Sam Wilson's Journal

Nothin' like a Good Upgrade to Start The Day: I got up early this morning to grab the phone line before the others awake - there's eight here today and I guess someone will come hassling before long. I have returned to using wordpress (the software that I was using last year briefly) for this s…
Sunday in The Lab: I have spent far too long on the computer. My mind is in quite a strange state. What am I to do? All this coding suddenly seems pointless, and I want to stroll on the terrace, prehaps sit with a quiet cup of tea, or be warmed by the fire and Kea…
Where Do I Walk, Then?: Today I reinstate this weblog. I've shuffled files around on this server, and I've shuffled boxes and books around in my bedroom; it's Spring, and time to re-organise, clear up, and start to think again. Last week I thought I was doing just so, but…
Hyphens and dashes: Dashes and hyphens, a good article from the Characters and encodings section of the free information site IT and communication by Jukka "Yucca" Korpela.…
What's the point?: Oh weary thing! Oh listless drudgery! Oh the stupid work we make for ourselves!! Oh!â€¦ Here I sit, on a cool spring morning, with nothing at all to worry about; I am happy. So why-oh-why-oh-why should I sit down to work at some sloppy, goo…
My xorg.conf: At last we have Ubuntu working with a SGI 1600SW Flatpanel display. Here's the xorg.conf: # /etc/X11/xorg.conf (xorg X Window System server configuration file) # # This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using # val…
Triple Gripe: Eighteen buckets of water for A.'s garden. A cycle over to my new community garden plot in O'Connor. And now much grief caused by our bothersome host. It's fun carrying buckets, when one doesn't have to worry about getting sunburnt. I'm oh-so-e…
Grepping: Global Search Regular Expression Print. An’ there I was, thinking McKenzie Wark was aluding to some pre-1976 use of this term. ‘Course he wasn’t, A Hacker Manifesto is way fully for geeks who’d know how to search, and what…
Yet again, the Great Divide: Often, when I'm sitting in a lecture about concurrency, say, or sketching a possible design for some program, I actively love the fountain pen that I'm using at these times. Engaging with I.T., I find such great comfort in using such an old and 'out…
Procrastination: I'm lost today, lost in a dull quagmire of concurrency, Ada and the oppresive weight of too much stuff. I have an assignment to do and I understand very little of it. I suspect that I could figure it out, but I can't be bothered. If I could see cl…
Nothing to say: (So why am I saying this?) I am looking forward to the day when I will again have something worth writing about (and I'm thinking here of woodwork: one of the happiest times of wood/tech union was back in 2003 when I was working at the art school wo…
End of the day, end of the week.: I am exhausted, but strangely not completely sick of this assignment. It's beer o'clock, and I'm going to the pub. Part of me wants to stay and keep going—while I'm going well an' all—but I think I've just deleted a function from the fi…
Relying on, but not trusting, technology: I have been sorting through my (digital) photos lately, uploading the good ones to my website. It's drudge-work, peaceful in its way like all drudge-work, and now and then I stumble upon a particularly nice shot, or one that evokes some pleasant mem…
Kerrie Tucker's revamped site: During the last few days I've been working with Margo Kingstong and Kate Tucker on porting Kerrie Tucker's website to Wordpress. I've also set up the new ACT Greens online merchandise shop, Green Shop. So I've probably had about enough of sitting a…
"Dad, I dug a hole.": I have been digging this morning, working on the chicken run. It's muddy, now we've started pulling up the concrete, and the clay sucks at my boots and sticks to all the tools; how very far this is from my memories of digging soakwells in Fremantle!…
New BB For Me: I've just installed a new bottom bracket in my bicycle. It's a Shimano UN26, 68x113mm (1mm narrower than the old one, but that's just closed up the little gap I had anyway), and cost $40. I'm posting this just so that I don't forgetâ€¦ I…
Facebook vs. Wordpress: The last few weeks have seen a great number of my friends turn to Facebook (and, of course, I know exactly how many). It's great, it's exciting, it's suddenly become so easy to organise things and we can now all talk about Facebook when we meet for …
How CGDNs might help build a sense of belonging.: My brain is feeling pretty groggy at the moment, so excuse any pointlessness in this post. Not that there's ever any point to my posts, but that's beside the point. I'm at work, almost thinking that the afternoon's nearly half-gone and so, well, wh…
That on which the coding rests: Just to intersperse this stream of codeish posts with something a little more real… I rode part of the way to work today, and then put my bicycle on the bus for the remainder of the journey. (An odd feeling, looking through the bus' windscreen …
Squirrelmail Variable Sent Folder Plugin: I've just submitted a patch for Squirrelmail's Variable Sent Folder plugin, fixing that plugin's lack of respect for the user's choice of folder-select-box display. It's been annoying me for a while. Here's the patched version (0.4sw).…