So apparently I’m still having technical problems. Can’t get any of the images auto-resizing.

I’ve got some huge pics for the kcachegrind post, but they’re 1277×995, which seems a bit LARGE to embed in the post …

So, you’ve probably noticed that last week’s post never appeared …

Partially that’s because I lost track of the date, and partially that’s because I was going to do an update from ubuntu 9.10 to 10.04 on my secondary server, so I figured I’d review the process.

The idea being that I ran Slackware for like 8 years, and loved it, but quit having time for the hand-compiling management that I wanted with that system.  But there wasn’t (AFAICR) any good base system version upgrading.  There might have been, but by the time the first update would have gone, i had so many customized compiles that it would have caused more problems than help.  And my system was more up to date with latest versions, because I didn’t have to go through package testing.

Then I went to gentoo, to keep that compiled “for your use”, and it was good, except some of the things I wanted to do I had to customize too much for, and so I couldn’t do upgrades again.

So now I’m moving to ubuntu.  Most of the things I’ve looked for i can find prebuilt packages for; and the VM management seems a little cleaner than the last try through gentoo, in that I don’t need to install X-Windows on my server to install the VM servers; it’s partially because ubuntu has good docs on Xen and KVM; I think gentoo had these options too now, but not positive.

Except 10.04 is still only in RC, not yet released.  I’m figuring on sometime this week, maybe, but figured I’d post since I was already a full week off.

I’ll probably write up that post when it happens and queue it up.  Trying to get some of these queued up, but I never get a chance to take all the screenshots I want for a few of them

OK, so I still want to keep this blog up.  But obviously I’m not so hot at keeping it running at full speed.

So for now, I’m going to post the first and third Tuesday of each month.  If I can get up to say 12 entries ahead in my queue, I may raise it to weekly.  But between two kids and being one of the seniormost developers at the office, I’m not always getting time to post often.  It’s a nice problem to have, I suppose, but I do like posting things here.

So, first and third Tuesday, for now.  So the next post would be 19 January 2009.  Let’s see if I can hit that rather sad target

I thought I had some more posts queued up, so I didn’t worry when I was sick all last week and not posting.

Apparently I hadn’t finished all the posts, so I hadn’t queued them   I’ll try to get some new posts up this week, and maybe my son will give me an opportunity to get ahead some

So, I think one thing I need to do is set up some new guidelines.  so one thing I’m going to do is create some new categories and set up some regular “features.”

To wit:  I’ve added “Tool Tips”, which is a category I’m going to use for posting about various programming or security tools I find and use.  Sort of a cross between overviewing and my personal review of it.   Not going to get all fancy dance with “4 shebangs up!” or fancy pics or anything, but will be posting my thoughts and opinions on the pieces.

And I’m going to currently lay that out as every first and third Tuesday.  I think that’s a reasonable frequency right now, two tools a month I think I can hit that.  And I’m hoping to set up some pipelined posts during the hiatus (like this one, for instance). And hopefully that will give me a little leeway in case I don’t hit up any new tools immediately.

Actually, now I almost want to make a graphic and do 4-shebangs out of 7 or something …

Actually, I realized that if I stick to my original intent of Tuesday/Thursday, then I really WON’T be back on the 6th.

So, yeah, the 7th.  Tuesday.  Should be the seventh anyway.

OK, so obviously it’s been offline for over a month now. I’m just making it official.

I’ll be back online in April 6.

When we went to India, I had intended to take my logbook and the DES algorithm and work through it (again), methodically and structured this time.  You know, at the top of each page I put the numbers from the last iteration for start, then work the iteration in the same places, so I can always see which piece is where because it’s not changing.

But then I left the docs on the kitchen counter where they were from taking the pics.  And I simply do NOT remember the DES algorithm off the top of my head.  Are you nuts?  So that didn’t get done.

Because I know the DES work would get tedious, I had also picked out ~10 of the Project Euler problems that I could work out on paper, maybe type in a code when we got back to test it and get the final result or something.  But then the printer choked hard and wouldn’t print anything.  So I didn’t take those.

Part of the intention of those had been to get some content that I could post easily during the recoup time between India and Thanksgiving.  So nothing got posted in November because all of that content didn’t get done.  But now Thanksgiving is over, and we’re not (AFAIK) going anywhere until next summer for holiday … so here’s hoping I can get back to posting at least twice a week here.

Going to try sticking to the TTh schedule, it’s a good twice a week set.

So, I’m thinking of doing some more of the Project Euler stuff.  Not sure how precisely to handle them, since for the most part they’re algorithmic rather than “solve the equation” things …

But it’s a thought for getting more bits.  Because as proven by the DES example that I’ve been working on FOREVER, doing the demonstrations for cryptography by hand is slow

Oops. I thought I had a post queued up for Tuesday, and then everything else in the way I didn’t get a chance to look until now.

I’m going to try to get up a post later today for today’s post. This is just to acknowledge that i botched Tuesday’s :/