Graphs

I was pleased with this graph that I created for the DHCP/DNS guide. I had to wrestle a bit with various attributes but in the end I managed to get something reliably reproducible, which is necessary because the graph is automatically generated from a dot file embedded in the markdown for that page. It’s also nice when I have an actual reason to use the Graphviz plugin that I wrote for Xac.

Exciting blog, huh?

Xac Update

Well, I finally implemented the code to keep the last x entries in the new/blog directory (see previous post). This was incidental to debugging something else, as I had completely forgotten about it. Obviously I don’t show this blog much love, but hey, it was only written in the first place because I got sidetracked wondering how I would do it.

As I was looking through the Xac source archive I noticed that the old news instructions were, well, old. Initially I implemented some unnecessarily complicated system that I thought would ensure consistent chronology of the posts regardless of modification time. It used scripts to synchronized markdown headers and mtimes and it was soon abandoned for a much simpler system. It was one of those wtf-was-I-thinking-when-I-wrote-this-shit-last-night moments, which are quite similar to what I experience when I look at Perl code that I wrote several years ago.¹ Well, when I look at anything that I wrote several years ago, or after a 20 hour coding binge.

The point, if there is one, is that the latest release of Xac should make it easier to use the news feed. There is also some interest in implementing a full blog with Xac (forum post). The only thing that’s really missing is a comment system, which I’ve wanted for a while but never really looked into. It would be quite interesting if this finally leads to one being found or created.

Feel free to email me or post suggestions in that thread if you have any.

Syslinux

About a week ago the Arch devs drove Grub legacy out to the Nevada desert and broke his legs. Even though he was able to get picked up by the AUR, I realized it was time to move on. Grub has been with me since I first started using Linux, but after a not too lengthy comparision I decided to switch to Syslinux. So far I’m very happy with it. It works and it has simple yet versatile configuration options. I don’t really understand why so many people went straight to Grub 2 as it seems that many found the transition a little difficult.

I will eventually take a closer look at GPT/UEFI/etc. but for now all that I really care about is that I can boot my system.

Systemd

Aside from looking at bootloaders, which I normally never do. I have also spent some time looking at the beast that is systemd. Even after spending a few hours reading through several announcements, wikis, forum threads, etc, I still don’t understand it as well as I would like. I will have to take some time to install that soon and play around with it. At this point it seems that there are many benefits but at the cost of complexity. I’m hoping that this apparent complexity will fade once I get over the initial hump of the learning curve.

Taken together, the recent developments involving initscripts and bootloaders have forced me to at least read up on both, which I probably would not have done any time soon on my own. Although it is a bit annoying to have to absorb new information when you would rather focus on something else, it is definitely educational.

Arch Linux: It gives you homework.

Of course, the other aspect of it is that you sometimes find yourself reading through obscure man pages at 4 in the morning wondering htf you ended up there. Nevertheless, it’s a better use of your time than chaining on Youtube.

Busy

So, I haven’t posted anything new here in a while and now all of the old posts have been auto-rotated into subdirectories. I thought I had configured it to conserve the last 5 entries regardless of date, but apparently not (either I imagined it, or the code is buggy²). It’s on my todo list, because I know people love reading stale blog posts.³

Tentative Blog

I’ve just tweaked the Xac news feed plugin and I’m going to see how it manages blog entries. There should be an atom feed in the file list on the right. Anyway, I really have no idea if anyone will even bother reading this, so it may be a short-lived experiment.

I might add a way to post comments but I want to give it some thought first. One idea is to put a FluxBB forum on this site and just embed threads on pages using object tags.

The advantage of the forum is that it’s simple and I can use it for bug-tracking and general feedback. Again though, I don’t know who would use it and I doubt many people want to add another set of login details to their list.

I could also roll my own comment system, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to do that right now.

Anyway, here’s the programmer’s limbo graph again, just because I feel like showing off the Xac graphviz plugin:

Haha, of course that didn’t work the first time because the news feed bypassed Xac pre- and post-parsing. I also found a hanging tag in the embedded object.

sigh

I suppose there’s something poetic about that happening while trying to post that graph. Anyway, it’s all valid XHTML again.