dammIT

A rantbox by Michiel Scholten

#rant Articles


Back and online again

We just got back from Corfu, and I just got online again after a refreshing period of offlineness. The statistics: Number of digital photographs copied to my laptop from the image tank we had with us on vacation: about 2000 Number of megabytes these take: 6582 Number of pictures I …

To Greece!

We are currently sitting in a waiting area on Schiphol Airport with our plane leaving in about 2.5h. On to Corfu! Yay at a completely offline vacation on a great green island :) See you all in about eleven days!

On stupidity

The problem with America is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself? [ Source ]

286 day today

OK, this is a real geek speaking, but the upcoming days present a nice numeric sequence other geeks will appreciate [except when you're not a fan of this platform ;)]: 2/8/6 today, 3/8/6, 4/8/6, 5/8/6 and 6/8/6 the following days, representing …


Fixing sound in Firefox on cheap audiochips in Linux

OK, so you're already using the nice ALSA sound system on your Linux install, but when you're playing music etc you can't hear the sound of those YouTube movies? Edit /etc/firefox/firefoxrc and add/edit the FIREFOX_DSP setting to read "FIREFOX_DSP="aoss". Of course, you will need ALSA's OSS …

*grmblgrmbl* Die hardware! Or rather, please don't

The fan of my server/mediabox/goddamnimportantfilesholder stopped spinning without my knowing and, it being the sole fan in the system as it's a small form factor machine with neat heatpipe and such, the whole machine turned into a lightbulb wannabe. Newsflash: that's not good for your parts [hdd!], stupid …

Almost 42000 unread items

... in my newsfeed reader. I guess I should start using it again ;) Frankly, I want to start building that new Django-based version, so I can implement smart filters based on tags. The current way is just too messy. Anybody has some more smart ideas? The cause of me still …

PHP security

As everybody and his dog can program in PHP nowadays, and -- worse ;) -- does without the proper programmer training in input validation and such things, here are some tips about hardened PHP, modsecurity, putting Apache in a chroot jail etc: Use security on multiple levels. Code your stuff so it's invulnerable …


Random brain blurp #233

Who would vote for a new top-level domain .w00t [if they're trying to introduce .xxx and .mobile and already having introduced .tv and .bizz, I have some more ideas for useless top-level domains :)].



Mission completed

Our teammate is going to put a hardcopy of the documentation [all 22 pages of it] in the teachers "pigeon hole" [teacher's own words] in about 5 hours from now. Now I hope it doesn't contain too much sleep-induced weirdness ;) Signing off...ZzzzzZzz

Late night documentation hacking

So, what do you do after working for a week on a project for the university, writing the documentation in the weekend, testing the implementation with rules, drinking some wine on a birthday party and merging some more changes into the doc which needs to be handed in as hardcopy …

Shopping and being eight years together

Yesterday me and my girl went on a shopping spree. The damage is considerable [hm, somewhat more than €0.5K for a total of five pairs of shoes and a lot of nice summer clothing for us both :P], but it was big fun! Our dinner was free, as we …


Evolution and GTK2

I wonder why Thunderbird -- which isn't even really native GTK2 -- looks better integrated than Evolution, which is. I see three differently looking scrollbars in one window...


Doctor Who!

Who? Doctor Who! On our television. In a time where everything else on that medium sucks [e.g., football -- what's the matter with that anyhow? -- all interesting series ended, etc] we get that fine series broadcasted right into our living room. Hey, and it's right behind two hours of South …