An *Ubuntu Home Network #1

The goal: A couple of Ubuntu 5.10 boxes for the wrinkled ones. A couple of Edubuntu boxes for the rugrats, all to be connected together via WIFI and share an ADSL modem connection to the internet. A proxy setup with Dansguard or similar for the Edubuntus.

A tidy little weekend project...That might not get done in a weekend.

I'll post the highlights of the highs and lows here, starting with this one:

Firefox Sloth Mode Headscratch

Installing the *Ubuntu's went off without any problems whatsoever. Auto-detected the wifi cards etc. Some problems getting the boxes to see each other but that is down to coverage issues from my coverage-challenged WIFI access point.

The first significant problem was with firefox which was painfully slow connecting to websites. At first I suspected a DNS lookup problem but the dig utility ruled that one out. Firefox hanging for ages on "looking up example.com" has a way of steering you towards DNS.

The real problem turned out to be IPV6 lookup. Firefox will do IPV6 lookup by default (and take about 30 seconds to fallback to IPV4 if your router doesn't grok IPV6).

You will need to turn that puppy off unless your router is IPV6 enabled.

St. Patrick Missed a Few

Legend has it that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland, oh about 1500 years ago. Hence the title bar on www.python.ie

Jambo Django

Django is building up a serious head of steam. New to it? Say hello to it here. The comments are worth a read too.

Whoosh!

This post was brought to you today - at broadband speeds (from Eircom) - from my house in Sligo, Ireland.

If I never see a 56k analog modem again, it will be too soon.

Sun T2000 Niagara Noodling. Part The First.

We have a Sun T2000 Niagra server now on Sun's 60 day trial.

When I first found out about this trial, I did not think Ireland was included as Ireland was absent from the drop-down list of countries in the form.

However, I called Sun and it turns out that the same offer applies in Ireland and they told me how to go about it. (Basically you send them the same information you would have submitted on the form as an e-mail. I recommend calling them if you are interested.)

So now we need to get it racked up and onto our Intranet. I'll be blogging how I get on.

Master Foo's Taxation Theory of Microformats

"One bright spring morning in 2006, a delegation of knowledge management experts arrived at the zenith of Pentimenti mountain to meet with Master Foo..." -- Master Foo's Taxation Theory of Microformats

Not mad, bewildered and a tad frustrated

Tim points out that if you know your way around the Java libs you are in great shape to use a dynamic programming environment on the JVM.

Tim reckons some people will be mad at him for saying that. I'm not one of them. Bewilderment laced with a tincture of frustration would be my position.

IMO, Tim is absolutely right. As I said in a recent IT World article The Library IS The Programming Language.

Getting up to speed with a programming language syntax and semantics is a matter of days. Getting up to speed with the quintillion libraries that make you productive can take years.

If you know your way around the JDK, have a bunch of third party libs and a bunch of libs you developed yourself then do yourself a favor. Install Jython and watch your productivity jump.

If that does not tickle your fancy, try Ruby or Rhino or SISC or...there are lots to choose from!

BTW, calling all developers with deep knowledge of Java. The Jython world could use your help. Two years ago I would have said "to keep pace with CPython" but today it would be more appropriate to say "to keep pace with IronPython".

I fear, that the Java world is on the verge of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory on the dynamic language front.

I'd hate to see that happen.