“LESSjs will obsolete css”
August 31st, 2010How to import a module programmatically
August 30th, 2010To import a module where you have the module name as a string and want to do it programmatically:
X = __import__(‘X’)
X is now a variable that can be used in your code:
e.g. getattr(X, method)
converting ssl cert from PKCS#12 to PEM
July 28th, 2010$ openssl pkcs12 -in /path/to/my/cert.p12 -out /pathto/my/cert.pem
If you get “X509_check_private_key:key values mismatch” e.g. with stunnel, then try adding -clcerts
$ openssl pkcs12 -clcerts -in /path/to/my/cert.p12 -out /pathto/my/cert.pem
HOWTO install couchdb 0.11.0 on Ubuntu Lucid from source
June 30th, 2010Only 0.10.0 available in ubuntu package, but I want 0.11.0. Here goes…
Get couchdb tarball from apache couchdb website.
sudo apt-get install xulrunner-dev libicu-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev erlang-dev help2man
You need xulrunner-dev as a replacement for the Mozilla spidermonkey which used to conflict with Mozilla and is not available in Lucid.
Then follow the rest of the instructions at http://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/Installing_on_Ubuntu (look for the section called “Ubuntu 10.04″)
iPad annoyances
June 8th, 20101. Can’t use certificate authentication with Safari, so there are some websites I can’t access that I can from my laptop.
2. iPhone-native apps don’t rotate into landscape mode.
3. Book selection in iBooks is paltry.
“host not found” on nxclient connect to nxserver
April 9th, 2010Cause: my user couldn’t read /etc/hosts
things I hate: companies who won’t let you leave them
September 7th, 2009Anyone thinking of signing up with Be Internet: be warned, it’s easier to join them than to leave.
I’m currently having a fight with them because they insist the only way you can close an account with them and stop paying them money, is by phoning a telephone number and giving lots of security information including your date of birth.
Not allowed to do it via their own “secure” account system…
Not allowed to do it in writing…
Not allowed to do it by them phoning me on the mobile phone number I’d given them X years ago…
Apparently even after the telephone line is disconnected tomorrow, they *still* won’t accept that I really, really don’t want their service any more.
This is going to be interesting!
Extracting files from rpm
August 27th, 2009rpm2cpio
OSX MacPorts install of postgres
June 23rd, 2009Following their instructions to initialise the database, you get a complaing about /dev/null.
This is because the default postgres user is installed with a shell of /dev/null.
To change it, forget all the Unix stuff you know about administering users and do this
sudo dscl . -change /Users/postgres UserShell /dev/null /bin/sh
Or if you want to check first, check that the user exists
sudo dscl . -list /Users UniqueID
And then check the postgres user
sudo dscl . read /users/postgres
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
June 11th, 2009Needed to do this:
sudo locale-gen en_GB.UTF-8
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales