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From: Simon Wistow Date: 12:03 on 30 Mar 2005 Subject: leaving a shell Ctrl-D? logout? exit? quit? All these things are valid all over the shop. All dependent on what shell, what machine, whether I'm root or not and, I suspect, the direction of flight of migratory pipistrel bats to the nearest (magnetic) degree and, possibly, how many tasty souls Cthulu has to devour this morning thus preoccupying him from constantly tormenting me. In tcsh (at least on this system) does auto-completeion. The fact that it's called Tab Completion everywhere else appears to have sailed cleanly past who ever decided that. This, goes out to software developers everywhere. I'm sure your ideas are fantastic and, in self-congratulatory tirades you pump out to your simpering yes men on whatever forum you frequent you have thoroughly justifed your design decisions but, and this is the important thing, I don't give a shit. STANDARDISE MOTHER FUCKERS - lest ordinary mortals without your near godlike vision rise up and give you an impromptu clue-bat colonoscopy.
From: Simon Wistow Date: 12:51 on 03 Feb 2005 Subject: fucking everything A broad hate this but what it coems down to is, I fucking hate it. I hate fucking edge cases, I hate libraries with cryptic errors like Use of uninitialized value in subroutine entry at line 51 or error parsing start file 0000001.dpx I hate the fact that something that works perfectly on your system but inecplicably doesn't work on someone elses despite the fact that there's no obvious difference between OS, architecture or any other fucking thing apart from some random whim of a malevolent god. I hate the fact that Goats don't have fucking linking errors yet I still don't have the guts to quit, move to a mountain and go all Heidi on my life. Yes, completel with the dirndl and cunting pigtails. Because the humilation of being dressed as a 12 year old Alpine fraulein is still better constant throbbing headache that I get from grinding my teeth over a towering stack of crack fuelled insanity. All must die beneath my fiery wrath. Let karma sort them out.
From: Simon Wistow
Date: 11:51 on 12 Jan 2005
Subject: lirc
This could easily be "Linux" or even "Every other operating system". But
I shall specialise - no point wasting all that good bile in one go.
So at work I'm tasked with building a set-top box. It must do full
screen DVD quality play back. I'm using Linux as the host OS on a VIA
Epia MII motherboard and a Unichrome CLE266 MPEG decoder.
I have, finally, got MPEG decoding working fast using the chip. TBH I'm
not all that fussed that it took me this long because MPEG decoding is
HARD, especially when you actually have to start worrying abotu
clockspeed of the mobo wrt to, say, PAL and NTSC. And interlacing.
Thinking that I've done the easy bit I skip merrily on to the next task
which is getting the remote control working. This, thinks I, should be
easy.
Except our chosen remote control, a Streamzap, is not support officially
by LIRC, the Linux Infra Red Control app. But there are patches.
Which don't apply cleanly. *sigh*
So I manually frig them just in time to find someone else has already
done it. And better.
The mode2 sniffer claims that there are signlas going in. The lirc
daemon however claims that it can't decode the remote control.
Try another remote control, in case this one is broken. Doesn't fix it.
Check the intaweb. Various people have had similar problems. All have
been ignored.
Mail the author of the patch. Silence.
Mail the lirc mailing list. Resounding absence of replies.
Find another patch which takes another approach - the /dev/input layer
Basically the remote control pretends to be a keyboard. Install.
And lo! If I fire up an editor and then start hitting buttons on the
remote and keys appear on the screen. Huzzah! Except that most of the
special keys, the important keys, like play. And pause. Don't produce
key codes.
However the lirc input driver should be able to cope with this.
Except it doesn't. It gets preciseley nada input. Not even the old
"Can't decode remote". Arse.
I don't know what to hate more - the parlous state of Linux drivers, the
kernel maintainers plans to change major APIs midway through a
supposedly stable branch or the weird fraction of drivers (is it a
daemon? a kernel driver? a user mode app? an X.org driver? [0], a
shared object? perhaps it can be all of the above!)[1]
Or do you know what else really fucks me off - I couldn't have done this
in anyother OS. Certainly not and keep it at a sensible price point but
very likely not have been able to do it at all. Linux may suck but it
was the best I could hope for.
And for that I really fucking hate, well, everything.
Simon
[0] Another mini rant - people who use domain names as application
names. Fucking idiots. OpenOffice.org I'm looking at you.
[1] I know why the division occurs - I understand and even agree with
principle of not having the graphics drivers &cetera; in the kernel
space. It's still a fucking arse though.
From: Simon Wistow Date: 09:51 on 26 Oct 2004 Subject: firewalls Now, don't get me wrong - firewalls and security are a good thing. But the current policy of only letting DNS and HTTP through mean that there's a generation of mongtards trying to reinvent established protocols. Just over HTTP. But worse. *cough* RSS *cough*
From: Simon Wistow Date: 15:41 on 20 Jul 2004 Subject: phoenix I just realised that I've got into the habit of hitting ctrl-t to get a new tab every time I want to go to a new URL. And I was doing ti subconciously. Why? Because if I accidentally hit Ctrl-W to close a tab and it happens to be the last tab (or last window) open then it shuts down the program. Well *obviously* that's the correct thing to do. Fucking morons.
From: Simon Wistow
Date: 10:49 on 26 Apr 2004
Subject: mel
Mel is the Maye Embedded Language. It's generally quite sane with a few
quirks that come out of it being pseudo shell-like.
Howveer it does have one fairly batshit convention, at least in my
opinion anyway, and lets face it, in a rant such as this that's the only
opinion that matters.
