Technology on Miro's World

Catching up: Obsidian + Claude

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Plain markdown files turned out to be the best possible interface between a decade of notes and a language model. No API, no export, no connector, no sync service in the middle: the agent opens the folder and reads it, the same way I do. This post is what happened once I let it.

The setup
#

There is a CLAUDE.md file at the root of my vault. It is twenty-nine lines long, and the last three of them say this:

Catching up: Riding the LLM Wave

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200

This is a history of three years - from bookmarking ChatGPT articles to an AI-managed knowledge base; with a certification in the middle and one embarrassing self-assessment along the way.

Spectator to User (2023)
#

I still remember my first interactions with ChatGPT (via the web, using the free version) sometime in early 2023. I wanted to have an episode guide of an excellent HBO series called Patria, a story of a Basque family during the ETA years. So I asked for it, and what ChatGPT produced was completely, utterly, unbelievably hallucinated: 12 episodes (the series has 8), a made-up story, randomly assigned actors, two thirds of them non-existent. One huge hallucination. I did not keep the transcript, but I remember it clearly. It was very disappointing, and my conclusion was: well, this is fun, but useless.

Git bits 2

Wed, 23 Mar 2016 12:57:35 -0500

Using the Scala source repo to demonstrate - see Github

Show merged and unmerged branches
#

This command allows you to show all local branches merged / unmerged to current branch

➜  scala git:(2.12.x) git branch -a --merged
* 2.12.x
  remotes/origin/2.11.x
  remotes/origin/2.12.x
  remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/2.12.x

➜  scala git:(2.12.x) git branch -a --no-merged
  remotes/origin/2.10.x
  remotes/origin/2.8.x
  remotes/origin/2.9.x
  remotes/origin/DarkDimius-patch-1
  remotes/origin/gh-pages
  remotes/origin/legacy/msil

This shows you all local branches merged into named branch:

Git - find unmerged commits

Tue, 22 Mar 2016 12:57:35 -0500

This is Ruby script I found way back and was using it since.

The credits for creation goes to Zach Dennis. The script is decribed in his blog post

The source is here

Example
#

This is beginning of very long output from Groovy source

The code
#

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require 'rubygems'

gem 'term-ansicolor', '>=1.0.5'
require 'term/ansicolor'

class GitCommit
  attr_reader :content

  def initialize(content)
    @content = content
  end

  def sha
    @content.split[1]
  end

  def to_s
    `git log --pretty=format:"%h %ad %an - %s" #{sha}~1..#{sha}`
  end

  def unmerged?
    content =~ /^\+/
  end

  def equivalent?
    content =~ /^\-/
  end
end

class GitBranch
  attr_reader :name, :commits

  def initialize(name, commits)
    @name = name
    @commits = commits
  end

  # Returns origin from origin/some/branch/here
  def repository
    name.split("/", 2).first
  end

  # Returns some/branch/here from origin/some/branch/here
  def branch_name
    name.split("/", 2).last
  end

  def unmerged_commits
    commits.select{ |commit| commit.unmerged? }
  end

  def equivalent_commits
    commits.select{ |commit| commit.equivalent? }
  end

end

class GitBranches < Array
  def self.clean_branch_output(str)
    str.split(/\n/).map{ |e| e.strip.gsub(/\*\s+/, '') }.reject{ |branch| branch =~ /\b#{Regexp.escape(UPSTREAM)}\b/ }.sort
  end

  def self.local_branches
    clean_branch_output `git branch`
  end

  def self.remote_branches
    clean_branch_output `git branch -r`
  end

  def self.load(options)
    git_branches = new
    branches = if options[:local]
      local_branches
    elsif options[:remote]
      remote_branches
    end

    branches.each do |branch|
      raw_commits = `git cherry -v #{UPSTREAM} #{branch}`.split(/\n/).map{ |c| GitCommit.new(c) }
      git_branches << GitBranch.new(branch, raw_commits)
    end
    git_branches
  end

  def unmerged
    reject{ |branch| branch.commits.empty? }.sort_by{ |branch| branch.name }
  end

  def any_missing_commits?
    select{ |branch| branch.commits.any? }.any?
  end
end

class GitUnmerged
  VERSION = "1.1"

  include Term::ANSIColor

  attr_reader :branches

  def initialize(args)
    @options = {}
    @branches_to_prune = []
    extract_options_from_args(args)
  end

  def load
    @branches ||= GitBranches.load(:local => local?, :remote => remote?)
    @branches.reject!{|b| @options[:exclude].include?(b.name)} if @options[:exclude].is_a?(Array)
    @branches.select!{|b| @options[:only].include?(b.name)} if @options[:only].is_a?(Array)
  end

  def print_overview
    load
    if @options[:exclude] && @options[:exclude].length > 0
      puts "The following branches have been excluded"
      @options[:exclude].each do |branch_name|
        puts "  #{branch_name}"
      end
      puts
    end

    if @options[:only] && @options[:only].length > 0
      puts "The following branches will be compared against:"
      @options[:only].each do |branch_name|
        puts "  #{branch_name}"
      end
      puts
    end

    if branches.any_missing_commits?
      puts "The following branches possibly have commits not merged to #{upstream}:"
      branches.each do |branch|
        num_unmerged = yellow(branch.unmerged_commits.size.to_s)
        num_equivalent = green(branch.equivalent_commits.size.to_s)
        puts %|  #{branch.name} (#{num_unmerged}/#{num_equivalent} commits)|
      end
    end
  end

  def print_help
    puts <<-EOT.gsub(/^\s+\|/, '')
      |Usage: #{$0} [-a] [--upstream <branch>] [--remote] [--prune]
      |
      |This script wraps the "git cherry" command. It reports the commits from all local
      |branches which have not been merged into an upstream branch.
      |
      |  #{yellow("yellow")} commits have not been merged
      |  #{green("green")} commits have equivalent changes in <upstream> but different SHAs
      |
      |The default upstream is 'master' (or 'origin/master' if running with --remote)
      |
      |OPTIONS:
      |  -a   display all unmerged commits (verbose)
      |  --remote (-r)  compare remote branches instead of local branches
      |  --upstream <branch>   specify a specific upstream branch (defaults to master)
      |  --exclude <branch>[,<branch>,...]   specify a comma-separated list of branches to exclude
      |  --only <branch>[,<branch>,...]   specify a comma-separated list of branches to include
      |  --prune  prompts user to delete branches which have no differences with the upstream
      |
      |EXAMPLE: check for all unmerged commits
      |  #{$0}
      |
      |EXAMPLE: check for all unmerged commits and merged commits (but with a different SHA)
      |  #{$0} -a
      |
      |EXAMPLE: use a different upstream than master
      |  #{$0} --upstream otherbranch
      |
      |EXAMPLE: compare remote branches against origin/master
      |  #{$0} --remote (-r)
      |
      |EXAMPLE: delete branches without unmerged commits
      |  #{$0} --prune
      |
      |EXAMPLE: delete remote branches without unmerged commits
      |  #{$0} --remote --prune
      |
      |GITCONFIG:
      |  If you name this file git-unmerged and place it somewhere in your PATH
      |  you will be able to type "git unmerged" to use it. If you'd like to name
      |  it something else and still refer to it with "git unmerged" then you'll
      |  need to set up an alias:
      |      git config --global alias.unmerged \\!#{$0}
      |
      |Version: #{VERSION}
      |Author: Zach Dennis <zdennis@mutuallyhuman.com>
    EOT
    exit
  end

  def print_version
    puts "#{VERSION}"
  end

  def branch_description
    local? ? "local" : "remote"
  end

  def print_specifics
    load

    if branches.any_missing_commits?
      print_breakdown
    else
      puts "There are no #{branch_description} branches out of sync with #{upstream}"
    end
  end

  def print_breakdown
    puts "Below is a breakdown for each branch. Here's a legend:"
    puts
    print_legend
    branches.each do |branch|
      puts
      print "#{branch.name}:"
      if branch.unmerged_commits.empty? && !show_equivalent_commits?
        print "(no unmerged commits"
        if prune?
          print ",", red(" this will be pruned")
          @branches_to_prune << branch
        end
        print ")\n"
      else
        puts
      end
      branch.unmerged_commits.each { |commit| puts yellow(commit.to_s) }

      if show_equivalent_commits?
        branch.equivalent_commits.each do |commit|
          puts green(commit.to_s)
        end
      end
    end
  end

  def print_legend
    load
    puts "  " + yellow("yellow") + " commits have not been merged"
    puts "  " + green("green") + " commits have equivalent changes in #{UPSTREAM} but different SHAs" if show_equivalent_commits?
  end

  def prune
    return unless prune?
    if @branches_to_prune.empty?
      puts "", "There are no branches to prune."
    else
      # Protects Heroku repo's
      rejected_master_branches = @branches_to_prune.reject!{|branch| branch.branch_name =~ /master/}
      puts "", "Are you sure you want to prune the following #{@branches_to_prune.size} branches?", ""
      puts red("(Keep in mind this will remove these branches from the remote repository)") if @remote
      @branches_to_prune.each do |branch|
        puts red(" #{branch.name}")
      end
      puts "(omitting branches named master)" if rejected_master_branches
      puts
      print "y or n: "
      if STDIN.gets=~/y/i
        @branches_to_prune.each do |branch|
          if local?
            `git branch -D #{branch.name}`
          elsif remote?
            puts "pruning: #{branch.branch_name} with 'git push #{branch.repository} :#{branch.branch_name}'"
            `git push #{branch.repository} :#{branch.branch_name}`
          end
        end
        puts "", "Pruned #{@branches_to_prune.size} branches."
      else
        puts "", "Pruning aborted. All branches were left unharmed."
      end
    end
  end

  def prune? ; @options[:prune ] ; end
  def show_help? ; @options[:show_help] ; end
  def show_equivalent_commits? ; @options[:show_equivalent_commits] ; end
  def show_version? ; @options[:show_version] ; end

  def upstream
    if @options[:upstream]
      @options[:upstream]
    elsif local?
      "master"
    elsif remote?
      "origin/master"
    end
  end

  private

  def extract_options_from_args(args)
    if args.include?("--remote") || args.include?("-r")
      @options[:remote] = true
    else
      @options[:local] = true
    end

    @options[:prune] = true if args.include?("--prune")
    @options[:show_help] = true if args.include?("-h") || args.include?("--help")
    @options[:show_equivalent_commits] = true if args.include?("-a")
    @options[:show_version] = true if args.include?("-v") || args.include?("--version")

    if index=args.index("--upstream")
      @options[:upstream] = args[index+1]
    end

    if index=args.index("--exclude")
      @options[:exclude] = args[index+1].split(',')
    end

    if index=args.index("--only")
      @options[:only] = args[index+1].split(',')
    end
  end

  def local? ; @options[:local] ; end
  def remote? ; @options[:remote] ; end
end


unmerged = GitUnmerged.new ARGV
UPSTREAM = unmerged.upstream
if unmerged.show_help?
  unmerged.print_help
  exit
elsif unmerged.show_version?
  unmerged.print_version
  exit
else
  unmerged.print_overview
  puts
  unmerged.print_specifics
  unmerged.prune
end

Git committer activity

Mon, 21 Mar 2016 12:57:35 -0500

Git command git shortlog is very handy to see what is team activity.

