The Ubergeek Bible

Translation via Google groups

Here's a new thing:
Kusaal is a language of Burkina Faso (West Africa). A Google group has been created to help with the translation of Kusaal.

"We are inviting interested linguists worldwide to help with the analysis of Kusaal, using the Internet as a networking tool and this site as a collaborative working platform. Not only will your involvement lead to the development of an orthography and literacy materials for the Kusassi people, but you can help make significant contributions to the corpus of linguistic knowledge through write-ups of Kusaal phonology, grammar, and more (as we get the necessary data collected)."

Blogrush is not a pyramid scheme

I stand corrected.

I don't understand what referring gives you, but I'm sure I will one day.

ODBC aaargh!

I came across an ODBC error:

PHP Warning: odbc_exec(): SQL error: [unixODBC][Driver Manager]Driver
does not support this function, SQL state IM001 in SQLSetStmtOption

If you're googling looking for the solution, like I did, and you came here, the best I can say is that SQLSetStmtOption appears to be deprecated. So the php/odbc code is calling something the driver doesn't support.

Even after upgrading from PHP4 to PHP5, and MySql4 to 5, it still occurs. The most frustrating thing is that I haven't found out a way of finding which version of ODBC is being used in the php/odbc component/rpm/package thingy.

Any ideas?

Pyramid scheme

Here's a pyramid blog scheme. The earlier you get on the better it is.
Blogrush

Subversion fun

I'm trying to bring in source code control on a lot of existing code. Just for fun I right click on a directory and choose "create repository here..." (I'm using TortoiseSVN). I get a choice:

So I click help. On the help page is the warning:

Warning
Do not create or access a Berkeley DB repository on a network share. It cannot exist on a remote filesystem. Not even if you have the network drive mapped to a drive letter. If you attempt to use Berkeley DB on a network share, the results are unpredictable - you may see mysterious errors right away, or it may be months before you discover that your repository database is subtly corrupted.

I'm glad I clicked help rather than guessing the right thing to do, as this directory is on a network share. Why couldn't subversion just see that it's a shared directory and not give me the choice?

When It Just Works for you, but not for someone else

Follow up on my previous post where I said my virtual machine Just Worked.

The trouble with resuming a virtual machine is that it's got its IP address from the last time. For the person who's since got that IP address, It Doesn't Just Work, It Stops Working.

Lesson learned.

Pleased with virtual machines

I've got an Ubuntu virtual machine which I've used quite a lot recently. For one thing I can ssh onto other Linux machines (both real and virtual themselves), where my windows ssh client struggles with certificates.

I've got it mapping a windows drive via samba, and when I start it up when I need to use it it magically does the stuff behind the scenes so that I can access the files on the windows share without having to remap or anything. It's a bit slow for the first access, but considering the virtual machine has been suspended not shutdown, I'm still amazed at how It Just Works.