Diary of an Emacs tragic

Category: General

  • openscad is cool

    UPDATE: You might also be interested in my list of programmatic CAD tools.
    Brendan introduced me to openscad while we were at the hacker space last night. I really like it and I can’t believe I didn’t try this tool out before. You essentially write your solid design in a programming language. Its simple to learn and very easy to get up and running.
    There is even a scad-mode for it in emacs which I added to the marmalade repo for easy installation. Anyway here is a screenshot of a display stand I am working on.

  • bigcommerce support failure

    I recently wanted to customise my bigcommerce site with some custom fields. Unfortunately support was unable to help me with this request.
    Apparantly what I want to do is possible, but it is secret and bigcommerce will not divulge this information. I discussed it in a chat session with bigcommerce support. Transcript follows:

    12:58Jason Lewis: hi
    12:58Jason Lewis: hi ken
    12:59Jason Lewis: on my homepage: http://www.pukkaherbs.com.au/
    12:59Ken Suarez: hi
    12:59Ken Suarez: you can display them by using custom codes
    12:59Ken Suarez: so you need to develop a code that will handle that functionality
    12:59Ken Suarez: we do not have that in our interface
    12:59Ken Suarez: once you add the field then it will automatically added to the group of fields
    12:59Jason Lewis: see how the featured product, “wonderfully uplifting…”
    13:00Ken Suarez: address to be spcific
    13:00Jason Lewis: um
    13:00Jason Lewis: but …. can you give me an example of the code i would need to display one specific custom field?
    13:01Ken Suarez: <input type=”text”>
    13:01Ken Suarez: that stuff
    13:01Ken Suarez: sorry we are not trained for scripting
    13:01Jason Lewis: so you are saying it is possible to display one custom field, but you don;t know the code to do it?
    13:03Ken Suarez: i know how to code it but we do not support customization/scripting here
    13:03Ken Suarez: its in the support policy
    13:03Ken Suarez: you might want to check
    13:04Jason Lewis: so how do i find out that information if you won’t tell me?
    13:04Jason Lewis: can you show me a BC site that does has that customisation?
    13:04Jason Lewis: i this information secret or something?
    13:05Ken Suarez: well you need to have html/css knowledge to do that
    13:05Jason Lewis: ok, i have html and css knowledge, now what?
    13:06Ken Suarez: then you need to start developing the code then
    13:06Ken Suarez: thats all you need
    13:06Jason Lewis: is there a more senior support person I can talk to please?
    13:07Ken Suarez: most scripting issues are posted there
    13:07Jason Lewis: posted where?
    13:08Jason Lewis: can you point me to a forum post with the answer at least? I have searched the forums myself and found several people asking this question but there are no replies with information on how to do it
    13:08Ken Suarez: the reason why i let you post so you will get answer
    13:09Ken Suarez: the answer is not there yet
    13:09Jason Lewis: ok
    13:09Ken Suarez: thats why you need to post for other developers or coders can help and assist you with scripting
    13:10Jason Lewis: so this is a totally undocumented feature then?
    13:10Ken Suarez: yes sir, as what i’ve mentioned earlier we do not support scripting/customization
    13:12Jason Lewis: but it is possible, you just won’t tell me how?
    13:12Ken Suarez: is it that hard to understand that we do not support scripting?
    13:12Ken Suarez: yes it is possible and know how to code it
    13:13Ken Suarez: we just dont give support here as not everybody knows scripting
    13:13Jason Lewis: i just wanted to confirm that it was in fact possible
    13:13Ken Suarez: i already informed you that it is possible
    13:14Jason Lewis: i was just double checking
    13:14Ken Suarez: not sure which part i did say that it isnt
    13:14Ken Suarez: double checking if it is possible?
    13:14Ken Suarez: ah ok
    13:14Jason Lewis: I was double checking that I had understood you correctly that it was possible to do
    13:15Ken Suarez: i did confirm already on the very first chat that its possible the issue is we cannot further support customization
    13:16Jason Lewis: ok, message received and understood

     
    I am very disappointed in this attitude bigcommerce too in dealing with this request. I don’t quite understand why they are being so secretive about it.
     

  • test file download

    test file:{filelink=1} |end of test

  • modifying and building a debian package from source

    I can’t work out where to document this so I’ll document it here – maybe it will help someone oneday.
    If you want to modify a debian package and then build it…
    apt-get source . Then cd –
    make whatever changes you need to make. debian/rules and debian/control.in are interesting.
    then do a ‘dch -n’ to change the version number of the package to a user version.
    and finaly:
    dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -b -uc -us
    stick -nc on the end if you don’t want a make clean to be done

  • Fairtrade Chocolate – A Deliciously Rewarding Experience! | Soul Economy

    Soul Economy have tried Cocolo and like it.

  • Dark Chocolate: Are You Eating Child Slavery?

    Nourished magazine have a
    nice piece entitled “Are You Eating Child Slavery” which mentions Cocolo.

  • HSBC annoyances

    A while ago I moved my banking to HSBC. This move has been pretty ok except there are a few annoyances with their online banking. the biggest of which is that you cannot get an electronic copy of a statement at all. In fact, the only way to get a copy of a statement is to have them post it to you and they charge you $7.00 a pop for it! What a rip off.
    When are banks going to get with the program and start emailing statements to you in PDF format so you can archive them yourself?

  • DC Make Trade Fair!: Consuming with Conscience

    Fair!: DC Make Trade Consuming with Conscience has a little post about Fair Trade chocolate and mentions Cocolo and where you can buy it.

  • ping with timestamp

    I couldn’t work out a way to get ping to print a timestamp of when the ping took place. For some reason it seems as though this isn’t a sought after feature.
    Luckily you can achieve the same thing using fping:

    while [ 1 ] ; do echo $(date '+%F %T') $(fping -e google.com); sleep 1; done

    Gives the following output:
    2008-03-18 11:06:54 google.com is alive (250 ms)
    2008-03-18 11:06:56 google.com is alive (248 ms)
    2008-03-18 11:06:57 google.com is alive (268 ms)
    2008-03-18 11:06:58 google.com is alive (250 ms)
    2008-03-18 11:07:00 google.com is alive (250 ms)

  • World Vision Australia – Evoke Faith in Action newsletter

    World Vision recommend you buy Cocolo