Copying Arbitrary Files to Aribitrary Places

Copying arbitrary files with some of the Maven plugins can seem a daunting task. If you have multiple sets of files that go to different locations, configuring the resource plugin is not enough. Likewise the assembly plugin is a pain and doesn't really work that well for things other than archives. Other plugins usually have some configuration of a different directory to some resource. What about the issue of having to make an arbitrary file copy before the usual build is done?

vi - God's Editor

The title is a joke... laugh.

I've been using vi since I started using Unix in 1994 or 1995. I forced myself to learn it because everyone around me told me to use it. Unix is such a text based system from configuration files to compiling Latex documents and even writing scripts. If you didn't know how to use a text editor on Unix, life was extremely challenging if not impossible.

I just posted this elsewhere, but it's so true I figured I'd add it to my own site.

I’m so hopping mad at Microshaft right now, I’m just spitting fire and brimstone. I just got a module working with Dojo that has a lot of floating objects and lots of behavior built into them. It’s a Java Enterprise web application. Things were swell in all browsers. I develop on Slackware Linux so I tried Firefox, Chrome, and Opera. Everything looks great, acts great, I couldn’t be more pleased.

Opera 10.6 for Linux... finally released. Not that I'm not grateful, but it was too little too late. After years of using Opera primarily, I switched on over to Firefox. Opera 10.6 is definitely an improvement, but there are some real issues with it that would have made me switch to Firefox anyway.

Firefox

One of the most annoying "features" of Firefox is the inability to save passwords for certain sites because those sites are configured with autocomplete=off.

There is a way to fix it... thank goodness. It was a major reason I never used Firefox before.

Edit nsLoginManager.js and change "off" to "XXX":

/*
     * _isAutoCompleteDisabled
     *
     * Returns true if the page requests autocomplete be disabled for the
     * specified form input.
     */
    _isAutocompleteDisabled :  function (element) {

Mozilla Firefox

I've always said that I love Opera. But if I was allowed one and only one browser it would have to be Firefox. It is the one work horse that reliably does everything. I can trust it to render properly, to work with *all* web sites, to *print* properly, to have the development plugins (that work) for development of Javascript, and to behave intuitively. I've been an Opera user for years, but I still always recommend Firefox to everyone.

Adobe Flash Player On Linux

If you've been paying mild attention to technology lately, you would have seen the pseudo feud developing between Apple and Adobe. I don't believe Steve Jobs was trying to antagonize Adobe with his negative comments and move to not support Flash on Apple's appliances. I agree with most of his sentiments regarding quality, stability, compatibility, and general efficiency.

Backups

I'm providing my version of what I believe are important data points on a Linux system. These are my subjective items of importance. Obviously, there my be more in a given situation because of other installed services, etc. Perhaps this will remind someone not to forget an important piece of information on their own system.

Minimal List of items to backup on a system:

• /etc
• /home
• /root
• /usr/local
• /var/spool/mail
• /var/www
• /var/lib/mysql

Imapd

Configuring imapd on Slackware is pretty simple because Slackware already has UW Imap server built into it. It's in the Alpine Slackbuild if you are looking for the source. I needed it because I wanted to know about the compilation switches.

More to come soon on the core configuration of imapd with the rest of the mail system. This, coupled with a proper sendmail, makes Slackware a nice mail server.

Using your IMAP server over SSL

SATA/IDE Device Parameters

This page is about the hdparm utility. In order to test the Buffered Reads and Cached Reads on a hard disk try this:

hdparm -tT /dev/sda

This assumes your device is /dev/sda. Substitute your device if it is different.