So, anyway, the following program
proc go() {
global int $depth = 3;
print ("\n" + $depth);
$depth = 1;
print (" " + $depth);
}
go();
go();
prints out
3 1
1 1
Why? Because
global int $depth = 3;
is only evaluated once. At compile time.
From: Simon Wistow Date: 10:44 on 26 Apr 2004 Subject: web sites that open new windows To not be doing this plz. I'm perfectly capable of deciding whether or not I want to stay on your site myself. kthx.
From: Simon Wistow
Date: 11:38 on 05 Apr 2004
Subject: "hating gcc" or "random errors make life interesting"
I am starting to get used to the fact that some specialist software,
which doesn't have the benefit of a massive testing base, doesn't do
what it says on the tin. The most recent one being some SAN software
that, despite its only real job being to hold a sequences of bits in
*precisely* the same order was when they were put down, err, doesn't.
Random flip-flop a-go-go. *sigh*
But that is a diffwerent hate. And at leats the developers are
responsive.
However gcc has *masses* of testing. Masses. It is, probbaly, the most
widely used compiler in the world or, if not, close. [0]
I have this code. It is fairly crufty because I've spent the last two
working days (well, 1 and a half including this morning) rewriting it
and rewriting it and cursing myself for inexplicably having a 2 day
braino.
Yes. I blamed myself. As Klortho's advice number 11907 says
-*-
Looking for a compiler bug is the strategy of LAST resort.
LAST resort.
-*-
And this was a potential mass of fence post erros and a whole other
county things.
while (i=files()) {
if (_start<0) _start = i;
if (_end<0) _end = i;
if (_end<i-1 || i<0) {
if (_start != _end) {
cerr << _start << "-" << _end;
} else {
cerr << _start;
}
if (i>=0) {
cerr << ", ";
}
_start = i;
}
_end = i;
if (i<0) break;
//cerr << "";
}
The code is designed to take a list of numbers such as
1,2,3,4,6,8,9,11
and turn them into
1-4, 6, 8-9, 11
Which is all well and good. Except, well, notice the commented out
thing at the bottom? If I uncomment it, it works perfectly. If it's
commented than it all goes tits up and never recognises the end of a
sub-sequence.
*sigh*
And turning off O2 optimisation doens't work either. I'm wondering if
it's some reserved token problem based on _end. Hrrmm, no. Changing it
to _foo doesn't work either.
My god, it really is shite. I hate you gcc. May a thosuand hairy backed
baboons violate your ocular cavities.
Simon
[0] Warning, contains traces of arbitary numbers and wild speculation
From: Simon Wistow Date: 18:08 on 24 Mar 2004 Subject: terminals and urls and copying Terminals seem to be another of those things that you'd think would be really simple (display text and, err, that's about it) but are actually a bottomless pit of hate situated in the Mountains of Loathing, deep within the steamy Destest Jungle on the Island of F&*CKINGPIECEOFSHIT!!@$% This has been documented elsewhere. There is much hate to be mined from that pit. It would be greedy, nay foolish to mine it all at once. I shall instead hack off a sliver of purest hate and cray it back from the pit, over the mountains, through the jungle and row away from the island merely to deliver it to you, my fellows Haters. This Hate, and a succulent morsel it is too, is concerned with urls in terminals. Some terminals highlight a URL that scrolls past and allow you to double click on it and it will be loade din a browser. They ones that do that have, in my experience, many other, often unrelated hates which preclude's their use. But thi is fine since I can just highlight the URL like so and switch to my other window and paste it into my browser's URL bar. No great hardship. But wait! What's this? I have pasted blank *cough* I go back. I look again. Oh, I see, it was in an IRC window and somebody has said something so the line I highlighted has moved up. CLEARLY THIS MEANT THAT YOU SHOULD CLEAR THE CLIPBOARD. YOU PIECE OF SHIT. There may be technical reasons why it does this. I care not. I just want to be able to copy something out of scrolling window (tailing a log, output of a make, etc etc) without having to do some insane dance. *sigh*
From: Simon Wistow Date: 15:02 on 03 Mar 2004 Subject: Tivo, oh how I wish you were smarter I love my Tivo in many, many ways. Some of them not even legal in Louisiana. But sometimes it is very, very, very dumb. I tend to only watch the "10pm" programs - usually an hour long and placed just after the watershed for a reason. Examples of these are Nip/Tuck, ER, Spooks, The Agency, The Handler. Mostly drama. Mostly on at the same or around the same time. Not always on the same channel. Recently the new series of the Agency started up. And for whatever reason the channel is doing an episode every night. At 10pm. Which means I lose the series arc because other stuff is being recorded at the same time. Except ... do I? Most of the other programs are on channels like Sky One or E4 and those tend to repeat stuff ad nauseam at least twice a week at prime time and once during the dead hours. Sure enough stuff that clashes with my 10pm showings of the Agency has repeat showings at 2am on a Sunday. Which is cool because, you know, it's a fucking Tivo and I don't care when it's recorded. But the Tivo just says that it will record the first showings of those other ones and not the second showings because, hell, I dunno. However, with a stroke of insight, and good guess at how its internal scheduling software was likely to work, I merely upped the priority of The Agency and suddeny it's all dandy and the second showings are being recorded and I can get everything that i want. Although I need to be careful because if I'm not then I'll end up with an HD full of Agencies and miss out on the rest of the stuff I want. And dman Nip/Tuck is good. But it's HATEFUL that I have to do this my self. I mean, it's not like it can be an uncommon thing SO WHY ISN'T THERE SOME SORT OF AUTO RESOLVE SCREEN? THINK! THINK ABOUT WHAT YOUR USERS MIGHT DO! WHAT COMMON SCENARIOS MIGHT BE! YOU FUCKING FUCKS. .... and breathe
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