Simplicity is a form of art...

Executing, but only when you're home

Sometimes you want to execute a particular command, but only when you're at home. Examples would be running fetchmail (or fetchnews) through cron, but you don't want this to run when you're in the train, connected to the Internet through GPRS...

My idea here would be to create a script …

Switching to database architecture

It's finally committed: I'm going to dive into the realms of database architecture. It's with some sentiment that I'm leaving the expertise field of Apache, J(2)EE and WebSphere, but seeing the database architecture field makes it up well. I'm starting to get acquainted with Oracle DB as first …

Translations to "Linux Sea"

A few people have contacted me if they were allowed to translate the online book I'm writing (Linux Sea). Of course they are, the license allows it. However, I recommend to wait a bit. At this moment, I'm not going to release the docbook sources (I'm not writing it in …

Small updates on Linux Sea

A few updates have made it to the Linux Sea book:

• Information regarding ndiswrapper
• Some information about udev and the symlinks that it creates

The PDF version has been updated as well.

Online image gallery

If you're not up to the various free image gallery sites, you might want to try out ZenPhoto. Quite powerful, easy to use and well themeable. Requires PHP / MySQL.

Added quota information

I've added quota support information to the Linux Sea book as well as information about the eclean command for cleaning distfiles and packages. The part on building a Linux kernel has been moved into its own chapter, the chapter on hardware support now has a bit more information about dealing …

Draft PDF for Linux Sea

I've added a draft PDF version of my Linux Sea document. If you don't mind the A4 papersize and the bad typesetting of the text boxes (I still have lots of overflows to correct) it is quite usable.

Darwin Information Typing Architecture

Having documented a lot in LaTeX (back in the old days at the university), GuideXML (Gentoo's document markup language) and DocBook (Linux Sea) I'm now pointing my arrows at DITA, the Darwin Information Typing Architecture.

DITA "forces" the technical writer in separating the content of his document in specialized subjects …

Linux Sea is progressing slowly but surely

My everlasting document, Linux Sea, is progressing slowely but surely. I've started a few new chapters and also initiated a chapter on Installing Gentoo (which is more a shortlist of tasks with pointers to earlier chapters).

I also took a different CSS (docbook.css file used by the FreeBSD handbook …

Extremely simple task manager

At work, I am often busy with quite a few projects. Yet, at times, I have no outstanding tasks because all of my tasks can only start when an event has occurred (like a server which is made available, or a budget that is approved) or another task has finished …