Building simplicidade.org: notes, projects, and occasional rants

Notes

last update:

.bash_completion.d

André Cruz asked me why wasn't his ~/.bash_completion.d/ being used by default. Well, its a feature of the bash_completion system that you must activate by hand. In my ~/.bashrc I have the following code: bash=${BASH_VERSION%.*}; bmajor=${bash%.*}; bminor=${bash#*.} if [ "$PS1" ] && [ $bmajor -eq 2 ] && [ $bminor '>' 04 ] ; then if [ -f ~/bin/bash_completion ] ; then BASH_COMPLETION=~/bin/bash_completion BASH_COMPLETION_DIR=~/.bash_completion.d export BASH_COMPLETION BASH_COMPLETION_DIR . ~/bin/bash_completion fi fi unset bash bmajor bminor The trick is the BASH_COMPLETION_DIR setting before you source the bash_completion script.

git bash completion

If you download the git tarball, you'll find a git-completion.bash script that adds shell completion to your git day-to-day usage. Look for it in the contrib/completion/ directory. (update: if you can't find it there, look for it in the $sharedir/git-completion/ directory. A recent patch by Johannes Schindelin promoted git-completion.bash to the big leagues.) When I started using git, I just sticked the script into my ~/.bash_completion.d/ and bash picked it up after a exec bash -login.

Software Update is dumb

I'm updating two Macs via Software Update in the same network and they share four downloads between them. Why do they need to download the new versions from Apple? I mean, they could just find each other and swap. This isn't rocket science, at least not in a system that has Bonjour built in. And its not as this would be terrible security-wyse: all the updates are signed by Apple and Software Update will refuse to install them if the signature doesn't check.

git gc --auto

For normal usage, git is written to be as fast as possible. That means that certain house-cleaning tasks are not done on every command and from time to time, you have to let the git gremlins cleanup the place. For the last couple of git releases, the most common command to do that is to use git gc --auto. This will check the repository, see if it needs cleaning, and perform the necessary operations.

Microsoft + Yahoo

A semi-random sample of anagrams of "Microsoft Yahoo": Tory fiasco homo;Mafioso Torch Yo;Chaos Fit Room Yo;Fiasco Hot Roomy;Yahoo For Sitcom;Fiasco Oh My Root;Chaos Firm Too Yo.

You'll be assimilated...

... eventually :). I actually did use IPC::MorseSignals to try a stupid idea. It worked as advertised, although it did not solve the idiotic nature of the solution. But it sure was fun.

Android

A nice article by Bill de hÓra about Android and other Telco/Webco musings. My favorite quote: If you had to pick a company that "gets all this", it's Amazon - which is why Redmonk James is right - someone should buy them before they turn into the 21st Century's answer to General Electric. I don't like to post links without my personal comment, but I'll make and exception for this one.

Y$

44.6B is a lot of cash, and they didn't even need to go to the bank. That's nice. Google is the big winner here, me thinks. Yahoo proves that they could not solve their problems, and Microsoft admits that they cannot leverage the brains they have on the payroll (I believe Microsoft to be second best in terms of brain-per-sq-feet, only to be bested by IBM) to produce a viable product in the search wars.

Down and Up

Last week we had a server crash. And I did 400 kms to fix all the bits. And it works now. Nothing to see, move along. Unless you are a true geek... In that case: Pentium 4 motherboard (about 3 years old) with a graphics card no longer supported by the graphical installer of CentOS 5 (see below why is that important);1Gb memory: I could have bumped it to 2 Gb, but I had other more important hardware upgrades to make;Our single (I though I had two RAID1 disks, I was wrong) 80Gb disk was caving under usage.

Off

Things have not been good this past month. My oldest kid got chicken pox, and a couple of days later I got it. And a week later the youngest got it. It hit me pretty bad, and only last week I was able to start working again, but still felling a bit strange. This week I've been on and off with fever and body aches, weird. So a lot of downtime, and given that I'm laptop-less until I can get the LCD fixed, I have "the shakes" like a good addict.