tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68630892024-03-18T10:05:13.032+00:00Geek ThoughtsRandom thoughts and ideas from a French geek in LondonAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.comBlogger553125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-23860827836123027172013-02-12T19:18:00.000+00:002013-02-12T19:18:40.284+00:00Green Deal or No Deal?Green Deal BasicsAs detailed in a blog post last year, my home energy use and a thermal imaging survey I had done show very clearly that my house is in need of serious energy efficiency work. I was intending to do this last year but working out how to finance the work proved to be a bit of a problem as I had depleted my savings to minimise the size of the mortgage. So when the Green Deal came Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-88278704401217744382013-01-20T23:48:00.000+00:002013-01-20T23:48:51.612+00:00Identifying spamRefugees UnitedYesterday, I participated in the Refugees United Modding Day 2013 organised by Rewired State for Refugees United. I worked on a hack that tried to implement and algorithm to identify spam and eventually also identify spammers. Our presentation was OK but not fantastic as time was short. The short of it was that by the end of the day I wasn't convinced the algorithm as coded worked Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-91526992634177092652013-01-13T17:40:00.000+00:002013-01-13T17:40:04.714+00:00for and while constructs in bashThe for constructWhen you want to iterate over a list in bash, the first thing that comes to mind is to use a for loop, like this:
for f in "abc def"; do
echo $f
done
Simple for loopThis works great when the list to iterate over is short and is composed of items that do not contain any white space. When they do, or the list is long, this construct will get into trouble. Let's demonstrate withAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-13548753562707149372012-05-20T18:32:00.000+01:002012-08-14T17:01:28.710+01:00European Cookie LawYesterday, Andy Budd tweeted the following:
Wondering if the browsers are doing anything about the EU cookie law? Would be so much slicker if this could be handled at the brower level.
That got me thinking and, as I like to work out how things work, I started to ask Andy how he would see this being implemented. A few tweets later and it's obvious I need more than 140 characters to explain what isAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-31092955840947156962012-04-02T20:55:00.001+01:002012-04-02T21:02:01.712+01:00Energy Use
I've been using iMeasure roughly since I moved into the new house and here's what the graphs look like so far:
iMeasure Energy Usage Graph
There are two immediate observations on this graph:
electricity use is not seasonnal,
gas use definitely is!
The first observation tells me that my main electricity usage is probably not lighting as it doesn't change with the amount of daylight. SoAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-15329132030411370722012-01-15T19:01:00.002+00:002013-06-08T12:49:37.550+01:00Recycling Smoke AlarmsWe all know that we should have smoke alarms fitted in our homes. Those alarms can be damaged and will need replacing every ten years or so anyway. So what do you do with the old ones? Chuck them in the bin? Well, the fact that they are the subject of a best practice guide on the National Household Hazardous Waste Forum suggests that this is probably not the right solution. And indeed, looking atAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-76535919666874020742012-01-13T21:11:00.000+00:002012-01-13T21:11:47.527+00:00Yodel redefines the word Safe while John Lewis redefines Eco-Friendly
Last week-end I visited the John Lewis web site and bought a couple of Buiani folding chairs. I was advised that they would be delivered within 7 days via a standard delivery service, as opposed to the specialist delivery service you get when you buy larger items and who are very good.
So when I came back home on Wednesday night, I found a very large (more on that later) cardboard box outside Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-47361714007388020762011-12-30T00:07:00.000+00:002011-12-30T00:07:21.065+00:00Non-Exchangeable, Non-Refundable
I travelled on Eurostar today and learnt something about non-exchangeable, non-refundable tickets in the process so thought I'd share in case it can be useful to someone else. Eurostar sells several types of tickets in several classes (Standard, Standard Premier and Business Premier). The higher the class and the more flexible the ticket, the greater the price. So the cheapest tickets are Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-81073556196625014322011-05-28T00:50:00.000+01:002011-05-28T00:50:45.881+01:00Crash of the DayReceived today from a colleague:
Please note that if somebody opens Build log excel in Microsoft excel 2007 and updates it while a filter put on any column, the file crashes.
So please avoid updating the build log in Microsoft excel 2007.
So we're talking about a fairy simple file created in Excel 2003 that crashes Excel 2007 if you try to update it while a filter is set on any column... Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-71220480710896906322011-04-21T23:27:00.003+01:002011-04-25T18:11:03.199+01:00MS Works to MS Word: LibreOffice to the Rescue
I am at my mum's for Easter and one of the first things she asked me to look at had to do with her computer. She had this document that she wrote using Microsoft Works aeons ago that she wanted to open again. Of course, she's now using Microsoft Word and Word has no idea how to open Works files, even though both products are produced from the same software company.
What to do? The answer is Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-51658031163714602182011-02-01T23:34:00.000+00:002013-04-29T13:45:00.779+01:00Outlook ErrorIn the meaningless error category, let me present today's effort by Microsoft Outlook: Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-51630199557102918242011-01-30T23:53:00.000+00:002011-01-30T23:53:07.764+00:00D-Bus Experiments in Vala
Most modern Linux desktop distributions now include D-Bus. It enables different applications in the same user session to communicate with each other or with system services. So I thought I'd experiment with D-Bus using Vala and starting with the published example.
