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A super-simple install

I was reading this Perl Advent Calendar (that would be good for DragonFly, come to think of it) post about ack, and came across a interesting line:

curl http://betterthangrep.com/ack-standalone > ~/bin/ack && chmod 0755 !#:3'

fetch’ would work just as well on a BSD system. The interesting thing is that it’s a one-liner for installing software that doesn’t make any assumptions about having an existing framework like pkgsrc or aptitude or anything like that – it just grabs the code and plops it in place.  It wouldn’t work for more complex software, but the simplicity is intriguing, to match the Unix-like single, chainable program idea.

For those who haven’t seen it, ‘ack‘ is a grep replacement that automatically takes care of common activities around searching – skipping files that would cause duplicate matches, binary files, etc., handles a larger range of regular expressions, and runs startlingly fast.

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Swapcache benefits

Tim Darby was looking to take advantage of swapcache, and got some advice from Matthew Dillon.  This led to a larger writeup that went into the mechanics and advantages of both swapcache and SSDs.  The swapcache(8) page has been expanded with these notes, and I’m sure I need to buy a SSD for my next upgrade.

SSD devices have tumbled into the sub-$100 range for smaller devices; they are perfect for swapcache if you’ve got the spare SATA connector…

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Lazy reading: numbers, servers, things

So, informal poll time: do people like these Lazy Reading roundups?

  • Numbers everyone should know.  (via)  I link to this cause it’s interesting, and because it shows something else.  If you understand what these numbers mean, congratulations.  You speak a language that a limited number of people on this planet can understand.  Think about that for a bit.
  • The end of a faithful server.  (via)  I can sympathize.  Run any computer for some number of years without any issues, and you’ll miss it when it’s gone.
  • A simple explanation for ‘git reset –hard’.  Some chunks of git are magical, in that I know they work but the internal behavior is still opaque to me.  It may be best to keep it that way.
  • I do gain a perverse sense of pride that DragonFly is an all-volunteer organization.  Linux, on the other hand, is mostly a corporate product.  (via)  I realize this is not a legitimate thing, and I’d love having enough of a market that someone could be paid to work on DragonFly.
  • Hey, the Economist Magazine’s Babbage blog is pretty good.  I like this recent article about the Eye-Fi, a device I tell people about whenever I can.  It essentially erases the need for storage on your camera.  The last paragraph in the Babbage entry is also a little bit important.
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2010 Home-made Holiday Geek Gift Guide

I did this last year and the year before, so why not make a habit of it?  I get no commissions; these are mostly places I’ve shopped or plan to shop.   It’s based on “This would be SO COOL to have”, and nothing else.

General:

Nerditry: Newegg, ThinkGeek, Leatherman Wave, ISC.org (see 9-layer OSI model shirt).

Science: American Science and Surplus, Ward’s Scientific, Carolina, and United Nuclear. 

Creepy: Bone Room,  Skulls Unlimited, or Skullduggery.

BSDs:

There are FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD stores, where money goes back to the project.

Bookwise, Jeremy C. Reed publishes a number of BSD–related books.  Buy his stuff through Amazon.  There’s also No Starch Press, which has a number of BSD publications.  (and LEGO, too?)  And of course O’Reilly, for a bunch of things.

Nice things to do:

The FreeBSD Foundation is having an end-of-year appeal for funds, so you can donate in someone’s name.    The NetBSD Foundation probably accepts donations, though I don’t have a specific page to link to for that.

Donations to the Itojun Service Award fund are also a good thing.

Everything else I could think of:

Further suggestions welcome, especially for European shoppers.  I’ve been slowly growing this list year-to-year, and I can always use more interesting and unique places.

Update: George Rosamond pointed at DealExtreme.com.  There are some crazy cheap prices there.

Also, and I can’t believe I didn’t link to this before: Brando.  If you’re looking for something with a USB port, Brando has it.  Even if it’s a jeweled scorpion necklace… USB drive.

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Odd mouse fix

Siju George noticed that his mouse would stop working in X, perhaps every hour.  Restarting X would fix it, but he didn’t have a clear cause.  Antonio Huete Jimenez suggested turning the sysctl ‘debug.psm.loglevel’ to 9 to at least see what messages cropped up, and that seemed to fix it.  I don’t think it’s a good long-term solution, but it’s worth mentioning in case this odd bug bites someone else.

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Lazy Reading: old UNIX, new book, more NYCBSDCon

A general roundup of things, this week.

  • The 1978 Bell System Technical Journal, describing this new Unix thing.  (via)
  • The book Modern Perl is out, written by chromatic.  I link to it for two reasons: the first is that while the book is available for purchase, it’s also available as a free download, with the only condition that you must tell others about it.  The second reason – and the reason I’d mention this book anyway – is that chromatic writes on his site and for O’Reilly, and his articles are succinct and enjoyable.  The Web is a deluge of text, so any author that can hold your attention, with all the other sources to read, is worth following.
  • More NYCBSDCon 2010 stuff, from the comments on my previous post: Will Backman has partial audio recordings, and Jason Dixon’s adventure is online.  (thanks, Will and Lawrence)
  • This summary of the (BSD-ish) Tarsnap service made me smile.
  • Top 5 Best Practices for an Open Source Development Community.  (via)  I especially agree with items 2 and 3.
  • Oddly compelling.  (via everywhere)

Thanks, chneukirchen.org, for leading me to this.