free the bird - Part 29

WordPress theme, css and plugins now compatible with IE7

What a horrible trial-and-error life web designers lead! After too much hair-pulling, this site now looks as it should on IE7. Issues:

IE7 does not like div tags between li tags – so I reworked everything to oblige
IE7 requires some hacking with padding and margin to get my rounded corners css to work

I hope I never have to touch it again (but I will).

This site now has pretty valid CSS and XHTML, and resizes pretty well too. Try it out with Ctrl+ to increase text size, Ctrl- to decrease. Change the resolution. Stretch it, pull it, bend it – better than Stretch Armstrong! (sorry, no green goo though…)

Comments | Saturday, August 30, 2008 [ css * liquid html * rounded corners * wordpress ]

Apache not happy, time for an [emerge world] bump

After bumping up 60+ packages (probably about half or a third the total), apache started spawning several processes, each taking 10-15% CPU, until my poor little server box was kswapd’ing its little guts out. It was heartwrenching seeing that red drive light on constantly. Poor little thing.

I did an emerge world and rebooted, and this baby is absolutely humming now. load average 0.00 :>

UPDATE: eventually Apache is still hogging things. Looks like gentoo changed the config settings for the Apache memory manager (MPM). There are several choices, looks like I want the “worker” variant. To get it, add APACHE_MPMS=”worker” to [/etc/conf.d/apache2], and update httpd.conf settings to specify performance settings. The defaults are here: [/etc/apache2/modules.d/00_mpm.conf]. I am attempting to adjust them to optimal values in my [machine_globals.conf] file.

The gory details follow. Sure it’s a lot of change, but once again, gentoo is the ultimate power tool. (continued…)

Comments | Thursday, August 28, 2008

Updated git, cascaded 60+ packages

Git caused (among other things) python 2.4-2.5 update. python-updater caused a bunch more updates (including cyrus! AAAA!! Hates it bagginses!). After the dust settled, an emerge-world still wants 60+ more packages. Not now.

Comments | Monday, August 25, 2008

IBM Rational Clearcase keyboard shortcuts from Visual Studio

I’ll repeat this as often as I get the chance:

The mouse is for CONSUMERS.
The keyboard is for PRODUCERS.
The only exception is for ARTISTS, who should be using TABLETS anyway.

Get your hand off that mouse! 😛

Here’s how to stay mouse-free using Clearcase version control in Visual Studio. To get to the place where you can set up your own “tools” to fire off via the keyboard, for VS2008, use Tools->External Tools, and if you’re still chugging happily along with VC6, use Tools->Customize->Tools.

Purpose	Command	Version	Arguments	Initial dir
Compare with previous version	#ccpath#\bin\cleardlg.exe	VS 2008 FP1	/diffpred “$(ItemPath)”	$(ItemDir)
Compare with previous version	#ccpath#\bin\cleardlg.exe	VS 6.0 SP6	/diffpred “$(FilePath)”	$(FileDir)
Show the version tree	#ccpath#\bin\clearvtree.exe	VS 2008 FP1	“$(ItemPath)”	$(ItemDir)
Show the version tree	#ccpath#\bin\clearvtree.exe	VS 6.0 SP6	“$(FilePath)”	$(FileDir)
Show checkouts (from 2 levels up)	#ccpath#\bin\clearfindco.exe	VS 2008 FP1	“$(SolutionDir)\..\..\”
Show checkouts (from 2 levels up)	#ccpath#\bin\clearfindco.exe	VS 6.0 SP6	“$(WkspDir)\..\..\”
Update view (from 2 levels up)	#ccpath#\bin\clearviewupdate.exe	VS 2008 FP1	“$(SolutionDir)\..\..\”	#ccpath#\bin
Update view (from 2 levels up)	#ccpath#\bin\clearviewupdate.exe	VS 6.0 SP6	“$(WkspDir)\..\..\”	#ccpath#\bin

Then add keyboard shortcuts for the tools, and you’ll be that much farther from reaching for the mouse.

Comments | Thursday, August 7, 2008

Putty + TortoiseCVS + proxy, redux

I’ve posted a few different ways to do this already, but they are out of date now. Here’s the two-minute instructions:

Set up a Putty session that uses your proxy to ssh to your remote server
Use the PROXY SESSION NAME for the server name in the TortoiseCVS ssh server field

Thanks to the authors for keeping these great tools up-to-date and robust! Man, they make my life easy. :>