configuration

Dual-head on collision

jp.stacey 21 July 2006

One of the last tasks that moving to my new machine involves is to stretch the Ubuntu desktop across both of my monitors. Our sysadmin had very kindly set it up to work with the monitor card integral to the motherboard, so in principle I only had to tweak the configuration for X, the standard Linux GUI system.

Could I get this to work? Could I hell. xorg.conf configuration after configuration threw the error

Realplayer to mp3: a configurable Python wrapper

jp.stacey 6 December 2006

It’s one of the worst-kept tech secrets in the world, but Real Audio streams can be downloaded using software such as mplayer and then converted to MP3 format with lame. Both of these are available in Ubuntu using the non-Ubuntu package manager Automatix. The possibility of doing this conversion implies that, although the BBC offer all their programs in Real Audio and only a few as podcasts, you can in principle put any you like on your portable music device.

Installing on the Edge

jp.stacey 9 January 2007

Happy new year, all. A short and relatively under-researched one to kick off 2007, as I’m suddenly very busy with multiple projects. Just to keep those Google fires burning….

New version of rmrip

jp.stacey 25 February 2007

Following user requests, I’ve uploaded a new version of rmrip which takes a command-line argument specifying your configuration file:

./rmrip.py foo.conf

As the user himself implied, this has the added bonus of making it more crontab-friendly e.g. you can have a crontab entry saying:

OpenSSH, Ubuntu popups and IPv6

jp.stacey 16 July 2007

I have a couple of on-login tasks doing various distributed office jobs for me: one brought in all the networked drives from machines in this and the other office; the other backed up my locally stored email to the office server. Because my work rarely spans offices I don’t pay much attention to the former; I pay even less to the latter. For various reasons I’m using ssh to make these connections—sshfs and duplicity over ssh, respectively—and I’ve found it easy enough to set up using keys on the two servers in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys .

Distributed FM radio from a single digital signal

jp.stacey 25 November 2007

There’s currently no plan to switch off FM stations. In fact, many radio bosses have said oh, for heaven’s sake to the very idea. There is, astonishingly, less of a plan for radio switchover than there is desire among the general public for TV switchover. So that must be some sort of record for nothingness.

Unsubscibe me form this maling list... for a bit

jp.stacey 17 December 2007

‘Tis the season to remove yourself from mailing lists if you’re subscribed from your work address. And there’s only so much good will to go round, until it’s completely soaked up by people asking lists with automated (un)subscription procedures to “unsubscibe” them, please, right now. It’s even harder to deal with those who ask thousands of people if they can be unsubscribed, but then re-subscribed

The TimeToLead.eu technical stack: Django and Flex

jp.stacey 11 September 2008
Move over LAMP: here comes LAPD.

As discussed previously, at Torchbox we recently built TimeToLead.eu, an advocacy site set up by the four major environmental NGOs to prompt MEPs into passing the sort of legislation the world's climate desperately needs. The project itself needed a fast turnaround time, and its pan-European audience demanded strong i18n and l10n.

Wordpress violence / breaks the silence

jp.stacey 14 September 2008
Come cracking in / into my little shared-hosting environment. I'm working on it.

I finally began to get on top of Wordpress upgrades a few months ago, with an upgrade to 2.5.1. It worked well, but left me open to what looks like a failed attempt to exploit a cryptographic splicing vulnerability in Wordpress 2.5.x.

Google now lets you pay for Google App Engine

jp.stacey 25 February 2009
But can you buy the bits you want to deploy a Django application?

Google are introducing paid-for extensions to Google App Engine quotas, which is great as it lets you build more complex applications if you're willing to pay the rates. At the same time they're reducing the baseline free quotas.