Random Ramblings :: Chris Jean

Archive for Random Ramblings

What is some.address.it.wont.ever.reach@lookup.and.try.to.find.this.host.name

by Chris Jean

July 22nd, 2016

Did you just receive some mail notifications saying that mail could not be delivered to some.address.it.wont.ever.reach@lookup.and.try.to.find.this.host.name? Fear not. This isn’t some kind of weird hack or compromise of your system. In all likelihood, someone just compiled PHP on the server.

PHP’s unit test to confirm that bug 72463 remains fixed makes two mail() calls that try to send mail to that address. The email address was specifically chosen to ensure that it would not refer to a real email address while still remaining a valid email address, thus the reason for the mail handler on the server sending the error stating that the mail could not be sent.

So, there’s no problem. It’s just PHP’s unit tests doing their job when someone runs make test.

Categories Random Ramblings
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My Six Month Personal Fitness Results

by Chris Jean

July 13th, 2012

I’ve been overweight most of my life. I experienced many years of depression that started in elementary school. From that moment until early 2012, I have consistently gained weight.

In January, I decided that I had to get serious about weight loss, so I did.

While driving to work one morning, I decided that if I didn’t do something to change my life at that exact moment, that I never would. I made a contract with myself that I would immediately go and sign up at a gym and get a personal trainer, that I would do everything that trainer told me to do, and that I wouldn’t look back or second guess myself. I had thirty years of being irresponsible, now it was time for some personal responsibility.

So, that’s what I did. I messaged the office to say that I would be late. I drove to Results Fitness, a gym near my office and home. I met Jeff Miller, a trainer at Results. I signed up for the gym and to meet Jeff every Tuesday and Thursday. I committed to eat a specific meal plan every meal of every day. I do what my trainer tells me. I haven’t looked back. I haven’t second guessed my decision. I haven’t regretted anything.

Categories Random Ramblings
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A Rough Launch for Ubuntu One on Ubuntu 9.10 – Karmic Kaola

by Chris Jean

October 31st, 2009

Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Kaola, launched earlier this week. One of the key new features in this release is Ubuntu One. Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen, this new feature/product launch has been anything but smooth.

Ubuntu One is one of the new ways that Canonical, the creators of Ubuntu, is trying to generate some revenue based on their distro. Ubuntu One is a hosted file storage solution that allows users to keep a folder and all of its content synced between multiple computers. All users get 2GB of storage for free with the option of increasing the store to 50GB for $10/month.

Since this new offering has many Ubuntu users very excited, I thought I’d give it a try as soon as I installed the new release. However, I was instantly met with a very big message telling me that something was wrong.

Categories Linux, Random Ramblings
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Gaarai is Back and the Jackalope is Jaunty

by Chris Jean

April 18th, 2009

It’s been a month since my last post. For all my regular readers, I’m very sorry for the absense.

There’s a lot of intersting stuff going on right now. Fortunately, with so much going on, I shouldn’t have a lack of topics to talk about.

To get the old post ball rolling again, how could I not start back up with Ubuntu 9.04?

Categories Linux, Random Ramblings
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Goodbye Subversion, Hello Git

by Chris Jean

March 17th, 2009

As I mentioned before, I want to switch from using Subversion for project code collaboration and versioning to Git.

I’m switching not because I have some idealogical dread of Subversion or its methods. In fact, I quite like how much easier Subversion has made handling code collaboration. The problem I ran into is that Subversion has become doggedly slow and bloated.

For example, a simple project with a current working size of 2.9MB has a Subversion repository that is a massive 98MB in size. Furthermore, it takes a full four minutes to commit a change, even a simple one-line change to a text file. During this commit process, my server’s dual quad-core processors are essentially maxed. Why the repository has become so amazingly large and why the commits take so long, I’ll never know. The maxing out of my server for four minutes per commit is also unacceptable since there are times where minor changes will need to be made to more than a dozen repositories at a time. Multiply the number of commits by 4 minutes a piece, and not only is a terminal on my system tied up for more than an hour, but my server’s CPU is maxed for just as long.

Beginning last week, I dug into Git and learned what I needed to know. The initial impressions are great; however, Git is not without its problems either. The primary problem with Git is that its syntax is extremely-obscure, IMHO.

