I spent a few frustrating hours trying to sort this out. I had utf-8 xml files with Irish language characters in them. Whenever I moved them from Windows to my own web hosting which uses FreeBSD the special characters did not come across. I could not cut and paste between Windows and a putty session on the FreeBSD box either.
I found the character set translation options in putty, under Window->Translation which allowed me to select utf-8.
I then had to set the following options in my .login_conf file in my home directory.
me:\
:charset=UTF-8:\
:lang=en_US.ISO_8859-1:
Top tip, the FreeBSD man pages show the above with the lang settings as de_DE, and if like me you cut and paste blindly without thinking you get a crash course in german Das Kommando ist ubekannt.

Posted by jaffs at 08:45 AM | Permalink

Whilst browsing the wikis at my new workplace, I discovered this produced by someone working on the project.
http://suckmypixel.com/surrealist_poetry/blog.php.
Without a doubt Stray Taoist's blog makes the most surreal poetry of any blog I tried.

Posted by jaffs at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Whilst following links from the previous posts on wikipedia, I read about Bootstrapping, a term I was familiar with, it apparently alludes to a German legend about Baron Münchhausen, who was able to lift himself out of a swamp by pulling himself up by his own hair. In later versions he was using his own boot straps to pull himself out of the sea which gave rise to the term bootstrapping.

Posted by jaffs at 08:50 AM | Permalink

We had a most unusual power cut last night. All electrical items started dimming, powering down, then coming up again, up and down continuously for a good minute. i ran round turning everything off except one light and the dimming continued, until the supply died.
Some interesting gubbins realted to power outages and how the supply is brought back online.
We were without electricity for a couple of hours, I always relish a power cut, I got the ipod out with a speaker and listened to Winnie the Pooh, a free talking book that came with the Sunday Times, it was narrated by Bernard Cribbins. It's fun to revisit these books, I think some of the humour was lost on me as a child.
My grandfather used to love power cuts, he had a primus stove and a box in the garage with powdered milk and the like. Operaton power cut would be put into place as soon as the electricity died, the whistling kettle would be produced and the stove started, there would be great annoyance when the power came back.
I remember a few years ago at Boxing Day we had the whole clan round at my parent's house. The power died, thankfully after everyone was fed. We all gathered in the living room, plenty of drink, nibbles and cards. It was a great afternoon. I was driving that day and my grandmother started to get tired, i offered to drive her home, but she said don't be silly, the power is off, your lights won't work.

Posted by jaffs at 08:36 AM | Permalink

I was reading the Lives of Great Engineers of Ulster . The chapter I read on the train this morning was related to John Stevenson, the paragraph that interested me was related to his purchase of Marcus Ward's company which at the time in 1900 was situated at the Ulster Works site on the corner of Bankmore Street and the Dublin Road, a stones throw from where I sit every day.
The Belfast Library Board website has some beautiful examples of Marcus Ward's work. After John Stevenson purchased the company now called McCaw,Stevenson and Orr they won the contract to produce the boxes for a new Liverpool concern called Meccano, the contract then followed for Hornby trains when Meccano developed that line. The relationship lasted in to the 1970's.

Posted by jaffs at 09:16 AM | Permalink