I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10. Overall, the whole experience that has been pleasant. But as always with upgrading, there’s niggling problems that linger until you get around to fixing them.

At the top of my list was the tool tips in Eclipse. Whenever you mouse over something in Eclipse, whether it is a function, object or struct, a tool tip appears with a snippet of information about that object. Usually its the definition of the object. Its pretty useful to have so you don’t necessarily need to go through your source to quickly remind yourself what parameters this function requires.

However since upgrading, the box background has been black, as well as the background text – effectively rendering it useless. Obviously, it doesn’t prevent me from working, just a slight annoyance.

Until today. Was perusing the Ubuntu forums and stumbled across this post on the topic.

I am DE-lighted.

Current Mood:Esctatic emoticon Esctatic

Background

My old server (Luke) has been dying for awhile now, and things had proceeded to unnacceptable levels.  The new server (R2D2) is running the new Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) instance, whereas Luke was running 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat). Mission critical software such as dhcp, apache, vsftp, python, ssh etc was operational on R2D2. Both are the “Server” edition/flavour of Ubuntu. Meaning all I have at my disposal is a command line.

Love it.

The Problem

After successfully transferring the svn repository (using svnsync) to R2D2 and installing the Trac environment and setting up my vhost for Apache; I proceeded to access my Trac repository via my browser. Everything was working, except anything to do with my subversion repository.

I couldn’t :

  • see any updates to the repository in the timeline
  • browse the source code
  • view the most recent repository version number in Admin->Repository settings page

No matter how many times I fiddled with the Trac.ini, vhost settings or repository/Trac environment configurations – I just could not make it work.

These were the approximate locations :

  • Trac Environment  - /var/trac/project/
    • I used to have more directories within project for each element, but this is no longer necessary for Trac 0.12.2
  • SVN Repository – /home/user/svn/project/element/

The Solution

I did have a hefty number of problems up to this point, which I’ll breeze over quickly here:

  • I was updating from an older version of Trac to 0.12.2. 0.12.2 handles repository set-up very differently from its predecessors since it is capable of handling multiple repositories within one Trac environment (finally!). I had to get my head around setting up svn hooks (I will have to write a separate blog post on that later. The documentation is shockingly confusing).
  • mod_python is no longer maintained, and there are issues starting to creep in that will never be resolved. I had to move across to wsgi – thankfully not much of a problem because I’m used to having to use mod_wsgi for Django.
  • Some “weirdness” with getting Apache to actually start on Natty.

After I fixed all of these, I still couldn’t browse the source code on my Trac environment. Just to note – I have configured my repository settings through the Admin interface on Trac, rather than using the Trac.ini file.

Unlike all of my Trac-y previous problems, despite some of the solutions themselves being a little fiddly, the errors were apparent and were presented to me via Trac. They were thankfully not squirrelled away in a log file somewhere. But for my browse source, I couldn’t seem to find any errors or indications to why things may have been going to shit.

It wasn’t my permissions – by this point I had chmod’d everything in my user directory to 777 and was beginning to actually stomp my feet in frustration. Then I had an idea – I visited the browse source web page : http://www.yourtracurlhere.com/browser

Lo and behold, I saw a permissions error! … but there shouldn’t be any problems accessing my home directory, should there?

TURNS OUT, even though I *thought* I had configured Natty to NOT encrypt my home folders, it had done so ANYWAY. I quickly moved my svn repository to /var/svn/username/project/element/, and updated Trac and my vhost files to use this new location. I also modified the permissions of the new repository location to something sensible, so that the it is accessible to Apache.

Aaaaaaaaand it appeared on the web interface.

Ace.

Current Mood:Angry emoticon Angry

The older I get, the more I seem to be travelling by myself. Initially, I was intimidated by it (what if I get on the wrong plane?!) and would become a big bundle of nerves. Which, I guess made me look somewhat shifty and I would always get pulled aside by staff for random spot checks.

When I was travelling around the USA, I was approached by various people and they would start conversations. Who were these crazy people? Just coming up to people and chatting to me? Why aren’t you leaving me to sit, eyes glazed, staring into the middle distance while I wait for the gate to open? Why me?

However, I endured the awkward start to the conversations. Before long, I realised that we were happily nestled onto our seats, continuing chatting and I was enjoying the airport “experience”. I wasn’t worrying about everything going on around me and wasn’t on a plane to Malawi.

The conversations were sometimes a bit wacky, sometimes a bit scary, sometimes a bit tragic, but always interesting. Now that I’ve returned home and beginning to travel Europe more, I’ve noticed that I’ve become the person who starts talking to people at airports and planes. I’m quite often rebuked (who is this strange ginger looking chap wearing a Texas t-shirt trying to talk to me?!), but I eventually find people who are amenable and continue the cycle.

In my time of chatting to other travelling folk, I’ve talked and interacted with people who I would never be able to talk to anywhere else. People who just would never enter my lifesphere. One of the more notable people I met was a Nigerien lass (from Niger, not Nigeria) who was travelling “to the West” because she had managed to obtain a bursary to study at an educational institution. Something she was intensely proud of, and apparently isn’t often given to people in her situation.

I guess what I’m saying is: actively chat to people at airports. Its amazing how such a small, everyday thing can completely transform a normally mildly unpleasant experience to something you remember fondly. You might even make a lifelong friend…

And it might help you not get randomly searched at airports.

Current Mood:Cool emoticon Cool

Because of the server outage – I couldn’t do food week as I originally envisioned. But, I did discover a new website (http://www.foodspotting.com) – which I have admittedly become addicted to.

Any of the interesting (non-toast) related food I ate across the other side of the world is on that website – with locations. People are going to get so annoyed with me for taking my DSLR any time we go and eat out…

Click here if you’re feeling crazy and want to check out my profile.