Categories Development, Linux, Random Ramblings
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World of Goo

by Chris Jean

March 13th, 2009

There’s a very good chance that you have already heard of the game World of Goo. If not, check out this video to get a taste.

This game has a number of great things going for it:

It’s a heck of a lot of fun to play.
The world if very unique and has a fun feel to it.
The music really sets the mood for the different areas.
It supports Windows, Mac, and Linux.
It’s DRM free.

These days, I find great favor in things that 1) have Linux support and 2) are DRM free. Since World of Goo looked like a ton of fun and had both of those, the $20 price tag was nothing. Frankly, the price is very small when you consider the many hours of fun that you can have with all the goo balls.

I ran World of Goo both on one of my Windows Vista machines and on my Ubuntu machine at home. It worked very well on both platforms. Even the Linux version was very smooth even though I’m running Compiz.

FYI: If you want to run this on Linux, you can get the software as a DEB or RPM package or as a tar.gz archive with all the application files. I recommend usingone of the package files. Since the packages are built for 32-bit, you will need to use these instructions if you have a 64-bit distro.

I highly recommend World of Goo, but you don’t have to have blind trust in my opinion. You can download the demo and try it out for yourself.

You might be interested in their post about the release of the Linux version. The day of the Linux release, sales were 40% higher than their previous highest-selling day. “There is a market for Linux games after all :),” said one of the developers after updating the post.

Categories Linux, Random Ramblings
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A Good Video on the History of the Open Source Movement

by Chris Jean

March 12th, 2009

I recently watched the entirety of the Revolution OS documentary. While it definitely is not a video that can be enjoyed by most people, nor even most computer users, it is a very intersting watch for a number of reasons.

Visiting the documentary’s site, you quickly gain a sense of what this documentary is aimed to be: “… the inside story of the hackers who rebelled against the proprietary software model and Microsoft to create GNU/Linux and the Open Source movement.” However, that’s not what this video is about.

When I first started watching the documentary, I thought I would get this intimate insight into how people made calculated movements against the growing monopoly of Microsoft’s operating systems. In fact, this isn’t anything near what actually happened.

Categories Linux, Random Ramblings, Videos
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Food For Thought

by Chris Jean

March 7th, 2009

I’m more or less taking the night off. I’ll leave you some good reading material that should cover just about any reader that comes here.

Make Linux: Harder – Better – Faster
This page is a great compilation of links on how to improve security, speed, functionality, or appearance of your Linux system.
Firefox Minefield
Very interesting version of Firefox that is in development. Apparently, it is capable of massive speed and gives Chrome a run for its money.
Conky
A highly-customizable graphical system monitor for your Linux desktop.
Armed and Dangerous
A blog I just happened upon today that has many great reads. The topics are varied, but there should be a little something for everyone. I was hooked with the My comment to the FCC on DRM post, as I share many of the feelings that the author does on the subject.
Swift Weasel
This project builds Firefox from source to provide optimized builds for the Linux platform. It’s still in the early stages but has potential.

I hope that my big post yesterday makes up for my weak one today. 🙂

Categories Linux, Random Ramblings, Tips 'n Tricks
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The Space Game – A Flash RTS

by Chris Jean

February 28th, 2009

I have another great Flash game to share with you today. It’s simply called The Space Game, or TSG by its creator, CasualCollective.

TSG puts you in the middle of asteriod fields. Your goal is to either mine enough minerals or survive enemy attack long enough to pass each mission. This sounds simple, but it is actually quite complex while still being managable.

Categories Random Ramblings
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The Future of gaarai.com

by Chris Jean

February 25th, 2009

It’s been nearly two months since I started posting regularly. I’ve just been throwing whatever content I was interested in at the moment day after day. Now it’s time to check in with my readers to see what you want.

I’d like this post to be an open invitation to have regular and new readers alike share what they think about gaarai.com.

Is there something your really like, don’t like, want added, want changed, want more of? Let me know.

Do you have a tutorial, topic, distro, random other morsal that you’d like me to start posting about? Please leave a comment about it.

Categories Random Ramblings
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