geek stuff - 8

I am using a Mac now, and this blog post is brought to you by the same php and lisp scripts that I was using on my linux box. Cheers!

Have you read the man malloc page recently? Did you notice this section there

Recent versions of Linux libc (later than 5.4.23) and GNU libc (2.x) include a malloc implementation which is tunable via environment variables. When MALLOC_CHECK_ is set, a special (less efficient) implementation is used which is designed to be tolerant against simple errors, such as double calls of free() with the same argument, or overruns of a single byte (off-by-one bugs). Not all such errors can be protected against, however, and memory leaks can result. If MALLOC_CHECK_ is set to 0, any detected heap corruption is silently ignored; if set to 1, a diagnostic is printed on stderr; if set to 2, abort() is called immediately. This can be useful because otherwise a crash may happen much later, and the true cause for the problem is then very hard to track down.

So, you can do export MALLOC_CHECK_=1 and malloc will print debugging messages to the stderr.

If you want to check what compile options were used to build the emacs, check the value of the variable system-configuration-options in emacs. i.e. C-h-v system-configuration-options

In my case, it is `—with-x-toolkit=gtk' '—with-xft=yes' '—prefix=/home/rshekhar/fakeroot/'`

Check out SpaceGlow joomla template by Bernard Esterhuyse. It is nice, however, more importantly, it is GPL-ed. I have been checking put a lot of joomla templates for my site, but all the joomla templates that I came across shared an important defect. Even though the template authors mentioned that the template was GPL-ed, they usually had a link to their own sites in the template, along with the request (or order), not to remove that line.

The Spaceglow template is really GPL-ed. This will allow me to hack it up further.

Check the slides at scribd, Getting Smart about the New World of PostgreSQL Replication. The first few slides are not specific to PostgreSQL and they define some common replication jargon very nicely.

I have created a emacs major mode, called lunatech-journal, that I use for blogging. It is a derived mode from muse-mode, an excellent mode for writing and publishing.

Currently, it has following functions defined

• lunatech-journal-skeleton - loads a skeleton for blogging
• lunatech-journal-show-hints - shows a buffer with questions to help me blog about my day
• lunatech-journal-make-html - creates a html file from the muse-mode
• lunatech-journal-preview - allows me to preview my journal in the browser

I use a php script to post the blog entry to the website. To use it, I have the following in my .emacs file

(defun journal ()
  (interactive)
  (find-file "~/blog/journal.muse")
  )
(require 'lunatech-journal)
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("journal\\.muse\\'" . lunatech-journal-mode))

When I feel the need to blog, I do M-x journal, I get dropped into my journal file and I can blog.

Links:

• lunatech-journal.el - the blogging mode
• Playing with your blog's xml-rpc interface shows the php script that I use to post entries to my blog
• MuseMode

An interesting bit of trivia. Ever wonder why the audio capacity of a standard compact disk is 74 minutes? Thank Beethoven - and Norio Ohga.

In the early 1980's, Sony was helping to develop a new digital music technology. Mr. Ohga, then the company's president, insisted that no matter what else, the new format had to be able to play Beethoven's Ninth Symphony without interruption. Mr. Ohga, you see, had been a classical vocalist before getting into electronics.

(Originally posted on my old blog on Fri, 31 Oct 2003)