silent rules with automake 1.11

It seems that automake 1.11 made it into unstable and, besides other features, that means silent rules like linux does since quite some time.
For the impatient, in configure.ac:

AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE

m4_ifdef([AM_SILENT_RULES], [AM_SILENT_RULES([yes])])

Then after a round of automake/configure the make invocation will be like

make[3]: Entering directory `foo'

  CXX    source1.lo

  CXX    source2.lo

  CCLD   lib1.la

[...]

Credit note: the autotools mythbuster guide

mozilla ubiquity commands for debian

I'm an avid user of mozilla ubiquity but I couldn't find any commands related to debian to replace those of yubnub. So, prodded by zack I've produced some like bts or pts.
The command feed is located at ubiquity-commands (don't be scared by the "this-code-can-be-evil" subscription page) with the actual code maintained under ubiquity-commands.git.
Note that there's *much* room for improvement so it would be nice to have a common set of commands for the various debian web resources.

you don't control your hardware, proprietary drivers do (rant)

Trying to associate with 00:1c:58:10:1d:30 (SSID='ALMAWIFI' freq=2417 MHz)

Associated with 00:1c:58:10:15:b0

                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ WTF?

In other words, my broadcom card won't let me choose the access point to connect to, instead the driver picks one for you (my guess: the one with the best signal) except that autentication on that AP doesn't work.
I'm fine with machines trying by default to be smarter than me, I'm less fine when there's no way to convince said machine to do something supposedly not smart.

in anticipo

tanto per essere chiari:





from http://www.eatdrinksnort.com/valentines-day-2008/1/

come ti italianizzo la storia

ieri (27/12) alle 13 si guardava il tg2 (vabbe', comunque il video e' disponibile su raiclick) e c'era la notizia del medico californiano che usava il grasso della liposuzione umana per farci del carburante (circa minuto 27 del video), la notizia su corriere.it.
Il tg2 chiosa con "(il medico scappa in sudamerica) finalmente LONTANO DALLA MAGISTRATURA della california" (l'enfasi e' mia), in buona fede uno potrebbe pensare che si italianizza un po' la storia e vabbe', in mala fede invece si potrebbe pensare che il messaggio da far passare e' "uno infrange la legge, la magistratura indaga dunque e' colpa della magistratura".
Fa inoltre un po' strano guardare il tg sul computer, c'e' il rischio di rendersi conto di cosa dicono.

don't exit bash on /etc with uncommitted changes

As explained before by Zack, it might happen that you co-administer a machine and have /etc under some VCS (which you should anyway by using etckeeper).
There are a few problems like detecting the identity of the committer and don't leave /etc with uncommitted changes so I recently came up with a slighly different solution than the one we thought two years ago (besides switching from bzr to git).
Take committer name/email from ~/.gitconfig of the user owning the tty or GIT_CONFIG or GIT_CONFIG_LOCAL if they are set.
Trap a function on shell's EXIT rather than loop on .bash_logout which applies only to login shell.
The resulting code to be put in /root/.bashrc:

git_functions="/path/to/git-etc-common"



# export GIT_* variables

if [ -f "$git_functions" ]; then

  . "$git_functions"

  git_export_env

fi



case $- in

*i*)    # interactive shell

  check_uncommitted(){

    if [ -f "$git_functions" ]; then

      . "$git_functions"

      if ! git_etc_status; then

        echo "Uncommitted changes to /etc found, please commit them"

        bash -$-

      fi

    fi

  }

  trap check_uncommitted EXIT

;;

esac

Where git-etc-common is to be found here.

RSSes for NEW available on ftp-master

The two RSS feeds previously at http://people.debian.org/~filippo/NEW_rss/ have been moved to a more proper location on ftp-master and the script (tools/queue_rss.py) merged into dak thanks to ganneff.

JFTR the script scans a directory with .changes files (which happens to be NEW in this case) and generates the said feeds, it is not tied to ftp-master and requires python-pyrss2gen and python-debian.

remote notification with irssi

I, like many others leave an IRC client always connected on a remote machine and my client of choice is irssi.
One good feature of graphical clients like xchat is the message notification when someone addresses you, which has the nice property to turn IRC from "pull" mode (you have to watch for notifications) to "push" mode (you get notified).
Notifications was the feature I missed the most from irssi so I hacked a solution:
Grab interesting messages from irssi and push them through an ssh tunnel, read them on the local machine and finally display them using libnotify. Implementation results follow:
- rnotify.pl is a script for irssi which pushes interesting messages to a local port
- notify-remote is a shell script to read messages on stdin and display them through notify-send
- esaurito the shell script to put it all together

ecce informazione

incappo per caso da reddit in questo link bimbe rom annegate - the independent che in effetti e' piuttosto grave (traduzione con google).
Cerco la notizia su repubblica, cosa trovo? Questo: http://www.repubblica.it/2008/07/sezioni/cronaca/napoli-annegate/napoli-annegate/napoli-annegate.html

Una lieve differenza di interpretazione, ma piccola eh.

update 27/07: claudio mi segnala che l'articolo in effetti c'e' nell'edizione di napoli http://napoli.repubblica.it/dettaglio/Annegano-due-bimbe-nomadi-tra-lindifferenza-dei-bagnanti/1490454 e la cosa diventa leggermente meno grave, nemmeno di troppo considerando la differenza di titoli

queste non le sentiremo piu'

B. sara' un pochino imbarazzato dalla pubblicazione sull'espresso delle intercettazioni a napoli http://espresso.repubblica.it/multimedia/2444353/1/1ma non c'e' da temere, non si potranno piu' sapere queste cose, e nemmeno queste http://gilioli.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/2008/06/20/queste-notizie-non-le-leggerete-piu/ si sarebbero potute sapere. Ci sono altre sfiziosita' che travaglio ci fa il piacere di raccontare qua http://it.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=B8A63E5F0786A732