Example 1: Ping Loop
I started with a simple ping client and server based on the example above, the main difference being that I Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-69091602449227784812011-01-30T16:42:00.000+00:002011-01-30T16:42:04.840+00:00The Devil's in the Details
A good piece of software should make boring, repetitive and error prone tasks easy. One of them that photographers face regularly is resizing a batch of images. The typical situation is the day after a party when everybody wants a copy of the photos you took, either by email or on a CD. Quite often, people don't want the full size but they'd quite like copies of all the photos. I found myself inAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-71666778108968757292010-12-06T21:22:00.000+00:002010-12-06T21:22:21.683+00:00Web accessibility – Code of practice
BSi have just released a new British Standard, BS 8878:2010 Web accessibility – Code of practice. First things first, this is not another set of web accessibility guidelines. This document is meant to complement existing guidelines such as WCAG and provide a framework for companies to implement accessible web products. It recognises that accessibility goes well beyond HTML tags and requires the Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-19471578446136653002010-11-07T19:49:00.003+00:002010-11-09T22:34:16.946+00:00Reading Paradise... or DRM Hell?New Toy
Yesterday, I bought myself a Sony PRS-650 Reader Touch Edition as a belated birthday present. I could have bought the new Kindle, as there are lots of adverts for it in the tube, it's cheaper and it has Wi-Fi. I went for the Sony PRS reader instead because I don't really need Wi-Fi and it has a touch screen, which means that it's not encumbered by a keyboard and is therefore a lot Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-26750822741245000362010-10-17T11:16:00.000+01:002010-10-17T11:16:05.938+01:00R.I.P. Benoit Mandelbrot
Benoit Mandelbrot passed away on Thursday at the age of 85. He last talked about his work at TED2010 earlier this year.
I remember being fascinated by images of the Mandelbrot set when I was a child and I did a series of articles last year on how to create them using GNU Octave so if you want to have a go yourself, feel free to grab the code and follow the examples.
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-25771345486584249392010-09-09T21:50:00.000+01:002010-09-09T21:50:50.011+01:00Of the Perception of Open Source Tools
Today, while discussing options for an identity federation solution, I had the following comment from one of my colleagues (I paraphrase as I don't remember the exact words):
The advantage with a Microsoft product compared to an open source product is that you get a good administration interface.
Note that no specific package had actually been mentioned so this was an obvious generalisation Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-52202709947558732462010-09-05T20:27:00.000+01:002010-09-05T20:27:08.212+01:00Adding Support for Alien Database Import in Shotwell
When developing the import from F-Spot feature in Shotwell, I made sure I isolated the F-Spot specific code from the generic code so that the same feature could be easily implemented to import photographs from other photo management application. So if you want to contribute an import from Picasa feature, here's a quick guide on how to do it.
Alien Database Framework
Everything you need in Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-31879154798132686642010-09-05T11:18:00.001+01:002010-09-05T11:20:02.908+01:00Sound Issue in Ubuntu 10.10 Beta
This morning when logging in to my newly-upgraded-to-Ubuntu-10.10 laptop, sound was not working. It appears that the solution was very simple: my user was not authorised to use audio devices. I don't know why it was disabled as it had always worked fine before but it's very easy to solve so if you have the same problem check that first. To resolve it, go to System → Administration → Users and Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-88066785878667472332010-09-04T21:23:00.000+01:002010-09-04T21:23:25.276+01:00Memory Usage Graphs with ps and Gnuplot
When developing the import from F-Spot feature in Shotwell, a user who tested the patch found out that there was a bit of a memory leak. After finding the cause, I produced a patch to fix it but I also wanted to identify what the difference was between the development trunk and the patch. So here's how I did it.
Gathering Data
The first step was to gather relevant memory usage data. For this IAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-19330916159441359352010-09-04T16:24:00.001+01:002010-09-04T18:47:26.890+01:00Ubuntu 10.10 Beta First Impressions
Ubuntu released the first Maverick beta a couple of days ago. As I had some time on my hands today (including the time to re-install Lucid if it all went pear shaped), I decided the upgrade my ThinkPad T42 so, as instructed, I typed this in a terminal:
update-manager -d
And here's how it went.
The Good
The upgrade took a few hours, was extremely smooth and just worked.
Everything that I'veAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-31380046675646438352010-08-24T20:07:00.000+01:002010-08-24T20:07:49.728+01:00Web Site "Optimisation"
Seen today on a web site that shall remain nameless:
This web site has been optimized for use with Microsoft® Internet Explorer 4.7 and above. Get your free browser update today.
I had to double-check my calendar to make sure I hadn't accidentally walked into a Tardis and been sent back to the last millennium.
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-2223520227174755522010-08-15T21:46:00.000+01:002010-08-15T21:46:26.170+01:00Contributing to ShotwellBackground
I use open source software every day on all the computers I own. In fact, outside of work environments where Windows is still predominant, very little of the software I use is closed source these days. As a result, I've wanted to contribute back to the community that has developed such great software by fixing bugs and implementing new features. However, I've found it a lot more Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-87793018363472933612010-08-07T14:56:00.000+01:002010-08-07T14:56:54.477+01:00Flashing the N900Introduction
The Nokia N900 is able to upgrade its operating system over the air, which is the best way to upgrade it, especially if you have a fast Internet connection. This is also very practical when you're not running Windows because the Nokia suite only exists on that platform. This is exactly what I had been doing since I bought my N900. Except that a few months ago, I declined to update Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6863089.post-22860259150233221132010-08-01T17:12:00.000+01:002010-08-01T17:12:14.345+01:00GUADEC 2010
I was at GUADEC this week so here is a summary of what I took out of it.
The Location
GUADEC was held in The Hague this year and hosted by De Haagse Hogeschool. The Hague is a nice medium sized town where, in typical Dutch fashion, you go everywhere by bicycle or tram. Public transport is very efficient, fast and always on time. In short, the only similarity with London is that the weather wasAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01600375579955596177noreply@blogger.com0