This is as days pass by, by Stuart Langridge

Ooh, ooh, Jeremy’s DOM Scripting book is nearly upon us. Looking at the sample chapter, it’s written in Jeremy’s literate and erudite style, and I suspect will be very good indeed. I would put it on my purchase list except that it’s already there…

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Jono and I are men who walk alone
And when we start to upgrade angel
I feel the fear get very large

When the package list begins to change
We sometimes feel a little strange
A little anxious when it’s sarge

Fear of the sarge, fear of the sarge
I have a constant fear that crashing’s always near
Fear of the sarge, fear of the sarge
I have a phobia that hell is nearly here

Today we upgraded angel, the machine that runs kryogenix.org and jonobacon.org and wolveslug.org.uk and phpwm.org and aurochs.org and dellah.com and lugradio.org and other stuff too from Debian woody to Debian sarge, the latest stable release. Pretty terrifying, especially since apt-get dist-upgrade doesn’t work properly between woody and sarge. What’s the point of running Debian, eh? The whole reason it’s better than everything else is that upgrading is done with one command! Anyway, that aside, the upgrade happened by:

1. Typing apt-get dist-upgrade and noting all the packages that it was going to remove or leave behind, and then cancelling it
2. Typing apt-get upgrade and letting it upgrade all the stuff it was prepared to, which wasn’t much
3. Typing apt-get install x y z where x and y and z (and more besides) are all the packages from the “remove or leave behind” list above that we actually need, like apache and mysql-server
4. apt-get upgrade again
5. apt-get dist-upgrade
6. apt-get dist-upgrade again, to confirm that nothing was left to do
7. Adding the line Include /etc/apache/conf.d to /etc/apache/httpd.conf
8. Fixing a bug in Debian’s mailman package by doing ln -s /usr/share/mailman /var/lib/mailman/templates and then creating the (newly required) “mailman” mailing list with newlist mailman
9. Crossing fingers and rebooting to confirm that the box would come back up

It all worked.

That is a big weight off our minds, that.

And now angel should go down less (i.e., not at all!) Fingers crossed, again…

Scott Isaacs, one of the Microsoft web chaps, is complaining about CSS hacks. His proposed solution is to, instead of applying CSS hacks to make a browser do what you want, instead have details of the users browser inserted into the HTML element either by server-side or client-side script. So, if you visit a page using IE6.0, it would add class="ie m6 d0 win" to the HTML element; using Firefox 1.06 on Linux it would add class="firefox m1 d06 linux", and so on. Then, in your stylesheet, use these hooks to apply style for specific browsers.
I think that this is not a good idea, and here’s why.
Firstly, it requires absolutely that every page be server-parsed, since you can’t rely on client-side scripting being there. Well, unless you’re prepared to make your styling depend on JavaScript, which rather defeats the point of CSS. In some places it seems like the norm is to make all pages, even ones with plain HTML and no dynamic content at all, be server-parsed by making them ASP or PHP, but I don’t like to do that for pages that don’t need it. If you’re thinking “but every page needs a header and that’s normally dynamically included!“, think about automatically generated pages which are generated dynamically when required and then cached, like blog archives. Or think about mailing list archives, or pages where the header and footer are added by your web editing tool like Frontpage or Dreamweaver rather than by the server.
Secondly, it clutters the HTML a bit. Not much, but a bit. This isn’t much of an objection.
Thirdly, how do you establish the platform and short-name-for-a-browser and major and minor versions? Parse the userAgent string? That takes us back to the days of browscap.ini and The World’s Biggest List Of Browsers, which you have to rely on someone to maintain.
In short, I don’t like the idea. I’d be interested in hearing dissenting opinions, though.

(Incidentally, you may be thinking that this should have been a comment over at Scott’s rather than a post here: I agree with you, but to post there you need an MSN passport and I don’t want to get one.)

I’m signed up to the new Google IM service, Google Talk. Works fine with Gaim. Good work Google for using the open-source Jabber protocol, too. I wonder how Google-client-to-Google-client voice chat works?
Username: stuart.langridge (I don’t actually know whether you need the @gmail.com bit on the end).
Update: it seems that they’re using a custom XMPP thing which they have promised to fully document. Nice.