Show committer activity - whole project
#

(output shortened to first 20 lines)

git shortlog -sn | head -20
  2991	Paul King
  1757	Cedric Champeau
  1615	Jochen Theodorou
  1031	James Strachan
   749	Guillaume Laforge
   312	Roshan Dawrani
   306	Jason Dillon
   301	Danno Ferrin
   284	Alex Tkachman
   273	PascalSchumacher
   230	John Wilson
   217	Pascal Schumacher
   204	pascalschumacher
   160	Thibault Kruse
   158	Jeremy Rayner
   134	Russel Winder
   123	Cédric Champeau
   122	Hamlet D'Arcy
   116	Dierk Koenig
   104	Pilho Kim

variant (without n) has different ordering:

Git project statistic tool

Sun, 20 Mar 2016 12:57:35 -0500

Git project statistic tool
#

Python based, requires Python 2.6+

Works OOTB on Mac

Installation
#

Download TAR from Github
unzipped to /opt

➜  ll /opt/gitinspector-0.3.2
total 52K
-rw-r--r--  1 miro  999 Jul 29  2013 DESCRIPTION.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 miro  32K Jun 14  2013 LICENSE.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 miro   78 Jul  2  2013 MANIFEST.in
-rw-r--r--  1 miro  681 Jan 13  2014 README.txt
drwxr-xr-x 45 miro 1.5K Mar 20  2015 gitinspector
-rw-r--r--  1 miro 1.9K Jan 14  2014 setup.py
-rw-r--r--  1 miro  110 Jul 27  2013 stdeb.cfg

create symlink from ~/bin (or from whatever directory on $PATH)

ln -s /opt/gitinspector-0.3.2/gitinspector/gitinspector.py ~/bin/gitinspector.py
  
➜  ~  ll ~/bin | grep gitin
lrwxr-xr-x 1 miro   52 Mar 20 16:06 gitinspector.py -> /opt/gitinspector-0.3.2/gitinspector/gitinspector.py

Example
#

Look at scala sources - git@github.com:scala/scala.git

Installation of sshfs in the new VM

Tue, 11 Mar 2014 11:22:48 +0800

Installation of sshfs in the new VM
#

On Centos 6, the fuse-sshfs is not part of default YUM repos.

Get the ’epel’ repos
#

wget http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
wget http://rpms.famillecollet.com/enterprise/remi-release-6.rpm
sudo rpm -Uvh remi-release-6*.rpm epel-release-6*.rpm

Validate

$ ls -1 /etc/yum.repos.d/epel* /etc/yum.repos.d/remi.repo
/etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo
/etc/yum.repos.d/epel-testing.repo
/etc/yum.repos.d/remi.repo

It if good idea to enable the remi by default

Difference between matching and simple - Git push

Thu, 26 Sep 2013 21:02:48 +0800

Git message

Git 2.0 from 'matching' to 'simple'. To squelch this message
and maintain the current behavior after the default changes, use:
 
git config --global push.default matching
 
 
To squelch this message and adopt the new behavior now, use:
 
 
git config --global push.default simple

Options for push.default

nothing - do not push anything.
matching - push all matching branches. All branches having the same name in both ends are considered to be matching. This is the default.
upstream - push the current branch to its upstream branch.
tracking - deprecated synonym for upstream.
current - push the current branch to a branch of the same name.

From SOF:

Case sensitivity and VirtualBox shared folder

Mon, 16 Sep 2013 11:22:48 +0800

Case sensitivity and VirtualBox shared folder
#

Weird but true behaviour:

I have the case sensitive encrypted disk (sparse bundle with HFSX type) mounted in VBox shared folders. All works fine, after VM starts:

touch zz zZ

creates two files, both “inside VM” ~/development/ATG/platform-edc as well as in OS-X.

If the VM is suspended and resumed, it looses the case sensitivity inside the VM.

Usable mc color scheme

Thu, 05 Sep 2013 21:32:48 +0800

Usable mc color scheme
#

Edit

~/.mc/ini

insert

[Colors]
base_color=lightgray,blue:normal=blue,default:selected=white,brightblue:marked=yellow,default:markselect=yellow,gray:directory=brightblue,default:executable=brightgreen,default:link=cyan,default:device=brightmagenta,default:special=lightgray,default:errors=red,default:reverse=green,default:gauge=green,default:input=white,gray:dnormal=green,gray:dfocus=brightgreen,gray:dhotnormal=cyan,gray:dhotfocus=brightcyan,gray:menu=green,default:menuhot=cyan,default:menusel=green,gray:menuhotsel=cyan,default:helpnormal=cyan,default:editnormal=green,default:editbold=blue,default:editmarked=gray,blue:stalelink=red,default

Show lock screen indicator in OS-X menu

Tue, 03 Sep 2013 12:57:35 -0500

Show lock screen indicator in OS-X menu
#

After HDD reinstall I lost most of my customizations (by choice decided NOT to restore from TM).

The Lock in menu is provided by KeyChain Access, not by System Preferences.

Open ‘KeyChain Access’ -> Preferences, select ‘Show keychain status’

and it is back:

Homelessness is over, moved in

Sun, 13 May 2012 11:22:48 +0800

Being two weeks without “permanent computer home” and living among old Helios, MacMini, temp repair and Web was interesting experience. I certainly remember most of my Web passwords (again).

Got my new MacBook Pro replacement yesterday. Pretty sweet upgrade: quad-core i7 @ 2.4, 8 GB RAM, 750 GB HDD 7200 RPM, Thunderbolt. Noticeably faster but also a bit louder - runs fans more often, maybe it is just while Spotlight does index everything ?

GitHub + Gollum vs BitBucket Wiki

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 11:22:48 +0800

both Wikis are backed by Git repo
both allow local edit

Gollum
#

See https://github.com/github/gollum#readme

Installation: http://alblue.bandlem.com/2011/05/git-tip-of-week-gollum.html

sudo gem install gollum

Running
#

git init TestWiki
gollum --page-file-dir wiki TestWiki
openurl http://localhost:4567

Parsers - separate install
#

gem install rdiscount
gem install wikicloth

Get Wiki for repo
#

git clone URL
  
URL:
- git@github.com:radegast/dotvim.wiki.git R+W
- https://radegast@github.com/radegast/dotvim.wiki.git R+W
- git://github.com/radegast/dotvim.wiki.git R

Pros
#

multiple markups
supports Markdown
List of all pages

Questions
#

How to link to page in subdir

Miro Manifesto

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:22:48 +0800

Miro Manifesto
#

Original text of the memo, written in February 2012 and shared with limited audience, until it surfaced up as main them of the planning meeting in December 2012.

This is an attempt to come up with better answers to the following questions:

what issues and challenges I see on our way ahead from the technology point of view and what needs to be done to address them
where do I see my professional and personal career go over next 12 to 18 months and in long run
how to best align those two streams

In the spirit of my latest “back to the basics” obsession, it was written in Markdown format and in Vi, copied and pasted into Google Doc, btw.

The aftermath of mainboard change

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 01:01:04 -0500

In theory, exchanging mainboard on Macbook has no impact because all your data is stored on your harddisk that is untouched. In real life, there are few minor surprises.

First, your MAC address of the network card had changed. This is something you will not notice, unless Murphy's law plays funny game with you, as it did with me. When arriving back to the office, I was able to connect to WiFi network, but the ethernet was stubbornly getting the "internal IP" - 169.254.x.x address, which is pretty much useless from connectivity point of view. We are running two separate networks - both NAT-ed, one on WiFi - mainly for guests, other internal. Not getting an IP address did not make any sense: the cable was OK, because other machine worked just fine with same drop/cable. The Ethernet connection was OK, because it worked when assigned IP address manually.

Rogers, iPhone and the dreaded kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork Error 302

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 22:57:15 -0400

Many people recently (including myself) had experiences difficulties with Web access on the iPhone. Quite often the following error message pops up:

Usually repeating the web page access helps. Sometimes you have to try third time or wait few minutes.

This has nothing to do with signal strenght - as you can see, there are 4 bars and 3G is on. I saw it happen on Edge as well. Reseting the phone sometimes helps, but it is hard to say whether because of the reset or time delay ..

iPhone 3G first impressions: Email, Web, Camera, GPS, Data Plan

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:01:48 -0400

continued from here

Email
My email information was transferred from Touch as part of the activation process and started to work right away. Very good and functional user interface.

I also found the mobile Google page (http://www.google.com/m) to be very useful - it adds easy access to small screen optimized versions of the Calendar and Reader. I use Reader a lot, the best feature being that articles I read on ANY device (MBP, Linux desktop, iPhone or even some of the many VM's I am using)
will be marked as read ...

On positives of negative experience

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:08:41 -0400

A comment got to me via friend mentioning why am I suddenly so negative about Apple and Macs, which quite surprised me. True, I have had some serious hardware issues in first two weeks of June, but this negative event was about as much positive experience as hard disk crash can be.

Thinking back what I have learned and discovered from this:

- Time Machine actually works
- it pays to plug in the firewire disk with Time Machine backups every day - the two second operation saves a lot of time in long run
- Carbon Copy Cloner is fantastic tool that makes creating bootable copy of your system disk as easy as possible
- I can easily use multiple bootable disks with various versions of OS-X, not only for backing up but also for trying out new things / installs - a kind of "VM on a disk"

Macbook Pro arrived

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 23:11:06 -0500

The combination of 17" screen with Leopard's visual appeal is pure beauty.

Unlike assumed, the Leopard does NOT (yet) come preinstalled on hard disk. There is a DVD which will install it. I have decided to erase everything and start from scratch. The install took about 45 minutes and had zero problems. The only confusing part was that after erasing harddrive you also erase iLife and need to reinstall it. On the Web site, Apple shows an image of two DVD's - Leopard and iLife'08. There is however no iLife install DVD in the package.

iPod Touch eBooks reader - problem solved

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:31:03 -0400

As I noticed on Apple Website, the SDK for developing 3rd party applications for iPhone/Touch will be available in February. This solves the biggest problem - offline reading - because with SDK, storing a downloaded copy will be trivial. It also will most likely fix the annoying lack of updatability of calendar and add few more interesting apps.

It is only matter of time until the other eBook formats will be be readable on iPod - such as CHM or PalmDoc (non-DRM-ed version).

iPod touch - finally !

