Author Archives: M@

Caching Functions In Perl

Posted on January 5, 2012 by M@

Synopsis There are occasions, where you write a function that takes some parameters and outputs consistentish data. Example: sub add { my($first,$second)=@_; return $first + $second; } If you call add(1,1) you get 2: always. Consistent input yields consistent output. … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Coding, Linuxy | Tagged | Leave a comment

Sorting Strings Ending In Numbers In Perl

Posted on January 4, 2012 by M@

Synopsis I deal with a lot of names that look like “somedumbserver2” and “somedumbserver15”. Using Perl’s default sort, “somedumbserver2” comes before “somedumbserver15” because the character “2” is greater than the character “1”, and that’s where the sort stops.  This sort, … Continue reading →

Posted in Coding, Linuxy | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Fixing Mis-cased URIs Under Apache

Posted on January 4, 2012 by M@

Synopsis This is rather old code, but saved my bacon more than once.Runs under Apache with Mod_Perl, and corrects the URI requested when it is giving lazily. Thus a request for “/INDEX.HTML” is rewritten to “/index.html” as appropriate. Code =head1 … Continue reading →

Posted in Coding, Linuxy | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Merging Filesystems Virtually Under Apache

Posted on January 4, 2012 by M@

Synopsis This is rather old code, but saved my bacon more than once. Runs under Apache with Mod_Perl, and “merges” any number of filesystems. You’ll see the @docroots array that takes a list of “document roots”. These all need correct … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Coding, Linuxy | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Reliance On GPS Is A Liability

Posted on December 16, 2011 by M@

I’ve written a couple times previously about how we shouldn’t rely on GPS solely. It appears the US government might have just come to that conclusion as well. GPS is awesome, but it cannot be the only mechanism used for … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Life | Leave a comment

Use MongoDB

Posted on November 8, 2011 by M@

So an Anonymous Coward’s pastebin rant against MongoDB has an awful lot of legs. I circulated a few thoughts yesterday morning to head-off the inevitable concerns of “um, we’re doing a lot with Mongo, and now I’m nervous”: [It] really … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Linuxy | Tagged , | Leave a comment

SSL CAs Are An Unnecessary Evil

Posted on September 22, 2011 by M@

I’ve talked about this to numerous groups, going back to 1999, but seems I’ve never done so publicly. Certificate Authorities are completely unnecessary. “OH MY GOD HOW DO WE MAINTAIN THE WEB OF TRUST?!” you scream. Easy, the same way … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Opinions, Work | Leave a comment

Redundant Array of Independent Datacenters

Posted on July 8, 2011 by M@

I used a phrase last night/this morning that I use to refer to distributed datacenter architecture, and afterwards decided to google it. It seems that while Cisco mentioned it a lot in 2010, I beat them by a few years … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, General, Work | Leave a comment

Open Response to Open Letter to the Netatalk Community

Posted on July 7, 2011 by M@

I can’t help but notice that you seem to think yourself above some pretty important facts with the coup you appear to be attempting towards Netatalk. First, and most importantly, while there are currently only a small handful of devs, … Continue reading →

Posted in Coding, Linuxy, Opinions | 6 Comments

Apple Touchscreen Patent – Invalid

Posted on June 22, 2011 by M@

You may be surprised to learn that Apple was granted, essentially, a patent on touchscreen computing. (and yes, I know it’s N-finger, so technically it’s multi-touch.. regardless) There is TONS of prior art to invalidate this, and I have in … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment