using MIME::Lite from ActiveState Perl on Windows

Wouldn’t you know it, but Windows just has to do things its own way. I’ve just started writing periodic system monitoring programs for our met station network, and needed to send e-mail. Under Unix, it was a simple matter of using MIME::Lite, and calling:

$msg->send();

But Windows doesn’t do sendmail, so you have to talk to the SMTP server directly:

$msg->send_by_smtp('your.SMTP.server.here');

That seems to work.

co-transiteers annoyance

Two new annoying fellow travellers on the GO train yesterday:

  • The Clipper: she took about 10 minutes to get her nails just right … clip, clip, tick, clip … am I the only one who finds that kinda gross? I felt like making kapweeng! kapweeng! ricochet noises to go with it
  • The Thumper: Take a Stompin’ Tom Connors record. Remove the vocals and instrumental accompaniment. Slow it down 200 times. That’s what this youth was doing with his right foot: thump … thump …  … thump …  …  … thump … thump. He kept checking around to see if he was getting a rise out of anyone.

Being the consummate commuter of course, I abided by the first law of transit annoyances: Sit there and do nothing, for cowardice is a virtue.

the joy of spam!

Hooray! I got my first bit of comment spam on this blog. This means two things:

  1. my blog is being found on search engines.
  2. WordPress is being used by enough people to make blog spamming worthwhile.

Of course, I’m not going to let any through, but it’s a wee piece of serendipity while I’m waiting for the furnace repair person to come.

my monitor crashed!

I use a Samsung SyncMaster 171s, and it has this weird quirk every now and again. It decides to fade to white with chilling slowness. I used to think it was Windows 2000 crashing, but the system’s okay if I hit the ‘Auto Calibrate’ button on the monitor.

Maybe it needs exorcism.

Poorly Hacked Perl

I have to admit, I’m gaining more than a sneaking admiration for PHP, the web application language that WordPress and Gallery are written in. It does remind me of an even more hacked-together version of Perl, but if it works well, well …

I looked for books, but they seemed to be out of date or very expensive, or both. So I’m sticking with the online PHP Manual.

banjo blues

I’m kinda stuck with my banjo playing. I can frail away an adequate Shady Grove, but — despite what my teacher Chris Coole says — I just don’t have the confidence to learn new songs from a book or CD.

I get home late and tired, and very often the banjo gets neglected. This isn’t good. I enjoy playing, but I think everyone around me would appreciate it if I got some new tunes.

only in toronto

A dude playing a fusion of traditional Scottish airs and free jazz on an electric bassoon in Union subway station.

late groundhog

Saw one this evening, near Appleby. Guess it’s getting pretty late for them to be about.

The ‘head -n’ debacle

Unix/Linux has a handy little tool called head that will print the first few lines of a file. Run without options, it’ll give you the first few lines, but called f’rintsance head -20, will give you the first 20. It’s worked this way since basically ever.

Now whenever I run it, I get the following smug little message:

head: `-N‘ option is obsolete; use `-n N‘ since this will be removed in the future

I don’t consider myself an old Unix programmer, but I know that there are probably 12 year old scripts of mine working in former employers’ offices far, far away that will need fixing if they ever get rid of the sane old `-N‘ option. For any sakes, why, man, why …?

The message is also rather ambiguous. Why would I want to use `-n N‘ if it will be removed in the future? I knew all along that I should stick with `-N‘. The right of the people to keep and bear heads, shall not be infringed, anyone?

brr brr bddr brr weew brr brr

Apologies to our neighbours for my testing the Wheelwriter this morning. This is what I found out about it (after having to compile in parallel printer support to the kernel, grr):

Do we need CRs? : yes
Does it talk ASCII? : yes, subset
Bidirectional? : yes

I chickened out and installed the Courier 10 printwheel just so I could use spaces to line things up. I don’t like Courier at all, but at least it’s easy to manage.

It’s strange that, in this age that we are creating information at an unparalleled rate, we’re also losing it just as fast. While IBM Wheelwriter codes from the late 1980s do not represent the lost wisdom of the ancients, it is something of our knowledge, and once lost, diminishes us all.

Therefore, send not for whom the (carriage return) bell tolls; it tolls for thee …

No sign of peace, order or good government here

From the livejournal of giantlaser, a contractor in Iraq:

  • We have 10 guards on staff at all times. They live with us. They are Kurdish, from areas 200-400 km north. They have no local loyalties at all – no friends, no family, no one to apply pressure here. While it is always possible they could be compromised, it is far less likely.
  • We have house staff to do all local things we need, like run the generators, shop, fuel the cars, etc.
  • When we leave, the guards sweep the street and secure the immediate area.
  • We are armed at all times. On foot, with a pistol. In a car, with an AK-47 as well.
  • We now take two cars with at least 3 guards. And we’ve appointed the most experienced and capable guards as our personal ones.

Doesn’t sound much like ensuring/enduring freedom or democracy to me.

Just like on the old Amstrad CPC

For no really well defined reason, I used to spend hours designing really tiny bitmap fonts on my old Amstrad CPC. Now it seems that Jason Kottke has done the same thing, but in truetype format:

silkscreen, in fontforge

Silkscreen
reminds me of the HP49g‘s system fonts. You used to be able to get one of those in a scaleable form, so I wonder how similar it looks.

I’m not sure if Jason’s copyright warning would work very well:

This font is free for personal and corporate use and may be redistributed in this unmodified form on your Web site. I would ask that you not modify and then redistribute this font…although you may modify it for your own
personal use.

Back in my pre-press days, I discovered that a font becomes your design if you trivially modify just 5 glyphs. It’s an artefact of the early type producers lobbying to be able to rip each other off … not something that happens much in these DRM-obsessed days.

the word “bummer”

WordReference used to have all the Collins dictionaries available online, for free browsing. I was the main dictionary computing guy at Collins when this deal was made, and it was pretty cool to have a good, non-US English dictionary on the web.

I gues the money has run out, as the Collins data has disappeared, and the English dictionary is derived from WordNet. While I think that WordNet‘s a worthy project, it doesn’t quite compare to the Collins English Dictionary.

Oh well, it was good to know you, WordReference.

Grocery gateway: now with added uselessness

I used to be mad about Grocery Gateway. Now I’m mad at them.

Our last (and by last I mean final, never again, not just most recent) order was a disaster:

  • the delivery was made 15 minutes before our delivery window, at 5:45am.
  • the driver did not call beforehand.
  • the driver was discourteous to Catherine.
  • only 2/3 of the items we ordered were delivered.
  • some of the items appeared to be dirty and badly handled.
  • they’ve put an extra inexplicable charge of $75 on my credit card.

I e-mailed a complaint on the morning of the delivery, and an automated reply promised me a response within 24 hours. A week later, an anodyne semi-human response trickled in, hardly worth the bits it was printed on.

The whole Grocery Gateway/Longo’s debacle has caused quite a stooshie on GTABloggers, with voxpopgirl more than sharing my outrage. A self-described PR-flack for Longo’s tried to make amends by saying how much in debt GG was, how Longo’s pride themselves on exemplary customer service, how hard a job it was, blah blah, rhubarb rhubarb. No ice was cut.

Longo’s cancelled the order of a person with disabilities. Is it possible to get worse PR than that?

Good riddance,Longo’s Grocery Gateway. I won’t shop with you any more, and I’d strongly recommend other to take their money elsewhere.