Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

There is an RPM available for ImageMagick on Debian, but it isn’t the most update to date, so if you need all the new features, you’ll need to compile and install it from source. Luckily, it’s very easy to do.

wget ftp://ftp.imagemagick.org/pub/ImageMagick/ImageMagick.tar.gz
tar xvfz ImageMagick.tar.gz
cd 
./configure
make
make install
make check

Following on from my recent post about adding JPEG support, I also needed to add PNG support. I couldn’t get the RPM’s to work, so I had to do this manually as well.

wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/libpng/00-libpng-stable/1.2.39/libpng-1.2.39.tar.gz?use_mirror=kent
tar -zxvf libpng-1.2.39
cd libpng-1.2.39/scripts
cp makefile.linux ../makefile
cd ../
make
make install

Huzzah I hear you cry! Yes, I’m please to announce three new episodes of the podcast are on their way – the first one is available today, and the next two will follow on consecutive Fridays. This series features expert insight from Norm “The No Man”, Hugh and James (now possibly known as “Old James” given there is a new A-Soc president also called James).

I didn’t take any photos while we were recording, so here is a stock picture of Hugh.

If you have made the mistake I did of doing a fairly minimal install on Debian, you might have noticed it is missing a few fairly basic features – such as JPEG support! Luckily it’s fairly easy to install it.

wget ftp://ftp.uu.net/graphics/jpeg/jpegsrc.v6b.tar.gz
tar -zxvf jpegsrc.v6b.tar.gz
cd jpeg-6b
./configure --enable-shared
make
make install

Recently, I attended the launch of ODDTV, the new social video platform for Open Door Design, the design agency I worked at. It was great to see some old faces and although we couldn’t stay for long, drink as much free lemonade as we possibly could.

ODDTV is an interesting mix of videos that ODD has been involved with or generally likes the look of. Check it out.

If you want to change your timezone on Debian, use the following command.

dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

That’s life on a planet in a binary star system.

Having pushed back my leaving do at Buzz Sports to accommodate the other four people who were leaving, it turned out it handed directly on top of the first social event of the new organisation I’m now consulting with.

I know what you’re thinking – the obvious thing to do would have been to constantly make excuses about going to the bathroom and then rapidly running between venues pretending I was simultaneously attending both events in some kind of sitcom setup.

Unfortunately, I eventually opted for something far more pedestrian. Having worked round Sandinista, The Lounge, Mojo’s, Fibre, Revolution and Call Lane Social with Gooroo, I headed over to Maven to find the Buzz crew. By this point (11pm) there were only two of them left standing – Simundo and Ian.

As it turns out, Maven is quite a find (and number two in the best kept secrets in the UK, according to Ian). They don’t seem to have cocktail menus – I just went up to the bar and told them what ingredients I liked and two minutes later I was sipping on a very nice raspberry based long drink. Delicious. Further investigation is definitely required.

It’s not often that I get kicked out of a restaurant.

But when you’re taking advantage of the early bird special and you then proceed to sit there for several hours, eventually they start moaning about having other bookings. You could blame me for turning up 7 minutes late, but I could tell from the waiter’s eyes that they were really saying “your mother is getting a little too lairy after that half a bottle of wine, sir.”

We were out celebrating my dad’s birthday and enjoyed a night of great conversation about how you won’t be around forever, so it’s important to spend your life’s savings before you die, while having picked the restaurant specifically because it represented a good compromise between great food and not having to pay Blackhouse prices.

I was very interested to try the pigeon available on the starters menu, but was somewhat worried I wouldn’t like it. Therefore, I did the only sensible thing to do – I made Elina get the pigeon and tried some of hers. Turns out, a pigeon is pretty delicious.

Of course, normally in these situations you would offer to pay, but having recently left my job, and having had our conversation earlier about making the most of your savings before your time is up, I thought it only fair to let me dad pick up the bill.

You can tell Sous le Nez is an authenticate French restaurant because they say everything in perfect English, but then add the word “monsieur” onto the end. So it’s a great to enjoy French food, particularly as if you actually go to France, you just get Greek food.

Awstats is updated by cPanel once per day, but if you want to force a manual update, you can do so with the following command.

/usr/bin/perl /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/awstats.pl -config=example.com -update

Sometimes, you must have to be bold and say “screw it, I’m going to Wendy House in a really outrageous outfit, no matter how much people stare.

That’s when I went in my Panic! At the Disco t-shirt.