KHTML/Safari doesn’t like negative absolute positioning/background positioning

04 Jan 2006

I don’t know why. Shrug.

VirtualHost, mod_proxy, and Apache HTTP 2.0 documentation

02 Jan 2006

I had to setup a virtual host that proxied through to another server today, and found the Apache 2.0 documentation on that matter particularly unhelpful for a rather trivial reason.

Here’s their broken version:

<VirtualHost *:*> ProxyPreserveHost On ProxyPass / http://192.168.111.2 ProxyPassReverse / http://192.168.111.2/ ServerName hostname.example.com </VirtualHost>

Here’s my working version:

<VirtualHost *:*> ProxyPreserveHost On ProxyPass / http://192.168.111.2/ ProxyPassReverse / http://192.168.111.2/ ServerName hostname.example.com </VirtualHost>

Spot the difference.

Yes, it was as simple as an omitted trailing slash.

Only takes a minute or two to figure out what’s going wrong, but it’s pretty darn annoying for that minute: I assume, as would many people, that documentation is generally infallible — its purpose being the cure to various software ailments, not the cause! Ah well. I’d have edited the Apache documentation, but it’s not a wiki and I can’t be bothered joining whatever mailing list I’d have to join to get one character added to their site!

NYE/Geek Fest

01 Jan 2006

Good fun. They’ve only been in the house (which doesn’t have a domain yet! I suggest TEDonMarian.net) for two weeks, but already have… err… the most important stuff sorted.

The rack, I’m assured, is coming. ;-)

Oh, no, there is a domain. http://lttd.net/ is it.

From the shadows

01 Jan 2006

I ♥ the GIMP.

The above edit (dark is before, light — visible — is after) took me about a minute and a half, and went something like Curve, Despeckle, Resample (scale for web), Despeckle (finer adjustment on wand-selected area), Unsharp Mask. I don’t think I even know how to do all those things on Photoshop!

But that wasn’t the purpose of this post. The darker original was the source from which I extracted the quite-visible lighter version. That is why I nearly always shoot with my flash off: it’s possible to recover ridiculous amounts from the shadows — even with a crappy digital that won’t let you use RAW — but it’s nigh on impossible to recover that lost to the nether-regions of over-exposed stock.

It was the power supply

31 Dec 2005

Yeah. Oh yeah. Everything else works fine, but the brand-name power supply (AOpen) had to keel over and die. Admittedly, it was only a 235W in a system with two optical drives, two hard drives, and a 1.8GHz processor with 768MB of RAM (I just kept adding things to it without really thinking about power til yesterday, when the type of crash/hang I kept getting struck me as being a classic power problem), but… a web-cam?!

That’s ridiculous. But true.

Anyway, I’m planning on violating (yet again — serial offender, here) the “No user-serviceable parts” sticker on the now-dead power supply so I can fix it to use it in another system. I swapped it out for some generic Happy Star Lucky Fortune Power thing (yeah, the name is parodic… it mightn’t have to be, though!) I had lying around — only 250 watts, mind — and everything turned back on again.

Well, kinda. The web-cam still doesn’t work on this machine, but I’m inclined to think that’s Linux (kernel-level/modprobe crap) being screwy, and not hardware particularly. Might be power again, but I doubt it.

And the web-cam is fine. I tested it on a Windows box and was delighted with the rather-un-crappy quality of it. Which you’d kinda expect seeing as it does 1.3MP still images, but I digress. Fixed-focus, but the exposure auto-balance is pretty decent, so I’m happy. Good exposure capabilities are what make crappy cameras less crappy.

As for the hub-that-wasn’t-a-switch, well… it’s going back this afternoon, if the place is open. They open IT-shop-like hours (i.e. open late, close later :P), so I’ll head down after midday. Hopefully I can just get a refund on the 3Com hub, because I don’t really need a new switch after all (though I want one that’s more solid + doesn’t make squealing noises incessantly!).

Oh, yeah, pictures. Here’s the 3Com hub on the inside. Because I had to unplug the fans, which were grinding annoyingly (barely spinning), and because I make it a habit to open up any bit of second hand gear to check for… dust, insects, anthrax. Whatever. The real reason is geekery.

Note howit’s designed to readily accommodate 24 ports. The 6 port model, reputedly, also has the same design, though presumably you’d need different types of chips there (divide 12 by three then try and multiply by a whole number to get 6… you can’t). Anyway, it’s after 12… I’m off!