The Twilight Report

heatwave

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 23:49:00 GMT

Tonight on the way home, Town Hall station was sweltering awful humid hotness on both sides of the platform like the innards of Hades in a bad mood. It does not bode well for the weekend when it is supposed to top off at 43 degrees in parts of the city^[1]. Since I got a train pass that goes out to Bondi Junction this week ^[2] I might go and hide in the mega mall with the AC for at least part of the weekend and maybe go see a movie.

I started writing this journal to keep my writing skills fresh. That was in 2004 and seems like forever ago. I didn't have any delusions of being some grate writer or anything^[3], but I think being able to communicate clearly is a pretty worth while skill even if one is simply a particularly cleaver monkey banging out source code on the keyboard. Then this year I started posting more photos because I've been taking more photos. Now I am thinking that balance is in order.

I am relieved at the ease of migrating my email server today. It took a long time to copy inboxes and folders and stuff, but the actual configuration and updating of the DNS MX records was a relative breeze. Since I ditched sendmail dealing with my SMTP server has been difficult but possible, a significant improvement over trying and impossible. The new server^[4] is going to save me a lot of money which is a good thing given that we are all going to lose our jobs and subsist on stealing gasoline in the desert using revved up muscle cars. I'm still losing money on it, which is okay, because I get a lot of utility out of it.

read it in mX so it must be true^TM
at the price of $3 more, which is pretty good because even one trip out there will save me money over getting a round trip ticket
...any more
Actually the new server is really three (virtual) servers, which is good because it builds some redundancy and backups into the system

I hope it's a long ceremony, 'cause it's gonna be a short honeymoon.

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 11:04:00 GMT

Finally got paid. Well, exactly when they said I would, it just seems like it has been forever waiting. Also: it always seems like a lot of money when it comes in, but as soon as I start adding up the bills and taking out the savings it starts to approach zero. Tyler joked years ago that one day if he worked hard enough he’d be worth nothing. It’s good to keep your sense of humour when you are in debt. I am well past being in debt, but it still feels as though there is never enough. The future is a tangled mess in my mind right now.

Things that I did over the weekend:

Switched from sendmail to Postfix. Wish I had done it sooner.
Upgraded my file server to FC4. Ditto. Although AFS authentication doesn’t quite work anymore.
Set up a heterogeneous distributed compiler system using four computers, five processors, six cores and three different operating systems to build FC4 applications. Why am I doing this? So that I can issue commands like make –j 12 (dork) and expect good performance.
Went to Terrigal and floated in the ocean for an hour. The water was awesome.

By far the best use of my time was going to the beach. A big part of coming out to Australia was the idea that I’d be able to go to Terrigal just about anytime I pleased. Years ago I had this perfect moment there. There had been some files and it had been smoky for days. Then on the last day we were in Australia the wind cleared it away and I was at Terrigal on top of the skillion. The colours were intense. It was beautiful. I don’t think I’ve ever felt like that anywhere else.

sendmail

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 03:21:00 GMT

sendmail is to me like Starscream is to Megatron. It’s always fouling things up at the last minute. I’m going to switch to postfix.

like a heartbeat / on the downbeat

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 22:24:00 GMT

Feeling overly dramatic and totally energyless tonight. sendmail should die; remind me again why we can't just use postfix instead?

I have an urge to write another computer demo. Will need two things:

to review OpenGL
inspiration

I was in a bookstore this afternoon after work and I picked up an OpenGL book. The hard bit will be the inspiration. My last demo was inspired by the number e^[1].

Who wants to be in charge of sound effects and music?

The other thing I thought about buying in the bookstore was a Mandarin/English dictionary. I decided to wait for now. I've obviously become interested in 中文^[2], but I have a few 中文 resources that I should finish with before buying new stuff. It could be a passing interest after all.

I'm a dork.
Chinese language