It’s a composter. It looks like a pig. It rolls. Left-overs go in the head end, and compost comes out of the bottom end. If I had a garden I’d get one (unless it has a silly price).

Link: Rolypig Composter

I’m watching Fljud read 1000 LDAP entries and send them to Psi (running on the same PC) as Jabber disco entities. Fljud is using about 20% CPU. Psi is using about 10% CPU. Gnome Terminal, which is displaying about 8 lines of debug text for each record as it is processed by Fljud, is taking most of the rest, roughly 65%. That’s an awful lot of processing power (and a bottleneck) to print some text.

When I use XTerm instead of Gnome-Terminal Fljud and Psi both use about 40% of CPU time each, and XTerm uses 10%. Redirecting debug to /dev/null, a file, or turning it off, leaves Fljud and Psi to fight it out and removes the bottleneck. This isn’t a major problem, but it’s still baffling: what on earth is Gnome-Terminal doing that makes so slow?

A weblog made up entirely of photographs of pet rats. I like rats, they’re great pets (far better than hamsters) but I find hairless dumbo rats to be just too weird looking. Someone should knit little jumpers for them.

Link: Ratablog

Apple switching to AMD CPUs would have been shocking, but Intel? Eurgh. I can’t stand Intel, I think they’re an unpleasant smelling business with misleading adverts, poor innovation and monopolistic abuses. Of course, the monopolistic abuses went on before AMD’s far better, cheaper products grabbed so much of the market that Intel dared to upset Microsoft…

The really interesting question is what effect this will have on Microsoft? Apple boxes will be able to run a lot of Windows applications at full speed now, via Wine, or VMWare type applications. Standard PCs will not be able (officially) to run MacOS. Will large businesses start switching to Intel Macs to escape shoddy Windows security without losing their applications?

This is probably a financially good move for Apple in the medium term, but they’re pissing off (pissing on?) the devoted Apple fans, most of whom love existing Apple hardware and dislike Intel intensely. If Apple loses its developer community, they might lose a lot of what makes them Apple, and not just Yet Another PC Company.

Microsoft base their Next Big Thing on PowerPC chips, and Apple move to Intel chips, this is a strange year…

Link: MacNN | Live WWDC Event Coverage

On the one hand, this makes much of what I’ve been working on in the evenings for the past year a little redundant… but for my day job, this could be very, very useful.

Penrose is an LDAP server that presents data stored in other, existing backends (SQL databases or LDAP servers, probably) as a fully structured LDAP directory.

OpenLDAP can use a variety of backends, including SQL, and act as a proxy, but it can be rather fiddly. The Flash demo of Penrose makes it look very nice indeed, integrating the configuration GUI with a directory browser.

And if you think it looks a little like Active Directory, you’d be right, and this is exactly what Open Source ‘proper’ LDAP needs.

I wonder what the performanceis is like? OpenLDAP is rather fast now, and I’m still sceptical about Java’s performance for things like this.

Link: Penrose

“Essentially everyone, when they first build a distributed application, makes the following eight assumptions. All prove to be false in the long run and all cause big trouble and painful learning experiences.”

Link: The Eight Fallacies of Distributed Computing

Lambs
Originally uploaded by BinaryApe.

We’ve finally got round to uploading the pictures. Nothing particularly interesting for most people. Just hills and things.

Link: Tarn Howe Holiday

Highland cattle
Originally uploaded by BinaryApe.

Just trying out Flickr…

Here’s a cow.

‘Ruby on Rails’ really needs a few nice hardcopy books, as the online documentation jumps from tutorials to full technical documentation and FAQs. This one looks good, and is available as a “beta” PDF already. O’Reilly have a couple in development too.

Agile Web Development with Rails

Looking at the BBC website today, there are at least 66 glowing stories on the late Pope, and 1 story that includes any criticism. In the “Your Views” pages, there isn’t one critical view, despite the pages being introduced with the line: “The following comments reflect the balance of views received”. Surely an angry Northern Irish Protestant or passionate American Evangelical, or anti-AIDs campaigner, or women’s rights campaigner wrote in? It seems nobody isn’t bothered at all, nobody disliked him. Or could this be the sensitive new post-‘Jerry Springer The Opera’ BBC?

It was interesting to learn that a Pope is declared dead after being hit on the head three times with a silver hammer while his name is called - if he doesn’t answer, he’s dead.

I didn’t like him. And if he was right, he isn’t even dead: he’s much better off now, so why the fuss? It seems rather selfish to want the poor guy living on with a feeding tube, barely able to breathe or move, when he could be enjoying VIP status in everlasting paradise.

Glowing articles: F1: Ferrari lead Pope mourning UK Requiem Mass to remember Pope Britons gather to remember Pope Grief amid high church grandeur Bono cheers ‘best frontman’ Pope Pope John Paul II Obituary - Pope John Paul II Scotland’s tribute to late Pope Pope death: Official announcement Q&A: What happens next? Pope’s body laid out in Vatican Pope’s death: Middle East views Pope’s death: Europe views Pope’s death: Africa views Pontiff’s life and death marked Pope’s death: South Asia views Pope’s death: Your global views Pope’s death: Asia-Pacific views Pope’s death: Americas views NI mourners’ prayers for Pontiff In pictures: Mourning the Pope Church leaders’ tributes to Pope Thousands at cathedral for Pope Services held in memory of Pope Scots remember Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II’s final moments In pictures: Mass for the Pope Sussex pays tribute to the Pope World reaction to death of Pope Reporters’ log: Mourning the Pope West remembers Pope John Paul II British Catholics remember Pope Hundreds gather to remember Pope World’s press bids farewell to Pope NI leaders pay tribute to Pope Polish village’s tribute to Pope Blair leads tributes to the Pope Catholics mourn ‘much loved’ Pope Politicians pay tribute to Pope Tributes to ‘rock of the church’ Bishop leads tributes to pontiff UK tributes to Pope John Paul II Queen leads tributes to pontiff Reporters’ log: Pope dies Diplomat’s fond papal memories Pope’s death: Thoughts shared Millions grieve for John Paul II Press focus on the Pope’s legacy Religious leaders mourn pontiff Pope John Paul II dies in Vatican Westminster mourns John Paul II Poland mourns ‘the people’s pope’ Who will succeed John Paul II? Cathedral bell tolls for the Pope Rome’s new orphans mourn their loss UK Catholics mourn ‘great’ Pope Pope’s role in Communism’s end Irish remember 1979 Papal visit Channel Islands’ tribute to Pope South West pays tribute to Pope The region mourns pontiff’s death Kent looks back on Pope’s visit Pope’s visit made ‘deep impact’ Yorkshire remembers Pope’s visit Pope’s visit to Wales remembered Obituary: Pope John Paul II Pope who reached out to people Cardinal speaks of Pope’s legacy Chants and prayers lift pilgrims’ spirits What is the Pope’s legacy to Africa?

Critical articles: Critics slate ‘out-of-date’ Pope

(Note the sensitive use of the phrase “Out-of-date”. My old trousers and some pesto in my fridge are out-of-date, but they didn’t cause much trouble in Africa.)