Inconsolata Cleartype: Raph Levien's Inconsolota font, hinted for Windows

2008-09-25 Thu – 21:30:09

Woo! I love Inconsolata (see also Raph Levien's main page) - so much so that I've even recommended (on the About page (which I know you haven't read)) downloading it as I've set it for the default monospace font on this site.

One problem it's always had, though, is that it looks pants with at low points subpixel rendering (aka Cleartype) turned on. Hooray! thought I, when I came across this page:

• Inconsolata ClearType: Raph Levien's Inconsolota font, hinted for Windows.

Thank you, xiy, or Mark, or whoever you are! You have made the world a better place.

Update 2009-04-27: the site seems to be down; for prosperity, here's a copy of the font (I hope I'm not breaking any copyright here!):

• inconsolata-modified.ttf

Update 2010-12-22: Codeur kindly notes in the comments that a better version has been uploaded to the Google font directory by David Crossland:

• Inconsolata

Posted in tech | 12 Comments »

scp: copying filenames with colons

2008-07-19 Sat – 18:11:07

# annoying:

[jem:pgl]:~/p/misc_useful $ /usr/bin/scp scp\:copying-filenames-with-colons-in-them.txt localhost:/dev/null
ssh: scp: Name or service not known

# sorted:

[jem:pgl]:~/p/misc_useful $ /usr/bin/scp ./scp\:copying-filenames-with-colons-in-them.txt localhost:/dev/null
The authenticity of host 'localhost (127.0.0.1)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is 12:2b:3a:4e:be:6f:41:f2:20:4c:1b:ee:6a:46:35:61.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added 'localhost' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
pgl@localhost's password:
scp:copying-filenames-with-colons-in-them.txt 100% 0 0.0KB/s 00:00

Executive summary: filenames with :colons: break scp, unless they're prefixed with a path.

Why: scp has no way of telling that a file called "file:name" is isn't the user specifying host:path, which is the usual way it's used. To disambiguate this for scp, prefix the filename with its path (either relative to your current directory, or a full path, it doesn't matter); ie, instead of "scp filename:with:colons", it's "scp ./filename:with:colons".

Posted in tech | No Comments »

WordPress Automatic Upgrade fix for local file access permissions bug

2008-07-19 Sat – 14:48:07

I've just upgraded this WordPress installation to the new point release, 2.6. Being lazy, I used a plugin to help me do it, "Wordpress Automatic Upgrade". Unfortunately it has a bug at the beginning that prevents local file access, so I ended up using the FTP method (which worked perfectly). I had a look at the plugin afterwards though, and was able to figure out what the problem was, and posted a fix to the forums.

- wpau_prelimcheck.class.php

Hope someone out there finds this useful.

Posted in meta | No Comments »

Nokia, Thunderbird, syncing, and mental anguish

2008-07-10 Thu – 02:10:07

From the Nokia forums (and approx. 2bn other places around the web where people are asking the same question):

"Does any one know how to synchronize ... thunderbird ... with your nokia ... and the other way round?"

A perfectly valid question, especially since both Nokia and Thunderbird have been around quite some time now - you would've thought that this is a solved problem.

However, I think the correct answer to that this question is, no, nobody does. And if they do then I would very much like to know about it.

The old Thunderbird addon doesn't work anymore, and hasn't for a while.

There's two beta-stage projects which might one day help, but look almost abandoned to be honest:

- http://www.gnokii.org/

- http://www.gammu.org/wiki/index.php?title=GPlus:Main_Page

(GPlus is actually based on Gnokii, it just has the same half-finished feel to it. (I am being totally unfair here - a lot of hard work has obviously gone into these projects, and they don't deserve to be dismissed out of hand; they just didn't work for me and the amount of time I've spent playing with stuff that also doesn't work has caused me to be nasty (fuckers).))

I've tried them, they don't work (at least not with my phone, a 6300). Ditto MobileMaster. Ditto Intellisync. It's tragic. Is this really such a hard thing to solve?

Oh well.

[... a little later on...]

I wrote this post a few days ago - since then, I've installed the Ovi Suite. And fuck me sideways, they've finally done it -- what they should've done five years ago -- a group of programs for managing your mobile that doesn't need three services running and five processes starting up when you login. Clap, clap, Nokia!

Horrible as it is that they've taken this long to come up with this, it is a good set of programs, and I have recently experienced my first proper Sync. Maybe I'll write more about it later - especially the weird as Wyrd 3D desktop thing that comes with it.

(Not that, of course, it syncs with Thunderbird: but it did with GroupWise, and GroupWise can export something which Thunderbird can import - so... well it's a start.)

[tags]nokia, thunderbird, syncing, painful, pain, gnokii, gplus, ovi, ical, calendar, 6300, mobilemaster, intellisync, fail, gplus, beta, groupwise, export[/tags]

Posted in tech | No Comments »

My Garden

2008-07-09 Wed – 22:55:07 A GARDEN is a lovesome thing, God wot! Rose plot, Fringed pool, Fern'd grot- The veriest school Of peace; and yet the fool Contends that God is not- Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool? Nay, but I have a sign; 'Tis very sure God walks in mine. -- Thomas Edward Brown (1830-1987)

Posted in poetry | No Comments »

Fuck you, spam

2008-07-09 Wed – 13:20:07

And this, folks, is why spam sucks so fucking much:

Junk Filter Statistics

The junk mail filter has been trained by 46868 messages, whereof 28127 (60%) have been rated as solicited and 18741 (40%) as junk. This resulted in a total of 699360 tokens read, 349780 (50%) rated as good and 349580 (50%) as evil; the number of different tokens is 622268.
The following table will show the 12 most common tokens, hiding 622256 tokens below the threshold of 24060 appearances.

(Processing this training.dat of 24060562 bytes took 780.35 seconds.)

Token                            Good   Evil  Junk Probability
1 mime-version:1.0              13818  17248  65.20 %
2 for                           16579   9394  45.96 %
3 the                           21511  11836  45.23 %
4 envelope-to:pgl@yoyo.org      22742  16294  51.81 %
5 content-type/type:text/plain  22016   6247  29.87 %
6 you                           19875   9279  41.20 %
7 with                          17209   8710  43.17 %
8 this                          17078   9004  44.17 %
9 x-mozilla-status2:00000000    10897  13810  65.54 %
10 that                         17419   7984  40.76 %
11 x-mozilla-status:0001        10846  13810  65.65 %
12 and                          20086  10530  44.03 %

 

That's right, there's a greater than 40% chance any mail I receive is going to be spam if it contains any of these words: "with", "that", "and", "for", "the", or "you". 40% for any of them. Sigh.

Posted in arse | No Comments »

Hello

2008-07-09 Wed – 09:36:07

So, I never really thought I'd actually end up attempting a weblog of my own, but, there you go - or here I go. I try to avoid things that have a very large statistical likelihood of failing; and maintaining a weblog is without question something which has shown a propensity for people not to do that verges on being a physical property of the universe.

However, as many before me, I have ignored my own best interests in order to satisfy those narcissistic tendencies (my real own best interests) that urge me (and apparently a large percentage of the rest of the world (who are arranged in some sort of sphere, it seems)) to tell everyone else (that's right, everyone) what's on my mind: resulting in this - this thing, here, with me, and you. Hello.

Warning: I will attempt to be amusing, and interesting, something which almost guarantees that my webloggery will annoy you. This is not an apology, just, an excuse I can use to myself after I've irritated you.

OK, right, now where is my checklist? Right - doing well so far, I can tick off self-absorbed posting, spending too long fucking around with WordPress, and - ah - I'm right on schedule to fill up some area or roll type section with links to people I've know. Then I think fairly soon I'll be ready to post about anything that over 90% of all weblogs have already posted about, followed perhaps by some short notes about work that mean nothing to anyone except myself, at which point I can take a break for a few months until I'm up for the apology for not posting much recently. Excellent. This is going to be fun.

Posted in meta | No Comments »