Inklings: a tumblelog

Leaving Cert changes: Oral to be worth 40% in Irish - Irish Examiner

A good thing this, but only if it’s backed up by changes to the way it’s taught by having teachers concentrate on talking and having students talk in class rather than the current damaging concentration on reading comprehension.

FG proposes health plan based on Dutch model

Seems eminently sensible, though it’s worth keeping in mind that the Netherlands has a population density over six times our own, and a population 3.5 times ours.

ports/130108: graphics/py-cairo: Unneeded dependency on math/py-numpy

Annoying, very annoying, when you start what should be a quick upgrade that ends up needlessly taking hours. Grr!

The Ultimate Commodore 64 Talk @25C3

This I’d love to have seen. Must download the video and take a proper read through it all.

Programming Problems

Seems like a decent source of mental exercise. I might try a few of these.

RFC 2229: A Dictionary Server Protocol

From the Wikipedia article: ‘DICT is a dictionary network protocol created by the DICT Development Group. It is described by RFC 2229. Its goal is to surpass the Webster protocol and to allow clients to access more dictionaries during use.’

PEAR :: Package :: PHP_CodeSniffer

PHP_CodeSniffer is a PHP5 script that tokenises and “sniffs” PHP, JavaScript and CSS files to detect violations of a defined coding standard. It is an essential development tool that ensures your code remains clean and consistent. It can also help prevent some common semantic errors made by developers.

UNetbootin

UNetbootin allows for the installation of various Linux/BSD distributions to a partition or USB drive, so it’s no different from a standard install, only it doesn’t need a CD. It can create a dual-boot install, or replace the existing OS entirely.

Excellent idea!

Gearman

Hurray!

tmux

tmux is a “terminal multiplexer”, it enables a number of terminals (or windows) to be accessed and controlled from a single terminal. tmux is intended to be a simple, modern, BSD-licensed alternative to programs such as GNU screen.

Open-plan offices are making workers sick, say Australian scientists

Australian scientists have reviewed a global pool of research into the effect of modern office design, concluding the switch to open-plan has led to lower productivity and higher worker stress.

I’m not surprised.

Irish Election: "Bord Snip" Chairman calls for Property Levy

Excellent idea.

Power backs cut in junior ministers

Junior minister Sean Power has said reducing the number of junior ministers in the present economic climate would be the right thing to do.

Holy crap, a politician demonstrating leadership? Better check if there’re any pigs jetting past my window.

Dual Pricing in Ireland

Can you say ‘rip-off’? Even differences in tax rates can’t account for this.

Maman Poulet - Immigration controls to be introduced for UK-Irish travel.

Moronic.

The BP Party

I think I might go!

xpra

Essentially screen or tmux for X:

Xpra gives you “persistent remote applications” for X. That is, unlike normal X applications, applications run with xpra are “persistent”–you can run them remotely, and they don’t die if your connection does. You can detach them, and reattach them later–even from another computer–with no loss of state. And unlike VNC or RDP, xpra is for remote applications, not remote desktops–individual applications show up as individual windows on your screen, managed by your window manager. They’re not trapped in a box.

Work on Stuff that Matters: First Principles

I need to take this hint.

Mini Icons For Web Designers

70 Excellent High-Quality Free Fonts

A Subversion pre-commit hook to prevent files with certain extensions from being committed.

12 Standard Screen Patterns

Changeset 9793 - Django - Trac (Testing e-mail sending)

Damn, that’s sweet! I wish I’d known about this before; it would’ve saved a tonne of time, and still might!

Pinax

Pinax is an open-source collection of integrated, but reusable apps for the Django Web Framework.

daemonize: Run a command as a Unix daemon

Because I’ll need something like FreeBSD’s daemon command for some stuff I’m working on at work.

ports/131016: x11/xorg - xorg-7.4 renders system unusable!

I think this affects me too, but in a much more minor (but still annoying) way: X refuses to recognise my keyboard settings in xorg.conf, so it’s using an en-us keyboard layout rather than en-ie or en-gb, which is what I want and need so as not to go mad.