Category: Technology

I work in technology sector. And I do round a clock, not only from 9 to 5. It is my bread and butter, it is my hobby, it is the fascination of my life. And with the current rate of change particular in information technology (IT), there is always something new to learn, to try, to talk about. I often post news, thoughts, and reviews. And when I do, this is the category I use.

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory

I’ve been playing Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory for the last few days. It was originally designed to be an expansion pack for Wolfenstein, but than the plans were cancelled and the game was released to the world for free (as in beer). The best of part of it is that the software is multiplatform.

It is possible to download the installer from a number of places (here for example). Game manual is also something that you’d like to scroll through before playing the game.

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is somewhat different from all the multiplayer games that I used to play before. Mobile objectives and rewards I haven’t seen before anywhere. Rewards add to the functionalities or abilties of the soldier (more ammo, more equipment, faster reloads, faster running, etc). Medals and ranks come as a visualisation of skills so to speak.

I’ve been having lots of fun on some European servers with as much as 30 people plaing the game (15 on each team). My favourite soldier class so far is Covert Ops, although I must admit I didn’t use the full functionality of it yet. Sniping is my favourite activity, although it’s not that easy to do with a 100+ ms ping.

Finding all executable files on the system

find is one of the most useful and feature rich commands in Linux. Sometimes it is not that obvious which parameters should be fed to find for this or that behaviour. The manual could surely use some work.

Today I was trying to figure out how I can find all executable files on the system. The manual suggests that I use the -perm option with the specification of the mode. Figuring out the mode might get to you, so here is the example:

find / -type f -perm +0111

One could specify any mode what-so-ever. Just remember that 1 stands for ‘execute’, 2 stands for ‘write’, and 4 stands for ‘read’.

Site speedups

I’ve been getting a lot of complains lately that my blog is very slow. I experienced it myself too, but I couldn’t recall which changes caused it. I checked all logs and configurations and everything looked just fine.

I asked Vladimir Ivaschenko to help me track down the problem. He is known as The Master of strace, so I was pretty sure that he would be help me. And I was right.

Within minutes, we found out that problems were caused by del.icio.us Smart Tagging plugin that I have installed not so long ago. With plugin activated, wget would take anywhere from 15 to 90 seconds to load the front page of the site. Deactivating the plugin, makes wget finish in less than 3 seconds. I consider the difference to be big enough for the functionality that this plugin brings in, so I disabled it. Maybe I will use it later again, when things get faster.

Thanks a lot Vladimir!

New Procedures for 2005 Readers’ Choice Awards

Linux Journal has changed the procedures for its Readers’ Choice Awards contest. From now on, if you want to participate, you’ll have to send them a specially formatted email message, instead of using a web form. They have published the instructions here.

I’ve already sent the email to [email protected] with the following nominations:

e-mail client: Mutt
distribution: Fedora
database: MySQL
backup utility: Tar
network backup utility: AMANDA
audio tool: XMMS
desktop environment: KDE
Linux web site: http://slashdot.org
distributed file sharing system: BitTorrent
programming beverage: coke
development tool: Vim
text editor: Vim
system administration tool: perl
server: HP ProLiant DL
office program: KDE Kontact
programming language: Perl
instant messaging client: Licq
graphics program: GIMP
web browser: Firefox
blogging software: WordPress