jcm's blog

Apparently, in order to stop the stupidly broken in-memory cacheing, you can add the following to your user.js file in your firefox profile:

// Specify the amount of memory cache
user_pref(“browser.cache.memory.enable”, false);
user_pref(“browser.cache.memory.capacity”, 8196);

I turn it off, then force it to 8MB just in case. Whoever wrote that code either riddled it with memory leaks or just has a broken notion of knowing when memory is running low (read: my machine and those of other people swap themselves to death with firefox, just like good old bloatzilla always did – which is why it got its very own oom killer policy module).

I wrote a quick hack for kswapd to send events on low memory that I’ll clean up and push out but that’s a heavyweight way to fix this bug. Anyway, I love the way they describe this hack on their FAQ pages. You need to refer to 2 other pages just to know where the user.js file should be.

Jon.

So I just got back from LinuxWorld Boston 2006. Had an enjoyable week overall, got to hook up with Sven, Bill, Debra and many other friends, developers and publishing contacts. Had dinner in lots of different (cool) places, had meetings and generally geeked out at a few MIT related events. Got back to the UK on Monday morning and skipped out on sleep until pretty much just now, when I seem to have grabbed a few more hours than I planned – oh well.

I’m so looking forward to living in Cambridge, MA that it’s just not true. It’s a happening place with some very cool people. Anyway, meanwhile I’m back in the UK. Spent some time on work stuff and got distracted fixing an ALSA bug last night that I think I’ll look at again in a minute. I need some coffee. And I’ll write an entry that doesn’t suck later.

Jon.

Here’s an updated list of countries that I have visited. Asia and Australasia is notably lacking at the moment since I cancelled out on plans to go to LCA this year (maybe I’ll go next year instead). I’m sure I’ve missed something, 14 seems a little low, but maybe that’s about right. There’s more to be done.

Image: Countries that I have visited (generated by http://douweosinga.com/projects/visitedcountries

NOTE: This image was not converted from GIF into PNG as in the past. I’ve got to get used to the notion that the Unisys patent has expired.

Jon.

Here’s a list of counties in the UK that I have been to. These are places I’m pretty certain I’ve been to at least once, though Wales is lacking a few places (because I don’t know which counties I’ve been to and it was a while ago too). So, if it’s not highlighted it doesn’t mean I’ve not been there, just that I can’t recall it at the moment.

I’ve visited the counties in yellow. Which counties have you visited? made by marnanel map reproduced from Ordnance Survey map data by permission of the Ordnance Survey. © Crown copyright 2001.

The conclusion is that I could go see a bit more of Scotland and the Isle Of Man (not sure if I’ve been there or not!).

Jon.

I’m over in Boston from Friday (2006/03/31) for 9 days. I’ll be at LinuxWorld and then hanging around for some meetings and to check out the local area on the weekend. If you’re in town and we haven’t already arranged to hook up next week, please send me mail.

Jon.

Photo: Maple Tea. I brought back 4 boxes (800g) and some Inuit herbal tea too.

So ajh invited people to a party over the weekend. Since I’d gotten an invite, I wasn’t about to let 3306 miles get in the way of some fun, so I hopped on a plane on Friday night, stayed for the party and then flew back on Sunday. This was a trial run to see if weekend transatlantic trips really are feasible (they are) and I get to do it all again on Friday – I’m off to LinuxWorld in Boston.

Andrew and Emilie’s Mardi Gras was quite amusing and I got to see a couple of other people I know in Ottawa too (though there are more to catch up with next time). We had dinner on Friday night and (aside from the party) a sedate Saturday afternoon getting ready around the house. We went shopping at the new Tea Shop location at the Byward Market and I used that as an opportunity to buy 800g of maple tea (Whittard now have some samples that I gave them on the way back home). On Sunday, I went for a stroll around parliament hill and reminded myself how much I still want to live in Canada some day – I’m sure living in Boston will be great, albeit without the context of the fantastic Canadian way of life.

Check out the photos on my flickr pages. I’ve got a load of photos on the cameraphone from the weekend too, but that’ll have to wait until I feel like taking it apart (perhaps another few hours then).

One thing’s for sure, I’m not coming back here. Not any time soon. I’ve really gone off the notion of living in the United Kingdom. Our legislature sucks, the whole thing is built on outdated class models and we have no fundamental rights. Plus the signage in this country really really sucks I got back to Heathrow to find that they’ve managed yet another round of central bus station optimization. They’ve not bothered to hook up any of the information systems but they have managed to stick up really tiny and pointless signs that nobody can see without having already done the right thing (typically British). It’s ceased to amuse me that this stuff happens here and is moaned about in a joking way. It’s just plain broken.

Anyway. I got back, submitted some figures for one of the book chapters and got back to work. But not for long. It wasn’t very long until I discovered that apogee (my router) had finally gotten very unhappy with the ailing/failing disk that it’s had for a while. I replaced the disk only to find that the one I’d replaced it with was also faulty, the disk cable was too long and out of spec (I didn’t build this machine as I picked it up used) and a lot of other things. I do need to fix this all properly by dropping all these machines at home altogether and moving such facilities over to colo accounts, but that’ll take me a bit longer to get sorted how I want. Anyway, in the meantime, I seem to be back online again.

Before I wrap up, I’d like to spare a thought for those customs guys I met on Friday night. Now, doing these crazy weekend trips may be fun, but not in the eyes of customs officials. They “knew” I was up to something, but couldn’t figure out what it was (I was genuinely just at a party, yes, I’ll fly that far for fun with no strings attached) so decided to spend about 20-30 minutes figuring it out. They called my friend, checked my bags, rooted around my laptop, that kind of thing. At least I’ve now got a precident for doing this so that when I do it again in another month or two, it’ll hopefully be less of an issue (or more of one, if they think they can find a pattern or something). For once I will agree that they were just doing their job – I bumped into the same customs guy on Sunday night as we were both buying food at Harveys. I told him that I really had been there for the weekend and really was leaving. I think he might have finally believed me.

Jon.