Clever work:
Increasing loop devices on Xen host
Trying to start another Xen guest domain, and getting an error indicating that there are no loop devices left, like the following? :
Error: Device 51714 (vbd) could not be connected. Failed to find an unused loop device
Increase the number of loop devices that the loop kernel module will create, by editing/creating /etc/modprobe.d/local-loop containing something like:
Back in the (bicycle) saddle
Last week, I picked up a used mountain bike off eBay, so I could get out cycling again. I used to enjoy cycling, but the chain on my old bike (which I was actually borrowing from my father) snapped, and I never got round to replacing it, so I hadn’t cycled for a couple of years.
I decided it was time to get back out there cycling for some good enjoyable exercise, so I picked up a 22″ frame Apollo mountain bike from eBay for £40, and got out there riding (click to embigulate):
I took a 3.4 mile cycle over the weekend, but just got back tonight from riding across town to my parents and back – 3.48 miles in 20:56 on the way out (avg 9.96 mph, max 24mph) and 4.38 miles in 26 mins (avg 9.9 mph, max 21 mph) on the way back (different route). Altogether, ~7.7 miles in ~45 mins cycling, I’m happy enough with that!
If you’re wondering about the level of geekyness required to get stats like that, I’m using Google’s “My Tracks” on my phone to record the route via GPS, mostly for motivation so I can work to slowly increase my average speed and cover longer distances. It’s also amusing to be able to see your route on the map.
I’m considering uploading maps of my rides, but I’m not entirely sure whether I want to, since one end of the ride will pinpoint where I live. (On the other hand, it wouldn’t be too hard to find that out anyway, and I don’t have a policy of making enemies, so it oughtn’t be that big a deal.)
840 Barrel Paintball Machine Paints a Picture in a Fraction of a Second
Nice marketing stunt for V Energy drink:
Ubuntu 11.04 – X freezing after screensaver active / laptop lid closed
I recently upgraded my laptop (a Dell 17R / N7010) to Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty), and since then, it has been randomly freezing when I come back to it after leaving it for a while.
I see my X session exactly as I left it, and can move the mouse around, but nothing seems to respond to mouse/keyboard events. The system is still alive, I can SSH to it from another box, or switch to a different virtual terminal (e.g. Ctrl + Alt + F1), and I can kill Xorg (sudo pkill X) at which point gdm immediately gets restarted, and I can log back in.
It seems to only strike when the laptop has been left unattended for some time. I can close the lid, wait ten seconds and re-open it, and everything is fine. I can also trigger the screensaver by locking the screen with Ctrl + Alt + L, then unlock, and all is also fine.
I’ve done some Googling, and I’m certainly not the only person experiencing this:
Bug 772925 – Screen freezes after laptop lid closed for more than 1 minute
Bug 781402 – Ubuntu 11.04 / Unity freezing when screen is ‘woken up’
a discussion of bug 781402 on fossplanet.com
Bug 740126 – Disabling an output can cause vblank events to be missed
I’m using ‘Ubuntu Classic’, i.e. using GNOME rather than Unity, but the reports of the problem I’ve seen are split between both.
I’ve found a suggestion of a possible fix – installing compizconfig-settings-manager then disabling Sync to vblankon ubuntuforums.org.
I’ve just tried that out; I’ll update this post when I know whether it has worked or not.
EDIT: I’ve checked logs for anything illuminating and found little, but I did just spot the following in /var/log/Xorg.0.log.old:
[437515.524] (EE) intel(0): [DRI2] DRI2SwapComplete: bad drawable
I’ve no idea if it’s related to the problem or not.
EDIT 2: So far, it would seem that disabling “Sync to vblank” as mentioned above has fixed the problem, for me. (It’s also possible that it was fixed in one of the updates since, but I haven’t spotted any package updates that looked relevant.)
If you’re having the same problem, feel free to comment here on whether the “Sync to vblank” change stopped the freezes for you.
Zombie identification guide
Bot::BasicBot::Pluggable::Module::GitHub
We have an IRC bot in the #dancer IRC channel powered by Bot::BasicBot::Pluggable, and I recently wrote some new features as a distribution of modules which I plan to release to CPAN soon.
Until then, you can see the code in the Bot::BasicBot::Pluggable::Module::GitHub repository on GitHub.
There are two modules so far:
EasyLinks
Bot::BasicBot::Pluggable::Module::GitHub::EasyLinks recognises certain elements within discussions on IRC and provides responses containing titles/URLs to see the corresponding entity, for instance:
<someuser> I'm just working on Issue 42 now
<bot> Issue 42 (Issue Title - Issues - sukria/Dancer - GitHub) - https://github.com/user/project/issues/42
<someuser> I've just submitted PR 517, anyone want to merge it?
<bot> Pull request 517 (Pull request title - Pull Request - GitHub) - https://github.com/user/project/pull/517
<someuser> What do you think of commit 0d2752 then?
<bot> Commit 0d2752 (Commit message summary here) - https://github.com/user/project/commit/0d2752...
PullRequests
Responds to a !pr command, reporting the number of open pull requests, either for whatever project is specified as the default for that channel, or a specific project can be named. For instance:
<someuser> !pr user/project
<bot> Open pull requests for user/project : 5 pull requests open (usera:3, userb:2)
I plan to add more features before releasing the first version to CPAN; in particular, I’d like to add commit hook support, so the module could spawn a trivial webserver to listen for hook triggers from GitHub, and announce commits.
As always, contributions would be welcomed.
Welcoming ambs to the Dancer core dev team
Alberto Simões (ambs) has been a helpful contributor to the Perl Dancer web framework for some time now, submitting a lot of helpful pull requests and being a valued member of the community providing ideas and support to new users.
I’m very happy to note that ambs is now a member of the Dancer core developers team – great to see all that hard work recognised (well, Dancer 1.3030 was released with codename “Silence of the ambs” as recognition too :) )
Welcome aboard, ambs!
Dancer::Plugin::SimpleCRUD 0.03 and Dancer::Plugin::Database 1.24
A busy evening’s hacking on Dancer plugins tonight. I’ve released Dancer::Plugin::SimpleCRUD 0.03, which incorporates a new search feature kindly contributed by Alberto Simões which I’ve been meaning to release for a while, along with removing the dependency on SQL::Abstract in favour of the convenience methods provided by Dancer::Plugin::Database, which will make D::P::SimpleCRUD work correctly with PostgreSQL databases too – thanks to Jonathan Barber for reporting this issue in RT #68040.
(I should point out that the problem was not with SQL::Abstract, but with D::P::SimpleCRUD setting the quote_char param to a backtick, which is good for MySQL and SQLite, but not so much for PostgreSQL. The code in D::P::Database uses the quote() / quote_identifer() methods provided by DBI, so should Do The Right Thing for any DBI-supported database engine.)
Also released is version 1.24 of Dancer::Plugin::Database, fixing a bug with the log_queries setting reported today on IRC by Martin P Evans (mpe) – thanks Martin!
As soon as time permits, I intend to add more features and refinement to Dancer::Plugin::SimpleCRUD to make it even more useful. Any contributions would be very welcome indeed – you can fork the Dancer::Plugin::SimpleCRUD repository on GitHub and submit pull requests, or contact me with patches.
(You can also find Dancer::Plugin::Database on GitHub, and if you’re interested in my other projects or “following” me, see my GitHub profile.)
Alternative vote – best explanation I’ve seen
I’m still not fully decided whether to vote yes or no to the Alternative Vote (AV) in the upcoming poll here, but I rather like this explanation of why it’s a good thing:
