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- Postgres timezone handling
  March 28, 2013, 23:23
  If you use the timestamptz data type, Postgres does timezone conversions automatically. First, some test data: pg=> create table time_test (id text,…
- Cannot see cursor in vi-mode with oh-my-zsh on Ubuntu
  March 25, 2013, 22:57
  I'm not sure who is to blame here, but using vi-mode in oh-my-zsh in Gnome Terminal on Ubuntu, I find that when I move from word to word, the cursor vanishes…
- Avoiding SSH host key verification failures
  November 30, 2012, 20:55
  While working on a deployment process that automatically updated an ElasticIP to point to a new instance, I got to see a lot of these: Offending key in…
- Thunderbird mailboxes growing without bounds
  October 25, 2012, 18:15
  The other day I got a low disk space warning because my Thunderbird Inbox had grown to over 100 GB. It turned out my Inbox, Trash, and Sent mailbox folders…
- Upload .m3u playlist to Google Music
  October 11, 2012, 22:46
  Google Music Manager uploads are based on looking for music files in a particular directory. This isn't helpful if you have a large directory structure of…
- Stripping Unicode Byte Order Mark to resolve SolrException: undefined field: "?myField" during Ingest
  August 17, 2012, 14:38
  Solr has a handy ability to ingest local CSV files. The neatest aspect of which is that you can populate multi-valued fields by sub-parsing an individual…
- Setting default package versions with MacPorts
  August 9, 2012, 12:54
  Given a working Perl 5.12 install (via MacPorts), doing a sudo port install perl5.16 does not update the perl symlink: % ls -alF /opt/local/bin/perl lrwxr-xr…
- Scala's abstract override, stackable traits, and object hierarchy linearization
  August 9, 2012, 10:34
  Stackable traits in Scala refers to being able to mix in multiple traits that work together to apply multiple modifications to a method. This involves invoking…
- Mocking Java final classes
  July 31, 2012, 10:57
  Trying to unit test some code that was to run inside Solr, I bumped into this: Cannot mock/spy class org.apache.solr.core.SolrCore Mockito cannot mock/spy…
- Apache Pig "Not a host:port pair" errors using HBase (2)
  July 3, 2012, 15:43
  When trying to use Apache Pig in local mode to connect to a stand-alone HBase using HBaseStorage, I kept getting errors like this: ERROR org.apache.pig.tools.g…
- VNC to OS X Lion: Gratuitous Passwords and Empty Grey Linen Desktops (3)
  March 28, 2012, 23:36
  There are two tricks to using VNC from a non Mac to connect to a Mac running OS X Lion. Turn on the VNC server by enabling System Preferences -> Sharing…
- "ERROR: cannot execute UPDATE in a read-only transaction"
  March 12, 2012, 13:56
  "ERROR: cannot execute UPDATE in a read-only transaction" is what PostgreSQL tells you when you try to execute an update on a replica instead of on the master.
- Browsing Without Being Tracked
  March 10, 2012, 11:03
  TL;DR: Install Do Not Track Plus, use Duck Duck Go (with !sp sometimes) for web searches., To go the extra mile also install Straight Google (requires…
- Google's Click Tracking and How to Disable It (1)
  March 10, 2012, 10:05
  By default, Google tracks every search result you click on. They do this surreptitiously: URLs in Google search results appear to go directly to the destination…
- Fixing key-repeat in OS X Lion (and restoring sanity for Vim keybindings) on a per-application basis (1)
  March 2, 2012, 21:06
  Starting with OS X Lion, holding down a key will bring up a menu of alternate characters rather than repeating the key. (This is a feature). There are many…
- Inserting newlines with sed on OS X (1)
  March 2, 2012, 20:58
  Out of the box, inserting newlines does not work with sed on OS X: % echo foo,bar,baz | sed -e 's/,/\n/g' foonbarnbaz The simple solution is to…
- Random file selections with Python
  February 21, 2012, 10:28
  After my previous adventures in slicing and dicing a huge XML file, I wanted a means to randomly select files. But first, the directory had so many entries it…
- Thunderbird still displays expunged IMAP messages (6)
  February 14, 2012, 22:11
  There is lots to be said about the intricacies of IMAP delete flags vs. actual expunging of deleted messages and the confusion caused when something is merely…
- How to treat a bare value as an Array in Ruby
  February 8, 2012, 21:40
  Often Array(arg) is used for this, but is flawed. Note the last result when applied to a Hash: > Array(42) => > Array() => >…
- Splitting large XML files with xml_split and sed (preserving root element and namespace declaration) (1)
  February 8, 2012, 20:47
  Slicing up XML files is best done with an XML parser. (Regular expressions, csplit, etc. are too easily confused by arbitrary strings in CDATA sections.)…
- Fixing predicted runtime on APC UPS after replacing battery
  November 27, 2011, 01:44
  The battery in my APC Back-UPS BR 800 was worn out after years of service, so I bought a replacement from APC.com. However, apcupsd still reported zero runtime…
- error: File name too long during Scala compile
  November 17, 2011, 12:17
  error: File name too long A common way to install Ubuntu is with an underlying ext4 file system and eCryptfs encrypted home directories. ext4, like many…
- Scala's missing splat operator
  October 4, 2011, 00:38
  Ruby, Python, and many other dynamic languages have a so-called splat operator that lets you easily invoke a function by providing a list of argument values: d…
- Argumentless git pull and git push (2)
  October 3, 2011, 22:55
  Pulling and pushing with git can be a bit verbose. This post explains how to get from git pull --rebase origin master and git push origin master to just…
- A Fruitless Search for a Password Bookmarklet (2)
  June 15, 2011, 00:41
  Using a bookmarklet to store passwords is appealingly simple. Alas, after doing some digging, I couldn't find any viable options. The first concern I came…
- Misadventures in Breaking Actors with Scala Self-Types
  June 5, 2011, 23:49
  Quick refresher: self-types are commonly used when writing traits that want to proscribe that they get mixed in to a particular class. For example, the…
- Untangling multi-threaded log files
  April 12, 2011, 23:59
  Yesterday I needed to decipher a log file in which a dozen threads were simultaneously logging messages. Surely there must be tools for this out there. But I…
- Snipping log files by time
  April 12, 2011, 23:59
  Grepping through log files for lines that match a timestamp is fiddly. It's hard to catch multi-line entries (e.g. stack traces) and to craft a regex that…
- Taming Firefox + Adblock with browser.sessionstore.max_concurrent_tabs
  April 4, 2011, 21:27
  I tend to have lots of browser tabs open. Even more so with Firefox 4's Panorama feature, which I find handy despite the frustrating limitation that tab groups…
- JSPWiki-translate-perl and HTML::WikiConverter-MoinMoin
  March 31, 2011, 01:03
  moinmoin-client-crypt was the fun part of a recent Wiki migration project I did. The tedious prelude was getting the content out of an aging JSPWiki version…
- Introducing moinmoin-client-crypt (2)
  March 30, 2011, 16:21
  I just posted the first release of moinmoin-client-crypt to GitHub. As way of introduction, here's an excerpt from the readme: moinmoin-client-crypt…

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