What geekiness/nerdiness did you do today?

[Greenbank]

VPN client died and said it required uninstalling and reinstalling to fix it.

Only copy of VPN client available for reinstall is on company network which requires VPN to connect to it (I'm on holiday Thu/Fri and on call this weekend.)

However, Windows keeps copies of installed MSIs in C:\Windows\installer albeit with mangled filenames. A bit of prodding and poking (by knowing the rough size of the download) and I found the VPN client MSI.

VPN client uninstalled. VPN client reinstalled from MSI file.

VPN client works. I now don't have to go back into the office on my holiday.

[Vince]

Started to write a message implementation guide to implement a GS1 message. Normally an easy task, but in this case no-one knows the data that is needed at the recipients systems. 

[Biggsy]

Found and installed more addons to Firefox and Thunderbird.  I think I'm an addon addict.

[bobb]

Today I have been learning all about the Haversine formula. You can do some cool shit like this:

Code: [Select]

    public DataSet getPlaces(int intUnit, float fLat, float fLng, int intDistance)
    {
        DataSet dsMap = new DataSet();
        string strSQL = "SELECT id, name, address, ( " + intUnit + " * acos( cos( radians( " + fLat + " ) ) * cos( radians( lat ) ) * cos( radians( lng ) - radians( " + fLng + " ) ) + sin( radians( " + fLat + " ) ) * sin( radians( lat ) ) ) ) AS distance " +
                        "FROM places " +
                        "HAVING distance < " + intDistance + " " +
                        "ORDER BY distance " +
                        "LIMIT 0 , 99";
        try
        {
            MySqlDataAdapter da = new MySqlDataAdapter(strSQL, sqlConn);
            da.Fill(dsMap, "places");
        }
        catch (Exception getPlacesErr)
        {
            LogError xErr = new LogError();
            xErr.sendError("Mapping.cs", "getPlacesErr: " + getPlacesErr.Message);
        }
        finally
        {
            sqlConn.Close();
        }

        return dsMap;
    }

Yup, it's a Geonames/Google Maps Mashup...

Edit: Hopefully I'll get it done soon -  the app is all about cycle touring....

[woollypigs]

Ubuntu nautilus played in 12.04 and in 12.10 and 13.04 it rendered in ubuntu totally unusable, eat memory and CPU. Tried to change flavor and even installed Mint. Then lost WiFi and only could install it on my USB with Mint. Now installed Ubuntu 12.10 with working WiFi and is now trying to see if my back up of the /home folder works as it said on the tin, waiting for 4.2Gb to copy over. So lets see if nautilus will behave after reboot.

[Vince]

Got bored copying XML element names into a piece of documentation, so I wrote an XSLT to extract the element and attribute names and their parents from a sample XML message output into a table, and just copied that into the documentation.

[Dibdib]

Not really "me", as such, but I now have lovely shiny Windows 7 on my brand new work PC. It's lufferly.

[David Martin]

Slow process trying to install a MS search engine on a new shiny VM.

[Phil W]

Written a client / server encryption / decryption process usin rsa 2048 bit and aes 128 bit routines. The client being an Android app, the server being php.

[Wascally Weasel]

Started looking for a Roomba. Because robots. And filth.

I love the idea of a Roomba but I would need to have another robot to pick up all the crap all over the floor for the Roomba to be able to actually see the carpet to hoover.  It would be a bit like all of the cleaning robots that appear when you try to get a Babelfish from the dispenser in the old Infocom H2G2 game.

[Regulator]

We've got a robot hoover - a Neato.  It seems to function mainly as a dog amuser...

[woollypigs]

A bit of a doh! and head against table today. Copying the new OSM (600Mb) to the Garmin and then while it was at it I deleted the folder, don't ask why. This could explain why Nautilus freaked out a wee bit, but it took some time for me to figure out.

[David Martin]

Disabled an emergent feature [1] in some software I wrote. It now copes with people who think that tab delimited includes arbitrary whitespace either side of the tab (contrary to the file spec). Post-appending whitespace on identifiers breaks things in amusing and hard to determine ways.

[1] It's not a bug, it is an emergent feature. It does what was intended. It now does more than what was intended.

[Kim]

Used the Android debugger to transfer my accumulated collection of wifi login details from one device to another.  This probably wasn't a net win over the time taken to enter them all manually.

It's all in /data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf for those who want to play along at home.  Watch for device-specific lines in the file, and make sure the file permissions are correct, otherwise the wifi will refuse to start.

[Chris S]

Finished commissioning a replacement Hyper-v server, replacing its 6 year old predecessor that melted its brains earlier in the week, causing me considerable angst when I realised one of the VMs I'd been using for development work wasn't in the backup cycle  .

Luckily, I'm old and paranoid enough to have other backups (not to mention, offsite source control) and so only lost a days work.

On the plus side - new server (ProLiant ML310 Gen8 - cheap as chips, and not half bad for the money) has 16Gb of RAM (old server only had 4Gb) so no need to keep turning off VMs to ration memory.

The best thing is - when you turn it on, the cooling stretches its legs a bit, and sounds like a Boeing 777 spooling up!

[Kim]

The best thing is - when you turn it on, the cooling stretches its legs a bit, and sounds like a Boeing 777 spooling up!

That never gets old.

[MattH]

Oh, I don't know. It got old very quickly when I was doing updates on my rack mount ProLiant (hence lots of tiny fans, arranged in a parallel/series configuration to give massive airflow with commensurate noise levels) and ended up with the fans on full speed all the time.

[nikki]

Listened to solar winds.

[woollypigs]

Listened to solar winds.

I think we have a winner

[nikki]

Hah! All I did was sit there and listen.

The person who made the solar-wind-satellite-data-analysing-electromagnet-metal-tube-resonant-frequency-chime-noise-making-device should probably get the credit for the geekiness!

If I can one day learn how to get space data into an arduino, I'll consider that a win 

[Chris S]

Oh, I don't know. It got old very quickly when I was doing updates on my rack mount ProLiant (hence lots of tiny fans, arranged in a parallel/series configuration to give massive airflow with commensurate noise levels) and ended up with the fans on full speed all the time.

You mean, you had to visit the hardware? 

That is old. Anyway, I thought ProLiants have iLO Remote Management (my new one certainly does)?

Ah... I do miss the cut & chase of the server room. My favourite memories:

Perm Sys Admin (yelling in my ear): "If the alarms go, you've got thirty seconds to make that door before it seals and the Halon comes on."
Me (n00b contractor) : "I can't hear a fucking thing for the fans"
Perm Sys Admin: "I know. Sucks doesn't it? Why do you think we get you contractors to do the work in here?"

Me (less n00by): "I'll have to reboot that NT server. Again."
Perm Sys Admin: "That server you're currently using as a chair? It has all the home loan records for [institution's name removed] since forever. It was last rebooted three years ago. Yay for Unix, I guess..."

Me on phone - shouting: "Yes, the aircon is definitely off. The fans are going fucking mental."
Perm Sys Admin: "Is it hot?"
Me on phone - shouting: "Like a furnace. There are three thermal warnings going - oh, and I can smell hot solder."

Ah, the good ol' days...

[Psychler]

I boiled a kettle, that's about as techy as I get!

[David Martin]

I have given up trying to use VBA to do some analysis in Excel. Instead I will dump the worksheets to csv and do it all in Python as it is faster and less likely to cause a global financial meltdown. It will also stop me getting a disciplinary for swearing in the office as VBA is on the 'banned technologies' list.

[woollypigs]

Looked into a Roomba and saw the price and forgot about it.

[MattH]

Oh, I don't know. It got old very quickly when I was doing updates on my rack mount ProLiant (hence lots of tiny fans, arranged in a parallel/series configuration to give massive airflow with commensurate noise levels) and ended up with the fans on full speed all the time.

You mean, you had to visit the hardware? 

That is old. Anyway, I thought ProLiants have iLO Remote Management (my new one certainly does)?

It does have iLO, but as for visiting it - this is one of the servers I have at home, so it's not like the rigmarole of getting into a data centre.
Doesn't everyone have a 19" rack in their spare room stuffed full of toys highly complex and essential equipment?