Bigbro's foray into the scary world of blogging
01 2007
I recently was required to make a dual-boot Red-Hat Linux AS and HP-UX server on some HP 9000 hardware. IN case I ever need to do such a thing again, here are the steps I took.
linux console=ttyS0I'm in unseasonably warm Bucharest at the moment. There's a beautiful mix of
old and new buildings and some fantastic Eastern European architecture to be
seen all around. The only big change I've noticed since Romania joined the EU
has been that the huge amount of cigarette advertising seems to be hugely cut
down. There are empty billboards throughout the city, which I assume carried
the massive amount of cigarette advertising I noticed the last time I was
here.
Courtesy of my camera phone, here's the view out of my 7th floor hotel room
window, on to Calae Victoria below, one of the two main streets in Bucharest.
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I arrived at work this morning to find someone had generously sent me this link on how SOAP is no longer simple. Thanks to Pete Lacey for writing up his thoughts and sharing them so generously.
...I've recently been involved in design discussions for a potential new product which involves an interface between two disparate organisations. The developers are tooting the SOAP trumpet and I've thus far been a lone nay-sayer. I hope this blog entry gives them as much of a laugh as it did me :-)
Developer: Okay, where's the spec on this?
Soap Guy: Oh, there is no spec. This is just what Microsoft seems to be doing. Looked like a good idea, so now all the cool kids are doing it. However, there is this new thing. I think you're gonna like it. It's called the Web Services Interoperability Group, or the WS-I. What they're doing is trying to remove a lot of the ambiguity in the SOAP and WSDL specs. I know how you like specs.
Dev: So, in other words, the specs were so bad you need a standards body to standardize the standards. Lord. Well, will this solve my interoperability problems?
SG: Oh, yeah. So long as you use a WS-I compliant SOAP stack, avoid using 8/10ths of XML Schema, don't use any unusual data types, and don't count on working with WebSphere and Apache Axis.
Dev: And is wrapped-doc/lit explained in there?
SG: Ermm, no. But that's okay, you're tools understand it. Most of them, anyway.
Dev: Let me sum up. The definition of SOAP is in constant flux, SOAP is anything but simple, and it is no longer meant for accessing objects-even though that's what all the tools still do.
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...trying to make Perl and AutoSSH play nice with each other. I suspect that 4:55am is probably not the best time of the morning to do the intricate debugging required to determine why autossh is dying as soon as I start it off with exec() - yet when I paste the exact same commandline at a shell prompt it works perfectly. I've probably made some subtle typo in my process management code.
Tomorrow's another day... or later today is... or something - definitely something.
On the plus side, I've rediscovered the value of Data::Dumper for debugging Perl data structures. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
posted at: 05:01 | path: | permanent link to this entry
Judging from the text I got today, I think Sinéad is worried that I've forgotten who she is or something - no chance! :-)
I was, in fact, going to call earlier this evening but instead opted to go for a quick power-nap, which may have accidentally turned into a 2 hour snooze. The advantage is that I can now think straight enough to deal with Perl data structures once more.
Huge 'Hi!' to my two favourite girls - hope all's well over there in sunny Bra'ford. Kitten also says, 'Hello' - though I suspect he's largely just looking for affection by walking on the keyboard.
posted at: 00:48 | path: | permanent link to this entry
wait() in perl is a 'good thing' when I'm trying to handle child processes that just won't die - and secondly for feeding me delicious fudge, the only downside of which is that I seem to have experienced some kind of mad sugar rush which means I'm wide awake now.It seems that ALL the service providers in this country are equally appallingly awfully bad. John O'Riordan had a terrible experience with Smart Telecom, which follows approximately two months without a phone connection in the house I share with a friend. This was due to Eircom and Esat BT not knowing their arse from their elbow. Even when Esat BT admitted that it was clearly their fault it took another 4 weeks before the connection was restored. (Some day if I calm down enough and manage to forgot the hundreds of Euro and GBP I spent to communicate with the UK during this screw-up, I may write up the details.) My family home, im Limerick, had no phone connection for over a month - the fault being either Eircom's or Perlico's. Despite repeated calls to both parties and raising a complaint with Comreg, noone admitted fault and one day (five weeks later) connectivity was restored.
All these events are from the last 6 months and are only examples of the
horror stories I've either personally experienced or have had detailed from
friends.
John's experience mirrors ours in that Comreg are utterly, utterly useless. They are a waste of money, time and space and should be either given the power and the mandate to do something useful, or scrapped. One or the other - their current existence is worse than meaningless. This is not a reflection on their staff, who seem to be just as demotivated and depressed at their lack of ability to do anything as the Irish telco user is.
In the interests of balance, and having working the the field of telecommunications myself, I would be quite interested in hearing a response from representatives of Comreg, Esat BT, Eircom, Smart, Perlico or any other telcos operating in Ireland. The usual mailing address ( blog-at-signal2noise.co.uk ) will get to me.
posted at: 21:44 | path: | permanent link to this entry
Cad a dhéanaimíd feasta gan adhmaid?...
Well, it might not be the best image ever, but it made me laugh ;-)
Originally from www.militantplatypus.com
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I do have some for 2007 - I just have not yet posted them here.
(i.e. Not procrastinating is not one of them...) ;-)
posted at: 12:58 | path: | permanent link to this entry
Today I had a Crunchie bar for breakfast... and it's not even Friday.
posted at: 09:14 | path: | permanent link to this entry
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