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Booting the Linux Kernel from Grub2
Recently a good friend of mine managed to uninstall all the kernels from his Ubuntu machine (what can I say – Monday morning and no coffee is a deadly combination). Luckily he had the install CD on hand so we did the following: Boot from the CD (we had Internet connection) Mount the Linux partition…
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The wrong time to update software…
is when the user is the busiest, for example when s/he just started your application. See for example the screenshot below with Adobe Air (click trough to see it in its full beauty). The mistakes it makes: It tries to do the update when I’m trying to start Grooveshark (it interferes with my intention) It…
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Recovering encrypted home directory under Ubuntu
While the home-folder encryption in Ubuntu is far from a perfect solution (there is considerable data leakage from the swap file and the temp directory – for example once I’ve observed the flash videos from Chromium porn private browsing mode being present in the /tmp directory), it is a partial solution nevertheless and very easy…
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scentsy review take two
I’ve already written about Scentsy Products, so I will try not to repeat myself that much (other than reiterating that you should really think before investing in a referral system) and will focus on their special product: Piece by Piece Full-Size Scentsy Warmer – this a usual warmer (usual for Scentsy that is – it…
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rubberecycle.com review
There isn’t much I can say about this company. They seem very legitimate by all indications (domain name registered more than 10 years ago, with the physical address of the company, no complaints on the web, etc). Their goal seems also very laudable: creating playground surfacing out of recycled tire rubber. While I don’t have…
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Medicalhealthinsurancetoday.com review
Today I’m reviewing a site which has the goal of comparing different private health insurance companies and giving you the cheapest one. Unfortunately I’m not familiar with the USA insurance rules (because I’m on a different continent :-)), so I can only comment on generic impressions related to this site: The domain was registered in…
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Setting the maximum number of opened files under Ubuntu (for JProfiler)
As I found out “on my own skin”, setting fs.file-max in /etc/sysctl.conf is a BAD idea. It can render your system useless in one step. Please don’t do it! If you did it, use the recovery mode to roll back the change. Also, currently I would only recommend doubling the limit (ie going from 1024…
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DiskMap – an disk backed Map in Java
I have the following problem: a Java application was running out of memory. It was not feasible to mandate 64 bit JVM for this application and the ~1.4G limit wasn’t enough. My solution was to implement a Map which – when an element is added – also saves the value to disk and only holds…
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Why running sushi is the best fast-food?
I just realized that running sushi is the best fast-food ever. (Yes, I have strong opinions weakly held): You get you food in small chunks, so you can stop at any time and still don’t feel like you’ve wasted food You have a great variety of food and you can look at it before taking…
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Microbenchmarking and you
Crossposted from the Transylvania JUG website. Microbenchmarking is the practice of measuring the performance characteristics (like CPU, memory or I/O) of a small piece of code to determine which would be better suited for a particular scenario. If I could offer but one advice on this, it would be this: don’t. It is too easy…