inside aebrahim's head

gmail is here!

I got Gmail! I’ve already set up a bugzilla.mozilla.org watcher account to send all copies of all my bugmail to it, so I can test it out and see what the new searching features and stuff are like. I’m thinking of forwarding copies of all my other mail there too, but I won’t do that … Continue reading “gmail is here!”

I got Gmail! I’ve already set up a bugzilla.mozilla.org watcher account to send all copies of all my bugmail to it, so I can test it out and see what the new searching features and stuff are like.

I’m thinking of forwarding copies of all my other mail there too, but I won’t do that for the time being. If I were to do that, I’d just ssh into harper.uchicago.edu and type the following command, and I’d be all set:

echo “\aebrahim, myusername@gmail.com” > .forward

period formatting rant

There is only supposed to be one space after a period. Maybe back in the days of typewriters two was okay, but today, with computers typesetting things so beautifully, one is enough, thank you. Even worse is when people send you blurbs to upload to websites you manage, and there are two spaces after each … Continue reading “period formatting rant”

I repeat, only one space should follow a period.

sftp over plaintext http? whats the point?

I was just testing out blogger.com’s upload-blog-over-SFTP feature and am confused. What’s the point of having blogger.com upload your site over SFTP if you have to submit your password to blogger.com over an unencrypted http webform? Can you say “purpose defeating”? Anyway, just something I came across …

daily bugzilla triaging

I just spent some time doing some bug triaging on Mozilla.org’s Bugzilla. There were a lot of polish bugs that were set to blocking0.9? (that is, “can this bug block Firefox 0.9?”) that shouldn’t have been set as such, because Firefox 0.9 is a feature driven release, and Firefox 1.0beta is where most of the polishing should occur. So I declined most of those requests. Hopefully that should clear up the queue a bit so that the real devs have an easier time with it. Mike Connor (mconnor) is also responsible for a lot of the same triaging that occured tonight.

I also realised that I had cc’ed myself on 151 bugs, most of which I wasn’t interested in receiving mail about anymore. So I un-cc’ed myself from 80 of those, so now I’m down to 71.

Lately there haven’t been any official nightly Linux GTK2+Xft builds of Firefox builds, so I’ve been making some of my own and posting them for other people to download. Generally speaking, you can always find my builds here, but if you want more info on them you should head over to the Firefox Builds Forum where I always post when I upload a new build. Usually I only build when the official machines are down for some reason.

cherokee web server

I just thought I’d mention a web server I’ve been testing, Cherokee. It’s a pretty handy webserver, very compact and apparently very fast at serving static files (better than Apache, even). It’s still very much in beta and there is quite a way to go before I’d consider deploying it on a production machine, but from the way things are looking, it has promise. The development team usually hangs around on irc.gimp.net #cherokee — so drop by there if you have a chance to test out Cherokee and have some feedback. The page says that it works under Cygwin as well, which it is supposed to, but the latest releases don’t actually compile on Cygwin, but it’s a known bug and will hopefully get fixed soon.

One of the main attractions of this server is that it can be run as a non-root user and doesn’t need to be installed by a superuser, which is a nice bonus. There is also a Cherokee community on Orkut, so feel free to check that out as well.

setting up samba

I set up Samba today on my Linux machine so that I could use it as a file storage location and map a network drive from my Windows XP laptop, which was running out of hard disk space. I made my home directory on Linux a readonly Samba share, and I set up iptables on the Linux machine to accept connections of state NEW on port 445/tcp and 445/udp only when coming from my Windows laptop. So now I basically have an extra 25GB of storage space for about 5 minutes of work. Not to mention that the access speed over 100Mbit LAN is basically as fast as my laptop’s local hard disk. Yup, that’s how slow my laptop hard disk is. Seeking is obviously slower, but once it gets going, movies play fast enough that they’ll never skip, and I could easily burn a CD off the network and never worry about a buffer underrun.

While writing this entry, I just came up with an interesting thought: what if I actually built Firefox over the network, meaning have the source and object files on a network drive, and just bring them over to my computer for processing? I wonder if that would actually compile faster than if everything was local. I think I’m going to have to try that out at some point and see. Definitely seems like an interesting experiment.

All in all I had a good day, went for a swim as well which was nice and relaxing. Then undid all the exercise goodness by having a Dominos dinner.

ariel sharon lies. so what else is new?

Well, this pretty much confirms what we knew all along: that promises from Ariel Sharon are worthless. Accoring to this BBC article, Sharon previously made a commitment not to harm Arafat. However, he now says that “I am released from this commitment. I release myself from this commitment regarding Arafat.” And this is the guy who promises to gain peace for Israel? Give me a break. And Bush, thanks a lot for giving this fanatical lunatic a free hand to wreak whatever havoc he sees fit. I guess it’s only fitting, since you’re not all that different either. It’s pretty clear that the United States stands alone in supporting Israel’s extrajudicial killings.

Personally, I find it ironic that Sharon, a Jew, should have so much in common with Hitler. Both of them seem to have an affinity for walling off populations who cannot defend themselves, and for taking unilateral action that flies in the face of common sense and international law (and at the same time doing this as if it was something to be proud of). If the two ever met, I’m sure they’d have a lot to discuss about strategies of oppression.

I should probably note that I don’t have any problems with Jews per se, just with the current Israeli leadership. Yitzhak Rabin got it right, and after his assassination things really started falling apart because of people like Netanyahu and Sharon.

my room is clean!

I just spent the last 80 minutes cleaning and vacuuming my room. I really wish I had taken some before and after pics, because the difference is like night and day. The carpet actually feels soft on my feet again, and it’s like my room is twice as big as it was before! I’m happy. … Continue reading “my room is clean!”

solution to firefox compilation woes

Well TierMann found a solution for the IE profile migration problem that I mentioned earlier today. He’s posted a pseudo patch in the thread that he started. I haven’t tried it out myself yet, but it’s good that someone has finally gotten Firefox building with something that has binary compatiblity with all plugins without having … Continue reading “solution to firefox compilation woes”

economist jokes

Got sent a link to a page of economist jokes today. Some of them are really good. Two of my favourites: I know that economics is ruling my life when: a) I tried to calculate my 3 year old son’s discount rate by seeing how many sweets he would require to be promised to him … Continue reading “economist jokes”

Got sent a link to a page of economist jokes today. Some of them are really good. Two of my favourites:
A lot of the jokes are accessible even to people who know nothing about economics, but the more you know about economics, the more funny they get.