Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Last month, I wrote to KFC to let them know that some of their customers do in fact want genetically modified products in their food. They wrote back.

Dear Mr Worfolk,

We would like to thank you for your interest in KFC.

Whilst we are certainly interested in new ideas, suggestions and information that will enhance our products we are unfortunately unable to accept unsolicited ideas and suggestions from the general public. This is partly due to the fact that a majority of ideas submitted by the public have already been considered by KFC and partly because they are not useful given the limitations of our particular field of business. Also, experience has shown the practice of considering ideas can give rise to misunderstandings as to the origin and ownership of particular ideas and lability in relation to them.

We nevertheless appreciate your interest, thank you for taking the time to correspond with us here at KFC and we look forward to your continued custom.

Yours sincerely,
Customer Careline

Basically, it says thanks for your opinion, but we’re not going to read it lol.

DKMS is in RPMForge, so we need to add that before we can install it via Yum.

cd /root/
wget http://packages.sw.be/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el5.rf.i386.rpm
rpm --import http://apt.sw.be/RPM-GPG-KEY.dag.txt
rpm -K rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el5.rf.*.rpm
rpm -i rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el5.rf.*.rpm
yum install dkms

This is how to install APC for PHP on Fedora 15.

yum install php-devel
yum install pcre-devel
yum install php-pear
pecl install apc

Create a file in /etc/php.d named apc.ini, containing the following.

extension=apc.so

I took my recently acquired flash to Wendy House to see if I could get better photos. What I got was a mysterious floating head of Fonze. Which was pretty cool.

To install VirtualBox guest additions on Fedora 15, you want to mount the ISO into the CD room of your host computer (either using Daemon Tools, or an actual CD drive) and give that to your virtual machine. Then run the following commands.

yum update
yum install dkms
yum install gcc
reboot
mkdir /mnt2
mount /dev/cdrom /mnt2
cd /mnt2
sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

This will give you a list of all the commits made between a specific date period. Just alter the dates accordingly.

cvs diff -N -c -D 2011-03-21 -D 2011-02-28 > /tmp/diff.txt

Having found an interesting note on KFC’s website, I decided to write to them.

Dear KFC,

I was recently browsing your website, when I found the following statement at the small print at the bottom of the page:

“Our research shows that UK customers don’t want genetically modified foods in KFC products; so naturally, we have ensured none of our products contain genetically modified ingredients.”

You seem to be pointing out that this is what we as consumers want, presumably rather than what is the sensible thing.

Therefore, I just wanted to write and let you know that I DO WANT genetically modified ingredients in KFC products.

Genetic modification is nothing new – we have been adapting plants to suit our needs in agriculture for thousands of years. Using GM crops allows us to reduce the amount of agricultural chemicals used, and is therefore be better for the environment. The EU maintains strict controls over GM foods to ensure they are safe.

For all these reasons, I wanted to inform you that some of your customers do want genetically modified ingredients in KFC products, and hope that you will re-consider your position.

Yours faithfully,
Chris Worfolk

Why not contact them about it too?

Recently, I was thinking that it must be coming up to ten years since I registered my first domain name, in the next couple of years. When I actually checked, it was two months ago.

In May 2002, I first registered Worfolk.co.uk, now the home of my consultancy company. This was by no means my first venture into the world of web development, I had been developing websites for years before, and programming for years before that. But it’s difficult to put a precise date on any such projects, unlike 7 May, 2002.

Between then and now things have changed a lot – a one point, the Worfolk Online network contained hundreds of websites. It now contains only a few dozen, that are far more focused on quality. While I don’t have screenshots of all of them, the image above shows the evolution of some of the network’s homepages.

Anyway, cheers, here is to a wonderful decade and hopefully, an even better one to come.

Zombie processes are very hard to kill, like cave trolls, but there is a way. We need to get the parent IDs for them and use those.

ps -Al
kill <ppid>

Last month, I went to Temple Newsam to see my mum perform at the Olympic torch celebration. The choir were fantastic, well done to everyone involved!

Getting in was a struggle. After the padding down and the cavity search you then have to have a long argument about whether the folding furniture you have brought counts as genuine folding furniture. No prizes for guessing who was sponsoring the event either…