Time Unknown (Entries tagged as learned)

This is how geeks nap

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:12:53 +0200

Lately I have messed up my night time sleep more often than usual. I'm not by any means good at napping, so usually falling asleep is difficult. However, I've recently discovered that the Stack Overflow podcast will put me to sleep very promptly. Is it geek or what to find Joel Spolsky that soothing?

Huawei observations

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Sat, 10 May 2008 15:11:12 +0300

Plugging in Saunalahti nettitikku Huawei 169 worked fine, and I could browse the web and ssh out. Soon, however, I realized that Akregator was failing to fetch feeds. I tried again and then fetched some feeds manually with Firefox.. that worked so it seemed unlikely .rss was somehow discriminated against. When I tried fetching podcasts with Amarok, that did not work either! I closed and restarted both apps, but no cigar.

Turned out both started working when I closed Knetwork-manager. I guess they believed it too well about there not being a network.

Disassembling your ill Roomba

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:35:17 +0200

If your Roomba is ill, you might want to disassemble it to see what might cure it... or just two see what makes it tick. I partially disassembled and reassembled our Lo (as in Robot, when said with a Japanese accent) in order to perform some more serious de-dusting. Only afterwards I found a good set of images showing how to do it properly.

Lo did not mind, though. It's now dutifully vacuuming the hallway.

The folder you don't want

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 13:47:22 +0200

When revamping my GTD setup last week, I discovered a monster. The scary creature in question was a folder titled 'Other actionable' and it was full of stuff. When I looked at the contents, my fears turned out to be true: it was stuff I hadn't looked at since filing it into that folder. Uh oh.

Luckily none of the contents were really important, but now I am a less-than-proud owner of 15 4 euro exercise coupons that will expire on Monday. I'm considering getting a 10 session gym card to Motivus with them.

Removing screenprotectors

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 19:13:41 +0300

If you have the original screen protector still on your N800, or want to remove some other stubborn screen protector, the following trick is kinder to your touchscreen that trying to pry the film loose with your fingernails.

1. Take some low-tack tape (masking tape is good).

2. Smooth a piece of it, 6cm or so, diagonally at a corner so that half of it is hanging loose outside the screen area while the other 3cm is firmly attached to the film.

3. Grab the loose end and pull quickly towards the center of the screen. For those of you unfortunate enough to have waxed of hair, this movement should come quite naturally.

4. Throw away the useless film or remove the tape and clean the film for further use.

If you are by the way wondering about a weird film on your N800 that has a tiny tab at the upper right that goes under the bevel, yes, that's the original protective film and can be safely removed.

A big mistake

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 18:44:19 +0300

Today I broke one of my rules of sysadmining and it lead to a big mistake at a really inconvenient time.

I normally don't do sysadmin tasks when even slightly intoxicated, too tired or way ill. I slept about 4 hours last night, but I'm working full time and there was some hurry, so there was no avoiding configuring the network interfaces of a remote server.

Configuring eth0:1 went fine and it came up beautifully. The second one, eth0:2 was same except a different IP. Or should have been. Something went wrong as as sometime after doing /sbin/ifup eth0:2 the server just disconnected me. I booted the server remotely, but had daftly left ONBOOT=TRUE on both of them, so it did little good.
I'm not sure what went wrong. It's possible that I e.g. moved eth0 configuration to eth0:1 instead of copying it,

New and improved rules include making checklists first, in full detail, if I cannot avoid working in a subpar state.

I feel really bad about this one, so I better learn something useful from it.

Clove oil for canker sores

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 08:26:10 +0300

Clove oil applied with a q-tip to a canker sore made it painless in less than a minute. It actually has been painfree since. However, clove oil is powerful stuff, so I don't recommend this if there are other things that help.

kpilot violence

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 22:53:39 +0300

When having trouble or a problem with kpilot, go ahead and kill kpilotDaemon. It either helps or is just very satisfying.

Akregator does tagging!

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Mon, 07 May 2007 08:27:03 +0300

Wow, I found out today (thanks to teprrr) that Akregator has a configuration option that allows tagging entries. This is exactly what I have been looking for as I have many different kind of articles marked as Important and this lets me tell reference materials from unread-but-interesting and fun from business.

Another paper wallet

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Wed, 02 May 2007 07:44:00 +0300

Now I have made another paper wallet.

I learned that thicker paper is not necessarily better: it will fold less flat and unlocking the locked cards is more hassle. Width of the paper is very important: if you have too wide wallet with too short flaps the 'locked in' cards will just weasel their way out of their compartments.

Update: Now, 4 months of daily use later it is starting to need a replacement. Quite good, huh?

Going for vi

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 11:58:23 +0300

I finally got tired of juggling between editors and as vi is the one that tends to be always there, that's my new non-X editor of choice. Unless I find out I absolutely hate it, that is.

However, the world seems to oppose this change. Whenever I tried printing a vi cheatsheet, I always either got HUGE print in landscape orientation, or a fraction of the page in portrait orientation instead of the normal size full page in landscape. I bet this is actually is caused by the original pdf not specifying page size at all. Annoying, irritating and all around bad anyway.

Liesimusta

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 22:54:26 +0200

Se pelottava aine jota kaupoissa myydään nimellä Liesimusta, ja jota käytetään keittolevyjen puhdistamiseen, oikeasti toimii. Järkytyksekseni nyt on melkein uuden näköiset keittolevyt, eikä mömmöä edes kulunut paljoa.

Royal Coat decoupage varnish not suited for coasters

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 10:29:00 +0200

I finished a pretty set of Luis Royo coasters but now it turned out the Royal Coat decoupage varnish I used was not suited for anything hot (sticks to hot mugs) or moist (turns whitish). I'll have to find some varnish to use on top of the Royal Coat to make the coasters usable.

Not today

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 19:02:40 +0300

Kubuntu 6.10 came out today. But I'm not going to upgrade today, despite having a mild case of The New Version Fever. I'm planning to wait a week, ask around for problems with the hardware in HP NC8230, then try the live cd, take last minute backups and only then upgrade.

However, if you are about to upgrade from Dapper to Edgy just now, take a look at Unofficial Kubuntu 6.06 to 6.10 upgrade instructions, it might be useful for you.