Liferea Font Rendering
The only one thing that didn’t work perfectly since I moved to Fedora 11 is font rendering.
After some time playing with Gnome font preferences I got that a 76 dpi resolution and setting the fonts to 12 points made almost everything usable and good looking (I don’t know why GDM is fixed to use 107x107 dpi, and I don’t know how to change this).
But two applications keep showing ugly font rendering: Gwibber (fixed with 1.2 release, now I can setup the font size and ignore system preferences! yay!), and Liferea.
With Liferea I tried to zoom out the text at first, but it also scales the images, so that was a suboptimal solution. I’ve just found a workaround for the problem:
- Create a file: $HOME/.liferea_1.6/liferea.css, so the application will load your custom CSS at start up.
- Put inside:
div { font-size: 10pt; } - Restart Liferea and enjoy.
The default CSS file warns you not to set absolute font sizes, to allow Gnome control default font size from preferences, but I’ve tested different relative values without luck (1.0em is an ugly default, and 0.9em it’s very very small).
I don’t know if this is the right direction to fix this, but it works for me.
And Test Automation Saved the Day!
Well, not. Actually I was the guy working like crazy from 9 to 15, but all this hard work was possible just because we had a nice set of 122 automated tests, and I can’t miss this opportunity to say: I told you!
The pre-production machines were supposed to be ready last Thursday to start the integration of our shiny SOAP web service into our partner SaaS platform (woah, look at me! I’m using modern buzzwords), but the machine wasn’t operational until Friday.
After that, our partner started today the integration, one week after we have planned to. So, let’s say we had the need to make things right today (no matter who gets hurt).
Besides that, isn’t easy working with Australian technicians because the time difference with Spain (+8 hours).
Fortunately today was my best programming day in some time and we had automated tests to do the quality control of the different changes we had to introduce in our web service. Without that stuff, which very often is treated as useless waste of time, we wouldn’t have been able to validate those last minute changes and the project would be either delayed or buggy (or both!).
To sum up: people out there, program your tests because they’re worth your time!
Well, that wasn’t me, but I find really hard to pronounce the sentence just the same way Jason Lee does.
My name’s Earl it’s a great series, and I find interesting watch it in original version to practice English, because of the accents you can find on it (Jaime Pressly is just incomprehensible at first).
Although you’re not able to pronounce the first sentence of each episode.
Another series with wonderful accents that I would recommend you is True Blood (set in the Deep South). Eh, Anna Paquin is a plus.
Bad News and a Trip to Vigo
I deserve it, because I chose not to pay the cancelation insurance, and when you’re going to a wedding… Now I feel dumb.
I was pretty sure that the wedding wan’t going to be canceled, but I was thinking just the usual reasons. Seems that there are other reasons to put off a wedding, such as medical reasons: the bride has severe health problems, and the wedding will take place next year.
I’m very sad and worried about my friends, and I wish with all my heart that she’ll recover from this bad time. I’m sure they’ll have a wonderful wedding after all.
To sum up: I have a plane ticket to Vigo 17th July and back to Valencia 20th July, and nothing planned to do. I suppose that other wedding guests are in the same situation, and I have some good friends in Galicia, so I think that I’ll go to Vigo anyway.
Lost in Translation
This is Evolution 2.26.2, and Expunge vs Compactar: translation FAIL!
If you don’t speak a word in Spanish, the translation says: Are you sure you want to permanently remove all the messages in folder … (inbox)? Yes, the deleted part is missing.
It’s not the first time I expunge a folder in Evolution, but it’s the first time I cry: WTF!?!
I’ve filled a bug: Bug 587116 – Expunge confirmation dialog asks to “premanently remove all the messages”.
Joy to the World
I have this song in my head since I watched the Simpson’s episode: Lisa’s Date with Density, in which Nelson plays the song with his guitar.
After a little research, it seems it’s a humorous children’s song popular in USA, parody of the Christmas song Joy to the World
.
This is my first try to record *ehm* something since I moved to Fedora, and I’m pleased with the packaged applications: Hydrogen 0.9.4-svn and Ardour 2.8.
Both applications are great and high quality software. It’s a pity I’m not such good musician, but I had fun recording this *ehm* version of the song.
PS: some feed readers won’t show the flash player, so you’re safe because you can’t listen to the song.
CentOS Server Install
I know I’m an old-school system administrator, who doesn’t want a X session running on his servers.
The Console and the CLI are the ultimate tool for a sysadmin (In the Begining was the Command Line), and I don’t like the extra stuff, specifically when you have to update the system: desktop applications have frecuently security updates, as other applications, but I’m not using them in a server so I feel it’s a waste of time and bandwith.
I tend to say base system as synonymous for bare minium install, and yesterday I had a little problem with a partner and a CentOS install.
We requested just base and the IT guy did a default install, that includes all the Gnome desktop and associated applications. That’s not a big deal, but it’s not the optimal situation.
What do you think? Are you OK with a desktop installed in a server?
From Firefox 3.5 RC2 Linux vs Windows Performance by Andrew M. Lawrence.
This is not the first time I read a rant about Mozilla Foundation support policy for Firefox: windows version goes first (ie. Firefox 3 will release with system-killing performance problem).
Changes in NetworkMonitor 0.7.1 OpenVPN Client
The symptoms are: when you connect to the VPN, you can access only to the VPN sites.
This is just to remind me of not going crazy every time I configure an OpenVPN connection using the NetworkManager client: go into IPv4 Settings > Routes and check Use this connection only for resources on its network (I think that was either the default set up in previous releases, or I don’t remember to had checked it in the past).
Today I had my second WTF with this new feature. I had to write it down somewhere.
OpenVPN + NetwokManager + SELinux?
Dear lazy web,
Is there any way to run OpenVPN from the NetworkManager on Fedora 11 without SELinux getting on my way?
I’ve already tried to set openvpn_enable_homedirs to on, but it doesn’t help:
avc: denied { read } for pid=2815 comm="openvpn" name="mls" dev=selinuxfs ino=12 scontext=system_u:system_r:openvpn_t:s0 tcontext=system_u:object_r:security_t:s0 tclass=file
I don’t have any problems with disabling SELinux, but I’d like to learn how to fix this in the right way.
Thank you!
Update: I’ve filled a bug (Bug 507422 - SELinux is preventing NetworkManager-openvpn to connect to a VPN).
