running LAMP-setups throughout the last 12 years or so, but security have always been a big concern. User convenience, simplicity and accessibility have also been big concerns, so security features and a locked down system can not decrease any of theese key points.
This is still a draft, needs to be updated. Consider it as a work in progress.
The setup below is a continous work...
Using rdiff for small mysqldumps
I’ve been pursuing the idea of using rdiff or something similar to manage sqldumps more effectively. We have a bunch of customers with the need and the requirement that they should store backups for a long time back in time.
As I like to keep it simple, using this wrapper together with Amazon S3 for storage seems simple and fairly robust. Its still in an early stage, and things might need...
Realtime stats with google analytics
Google launched the realtime stats in analytics in beta a few weeks ago, I quickly signed up and after a few days got the confirm-email. Great!
My often biggest issue with analytics have been the terribly long delay from the visit to the site until it shows up in the statistics. Especially when creating funnels, goals and other more specialized tracking stuff, the debugging have been extremely...
2 tags
Bring cookies from the web to my DVD
DVD is an annoying mediaformat, filled with barriers, obstacles and annoyances towards the enduser. The dvdplayer constantly tells you what you can and can not do, if you feel like fast forwarding through the “please do not pirate this movie”-text, youre immediatly shown a stop sign. Even though you bougt it, you cant fast forward. Its fair to assume that pirated material doesnt have this text...
Bounce rate for analytics..
I read about this a few weeks ago, and finally got around to implement and try it. Really interesting method to compensate for Google Analytics poor bounce rate calculation.
http://mindtheproduct.com/2011/08/data-driven-your-bounce-rate-and-time-on-site-are-wrong/
September 2011
3 posts
1 tag
Multiple incognito windows in chrome...I wish..
Today I realized coincidentally that cookies between incognitowindows are shared, didnt think about this before, I just assumed that a newly opened incognitowindow from the main window was a new fresh one. It turns out not to be.
A quick googlesearch shows that its not just be, theres several others who came across this a long time ago. Theres even a bug filed for it, although the status wontfix...
2 tags
Massive smartphone penetration
Yesterday getting home on the subway, the massive smartphone penetration struck me. Standing up between all those seats, i noticed that, in a group out of 16 seats in car, 12 people where using a smartphone. From the quick glance, more android ones than iphones. Out of the 12 people, 4 where as far as I could tell above 50 yo, all of those 4 where playing som sort of game, wordfeud was on 3, the...
Whats happening in tech..
Seems like the heat is on in tech, in multiple ways. Most significant as of late is the patent wars. The view from the sideline tells me its energy spent that could been used for something better, like improving products.
And the social platform chaos, g+ is moving ahead, and Facebook seem to be rolling out features faster than ever, allmost all at the cost of privacy of users and headaches of...
August 2011
8 posts
2 tags
Gameification part 2: the quick demo
Makeing a quick demo prototype is always good to get a message across, although can be a bit more time- and energy- consuming than just talking. :)
If you read my previous post “Gameification part 1 - thoughts only…”, you might see where I’m going, getting a simple score for each simple achieved task throughout the day. Scores could be weighed on work amount and or time...
3 tags
Gameification part 1 - thoughts only...
How often do you perform repetitive(usually boring) work throughout your workweek? I usually think about this when sorting through my inbox, replying to simple emails that, this is fixed, this will be fixed and whatever else is needed.
And when done, the inbox is sometimes almost empty, and at other times you only managed to clear out the upper top of the iceberg. No matter what, at both of...
2 tags
Overloaded inbox? Chaos-email management?
Then this might be for you, for a while, I’ve been developing a new tool to handle overloaded inboxes and give the control back to the user. To get it going a bit, I’m interesting to see if more have the same issues as I have with email. Just plain to many to respond to, hard to focus on the most important ones and just get the stuff done.
Läser in…
2 tags
"Linux Journal goes 100% digital"
I just recieved an email with the subject above. Whats up with this? I’ve been a subscriber for the past 10 years or so, and have really appreciated the physical magazine.
Sure, I can read a PDF, both in my phone and on the computer, I could even get some sort of tablet or e-reader to get the reading done. But, I already spend 8, if not more, hours / day in front of a screen, the physical...
ios ui design
Really interesting post about grids in the user interface of the iphone. I’ve always though of the interface as really good, but he actually makes suggestions for a few improvements.
http://aentan.com/design/new-visual-proportions-for-the-ios-user-interface/
Still, i prefer android, who could really benefit from some new and improved ui-design, nothing big, just tuning.
PHP import ODS documents
Want to read open office spreadsheet(.ods) files with php? Since they are zipped xmlfiles, its really simple. The quick example below shows how to read a simple table structure using zLib(for reading the zipfile) and simplexml to navigate through the xml.
It will return an array with a key:value pairs for each columns. Make sure it works with the file you have, my files where very static and...
Testing ubuntu on family member
My sister complained about their old sluggish winxp-spyware-infected laptop once again. I’ve cleaned it out a few times, but I guess the hardware specs arent really up to todays standard anyway. So I figured I’d replace it with a new laptop with ubuntu on it, just to see how they liked it. I’ve been considering doing this to a few clients with minimal desktop needs, but havent really gotten to...
February 2011
1 post
2 tags
Simple browser testing
Not very often(more often than I like to admit), but sometimes testing needs to be done for a specific webbrowser to sort out some graphical issues. I stumbled upon http://crossbrowsertesting.com which has vnc to a lot of different environments. Works very well, its as slow as vnc over internet is, but its fully capable of doing testing in different browsers.
Although, I wanted it to be able to...
September 2010
1 post
4 tags
xls2mysql with ease
I have converted millions(as it feels) excel-documents to mysql for clients, when creating new solutions for them. And I’ve missed a great tool to do it in as few steps as possible, without to much fuzz. As fun as axe-sharpening is, I created one, suitable to my own needs, but might be useful for someone else as well.
It only supports excel 97(as far as i know), and generates output in...
November 2009
2 posts
1 tag
Cloning disks over SSH
Lets say you want to migrate a disk or partition over ssh from one machine to the other, well, lets just do the following on the _target_ server.
ssh server1 -c blowfish "dd if=/dev/vg00/disksnapshot" | dd of=/dev/vg00/target-disk bs=1024k conv=notrunc,noerror
Some more good hints can also be found at, http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/saw27/notes/backup-hard-disk-partitions.html
SMS Gateway with gnokii
Introduction to gnokii
So, gnokii, what is that? As the authors sees it its just a name of a project aimed to develop tools and drivers for Nokia mobile phones. Tools and drivers which enables you to use your connected phone from your Linux system. Its all kind of like the Nokia data suite, which is shipped with more advanced models from Nokia, you can send sms, edit contacts and so on, actullay...
August 2009
1 post
Thinkpad T500
Installing Debian Lenny on a Thinkpad T500 turned out to be less than trivial.
HardwareStatusWired EthernetWorksWireless LanWorksGraphics Adapter(ATI)Works
lspci output
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Cantiga Memory Controller Hub (rev 07)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cantiga PCI Express Graphics Port (rev 07)
00:03.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Cantiga MEI...
February 2009
1 post
2 tags
Disable Caps Lock in X
Dont you hate that Caps Lock key which you accidently touch and it ruins a few lines of code, well, I do.
Make sure caps lock is of, then run
$ xmodmap -e "remove lock = Caps_Lock"
Also add this into .bashrc to make it persist between boots. Really nice!
January 2009
1 post
2 tags
Throttling Spotify bandwidth
Tried to work over ssh or similar when using Spotify at the same time? Since it hogs the bandwidth, especially on poor connections, it halts and slows down terminals and other sensitive connections. By throttling the bandwidth, you can get a smoother experience without the spikes.
Trickle is the perfect tool for it, its described as “trickle is a portable lightweight userspace bandwidth...
October 2008
1 post
Mysql fulltext indexes and html entities
Using the builtin myisam fulltext index to search for text in a table with htmlencoded text gives bit of a strange results. Perhaps it could be expected, but for convenience, it would have been nice to have it working…but apparently its not…
The following table
CREATE TABLE `texts` (
`id` int(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`content` varchar(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
PRIMARY KEY ...
August 2008
1 post
3 tags
Integrating dokuWiki with phpbb3
I needed to integrate the dokuWiki authentication against a phpbb3 database. The following code just authenticates against the user table, without considering groups and any admin roles. The code doesnt take into account and table prefixes used in the setup. It also expects the phpbb3 files to be available as a sibling to the wikidirectory(check the paths if unsure).
It also has some debug...