Posts

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numlock.ch changelog partly updated

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve finally managed to migrate the posts and comments to the new publishing software (which is WordPress, mainly due to the fact that it can be conveniently kept current using Gentoo’s portage system). The outgoing links/blogroll is still not migrated though (as I don’t have them ready in an OPML file for easy importing) – it will be done ASAP.

Note that links of RSS/XML/Atom feeds and of the blog itself are not necessarily final yet (expect some changes during the next couple of weeks)

Stay tuned and thanks for your patience!

Dani

P.S. If you’re wondering: The design of the blog will be migrated too, of course ;)

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Apache: How to deny access to a parent directory/location only

If you want to deny public access to a parent location (let’s say /projects/), but allow public access to a sub-location (/projects/myproject/), use the following statement in httpd.conf:

<Location /projects>Order allow,deny</Location>
<Location /projects/myproject>Order deny,allow</Location>

(can also be used for <Directory> statements etc.)

Note that the URL of the sub-location must include a trailing slash (e.g. “https://news.numlock.ch/projects/myproject/”)

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FireBug – debug Javascript, DHTML and AJAX in FF


FireBug is a new tool for Firefox that aids with debugging Javascript, DHTML, and Ajax. It is like a combination of the Javascript Console, DOM Inspector, and a command line Javascript interpreter.

FireBug – JoeHewitt.com

In preparation for an upcoming Java EE project, I’m also doing some advanced GUI prototyping using DHTML, Javascript (and eventually AJAX, where it fits in). FireBug comes in handy :)

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Gentoo: The -vt option of emerge

The -vt option of emerge is very useful for finding strange dependencies when doing world updates. E.g. when the question is “Which ebuild is causing X11 to be installed on my headless server all of a sudden?”. Just add -vt to emerge -puD world:

emerge -puDvt world

..and take a look at the root of the relevant tree. In this case, the culprit was “fte”:

[nomerge      ] app-editors/fte-20050108-r3  -X +gpm +slang
[ebuild  N    ]  virtual/x11-6.8  0 kB
[ebuild  N    ]   x11-base/xorg-x11-6.8.2-r6  -3dfx -3dnow (etc.)
[ebuild     U ]    x11-apps/ttmkfdir-3.0.9-r3 [3.0.9-r2] 19 kB
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Es guets Neus!

Happy New Year to all of you! As my public pledge for 2006 I hope for more diversity in thinking and doings again (which requires a deeper understanding of differences).

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Windows Vista or The Holy Grail of Usability

Fine. After years (heck, even decades!) of staring into distorting, flickering, radiating and mirrorlike CRT screens we finally managed to banish those darn things from our desks and to use distortion-free, flicker-free, radiation-free, coated TFT screens instead. Time to put glares and reflections back into the GUI (just try to read the labels on the taskbar)! Hallelujah! ;)

(I bet Microsoft will get back to this once the dust has settled. Apple made a similar experience with Aqua’s transparency effect which was significantly reduced in later versions.)