 

 

 

 

 

Current Mood:Abashed emoticon Abashed

So whilst I was over in Japan – my server, Luke, became unresponsive to external control. The system and data is fine, but its CPU was just being devoured alive. This is happening simply because as I slowly put more services onto the server, I’m getting more traffic over time AND programs tend to eat up a little bit more CPU with each update.

So since I’ve come back to the UK, I’ve accelerated the change over from Luke to R2D2. However, things are being slowed because Luke has really started to croak, becoming unresponsive more quickly and taking more time to recover from a restart.

This is the first post on the new server!

Current Mood:Alarmed emoticon Alarmed

Breakfast

Japanese Style Breakfast

I ... don't really know what it all was. I just picked things and then ate them.

The hotel did a buffet style breakfast, where they had all manner of (mostly) Japanese nibbles for breakfast. I couldn’t find the Miso soup that day, otherwise I would have had that too! Miso soup is what most Japanese folks have for breakfast (like how we have breakfast cereal).

I think there was some deep fried shrimp, iced tofu with fish sauce, some kind of fish cake and miscellaneous veg I haven’t seen since. Some of it was nice, some of it tasted bad and some of it just had crazzzzzy texture. I then followed it up with some :

Toooooast

Toast, Marmalade and Blueberry Jam.

That was just to get rid of the taste of the deep fried shrimp (I don’t like shrimp). Yeeeeeeeerk.

Lunch

My lunch consisted of lots of fluids (mostly water) because I was so dehydrated. I just didn’t feel hungry.

Dinner

We went into a restaurant in Osaka and had the just the following:

Ricey Balls

Fried Rice Balls

and some Asahi Dry too. The story behind this is a post in itself…

We popped down to the corner shop to grab some things to eat…

Kirin Autumn Beer

Almond and chocolate Pocky

Yay! Healthy I know. I was originally introduced to Pocky whilst I was in the States – so I knew what I was getting. A lot of the other food was just plastered in Japanese Writing – I didn’t trust my luck to pick something that was paletteable. I tried a cold green drink tea previously – yeeeeerk. Won’t make that mistake again.

Current Mood:Sad emoticon Sad

You asked for it, and I listened!

I have returned the ability to search the Marky Archives from the bar on the right. Albeit in a compacted drop-down form :)

Happier ‘n’ easier navigating!

Current Mood:Playful emoticon Playful

Day One

Lunch

I have decided that “Day One” of my food week will NOT include the loooooong flight and its food. Firstly, I would need to know what I was actually eating, and secondly food usually has some kind of flavour and thirdly, I had little/no choice in what was shoved in front of me.

So! My first actual day in Japan. We found a nice looking place that looked like it did a mix of Western food and Japanese food, so we could pick something familiar in case the Japanese food scared us off (when I say us, I mean my Mum and I – my Dad will happily crunch of octopus tentacles if given the chance…).

Lunch Restaraunt

Luncheon Place!

Lo and behold they had a menu in English too! Great! Untttttiiiiiiiil we realise there was no Japanese food on the menu, only Western food. Damnit. Naturally, I went for the most exotic thing on the menu…

Hamburger Curry

Hamburger Curry

Hamburger curry! Both of my parents had Spag Bol, and we all know what that looks like so I didn’t deem it worthy of a picture. The burger curry was super tasty though.

Our drinks were more of a success though. Father and I had Asani “Dry” Beer, and my mum sampled a “Cream Soda” – a nice radioactive green. It didn’t look like any cream soda I’ve ever seen, but it did taste nice!

Cream Soda and Asahi Dry

Cream Soda and Asahi Dry

Verdict? It was nice – but we were miserable failures at finding something more Orientatal…

Dinner

This was much more successful. Check it out!

Dinner

Pork Thai Noodle Curry; Chicken & Cashew Nut; Rice 'n' Beansprouts

However, when I proudly told me sister that we had actually managed to locate and eat food somewhere that wasn’t Westernised – she wasn’t particularly impressed. Apparently, Thai and Chinese style dishes aren’t Japanese. Ooops.

Admittedly, in my parents defence, it didn’t specify if their dishes hailed from a different country. I, however, had no excuse since my dish was prefixed with “Thai”. It looked and sounded tasty from the menu. I HAVE NO REGRETS.

I also introduced Dad to Kirin Ichiban – my favourite Japanese beer. I first started drinking this across in America and have thoroughly enjoyed it. Mum had a low alchohol hoppy beer (although in Japan I don’t think they’re allowed to call it beer legally..)

Beeru!

Kiri Ichiban and "some-kind-of-low-alcohol-hoppy-beer."

Current Mood:Playful emoticon Playful

That’s right, although this time with a twist.

For those of you not in the know, I am currently holidaying in Japan. My sister is over there and teaching English in a Japanese school. The Folks and I have decided to go over to see her before she ends up back in the United Kingdom. Assuming she doesn’t immediately go gallavanting somewhere new and exciting that is!

I wouldn’t put it past her. It would suck because I would be forced to visit her in interesting foreign parts – again. How unfair is that?!

So anyway, I thought it would be interesting to do the food week again – but from the other perspective…

 

Current Mood:Cool emoticon Cool

The Week is over. I genuinely enjoyed partaking in this little experiment – although admittedly I am a little bit terrified by my own diet. I attempted to keep my diet as natural as possible, otherwise I probably would have eaten a few less bacon butties ;)

My sister has been making posters of the food I’ve been eating – I’ve asked her to photograph them. It should be really cool to see what she’s made up. It’ll be interesting to see if/when anyone else undertakes the Week and see what they eat.

Any takers on how long its going to take for my diet to kill me?

Current Mood:Sad emoticon Sad

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