If you are trying to install PECL YAML on Mac OS X Lion, you may find you get a conflict with an error message similar to the following.
WARNING: pecl.php.net/yaml: conflicting files found:
yaml/LICENSE (pear.symfony-project.com/yaml)
This error is documented on GitHub and as it is not critical, can be overcome by turning off errors.
pecl install --ignore-errors yaml
On running that command, it should no longer stop at that point.
Last Thursday, I took on the role of Toastmaster for the first time.
As well as speakers, each Toastmasters meeting is run by a series of roles, including the Ah Counter and Grammarian, but arguably the toughest role is that of Toastmaster – the host who begins by introducing the club and what we’re about, and goes on to introduce everyone else as well. It provides more stage time than any other role as you’re constantly up and down throughout the meeting.
I was reasonably satisfied with how it went. It certainly wasn’t without issue – we had to move to a different hotel just hours before the meeting, which meant we weren’t totally prepared with voting slips, and that threw me a little.
Also, despite my system of crossing everything off on the agenda as we went, I still forgot to include one of the feedback sessions until someone reminded me. But overall, it went reasonably smoothly, and I seemed like a nice way to round off my Toastmasters anniversary.
December 9th, 2012 |
Life
Last Monday, we went to the final session of our photography course.
Overall, it was well worth attending. I’ve read plenty of books on how to use my camera, but having in person tuition and going through the exercises is far better to getting knowledge into my head, even compared to going out and practicing what I had read about.
It did end quite expensively though – I’ve acquired two new lenses since starting the course and added flash studio kit to my Christmas list, so presuming Elina gets me that as well as my iPad 3 and iPhone 5, that is going to end expensively for her too.
Last week, the Atheist Society organised a dinner at Veritas. We gave them fair warning, booking out their back room so we would have the place to ourselves.
We’ve eaten there before, and it’s been reasonable.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case on Tuesday. We arrived at 7pm, and after a bit of a delay in just taking the orders – the food didn’t turn up until 9:30pm! We got some snacks and a round of drinks to say sorry, but two and a half hours is just incredible.
Worse, when the food did turn up, a lot of it was burned and badly cooked – Elina’s pie seemingly the only meal that came out of the kitchen as intended. By the time our main courses had arrived and we had eaten, it was going on until 11pm, so we skipped dessert and gave it up as a bad job.
When I first started watching Formula One, I was just a child, and the racing it was between Michael Schumacher, at his peak, and everyone else.
Williams were doing great too, Damon Hill had a far better car than Schumacher’s Benetton, but still the master could not be beaten. Then the MacLaren rose back to peak performance, while Schumacher climbed into a slower Ferrari, and still he was incredible.
It was incredible. Your skill as a driver actually makes very little difference – it is mostly how fast the car you are sitting in can go, that determines how well you do. But Schumacher defied rules.
As a seven times world champion, he is easily one of the greatest Formula One drivers of all time – but that is possibly meaning miserly – perhaps only Ayrton Senna can contest the title of the greatest of all time.
After retiring in 2006, he came back to the sport in 2010, and drove for a further three seasons. He certainly wasn’t at his peak any more – he didn’t have a great car, but he was often beaten by his team mate (who obviously sits in the same car) and made mistakes that resulted in him not finishing races.
But this only makes him more of an inspiration. Why do I think that, when so many people said he was ruining his legacy? Because who cares about that! I want to do what I love in this life and if nobody ever remembers me again after I’m dead – so what?
Not that there is much doubt of that. As Schumacher leaves Formula One for a second time, he does so as someone that will forever remain in the history books of the sport.
As you may be aware, the Humanist Action Group is currently staging its 2012 Holiday Food Drive for local homeless shelters in Leeds.
Next week, Leeds Skeptics hosts a talk entitled “Do we get the legal system we deserve?”, as part of their programme of monthly events.
Unlike a usual Leeds Skeptics event, though, we won’t be taking donations to help cover the cost of running the meeting – that is going to be covered by the organisers. Instead, all money donated will be given to the Holiday Food Drive.
So, if you fancy helping those a little less lucky than ourselves, in a way which simply involves you hearing an interesting talk in a great pub, then come along to the next meeting of Leeds Skeptics! Full details can be found on their website.
What a grand prix season it has been – almost certainly the best in memory!
We started the year with half a dozen different winners in as many races, tyres went on and off like lightening and if you didn’t manage them probably – you could lose it all at the end. Exciting, wheel to wheel racing continued all year.
After all that, we came down to the final race of the year – and the championship race was still open with Vettel and Alonso only a few points from each other! We couldn’t have asked for a more exciting ending. Well, we could have, but it would have been entirely unreasonable.
It did get better though! The first lap, Vettel finds his car facing backwards, but he is able to keep the engine running and now he is on a mission to get right through the field, and catch Alonso to stop him tacking the title away from him.
In the end, he did, and what an amazing end it was. I hope 2013 is just as exciting, even if we are going to have to mange without Jake Humphrey.
If you want a service to start automatically when Gentoo boots up, you need to tell Gentoo to start it. Gentoo looks at /etc/runlevels/boot to see what it needs to run, so all you need to do is add a symlink in here to your init.d script. In this example, I’ll use exim.
cd /etc/runlevels/boot
ln -s /etc/init.d/exim exim
Next time Gentoo boots, it will see exim in the boot directory and run the script. This isn’t just limited to boot either – /etc/runlevels also has directories for shutdown and system initialisation.
Last week, we headed up to Headingley for the Finnish Christmas Carols concert.
It was held at the Lutheran Church in Headingley, and there were around twenty people there, mostly Finns. Mixed in with the hymn, which had an organ for the first time this year (in previous years, they have just sung, without music), they had a short play as well, about how you should be dishonest in order to achieve personal gain (not quite why you would include a play with such a message, but there you go).
I’m not sure about the idea of getting a nation of people famous for being rather introverted to sing, but Elina seemed to enjoy it, so job done I guess.
After, everyone headed into the church house in which there was some Finnish food laid on. There were also feedback forms, in which I suggested it would be great if the church could get wifi installed.
