https://minimal.org.uk/categories/articles/ Recent content in articles on minimal.org.uk Hugo -- gohugo.io en-gb ian Thu, 02 May 2013 20:31:41 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2013/05/02/how-to-apply-for-a-programming-job/ Thu, 02 May 2013 20:31:41 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2013/05/02/how-to-apply-for-a-programming-job/ Note that the opinions here are my own: they draw upon real world experience at my current employer, but they are not their views, I do not speak for them and I’m far from the only person there who reads CV’s, so my suggestions should not be assumed to offer a quick route to an interview. I’ve been interviewing for over three years, and in the past year I’ve spent a lot of my working time looking for fresh Graduates to hire. https://minimal.org.uk/2006/01/07/revised-sshipf-blocking-on-netbsd/ Sat, 07 Jan 2006 23:49:31 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2006/01/07/revised-sshipf-blocking-on-netbsd/ Update 08jan06 @ 08:05: After sending this link to Hubert he came back with a change to get the sed lines inside the shell, so I’ve updated the post to reflect this as it’s a far neater solution. Ok, I couldn’t resist the challenge after Hubert blogged about my pop-before-smtp script, so here’s my rather ugly shell version. Sadly, I’m lousy at sorting out shell escaping so as well as the shell script there is also a sed script that does the log file filtering: please feel free to alter things to work in one shell script – the code is mine, but do with it what you will, as it doesn’t really have much to it in the end (click on the filenames to get the source). https://minimal.org.uk/2006/01/04/fun-with-pop-before-smtp-and-ipf-on-netbsd/ Wed, 04 Jan 2006 12:19:39 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2006/01/04/fun-with-pop-before-smtp-and-ipf-on-netbsd/ I’ve not bothered with POP before SMTP authentication before but since v1.38 the script can take an optional config file that allows it to watch different log files in an easily customised fashion, which is great as I was wondering what the most efficient way of blocking automated ssh attempts was. I didn’t want to run a one minute cron job to parse the authlog file as it was clunky and most of the automated attacks I have seen are over in under two minutes or so. https://minimal.org.uk/2004/08/23/making-an-unabridged-audio-album-from-a-dvd-in-mac-os-x/ Mon, 23 Aug 2004 20:03:02 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2004/08/23/making-an-unabridged-audio-album-from-a-dvd-in-mac-os-x/ I’m pretty sure this is covered by most ‘fair use’ clauses (do check your own laws: IANAL) but is intended for people with a DVD and a DVD-ROM drive who want the soundtrack to the film but don’t feel the need to pay twice for the same material on different media… Pretty much all you need to know can be found at Shepmaster’s site, but there are only two pages that matter: how to turn the DVD into AAC files and then how to turn AAC files into stereo audio files. https://minimal.org.uk/2003/12/11/typo-in-the-wincvsssh-guide/ Thu, 11 Dec 2003 11:36:02 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2003/12/11/typo-in-the-wincvsssh-guide/ Thanks go to Skip Coombe for finding two very long standing errors in the WinCVS/ssh guide – I can’t prove one of them as my setup works fine as detailed, but it’s been added as a footnote for those that might be having problems. https://minimal.org.uk/2003/06/12/messin-with-googlecom/ Thu, 12 Jun 2003 21:25:32 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2003/06/12/messin-with-googlecom/ Cool – giving Google the search phrase ‘wincvs ssh‘ means that the guide on this site is the 7th hit ! https://minimal.org.uk/2002/10/03/applescript-itunes-and-speech/ Thu, 03 Oct 2002 10:43:10 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2002/10/03/applescript-itunes-and-speech/ I like iTunes on my iBook, but I often forget the name of a track (I just listen to the album[s] whilst programming) so thanks to the hotkey ability of Keyboard Maestro, I’ve got an AppleScript solution (my first !) that takes up no screen space at all. I also threw in a pause and play pair of scripts too, so other people can interrupt me and I don’t need to hunt for the right app and button. https://minimal.org.uk/2002/08/16/neoprene-case/ Fri, 16 Aug 2002 17:53:07 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2002/08/16/neoprene-case/ I’ve also started planning a neoprene case for an iBook. No, I don’t have one (yet), but that doesn’t stand in the way of a good idea… Unfortunately, just after I got the rubber delivered, I found that the idea is already a product, but I reckon mine will be nicer 🙂 Ok, it’ll be cheaper. https://minimal.org.uk/2002/08/16/neoprene-ibook-bag/ Fri, 16 Aug 2002 