Back from hols! Things I have learned this week:

• There is virtually no interest in ghosts and whatnot in the Lake District. We looked in tourist information offices, a library, and bookshops. Nothing.
• So we spent a bit of time looking in pubs instead, ahaha.
• We were staying in the Coniston Hall camp site which was run by a woman remarkably like Tubbs from The League Of Gentlemen. We kept a sharp ear out for the cries of “We didn’t burn him!” but fortunately managed to avoid a gruesome death at the hands of locals.
• Possibly by hiding in the pub the whole time, ahaha.
• The beer’s pretty darn good in the area, too.
• Sellafield Visitors Centre is not only a very interesting and interactive day but is very objective about the costs as well as the benefits of nuclear power. Good on them, I say; at times it almost seemed like a place set up by the CND rather than BNFL.
• Andy refuses to pee in a bush in daylight, even if no-one is watching. I feel no such restriction.
• You can drink almost any amount of beer if you really put your mind to it.
• John Ruskin (the local Coniston luminary) is a pretty cool guy; his pencil drawings of Venetian stuff are particularly good. I had no idea he was so influential!
• Castlerigg is an interesting stone circle. St Julian had quite a bit to say about it in The Modern Antiquarian as well, although he’s not as inspired as Andy’s theory about the stones reflecting in shape the mountains around them. I personally have my doubts, as well as my doubts about Cope’s mysticism in general, but it’s a good theory of Andy’s and a good writeup of JC’s.
• The Lake District is very pretty.
• One day I shall return.

Right, I’m gone. See you in a week!

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Catching up on all the stuff I’ve marked as Keep New in Bloglines before I go away for a week (how will you all cope?) to find ghosts in Cumbria.

• Tom Coates asks where all the UK technology startups are. It’s not a bad point; there’s innovation going on but few companies being formed. Maybe this is just a symptom of the British character; setting up a company to do your idea seems slightly brash and over-self-confident. My big worry is that as soon as you set up a startup you’ll spend 10% of your time doing what you actually want to do and 90% of your time doing things that mean “running a business“.
• Malarkey pimps Extreme Programming. I’ve always liked the concepts in XP, and here’s another example of people actually doing it in practice. Is there a problem in pair programming if the skill levels of the two programmers are unbalanced?
• Ian Bicking talks about how WSGI and Python Paste aren’t just ‘another damn framework’. I still don’t get WSGI properly, and I need to, I think, especially if I get into the whole wonderful world of Django. Simon WIllison gave me a kicking about not having used it enough at OpenTech, which is particularly apposite given that it’s already creating jobs.
• If you’ve got a form with only radio buttons on it, should double-clicking one of the radio buttons select that button and submit the form? Raymond Chen talks about how to implement that under Windows and how the Office team do it. Interesting little usability tweak, I think.
• A couple of good Joel Spolsky pieces on usability testing and how there really are ‘the best programmers’. That last point ties in, sort of, with another excellent Paul Graham essay on What Business Can Learn from Open Source. That essay contains many fabulously quotable bits, including numerous bits about the spectre of “professionalism“, a code word for “it’s more important that you wear a suit and spout the company line than that you actually do good work“. There’s lots more on this over at lesscode.org including an excellent essay, Motherhood and Apple Pie.
• Ned points out the perfectly constructed joke that is the Collier Classification System for Very Small Objects. I love science jokes, although none of them are as good as the IDEAL Scientific Equipment Company which is hilarious if you have done a bit of physics and probably incomprehensible otherwise. “If you didn’t get it from us, it’s not IDEAL!”
• Jeremy Keith stands up against Apple making use of Trusted Computing hardware on their new Intel machines and says “I’m with Cory on this one. If this turns out to be true, I’m switching to Linux.” Jeremy, we salute you; your freedom is more important than perceived benefits. That’s a big part of what we’ve been fighting for all these years, and a big respect goes out to you. You can grab and try out an Ubuntu PowerPC LiveCD on your Mac right now to see what you think of it without actually touching the hard disc.
• Mark Pilgrim unleashes his mighty coding power once again and produces MagicLine , your personal search command line for a GreaseMonkeyed Firefox.

