I recently switched to using xfce on my FreeBSD desktop. Window Maker is nice but it was starting to feel a bit dated. Thus far I like xfce, but I had one problem with Terminal. Whenever I tried to resize it or switch desktops to one with Terminal open in it I could see it painstakingly render the window. Xterm and aterm didn’t exhibit this behaviour, my 3d was accelerated, and other screen drawing didn’t show problems either (do note I am using NVIDIA’s binary driver for my GeForce 8800, the nv driver from X.org is unusable at this point).
Someone pointed me at the environment variable XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1. Once added to .zshenv, properly exported on my shell and an X restart later I find Terminal to zoom along as expected. It turns out that the NVIDIA driver doesn’t properly accelerate alpha channels.
One thing that has been annoying me over the past years is that on mailinglists people with Outlook or Outlook Express clients tend to start a new thread by replying to an email in another thread. They remove the body, perhaps some cc: information, change the subject, write their body and send it off. Since Outlook supports completion for to: and cc: fields, it seems a bit of a timewaster to start a new topic like that.
But leaving all that aside, the worst part is that Outlook doesn’t show you all headers, in particular it leaves the References header intact, which means it is now a reply to an earlier post in another thread. And so threading is broken. You might think “why be annoyed over it”, well, the problem is that online mailinglist indexes use this information for proper navigating through a thread. Typically they provide a ‘next by thread’ and ‘previous by thread’ hyperlink to navigate, but the logical flow of the thread is now broken.
So whenever I see someone with Outlook do this, I send them a note about this in private and most often they adjust the way they work, since, like I stated earlier, starting a new message is actually even faster.
If we consider common available technology and the average use of a FreeBSD installation as desktop or server then I think these are sensible defaults for /etc/src.conf under FreeBSD 7.
Do you really need a full installation of BIND on your machine? In most cases you simply need a caching, recursive resolver. For this just install unbound (found in ports/dns/unbound). Do note that I did not specify WITHOUT_BIND_UTILS so tools like dig and nslookup will still be installed. Only if you need an authoratative nameserver might you want BIND. On the other hand, you might prefer to install NSD (ports/dns/nsd).
WITHOUT_BLUETOOTH=yes
Most systems will probably not use Bluetooth at all.
WITHOUT_I4B=yes
Do you even use ISDN?
WITHOUT_IPFILTER=yes
Most people I know use either ipfw or pf, so little need for ipf.
WITHOUT_IPX=yes
You seriously still use IPX? Even NetWare is IP-native nowadays.
WITHOUT_NIS=yes
I would hope most systems are using some sort of LDAP lookup nowadays. NIS seriously doesn’t scale.
WITHOUT_SENDMAIL=yes
Given the ease of configuring Postfix, why would one want to bother with the archaic syntax of Sendmail? It has served faithfully for many, many years, but its design and configuration are archaic.
Your smile goes so deep,
it makes me happy and I wonder
if I can ever find a star
that matches the brightness of your eyes.
The curve of your lips hides nothing,
everything is there in plain sight.
It is all so simple, yet a beauty beyond compare.
How can I protect that smile of yours?
When I lay the moon and stars at your feet,
will you keep smiling for me?
Or is it better to leave them in the sky above,
so I can catch their reflection in your eyes
as you move ever closer and closer and closer…
There are no clouds of boredom in my living sky,
no lack of purpose as time passes by.
I grasp the moment with all my soul,
firm, yet gentle, of my own destiny I take control.
Shaping, like a potter, form from naught,
organically grown, the shape at end matters not
for it is the experience itself, the path I took
that writes the chapters of life in my book.
For a few years now there’s been a website in the Netherlands and Belgium that asks participants to fill out their details on a weekly basis with regard to cold and influenza symptoms.
After that there was a Portuguese site doing the same thing.
There is still not much known about migratory patterns and occurences of the flu within the world, these websites will help create more understanding, so please help them out. It will take a maximum of 5 minutes per week, but the information is very useful for scientists (virologists).
New Zealand starts its Haka ka mate but then get interrupted by Tonga with their Sipi tau. Every time I watch this my skin gets goosebumps. Quite powerful when you see them perform against each other like this.
So I was updating my input method editors (IME) from the default in Windows x64 (IME 2002) to the ones provided by Office 2007’s language packs. As explained in a previous post of mine you can install the proofing tools and input by passing LAUNCHEDBYSETUPEXE=1 to the execution of the MSI. Now, on my Windows x64 I installed the IME by installing the IME64.MSI with this added variable. The weird thing was that some applications worked flawlessly and yet others showed me the wrong number of icons or no icons at all! It turns out that these applications are 32-bits applications and need to have the 32-bits IME installed as well. So next to installing IME64.MSI of the language you want to install, you will also have to install IME32.MSI. Only after doing this will you notice the applications working as you want them.
Thinking back on it, it makes perfect sense, but while you are in the middle of working with it you keep wondering: “why?”