16:48:57 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2002/08/16/neoprene-ibook-bag/ the idea The Apple iBook laptop computer is one of the nicest ones I’ve seen. So nice, in fact, that for the very first time I have been tempted into a purchase, although I haven’t as yet actually finalised the order… One thing that was obviously required right from the start is some sort of carrying device, and I was also 100% certain that I didn’t want something that would draw attention to itself on public transport (nothing says “Snatch me! https://minimal.org.uk/2002/08/05/wincvs-ssh/ Mon, 05 Aug 2002 16:54:28 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2002/08/05/wincvs-ssh/ Intro Most of the guides I found whilst trying to do this task were aimed at older SSH v1 clients, and a lot of the setup involved custom builds of SSH, which wasn’t really what I was after. I wanted a simple guide that would work for common downloads of free software so my friends could access a remote CVS repository from Windows – this is the result. Before starting, you need to have SSH (Protocol 2) access to a server that contains the CVS repository, and know the correct path to CVSROOT along with your login username and password. https://minimal.org.uk/2002/07/24/video-capture-part-three-what-to-do-next/ Wed, 24 Jul 2002 21:13:26 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2002/07/24/video-capture-part-three-what-to-do-next/ win2k/sonic mydvd There will be some details here, just as soon as I can stop screaming at the memory of it all… macos x/imovie 2 macos x/dazzle hollywood bridge macos x/idvd 2 mac os x/imovie 2/project builder https://minimal.org.uk/2002/07/24/video-capture-part-two-getting-it-working/ Wed, 24 Jul 2002 21:12:37 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2002/07/24/video-capture-part-two-getting-it-working/ win2k/tmpgenc The answer to the AVI capture limit was simple: move to Windows 2000 and NTFS, and capture until my hard drive ran out of space. This was good, in that it worked fine, plus the move to MPEG files rather than AVI meant that there wasn’t really a limit anyway. The O/S was far, far better than Win98 in terms of stability, and the Task Manager that could be invoked by a simple CTRL+ALT+DEL was a delight: I could bring the system down to the bare minimum of executing tasks in a moment. https://minimal.org.uk/2002/07/24/video-capture-the-first-steps/ Wed, 24 Jul 2002 21:11:53 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2002/07/24/video-capture-the-first-steps/ beos/hauppauge wintv Hmm, well that was nice. It’s a wonderful OS, bringing elegance and slickness to the desktop of even ‘slow’ machines, if you can find a selection of hardware with the correct drivers. It can do multiple video and audio streams that even today’s O/S have trouble with, and the default versions even came with Japanese localisations – how about that for a US company ? Well, not so great, actually. https://minimal.org.uk/2002/07/24/video-capture-the-quest-for-quality/ Wed, 24 Jul 2002 12:36:21 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2002/07/24/video-capture-the-quest-for-quality/ background I’ve been messing around with digital video since my first video camera (JVC GR-DVJ70), and have played with capture on BeOS, Windows 98, Windows 2000 and MacOS X. If I knew at the start what I know now, I’d have saved up the extra for a unit with Firewire output… As it it, the camera is a fully digital MiniDV unit, but it only has analogue ouputs, and no video inputs (external Mic is provided, but no headphone out). https://minimal.org.uk/2002/07/01/javastation/ Mon, 01 Jul 2002 10:10:35 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2002/07/01/javastation/ What’s a JavaStation ? The best starting point is the Linux on JavaStation HOWTO, which very clearly covers all of the machine variants with nice explanations of the hardware and firmware differences of each device. It also explains that the machines were design to do, should that be of interest. For the record, the system I’m using is a MrCoffee (“Brick”) JavaStation-1 device with 64MB of RAM. Why bother ? It’s got the fastest SPARC CPU of any of my Sun gear, so I fancied trying to use it as a VNC client to do some remote working. https://minimal.org.uk/2002/06/10/mod_include/ Mon, 10 Jun 2002 09:37:01 +0000 https://minimal.org.uk/2002/06/10/mod_include/ What does this mod_include offer ? Post-processing of variables contained within a variable. Doesn’t sound too helpful ? Well, maybe not, but I found that during construction of this site that I was frequently replicating 5 lines of text with only a single word altered (the left menu). This was both inefficient and awkward to debug, and didn’t lend itself to keeping a common look and feel for the site as a whole.