Tomorrow, fearless Andy and I depart on the latest installment of our annual paranormal investigation tour; the Men With Big Moans are going to Cumbria to seek out ghosts and beer and ghouls and beer and other things that go bump in the night. We’ve previously visited Wiltshire for the Men With Big Stones tour, to investigate Neolithic stone circles, beer, crop circles, and beer, and then Cornwall on the Men With Big Thrones tour to investigate beer, the history of King Arthur, beer, and the location of Camelot. As ever, this is really an excuse to have a drink and talk shit until three o‘clock in the morning, but we have come up with some credible theories on the nature of stone rings and the history of Merlin before now. I can’t find a PK meter anywhere to take with me, though. Anyone got any suggestions for good online references for hauntings in the north-west of England that I can snarf before we go? We’ll be staying on the shores of Lake Coniston, near the car museum with the Batmobile in it, if anyone wants to drop by the tent. Suck in your guys, guys, we’re the Ghostbusters.

I spend a lot of time in front of my computer. Probably more than most. So I want to make sure that I spend as little time as possible keeping my system running. Many years ago I used to use a Windows PC and estimate that I’d spend around 2% of my time keeping the system in good working order. That could be installing software or patches, defragging the disk, or the occasional OS reinstall. Not a huge amount of time, but it does add up. These days I use Linux, and the amount of time I spend on maintenance has easily dropped below 0.01%.

Because I use my computer all the time, I want it to be as pleasant an experience as possible. I want my computer to help me do my work, or at least not get in my way. At work I have to use Windows; while the OS has definitely improved in the last few years, I still get the feeling that I’m fighting against the OS rather than working with it. And while Windows XP looks a little nicer than its predecessor, it still feels miles behind Linux. Windows looks and feels cluttered and complex to me, and the clean and usable lines of my Gnome desktop get out of my way and let me get on with work.

Now before the Windows and Mac users go on the defensive, I’m not saying that Linux is perfect. Like most computer systems, it has its quirks, oddities and annoyances. However I truly believe that its the best operating system around, because it not only works more smoothly but also embodies an ethical stance. It will stay that way pretty much indefinitely; neither Apple nor Microsoft show any significant sign of moving away from proprietary formats, proprietary applications, and forced user lockin.

I have quite a bit of time, money and emotional attachment invested in Linux, so would hate for anything to happen to it. There have been a few moments in recent history where there future looked uncertain, but the growth of Linux in industry, along with the cooperation of large corporate firms such as IBM and Novell (who are mostly becoming involved with Free Software in a Free way rather than simply trying to take advantage of others’ work for commercial gain) seems to have secured its future, at least for the next couple of years. However I want Linux to thrive and one perceived guarantee of longevity is market share.

Currently Linux has a global market share of 2.8 percent on the desktop. It has a global market share on the server of 28.3%. While the server market is a stronghold for Linux, at first glance the desktop figure seems pretty poor. However, it’s worth putting that in perspective. 2.8% percent means that one in every 36 computers in the world is running Linux. When you think about it, that�8364;’s actually quite a lot.

Most of my friends and colleagues own at least one Linux box, and at conferences like What The Hack and FOSDEM, the halls are swarming with them. In fact spying a Windows box at one of these events is a cause for a raised eyebrow or two.

Linux doesn’t have a huge cut of the larger computer market, but it does have a strong showing in the developer sector. A good portion of developers I know are using Linux or are in the process of trying it out, which is made easy by the existence of Live CDs. This site balances between Linux, web technology, and me complaining about stuff; I don’t, unfortunately, have stats for operating system share of visitors.

So while Linux’s market share may appear small, it is actually a lot larger and more stable than you may imagine.

With apologies to Andy Budd.

Blimey. DHTML Utopia is at sales rank #44 on Amazon.

I suspect that this is almost entirely down to it being Slashdotted.