graham brookins’s blog

I found a little shortcut to view past month’s detailed stats view within awstats.

Simply append the following url paramiters into your awstats url ‘?year=2006&month=09′.

Example
http://stats.example.com/
http://stats.example.com/?year=2006&month=09

I’m supprized another user of awstats has not promoted these keywords yet in google! I’m even further suprized there is not already an addon component or patch which adds a javascript forward / back navigation links to use these urls hooks to provide clickable functionality (which could only assume the stats would exist) as a hack but a functional hack.

Right back to why has awstats reporting views have stagnated while other non-free packages sway users with higher quality / relavance in report views …

Awstats url sucess!

I noticed today that the free software community members have spoken clearly over say the last 6 months, purely as an example of a much longer arc.Their answer to the world has been, we support GNU, the FSF, including the GPLv3.

For example taking an item from the news and events around the world, if the leaders, maintainers, developers, distributors, Linus do not consult the members of their own community (Linux,kernel.org) on the licensing, securing, protecting, engaging of the contributors ( http://gplv3.fsf.org/ has for GNU and Free Software) then what will become of developers who value and protect their freedom? I suspect they will look for other existing efforts to achieve their goals without forsaking their freedom.

I know the GNU System is no one operating system, server, application, software package, component, kernel, ad nauseam. All pieces are replaceable, interchangeable and reusable, but not always redistributable ;D

We learned this from the story of the GNU tar program and the GNU gunzip (otherwise known as gzip).

This was proven again (if not many times before) by the transition from XFree86 to Xorg. XFree86 a front for the x consortium (old world player for everyone) and Xorg the young upstart to protect freedom. Xorg also devastated XFree86 very quickly by accepting contribution and engaging it’s community in ways XFree86 had always refused to the detriment of everyone in all our communities.

The net benefit from XFree86’s non-gpl-compatible license changes (without engaging their community) was a very large improvement to the community, new, better, more stable, more feature rich, more flexible, more free X11 package (Base GUI / Desktop System Service).

I have been watching the GNU Hurd for sometime, watching it’s activity. I’ve learned a lot about the Hurd; more than enough to also pine for the Hurd’s triumphal return to popularity in the wake of the current events in the free software community and all things kernel related.

A number of people point out how clear it is that Linus while he is using the GNU GPLv2, Linus appears to only truly support the freedoms of others, under gpl-incompatible notions more akin to BSD than Free Software and Copyleft.

Back to the Hurd, I have not spent enough time trying to get a copy running on my own machine for the most basic hobieing. I foolishly (like others tho …) keep looking for that one build/distro of the Hurd (to help me quickly install the system for testing …), that I can pop a iso text installer into a computer and install a FSF/RMS Approved/Sponsored copy of the GNU Hurd + System.I know if I was just a little more tenacious I could get build of the Hurd running on some spare hardware and start helping others fully enjoy all of their freedom. Still, I can’t wait for GNU Hurd licensed under the GNU GPL v3 for all my free software computers.

Seems like a good time to try again and try harder!

I admit, I could easily have over looked something simple (a given) but I don’t get why almost no one seems to have pointed out that ubuntu is different from Debian or other GNU/Linux distributions in that they name the package myodbc a bit differently?

I was following some of the reference material for connecting open office’s base2 to a mysql database and use the tools to build something with it, you know … for fun.

See … in Ubuntu GNU/Linux Instead of calling the package myodbc they call it libmyodbc, this was a bit confusing an took me awhile to figure out to properly configure odbc to work with my mysql database.

I love apt

# apt-get install libmyodbc mysql-client mysql-server unixodbc odbcinst1debian1 libmysqlclient12

I had wanted for some time to test the oobase2 functionality I had heard about in open office’s database frontend component which offers the ability to connect, open and work with a MySQL database inside open office via an odbc connection.

ODBC / MySQL Settings for Ubuntu

$ cat /etc/odbcinst.ini
[MySQL]
Description = MySQL driver
Driver = /usr/lib/odbc/libmyodbc.so
Setup = /usr/lib/odbc/libodbcmyS.so
CPTimeout =
CPReuse =

$ cat /etc/odbc.ini
[leads]
Description = Leads MySQL database leads
Driver = MySQL
Server = localhost
Database = leads
Port = 3306

# /etc/init.d/mysql start
# mysqladmin -u root create leads -p
# isql -v leads graham publish
# oobase2

The Reason

Now I had a real reason … not like they care. I need a lead / contact management system.

Specifically to document and track … Employment Opportunities, Employment Firms, Employment Contacts, Opportunity Status, Opportunity Details. I could also use a call log, notes, and a bunch of other little things.

This all started from a perspective of job seeker, new to the scene, trying to document the people, companies, contact, job details one really should track when looking for a job and talking with a lot of different people about a lot of different jobs. Hint: Headhunters get really really rude and upset if they find out you have already been applied for a position by another staffing firm! Lesson Learned …

Tracking it all by hand is just insane

I don’t really believe it is possible to track 100% all of the information involved all the time, or track it all and give a good interview over the phone at the same time. That said, with good tools you can make a sizeable dent at the problem, I’m not beat yet.

Though, if you are like me you could easily submit over 35 different entries online via email, website (via any other of the hundreds if not thousands of smaller job sites that require registration but do very little for a person after registration), or talk with over 25 different people over the phone in a single week and complete over 5 different in person first round interviews. They really expect you track all of this yourself, including the over 75% of them which you never hear from again and gain employment through all of it.

It gets worse

All of these sites, firms, companies, every one of them want a lot from the job seeker but rarely provide very much to the masses who frequent them. Case in point, where is the web service support from these companies to help a job seeker from duplicate submission or job status tracking through out the interview / employment process? Your little more a short term commodity to them or something …

These people should be offering tools to help the job seeker rather than treat them like rats in the maze. From wishlist, submission, followup, closed or hired … few really offer much more than resume spamming services and badly at that …

I actually had someone ask for my ssn over the phone in a cold call, I was horrified. It just served to remind me … it’s a cement jungle out there.

Demand more ..

I just want them to at least offer more for my information I am giving out, they make a lot of money off of us and our information.

They compete against each other but few are raising the bar of services offered.

All I want is all the about my information, my submission information + timestamps made available via authenticated ssl xml so I can suck it into my own web based tracking app / service.

What more harm can they do by giving us back the information we have access to already, in an actually useful format? They already spam the world with the details of our lives without real thought or planning.

The reality is this is the way it is and it’s hardly going to change any time soon, you can’t fake or make people care about the people who use your service like job seekers, if you view them as a sea of things to be used rather than empowered and teamed with …
I would not want to work for them :\

Looking for something like this …

Man must have had developed tens of thousands of them over the course of time. I did not see a single one which was targeted towards my needs or purpose, let alone licensed as free or open source software written with a web application or GNU/Linux kid in mind… grrr.

Updated: Proof that I am not alone and that the industry will (all be it slowly) move in this direction. Just look for the job sites providing rss feeds for jobs and more people to insist on open xml formats to encompase employee / job information.

References:
- OpenOffice.org 1.0, ODBC, and MySQL ‘How-to’
- Connecting Openoffice.org’s Writer and MySQL on Debian GNU/Linux
- OpenOffice Base And MySQL
- Adding New User Accounts to MySQL

I saw this interesting post this morning on digg and software-quality blog. Ideas to guide us all in the quality of our work in life.

Basics of the Unix Philosophy
From Eric Raymond’s “The Art of Unix Programming” I picked here the 17 rules described as the Basics of the Unix Philosophy. For me these are also rules for writing high quality software:

Rule of Modularity: Write simple parts connected by clean interfaces.
Rule of Clarity: Clarity is better than cleverness.
Rule of Composition: Design programs to be connected with other programs.
Rule of Separation: Separate policy from mechanism; separate interfaces from engines.
Rule of Simplicity: Design for simplicity; add complexity only where you must.
Rule of Parsimony: Write a big program only when it is clear by demonstration that nothing else will do.
Rule of Transparency: Design for visibility to make inspection and debugging easier.
Rule of Robustness: Robustness is the child of transparency and simplicity.
Rule of Representation: Fold knowledge into data, so program logic can be stupid and robust.
Rule of Least Surprise: In interface design, always do the least surprising thing.
Rule of Silence: When a program has nothing surprising to say, it should say nothing.
Rule of Repair: Repair what you can — but when you must fail, fail noisily and as soon as possible.
Rule of Economy: Programmer time is expensive; conserve it in preference to machine time.
Rule of Generation: Avoid hand-hacking; write programs to write programs when you can.
Rule of Optimization: Prototype before polishing. Get it working before you optimize it.
Rule of Diversity: Distrust all claims for one true way.
Rule of Extensibility: Design for the future, because it will be here sooner than you think.

Or even rules for living a high quality life !

I saw this come through my mail this morning.

A very interesting (to me, heh, only) prolly look at
eZ systems, eZ publish and the PHP community
and their sampleing, interaction and usage of each
other’s work.
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