pkgng is now in the FreeBSD Handbook

Software

As far as I'm concerned, this makes it official! Under 5.5 Using pkgng for Binary Package Management:

pkgng is an improved replacement for the traditional FreeBSD pkg_install package management tools, offering many features that make dealing with binary packages faster and easier. The first release of pkgng was in August, 2012.

My only lingering gripe with pkgng was you still needed to download the ports tree or use pkg_add to install it, which seemed redundant. This has also been addressed:

FreeBSD 9.1 and later includes a “bootstrap” utility for pkgng. The bootstrap utility will download and install pkgng. [..] To bootstrap the system, run:

# /usr/sbin/pkg

I'm counting this as an early Yuletide present from the lovely, epic FreeBSD developers and documentation team. I'd jump in my chair with joy, if I could!


A veritable pain in the neck

Anime

Max Factory Hatsune Miku figure

My first reaction when I saw this Hatsune Miku figure in 2011 was "jeepers, you'd get a twisted back doing that!" Today, I feel like an idol who's spun too far, though there's nothing virtual about MY neck!

“A curved spine is The Devil’s roller coaster!”

As a young, healthy, immortal person who's only health issue is recurrent family headaches every few weeks, when I do get sick or have pains hit me from out of nowhere, I take the opportunity to complain about it whenever and however I can.

Since this morning, the back of my neck towards my spine has been in such horrid pain it's indescribable. I've had neck pain before, often when I've slept in an awkward position or that time I fixed a computer tower under a desk rather than bothering to lift it up and work on it where there was plenty of light and space.

This pain is different through. It's as though someone has a drill and is boring a hole into the top of my spine. As long as I sit perfectly still with perfect posture (the latter is probably a good thing to do anyway) the pain is dulled, but the instant I turn my head or eat or sneeze, I'm suddenly a drunk sailor.

My mum's cancer treatment often left her immobile for many days, and as a result I'd help her perform exercises to release tension in her joints and muscles. A common one we did for her neck was to have her stand in the corner of the room with her arms on each wall, and leaning as far forward as she could before the pain set in. Years later, I found myself doing the same thing this morning. I could feel (and, gulp, hear) things happening with my body, and afterwards the pain was slightly more tolerable.

Not the French bread kind

I'll be heading to the GP first thing in the morning to see what I should do. I've never done this before, will I get a referral for a physiotherapist? And while I'm on the subject, what's a physiotherapist?

If anything, this is a wake up call. I'm not a teenager any more, and can't afford to take things like my posture and ergonomics for granted. I liked to think I do the right things for my back and neck, but there are probably many more things I could be doing.

Thank you for letting me whinge ^_^;


Malaysian FreeBSD nostalgia and community

Software

Screenshot of my MacBook Pro running FreeBSD with Haruhi Suzumiya's approval in 2006

Martin Wilke maintains one of the FreeBSD blogs I read most often, and one of his posts from February sent me down memory lane, and made me think about FreeBSD's future.

Some Malaysian BSD nostalgia

Going through his archives this evening, I found this post about BSD In Malaysia, which opened thusly:

Few days back I’ve met up with Mohd Fazil Azran for a small talk about *BSD at Starbucks coffee.

Funnily enough, I started experimenting using FreeBSD when we were living in Kuala Lumpur. Our home Streamyx internet was so laughably unreliable, I used to commute with my dad to KLCC where he worked, and hang out at Coffee Bean and Starbucks to download portsnap updates and build the latest ports on my MacBook Pro. You probably know KLCC from those Petronas Twin Towers.

Here's one of the posts I wrote at the time, from 2006. And another, specifically from the Starbucks in KLCC. And finally, another when I'd gone to the airport to use their internet. KLIA wasn't that far from our house.

Anyway, I thought it was cool someone was talking about BSD, in a place where I first learned and experimented with FreeBSD.

But I digress

As it happens, Martin blogged about FreeBSD in Malaysia specifically to highlight what he sees as a decline in the BSD community there.

I was interested to know why Malaysian *BSD community is so inactive, and from the discussion, I’d say that the reason is more likely caused by too much of politics in the group, financial issues, lack of interest to share knowledge and blablabla.

I was never an active part of the Malaysian BSD community (save from blogging about BSD in Malaysia at the time), but I agree with Khairil Yusof who left a fairly detailed comment. In brief: "the younger generation are used to the ease and flash of Fedora and Ubuntu Linux and therefore, start on those and get hooked on it."

With the release of FreeBSD 9.2 and the official inclusion of pkgng, perhaps this will change. I know from personal experience building ports was the least fun part of running the OS, and now that's been taken care of I've moved all but two of my machines back to it. I've always asserted (with a modicum of confidence!) that FreeBSD is technically superior, faster and more secure, but it was no secret that using it as a desktop OS was more challenging than Linux.


Changing timezones in CentOS, Fedora, FreeBSD, Yuki

Travel

I knew how this worked in FreeBSD, and fortunately it works in the Red Hat world as well. First, make a backup of your existing timezone file, the create a symbolic link to your timezone. I've seen people copying the file instead, but I feel safer linking.

# mv /etc/localtime /etc/localtime.back# ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Singapore /etc/localtime

I'm tempted to set my timezone to Reykjavík, it's HOT in Sydney today. Nagato Yuki has the right idea. A-heh-hem.

UPDATE: @dai1311 on Twitter says that this also works on Arch Linux. Incidentally, his avatar is of Yuki!


Summer Night: Live with the Chick Corea Akoustic Band

Media

Finally, I had the time today to create a new article for my beloved WikiProject Jazz group on Wikipedia.

Summer Night: Live is a live jazz album by the Chick Corea Akoustic Band trio, featuring Chick Corea, John Patitucci and Dave Weckl. Recorded during a concert in Belgrade in 1987, it was released with Jazz Door, the former recorded and live jazz record label.

The set contained jazz standards from Miles Davis and John Coltrane, as well as several original quartets by Corea.

I could see why Wikipedians had skipped this particular album in Chick's discography; information about it online is scant. I was just lucky that we had the physical album here to reference! Oh yeah, and the music is friggen good too.


When I lost some respect for Julia Gillard

Thoughts

Julia Gillard (right) with David Petraeus

It's the kind of thing you expect them to say, but you're still disappointed when they do. Jonathan Swan reporting for the Sydney Morning Herald:

Australians cannot have it both ways in wanting their government simultaneously to respect their privacy and also to protect them from terrorist attacks, says former prime minister Julia Gillard.

I consider violating our privacy to be a terrorist act. Such sentiments will come back to haunt her one day, as they will for all the politicians who've let frenzied terrorist paranoia overshadow rational thought and regard for the dignity of their people. Maybe.

Prior to today, I placed Julia Gillard in relatively high regard. What she endured with class as Prime Minister was appalling; Australia at its worst. I feel betrayed that she's taken this regrettable position.

Photo of Julia Gillard and David Petraeus by the ISAF Headquarters Public Affairs Office in Kabul.


Now @Technorati can’t tell what a blog is?

Internet

Icon from the Tango Desktop Project

So I re-claimed my blog on Technorati after they stopped pulling in items from my feed. This was the response I got:

Nov 21, 2012. This site does not appear to be a blog or news site. Technorati does not support claiming of forums, product catalogs, and the like. You can review our site quality guidelines at http://technorati.com/blog-quality-guidelines-faq/.

Oh, please. Time to put my account with them to pasture, me thinks.


Technorati re-verification

Internet

Technorati

Technorati will need to verify that you are an author of the blog by looking for a unique code. Please put the following short code BWSUEMRM6QG8 within a new blog post and publish it.

I already did this in 2005, but somehow Rubenerd.com posts stopped appearing there recently. When I attempted to update the site details, it asked me to re-verify. Done and done, and I mean done.

Incidentally, I'm using the same Technorati logo image on this post as I did in 2005. It has the same awful, mangled file name that my old CMS gave it at the time. True facts. Any of this helping to verify my site, Technorati?


A @grass_desu answer;gate

Anime

While I was gone from Twitter on Monday, I was tweeted this:

I don’t know her name I’m sorry…. @Rubenerd twitpic.com/behyf9

It would appear to be a Sony Alpha lens cap, and Makise Kurisu, everyone's favourite scientist! Well, that may be a stretch. Wait, the only thing stretching are her shorts.

Ironically, the last time I posted about her was when I was discussing hard drives. Wow, that was a lame pun.


#Anime Mugi vector, via @JamieJakov

Anime

From the illustrious Vadim this morning, here we have a #Double-You-Vectors contest entry by ~asdf12324qwerty on DeviantArt. Mugi-chan from K-on!

Vadim likes using vectors for folder icons, but my current thing is using them with scenery pr0n to create desktop backgrounds.