Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Need to uncompress a .tar.gz file from the terminal? No problem.

tar xvzf filename.tar.gz

Hello everyone! I just wanted to post a quick update on what the status of the site was now.

We first acquired Hardware Tutorials back in 2005, but since then there hasn’t been much content added to it – and indeed the content that was posted back then wasn’t exactly amazing quality. But for prosperity sake, we have kept it.

Never the less, it has always been an ambition to develop the site further and one thing I constantly find myself doing at work is googling for solutions to problems, usually when I’m trying to install something, usually on CentOS. Though that isn’t to say I don’t have my fair share of problems dealing with OS X, Windows 7 and Fedora too.

Rather than just leaving the solutions I eventually find for these problems, Hardware Tutorials seems a reasonably appropriate place to post such solutions – a lot of it isn’t strictly hardware, but as I said in my opening post six years ago, we would almost certainly be straying from that criteria anyway.

So please enjoy the new and updated Hardware Tutorials. Hopefully, you will be seeing a lot more regularly updated content from now on.

Following on from my previous post about installing Git on CentOS 4, CentOS 5 is a whole different story. This is because you actually can get the RPM for Git on Cent OS – but cPanel doesn’t make it quite easy enough to do it.

You see, cPanel likes to take control of a lot of it’s own stuff, so it has a long list of packages which it won’t update automatically, because it will end up breaking itself if it does. As Git has two dependencies from the Perl libraries, this causes a problem.

But we can easily fix that.

cd /etc/
vim yum.conf

Remove perl* from the exclude line, then save the file. Now you should be able to run the command.

yum install git

It will gather all the dependencies and install Git. Final step, go back into the YUM configuration and put the exclude pack in to protect cPanel from its malevolent self.

vim yum.conf

If you’re trying to install Git on CentOS with cPanel, you’ll probably be running into the problems where you can’t get hold the RPM because cPanel excludes all Perl modules. But that is a whole different problem to if you are running CentOS 4.

CentOS 4 doesn’t actually have the RPMs for Git at all. But luckily, it’s actually really easy to install on a cPanel server because cPanel should come will all the dependencies you need.

So, all you need to do is head over to the Git website, download the latest source (I tried it with v1.7.8.1) and compile it – no problems, no worries.

wget http://git-core.googlecode.com/files/git-1.7.8.1.tar.gz
tar xvzf git-1.7.8.1.tar.gz
cd git-1.7.8.1
./configure
make
make install

I thought I would write to share what I consider to be quite a positive experience I have recently had with the Advertising Standards Authority. Last month, I complained to them about an advert by Boots which I consider sexist.

It’s updated to their YouTube channel with the caption “the girls can’t let the onset of man-flu slow them down.”

Just three days after I had made the complaint, they posted out a letter to me! While it said they wouldn’t be taking any further action, they did take the time to explain to me why they wouldn’t – in this case because they did not feel the advert caused sufficiently widespread offence for them to take action. However, given complaints so often disappear off and are never heard of again, I think the ASA deserve praise for their speedy and in depth response.

Thought Bubble isn’t a comic convention. It’s a sequential art convention :D. I didn’t go or anything, but Si did, and afterwards, we went to Pizza Express. I keep ending up there, despite the fact I dislike pizza.

I don’t keep a great deal of food at home. My freezer is always full of stuff, and I have some backup tins in my cupboard, but beyond that, I have to specifically go out and buy food to put in my fridge. The reason is, it never really seems to get eaten.

Taken my recent weekend for example. On Saturday afternoon I went for lunch with Raby. We hit up Las Iguanas which is always a pleasure and it was great to catch up with Raby as it’s been quite a while since we’ve met.

In the evening, we hit Sam’s Chop House, then on Sunday afternoon, I headed over to parents for lunch before hitting up Humanist Community on Sunday evening – which may well have set a new record for attendance.

Having left the cinema from seeing Johnny English Reborn, we decided to find somewhere to grab dinner.

It was Saturday night and a lot of restaurants would be busy – so we decided to hit Thai Edge as they always have a table free :D. Of course, I was hoping they didn’t remember me after the now infamous change incident.

Dinner was good and I almost finished my main – something which I would have considered quite an impressive feat given I had a starter as well and I’m not getting any younger.

Despite little success last time I complainted to Sainsbury’s, I decided it was worth one more go when I had another complaint.

To whom it may concern:

Earlier today, I visited your branch located on The Headrow in Leeds.

Upon arriving at the tills and scanning my items I was asked to produce identification to complete my purchase. I have recently turned 25 and therefore was expecting not to be flagged by your Check 25 policy, given I have now been able to legally purchase alcohol for 8 years and nice as it is to think, there is no way I look 9 years younger than I actually am.

More to the point, however, is the fact that I was attempting to purchase non-alcoholic wine. It therefore baffles and frustrates me that I would have to produce identification to prove I am over the age of 18, for a product which is alcohol free.

I asked the assistant who approved the item for me why such a product would be classified as restricted, but she said she didn’t know.

I believe such a restriction should be removed from such items, to avoid further aggregation for your customers.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes,
Chris Worfolk

Luckily, this one was slightly more fruitful. Well, I say that, this time they said that it was indeed a problem and generally a bit silly, but there wasn’t exactly a promise to do much about it.

I contacted the store and spoke with Lisa, the Customer Service Manager, who advised the checkout automatically prompts colleagues to ask for identification when items are scanned. Lisa apologises if this has inconvenienced you and advised she will have your feedback logged for future reference.

We appreciate you taking the time to make us aware of this issue and look forward to seeing you in store again soon.

Still, better than nothing. And way better than Co-op who don’t even respond to your complaints.

With Blackhouse offering 40% off your food bill this month, I decided to take Elina there for lunch.

Despite being tempted by the Kobe steak given the discount, I eventually settled for a nice rump steak while Elina went for the posh surf and turf. As usual the steak was cooked to perfection, though I was a little disappointed by the rest of the experience. The steak knives didn’t cut the steak very well and sitting directly under the low hanging lights made for an uncomfortably warm dining experience. Still, always a pleasure to eat there.