Experiments in Geekery

I started a new job in April 2012. My old one was relatively geeky but working in a very highly specialised field. "Group Technical Support" was the job title but in reality I was doing all-sorts, from development support, software & hardware validation, and a fair whack of PHP/MySQL/Bash/Python troubleshooting on a distributed system getting telemetry data from buses at depots through a wireless network. My new job is for a company that does what essentially comes down to data processing. Lots of stuff like address cleansing, identifying duplicate users with different accounts, fraud prevention, data pooling. My job title is "Application Support Engineer" and formally I sit between the service desk and infrastructure, mainly tasked with monitoring the data flow in, through and out of the business. In reality there's a lot more of the tedious stuff than I really want (service-desk type stuff) and far too much being on-call for my liking, but overall I...

I was trying to do some stuff with PHP and every time I ran some code through PHP, I got the error: PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/lib/php5/20090626+lfs/suhosin.so' - /usr/lib/php5/20090626+lfs/suhosin.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory in Unknown on line 0 It's not at all clear what package provides suoshin.so, so if you get stuck and can't find it, just run this at the command line: sudo apt-get install php5-suhosin That'll stop the error message from showing up.

I recently downloaded and struggled with Tweet Nest (http://pongsocket.com/tweetnest/).  It requires some components that weren't installed by default in my Ubuntu install and the setup scripts don't do some nice things that it could do (i.e., set up a back-end database for you). I first of all tried to get it working in my public_html directory which was a minor disaster and didn't work at all (I think this is related so suphp and I don't know anything about that though).  I moved everything to /var/www/ and it worked slightly better (i.e. I didn't get prompted to download a file every time I went to http://laptop/tweetnest/). [EDIT 1: Ahhah, I have now found out that the reason it didn't work in user space was that by default PHP is disabled in user's "public_html" directories.  This needs editing in the Apache PHP5 configuration file: http://www.weblogism.com/item/266/php-not-interpreted-in-public_html-in-recent-ubuntu-update It's workin...

As a Christmas present this year, we (being me and Jane) were given a lovely piece of art work by my parents.  The work is by a Bristol-based lady called Jane Ormes (http://www.janeormes.co.uk/) . It's a print (#28/100) and now hanging on our living room wall where the Pistyll Rhaeadr painting used to be.

When the wagon's a treadmill, it doesn't have the same impact I suppose. I'm considering giving C25K (Couch to 5K) a try, in somewhat modified form no doubt.  I think the chances of me hitting 5K in a session at any time soon are so small that to even aim for that is to be unrealistic.  I don't run.  Never have done.  I've been forced to at school, doing the 100m, 400m and 800m (seriously - you call that a sprint?!) along with the joy of Cross Country through Gaitsgill and Raughton on cold winters days. But I never enjoyed it, I find it uncomfortable enough that I can't get into a groove.  It's not like walking where I can find myself just slipping away into myself or like cycling where the pleasure of just getting somewhere different and unachievable by walking (and let's admit it, the speed) are all pleasures. I did however give running on the treadmill a brief shot today.  I walked briskly for 5 mins, ran for 90 seconds, walked for 3 mins, ran f...

The blogging, I mean.  The gym lasted OK, until we went on holiday to the depths of Scotland for a week.  That threw me completely out of whack, and then the clock change threw me for a loop as well.  Getting up at 0630 became impossible, so to be honest I only made it to the gym about 3 times in November, and December I didn't make it once - partly because the panto I did in the beginning of the month sapped my will to do anything at all for the week of the show and a week or two after.  Then it was Christmas and what's the point then? :-) I'm disappointed because I did really well, lost a fair whack of body mass if not weight (it was noticeable to me at least, and Jane was quite pleased), but the time constraints that I have mean early mornings are my only real option. So then, to the new year, to new attempts.  I have a new alarm clock, and renewed will.  I know far too many people who are doing far too well at losing weight it's making me feel inade...

Fabulous film, in a cheesy and geeky way. Chock full of geek references to late 80's early 90's video games, silly action, and just wonderful. I would like to say more, but I really can't right now. Sleep is calling me.