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 23:23:42 -0400

So, I have finally got it. Only the 8 GB version as the 16 GB were sold out, but I just could not wait for another week :-). After playing with it for about 1.5 hour, I like it even more. The readability of Safari Web sites is excellent - I started to put together some links. Did not try too many sites yet, but the Dzone reads OK :-). Also the PDF book reading is very good - but that is no news. I guess I will have to put up some internal Apache access to my PDF eBooks from my bed :-).

iPod touch - first impressions

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:51:23 -0400

No, I have not bought it yet, to big disappointment of Gabo and Shane - sorry guys. I wanted to buy it but all FutureShop stores in Ottawa are hopelessly sold out and on-line delivery is 7-10 business days - which I hope I will beat if these guys get new shipment (maybe tomorrow ?).

I played with two demo pieces though for about 30 minutes, and here are the first impressions:

Experiment with Sony Reader battery life

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 22:00:42 -0400

After returning from holidays with completely drained PRS 500 (see field test blog entry), I have decided to test what is the battery life of the fully charged reader without any usage at all. It was easy as I was pretty busy after being away 3 weeks.

The reader was fully charged on 29th of August (24 hrs with wall charger). After that, I did not use it at all, only checked every 2-3 days the status (the reader was switched off except this brief check). As of Wednesday morning, September 19th the battery was drained and the reader switched itself off right away (it is being charged as I type this). This gives us about 3 weeks of available standby time, without any use from page turning, until the fully charged battery is completely drained.

Sony eReader - charging problem fixed ?

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 01:32:11 -0400

With the latest software update (I am now on 1.0.3), one of the issues to be fixed was the "charging indicator behaviour". Looks like it was indeed the software bug. After upgrade, the indicator jumped to full 4 bars and stayed there. Beforehand, I had usually only 3 bars regardless how long it was charged.

Time will tell - I am taking the reader with me to Italy to get some mileage out of it, during transatlantic flight ...

Strange charging behaviour of Sony Reader

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 22:41:12 -0400

Despite pretty impressive battery life - which is btw *nowhere* in the range of advertised 7500 page turns - over period of few months I have noted that the charging of the reader behaves kind of funny. Sometimes, even after being plugged-in for 24 hours, the battery indicator stubbornly stays on two squares out of four. Other times, right after connecting, it jumps right to full charge.

It is hard to really measure these things as the battery depletion is very slow on reading and I do not really listen to music on this device (that's what iPods are for). I am not the only person who noticed this behaviour - Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte, who enhanced my favorite podcast Security Now! to be an unofficial eBook Sony Reader news exchange :-) have seen the same thing (search for Sony). Btw, Steve and Leo - thanks for doing the eBooks plugs - I appreciate that a lot ...

Time to leave CVS ?

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 23:49:00 -0400

A friend sent me link two days ago making me aware that Mozilla decided to change the source code control system (= SCCS) they use. When such large and important project as Mozilla moves ahead and changes something so basic and fundamental to development as the SCCS, there must be good reason behind it. What was even more interesting was the system selected: no, it was not Subversion, but something much less established - Mercurial. Actually, until they selected it I was barely aware of its existence.

Sony eBook Reader - software updated

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 22:28:26 -0400

After few weeks, I have got back to actually using my PRS500 again and I have finished the books loaded on the device. When I have connected the reader, first the CONNECT software as well as the PRS500 downloaded the updates. The firmware in reader is up to version 1.0.02.0130 from 1.0.00.21081 and should bring longer battery life and stability improvements. It better does, because so far the battery life is nowhere in the proclaimed range of 7000 page turns ... Time will show.

Avalon - reloaded ...

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 22:54:25 -0400

Now this is something really interesting: as found on Adobe Labs site, their technology codenamed Apollo is approaching Alpha status. What Apollo is - in a nutshell - is another virtual machine, similar to Java runtime or .Net framework, with few minor twists: it is multiplatform (as Java) as well as multi-language (as .Net) at the same time. Before flame wars start - I am aware that JVM is capable (more or less) to support multiple languages beyond Java and also that .Net is (more or less) capable running on non-Windows platforms (e.g. Mono project), but that is not the point. The point is what is different about the Apollo compared to JVM or CLR.

NAS Odyssey: Almost there

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 19:36:04 -0500

As the tittle says, Fedora Core 6 is it. Everything is installed, everything works. The box is very fast, Samba network server is visible on all computers - I have not had time yet to do some tests on access and write speed. I have 930 GB shared space on RAID 5 which is in process of being subdivided into separate shares for video, images, music, and so on.

Installation was really nice and I was very pleasantly surprised how huge progress did Linux made since 2000 when I last time was really spending some time on it (I was always using Linux as file server and Webserver, but since year 2000 never actually was working in Linux environment). The only minor issue during configuration was that after installing suggested updates (one almost feels like with Windows when Linux box tells you that there newer versions for 200 something packages available), the mouse disappeared. It was there, I could drag and drop, click - but it was invisible. It took less then minute googling to find an answer. As usually in Linux, once you find what is wrong, fixing it is very easy. All I had to do was editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf file (which is of course text file) and adding: Option "HWCursor" "off" to the Videocard device section.

Before you upgrade to Vista, you should read this

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 23:10:10 -0500

In order to provide HD Video capabilities and to appease content creators, Microsoft went very far in making sure the Vista is not seen as a tool for content piracy. Did they went too far ? What will be the real cost of this contraversial features ?

Listen (or read) the comments of people that understand the DRM topic better than me and make your own opinion:

* How and why Windows Vista has incorporated the most pervasive and invasive system for digital rights management ever created, AACS - as MP3 and PDF

NAS Odyssey: Fedora Core

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 01:23:08 -0500

As the title says, the Ubuntu is out. Not really because of some technical flaw or missing features (as the FreeNAS, NASLite+ and OpenFiler before), but because of lack of experience and patience on my side. Unlike other distribution which come pre-packed on DVD, Ubuntu installs from a single CD. There are 3 CD variations available: Desktop, which most of the people use and which is likely responsible for Ubuntu fame, Server and Alternative. I did not want to go with desktop - for obvious reasons, so I started to install Server. It installed OK, except it did not offered any option to create RAID. Technically, I still had the RAID created from experiments with OpenFiler, but as I was not sure in which state did I left it, I wanted to recreate it.

NAS Odyssey: OpenFiler is out, let's try Ubuntu

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 01:57:20 -0500

My love affair with OpenFiler did not last very long. After installation finished, I started browser, pointed to URL I was told by the installer and started to configure. The Web admin was OK, nothing really exciting, but functional. The bad surprise came when I was trying to define users - in order to define volumes later. And here came the screen saying:

Please note that Openfiler needs a central directory service
on the network to function, which it and the client machines can see and use.
You cannot use local users and groups with Openfiler.
Otherwise there is no means to implement authorisation
as one machine's information about users and groups can differ from another's.
You can configure the directory service below.

Joys of the Opensource NAS - Part 2: OpenFiler

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 00:54:31 -0500

After spending most Saturday and Sunday fixing, coding and logging bugs, I finally got to moving ahead. Very likely it is about time, because the NSLU2 keeps producing strange sounds

The box has now additional IDE 160 GB IDE disk, which will hold Linux installation as well as "temp" share, which will not be RAID-ed. Sort of staging area for the stuff in flux.

After contemplating for a while which distribution to use - and generally, whether to build more generic Linux server with Samba or more appliance-type box, I went on with trying OpenFiler first. The truth is that my old Linux box did 99% of his services as Samba fileserver and very little as Web server / Java application server. Most of the fancy GUI applications were barely used - including pretty loaded Gnome and KDE installation (one can never decide which one is actually better). So why to repeat same mistake twice ?

The joys of open source NAS

Sun, 21 Jan 2007 16:19:01 -0500

Well, as it looks like, I was prematurely ecstatic about the new open source based NAS server. While the hardware works great, I had not much luck so far with setting up the software on top of that.

My original idea was to use FreeNAS, let it boot and install into USB drive and use all 4 SATA disks in RAID 5 set up by BIOS. It did not work. FreeNAS does not see the RAID5 volume created by BIOS and keeps referring to 4 separate SATA drives. So does Openfiles and few other distributions. After the USB key was initialized, the system did not boot and stopped with error message 'No Ufs'.

Unlike Vista, this user interface is something new

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 23:09:25 -0500

Quite seldom I see something on the net that is elegant, beautiful, and simple - so simple that it becomes obvious. Last time I had this feeling was with iPod's wheel.

There was lots of excitement about new Vista user interface features. The users who never used / saw OS-X, must love Vista. It is huge improvement over XP - much nicer, cleaner, very good typography, comes very close to Tiger. Linux users have their own great looking desktop XGL. From human-machine interaction point of view, neither Vista, nor XGL did really bring anything new - just caught up with Apple and added few eye candies on top. All this 3D-turning, spongy shaking windows, transparencies and rotating planes look indeed nice, but add very little to the functionality of Expose (besides, no one except Apple has two finger trackpad scrolls). So what is so cool about the BumpTop ? Everything.

Ready for a new day (continued)

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 22:05:28 -0500

As I mentioned yesterday, my expectations regarding Office 2007 were fairly low. I am not a big fan of office application suites and for most of my editing I am using either on-line tools (like Google docs or Writeboard) or Open Office. True, neither of them has the smoothness and fine polish of Microsoft Office 2003, neither has all of it's features, but - let's face it - I barely use maybe 10-20% of Word or Excel capabilities anyway. For which reason, I am not willing to pay premium just for improved user comfort.

Ready for a new day - or Vista-Office-Exchange launch

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 23:56:18 -0500

Today was a big day in Ottawa Microsoft community. The Congress Centre was hosting large event - simultaneous launch of Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange server 2007. Because I have almost registered about two months ago, I attended the event. The "almost" means that I tried to register right after receiving MSDN Flash email, but many people must have been faster - I was put on waiting list on two of the 3 tracks (Developers and IT Pros) and before I could even try to register for the third track (Business), everything crashed, Web site hang and I have never heard back from them, nor received any email. Until yesterday, when an automated voice reminder service managed to catch me by phone in underground garage under Brookstreet Hotel, and delivered first part of reminder - telling me that I was registered to attend something ... Too bad it did not tell me to what, when and where did I registered, before it broke off and I lost the signal. But I deducted that the only reason to call me would be a reminder of the Launch and after logging on to My Events, voila - the ticket was there. So I went. It was a tough decision, whether to sacrifice full work day and possibly evening ping-pong at Igor's - but - what the heck. Microsoft does not produce new releases that often so going away once in 5 years should be OK. And now I am glad I did go.

The problem with hard drives: too large and too cheap

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 23:36:51 -0500

I have worked through my listening to the Security Now! podcasts up to middle October now (more specifically up to here) and one remark from Steve Gibson forced me to think very hard: how today's hard drives encounter hundreds of read errors a day (actually Leo said "hundreds a minute"), but thanks to ECC process and dynamic reallocation of sectors, this is invisible to the user, because:

" .... if a file is damaged because of a bad sector, it can recover that data by recovering the data, either moving it or kind of reformatting the sector underneath it to make it readable again ... "

Security now

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 20:38:04 -0500

After listening for over week to Security Now! podcast (thanks, Steve, thanks Leo and happy birthday), I've decided to actually do something about the security on computers around. I started to scanning my home network using "Shields Up" and was happy to found that the only open port was SSH, exactly as I thought I configured it.

As next step, I followed the advice from this podcast and used my hosts file to block out ads servers and other internet vermins. You may also want to look at the podcast notes, read full transcript or listen to it.

Vista security and starting from scratch ...

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 22:14:34 -0500

I have read somewhere that quotation is safe way how to say something potentially dangerous or controversial without being legally exposed :-). So today I am going to quote an authority in computer security - Steve Gibson on some very interesting Vista related security information.

Steve is doing (together with Leo Laporte) excellent weekly podcast "Security Now!". It is so great that I have decided to download as many back episodes as I could find on their site and started to listen to them in the chronological order, back from June 2006. It was worth of every minute. I am now somewhere in August 2006 and Steve Gibson (== SG) covered interesting tricks what to do with you hosts file, very nicely explained the usefulness of netstat program and started multi-episode sequence on virtualization and virtaul machines. Thanks to many years of experience, Steve always gives a historical perspective on every topic he covers.

R.I.P. V.H.S.

Thu, 23 Nov 2006 21:27:58 -0500

I cannot help it, but it is awkward feeling when something that was part of your life, was so omnipresent is announced to be dead and disappear shortly. Exactly this is happening to video tapes and format VHS specifically. The news has been all around the net day or two ago: studio's stopped after 30 years production and distribution of the VHS media.

It does not seem to so many years ago when VHS was and new and struggling to survive against more technically advanced BetaMax (I still remember how great the BetaMax movies looked). Now the VHS is slowly disappearing and everything moves to digital format and DVD. One one side, it is better - higher quality, less compatibility issues (no more struggling with expensive VHS players that can play both NTSC and PAL tapes on NTSC TV (strangely enough, the other way is much easier and many players sold in Europe do play NTSC tapes OK, but require 220 Volt/ 50 Hz and PAL TV). Compared to this, the DVD "zones" create much smaller problem, especially since Linux folks gave us some very good tools :-). Even the DVD and medium seems to be approaching the beginning of the end of life - albeit it is very unclear who will win the BlueRay / HD-DVD war. Maybe nobody will prevail, consumers will wait until the live with live streaming and video on demand with PVR's will be practical alternative to physical distribution.

New toy

Sat, 18 Nov 2006 21:25:30 -0500

Got a new gadget. Actually, not quite "got" - just borrowed from Mike. It the digital pen - amazing piece of machinery, that remembers all you write (up to 40 pages) and allows you to transfer written text to computer. The catch is that you *must* write on special paper, with microscopic marks that help to note the position of the pen.

I was surprise how successful was the CRC software of making some sense from my cat scratches :-).

To upgrade or not to upgrade ?

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 21:48:10 -0400

It's official. The Browser version 2 final is out. I mean Firefox, of course - it should be quite obvious what is "the browser" these days. Yes, I know - IE still holds majority of the browser share and yes, Safari is really really nice, fast and good looking application - but let's face it: browser is not just another application - it is a *platform* these days. Platform means extensibility and extensibility means being a good foundation for add-ons, extensions and plugins. And from the platform perspective, the Firefox is the king.

Working On-Line: More to word processors and spreadsheets

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 22:45:00 -0400

Bruce Byfield has interesting article in Linux.com featuring hands-on comparison of four on-line wordprocessors: specifically ajaxWrite, ThinkFree Online, Writely, and Zoho Writer. I do not 100% agree with all his conclusions, but it's interesting and worth reading if you are exploring these tools. I am certainly staying with Writely, right now I am using it on daily basis. Combination of WriteRoom for off-line concepts and "thinking phase" of writing and Writely for on-line editing, adding links, etc fits ideally my needs.

Harddisks turns 50 on September 13th

Tue, 05 Sep 2006 21:33:19 -0400

It is hard to imagine - on September 13th it will be 50 years since IBM introduced the very first hard drive.

Since that time technology made quite a progress. Compare for yourself:

1956 - RAMAC drive

capacity: 5 Megabytes, built from fifty 24" spinning disks
weight: about one ton
price: $250'000 / year (lease)
price per gigabyte: about fifty million dollars

2006 - typical harddrive

capacity: 500 GB
weight: < 1kg
price: ~ $300
price per gigabyte: about 60 cents

Amazing, isn't it ?

Road to Mac VI: The infection is spreading

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 20:57:29 -0400

See also Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV and Part V

This Mac thing seems to be quite contagious. Gabo started to seriously considering buying the MacBook, after listening to my happy stories about Great Mac Discoveries. Even Vlad, right now living trough his latest love-affair with Ubuntu Linux was deeply impressed with OS-X after we seeing Expose, Spotlight, PhotoBooth and iPhoto in action.

Next day, after I arrived to the office in the morning, Gabo was already there. Which is not unusual. Since his little son and wife are back, they get up quite early in the morning and Gabo usually beats me to arrive first to work. He lives only 5 minutes away anyway ...

Road to Mac V: Feeling happy

Sat, 26 Aug 2006 11:16:10 -0400

See also part I, part II and part III and Part IV

August 13th
#

I have discovered wonderful thing today. I was experimenting with my PocketPC (Toshiba e830) and switched on Bluetooth. Mac discovered the device OK - all I had to do was to follow the wizard Setup Bluetooth device, under Bluetooth menulet (the strange B icon upper right). I have entered the code Mac suggested on PPC and they new about each other. What was really cool was that I found out how to access files on that device ... but let's step back a moment.

Road to Mac IV: Getting accustomed

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 22:51:19 -0400

August 10th
#

That Spotlight thing is just freaking fantastic :-). After few days of work, accumulating some files, emails etc, just for fun I typed Gabo’s last name to Command-Space search box. I did not even finish typing and first results were coming in the result list: all emails exchanged with Gabo, saved chats, text documents and as “best hit” Gabo’s contact card. Which was exactly right.

Road to Mac III: The Culture Shock

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 21:00:09 -0400

August 3rd
#

This is my second day with Mac, writing in TextEdit as I have not installed any other editor (yet). Still learning, do not want to install lot of junk before I find out proper ways how to do things. Time to learn how things are in the Brave New World ….

Road to Mac II: I've got a Macbook !

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 21:22:13 -0400

See part I

July 25th - August 2nd
#

After ordering, I received two emails from Apple, confirming the order. It took 3 days until the order finally got shipped from China (where else, of course) on Friday, July 28th and the estimate for delivery was 5-8 business days. I have received the tracking number and was able to track how my Macbook was moving around the globe: starting from Shizou, China on 28th, arriving to USA, Anchorage, Alaska one day later. One more day and it showed up in Memphis, Tennessee. That was on July 30th. It seemed to stuck there for over 2 days and then, without any interim stops it showed up on August 2nd in Ottawa Fedex location. I have just arrived to customer place in the morning and saw the news on Fedex Tracking page (dutifully bookmarked and checked every few hours )…

List of Mac applications by macgiver

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 21:00:53 -0400

Just stumbled upon this blog and noted at least three things of interest:

he has got a new a Mac Pro (I am green with envy :-) )
uses as a nick nice wordplay on MacGyver (this name has special meaning for all us, ex-Montage folks)
he started to learn Objective C and Cocoa and blogs about it, I am curious - (not that I plan to give up Java, C# and Python ..)

Also see his list of recommended (mostly) free Mac applications. Going to try out some of them for sure !

Technology on Miro's World

Catching up: Obsidian + Claude

The setup #

Catching up: Riding the LLM Wave

Spectator to User (2023) #

Git bits 2

Show merged and unmerged branches #

Git - find unmerged commits

Example #

The code #

Git committer activity

Show committer activity - whole project #

Git project statistic tool

Git project statistic tool #

Installation #

Example #

Installation of sshfs in the new VM

Installation of sshfs in the new VM #

Get the ’epel’ repos #

Difference between matching and simple - Git push

Case sensitivity and VirtualBox shared folder

Case sensitivity and VirtualBox shared folder #

Usable mc color scheme

Usable mc color scheme #

Show lock screen indicator in OS-X menu

Show lock screen indicator in OS-X menu #

Homelessness is over, moved in

GitHub + Gollum vs BitBucket Wiki

Gollum #

Running #

Parsers - separate install #

Get Wiki for repo #

Pros #

Questions #

Miro Manifesto

Miro Manifesto #

The aftermath of mainboard change

Rogers, iPhone and the dreaded kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork Error 302

iPhone 3G first impressions: Email, Web, Camera, GPS, Data Plan

On positives of negative experience

Macbook Pro arrived

iPod Touch eBooks reader - problem solved

iPod touch - finally !

iPod touch - first impressions

Experiment with Sony Reader battery life

Sony eReader - charging problem fixed ?

Strange charging behaviour of Sony Reader

Time to leave CVS ?

Sony eBook Reader - software updated

Avalon - reloaded ...

NAS Odyssey: Almost there

Before you upgrade to Vista, you should read this

NAS Odyssey: Fedora Core

NAS Odyssey: OpenFiler is out, let's try Ubuntu

Joys of the Opensource NAS - Part 2: OpenFiler

More on Sony Reader

The joys of open source NAS

Unlike Vista, this user interface *is* something new

Ready for a new day (continued)

Ready for a new day - or Vista-Office-Exchange launch

The problem with hard drives: too large and too cheap

Security now

Vista security and starting from scratch ...

R.I.P. V.H.S.

New toy

To upgrade or not to upgrade ?

Working On-Line: More to word processors and spreadsheets

Harddisks turns 50 on September 13th

Road to Mac VI: The infection is spreading

Road to Mac V: Feeling happy

August 13th #

Road to Mac IV: Getting accustomed

August 10th #

Road to Mac III: The Culture Shock

August 3rd #

Road to Mac II: I've got a Macbook !

July 25th - August 2nd #

List of Mac applications by macgiver

The setup
#

Spectator to User (2023)
#

Show merged and unmerged branches
#

Example
#

The code
#

Show committer activity - whole project
#

Git project statistic tool
#

Installation
#

Example
#

Installation of sshfs in the new VM
#

Get the ’epel’ repos
#

Case sensitivity and VirtualBox shared folder
#

Usable mc color scheme
#

Show lock screen indicator in OS-X menu
#

Gollum
#

Running
#

Parsers - separate install
#

Get Wiki for repo
#

Pros
#

Questions
#

Miro Manifesto
#

Unlike Vista, this user interface is something new

August 13th
#

August 10th
#

August 3rd
#

July 25th - August 2nd
#