Monthly Archives: May 2006

pbuilder backporting guide

5/30/2006 – 11:25 pm

I have written a new guide, focusing on backporting Debian GNU/Linux packages to earlier releases. Detailed discussion of pbuilder as a tool for backporting Debian packages from Unstable/Sid to the current Debian GNU/Linux Stable release. Building the initial environment, care and feeding of pbuilder, apt sources, building, and debugging are covered. Update, June 13th. The [...]

By jasonb | Posted in Quick Guides | Comments (0)

Scythe Kama Bay Cooler

5/23/2006 – 6:14 pm

I finally bought a Scythe Kama Bay. It’s a product of solid construction. The 12cm fan it ships with is reasonably quiet, for me, even at +12V. It won’t spin up at all at +5V, but probably will at some higher voltages. It has a dust filter in behind the swiss cheese metal mesh in [...]

By jasonb | Posted in Product Reviews | Comments (1)

Clueless IT Consulting Groups are Fun

5/17/2006 – 5:29 pm

This exchange should prove amusing. karan@effervo.com wrote: > Hi , > > This is Karan from Effervo Technologies inc,this is regarding one of our > client > requirement in FL,here i am sending job discription if you are interested > for this position > you can send me your updated resuem along with pay rate [...]

By jasonb | Posted in Rants | Comments (0)

GMAC Banking Is Easy!

5/16/2006 – 12:53 pm

With HSBC having recently reducing their APR yield to an noncompetitive 4.50%, I made the jump to GMAC Bank. Initially I was somewhat skeptical, given my experience with signing up with HSBC earlier this year. Fortunately, I went ahead with the signup for the 4.75% APR offered as of this writing for a balance of [...]

By jasonb | Posted in Money | Comments (0)

Convert DocBook XML to PDF!

5/9/2006 – 10:35 pm

Finally, there’s a way to convert DocBook XML to PDF. Petter Reinholdtsen describes the tool he used and the simple process involved. I pulled dblatex from Debian Unstable and it essentially just worked. The PDF output looks quite professional and the DocBook XML conventions are followed as you’d expect. Nice.

By jasonb | Posted in Links | Comments (1)

Stick it to Spammers and Sign Up with Blue Security!

5/8/2006 – 4:57 pm

Spammers aren’t happy, so I am happy. Blue really annoys them, and that makes me happy. Contribute to my happiness and sign up for a Blue Security account. Just look how unhappy they are — and messages like these are trivially blocked with Pyzor, Razor, and DCC, so it’s hardly anything more than a sad [...]

By jasonb | Posted in Rants | Comments (0)

Configuring Multipath Routing for Ports without Balancing

5/1/2006 – 5:49 pm

Recently, I have found myself with two independent internet feeds. The nice side effect of having two feeds is you can configure multipath routing, load balancing, failover, and dead gateway detection. However, for a individual setup there isn’t much value in configuring all that is necessary for the latter items. Nevertheless, configuring multipath routing can [...]

By jasonb | Posted in Quick Guides | Comments (1)