Lunar_Lamp

Fewer and less are not synonyms. In short, fewer should be used when you can count objects, and less with continuous items. For example, you may have less time, or fewer hours, to achieve a task than you might have wished. I'm seeing this being used incorrectly all over the place at the moment, from TV to software. From now on, whenever I see it in a software program I will be filing a bug report. You have been warned.

I keep getting an entry in my window list that says "Launching HTTP Cache Cleaner". It lasts a few seconds, and then vanishes, causing two resizes of all the windows in the list. It's been annoying me for quite a while, but I finally decided to see what was going on there today.

Just a quick tip. If you're working in a terminal and want to parse the output of a command, you can have issues with commands that try to limit their output dependant on your terminal width. An example of this is "dpkg -l" which lists all the packages installed on a machine (first few lines shown below)

I am virtually clueless in the world of LaTeX. Having said that, I'm liking it a lot due to the power with which you can create fantastic looking documents; even if the learning curve is rather steep.

Below is an approximate layout (with the actual text removed) of my final year project at university:

%Preamble.  Ths stuff is important!
\documentclass[a4paper]{report}
\usepackage{setspace}
\usepackage{a4wide}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage[sort&compress,super,comma]{natbib} %required for bibliography

I've recently decided to give irssi a go after all the praise people give it. My previous attempts ended in me being angry with it, but I'm giving it a fair shot this time.

After setting it up how I wanted on my server, in a screen session, I found that I didn't quite like the extra work required to start IRC-ing compared to my previous Xchat. I had to open a terminal, ssh to the remote host, and then reattach to the screen session. I was sure that this could be done all in one go, and I was correct.

I occasionally have issues with slow DNS propagation between my DNS servers and myself. Instead of sitting there trying to see what is happening, I have written a little bash script to let me know when it has updated (I know this can be improved, but it works).

#!/bin/bash
###
### Script to check if a DNS entry exists.  If it does not it will 
### check again in 60 seconds. If it does exist, it will play a file
###
digcommand=$(dig "$1" | grep "ANSWER SECTION")

while true
    do
	if [ -z "$digcommand" ] ; then
	    curtime=$(date | cut -d" " -f4)

I scribbled out this script quickly when I had a problem with my mythtv database crashing. I haven't really tested it much, but I think it may be useful to run as an automatic fix script triggered by a cron-job.

[update: I actually wrote this a fair while ago, and am just copying it here for reference - I would say that if you don't understand what's going on, DO NOT USE ANYTHING HERE, as it will likely break your database and set your computer on fire. Seriously. Even I have never used this in anger, as I lost interest in the script before I got it working how I wanted].

A quick explanation of how to fill in calculations in a grid in a spreadsheet like excel.