I’ve released another small project. This time a statistics generator for IRC, written in Perl under GPLv2. This release comes only four years late (but hey, I finally got around to ticking off this release from my todo list). It only understands irssi logs. And is partly broken & unfinished, too.
The idea was to be similar to pisg – but much more detailed with personal stats for each and every nick. In other words, statistics, statistics, and more statistics – which is the whole point with IRC statistics generators (duh).
A screenshot:
And an example output for a channel.
This one is only available via ViewGit @ code.fealdia.org:
Note that I’m not exactly sure where the spring embedder algorithm is from. It’s ripped from my “scripts” project’s snet.pl, which in turn suffers from similar “no clue of source” problem. If you know, enlighten me :-}
releases irssi, projects, releases
Exception in thread “main” sun.jvm.hotspot.debugger.UnmappedAddressException
Googling didn’t help much, so in case anyone else is looking for solution to this problem: my case was that I was running the java process using 1.6 and running jmap of java 1.5.
Bitten by Debian java alternatives once again…
$ readlink -f $(which jmap)
The above command is your friend when checking what version you are using. To set the version explicitly to 1.6:
$ update-alternatives –set jmap /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/bin/jmap
$ update-alternatives –set jhat /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/bin/jhat
tips java, tips
Firefox 3 uses SQLite for history, places and various other things. These databases occasionally need VACUUMing. Quoting SQLite manual:
When an object (table, index, or trigger) is dropped from the database, it leaves behind empty space. This makes the database file larger than it needs to be, but can speed up inserts. In time inserts and deletes can leave the database file structure fragmented, which slows down disk access to the database contents.
NOTE: You need to shut down Firefox to run VACUUM.
The following commands can be used to VACUUM all FF3 sqlite databases:
$ cd ~/.mozilla/firefox/$profile/
$ tar -cf backup.tar *.sqlite # take a backup if paranoid
$ for i in *.sqlite; do sqlite3 $i vacuum; done
The difference can be quite large. For example, urlclassifier3.sqlite before and after for me:
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 55226368 2008-11-16 13:31 urlclassifier3.sqlite
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 29134848 2008-11-16 13:35 urlclassifier3.sqlite
So that file shrunk to about 52%. Happy vacuuming! 
tips tips
Some days ago I ran into some free software project website which used an Arcsin template. The themes on the site seem to be pretty neat, and best of all, free to use for any purpose (the author merely states that the attribution part must be done by linking back to the website).
Anyway, I suggest to check these out – there is a nifty preview feature as well, so no time wasted trying out something that you wouldn’t like. 
I’ve changed this blog to use the Colorvoid theme for now…
Update 2008-11-16: Okay, there is one serious flaw (in my opinion) in these themes. And that is the fact that they are fixed-width (including images, so it’s not a trivial task to fix them). The smileys also appear in boxes that disrupt the text flow, which is quite annoying.
tips site
AUSTRALIA’S mandatory net filter is being primed to block 10,000 websites as part of a blacklist of unspecified “unwanted content”.
Australian web filter to block 10,000 internet sites | Herald Sun
newspicks censorship
We see all sorts of ridiculous patent applications and patents, but my favorites tend to be the patents that have to do with patents themselves (such as the patent app on a method for filing a patent). However, the folks over at Patently-O have highlighted a fascinating patent application from an attorney at Halliburton, which appears to be an attempt to patent the process of patent trolling.
Techdirt: Halliburton Tries To Patent Form Of Patent Trolling
newspicks
China is not new to censoring the Internet, but up until now, BitTorrent sites have never been blocked. Recently however, several reports came in from China, indicating that popular BitTorrent sites such as Mininova, isoHunt and The Pirate Bay had been hijacked. The sites became inaccessible, instead redirecting to the leading Chinese search engine Baidu.
China Hijacks Popular BitTorrent Sites | TorrentFreak
newspicks
Not-so-surprising news from UK:
Under Government plans to monitor internet traffic, raw data would be collected and stored by the black boxes before being transferred to a giant central database.
Internet black boxes to record every email and website visit – Telegraph
newspicks privacy, runforthehills
