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Informal scribblings

Here's some stuff I've jotted down on a variety of subjects which I hope may be useful to someone. You might also like to look at this page.

  1. The Patent Cold War

    Quentin Stafford-Fraser

    The current patent system is something of a farce. Almost everybody involved in it knows this, but it's a game we all have to keep playing because nobody can afford to be the first one to stop.

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  2. The Importance of XML

    Quentin Stafford-Fraser

    I suspect there may be a great deal of confusion amongst non-technical people about what it is, exactly, that the much-hyped XML gives you. There's no shortage of confusion amongst technical people, too. So here's my attempt to summarise why it is so important.

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  3. Building Debian/Ubuntu packages using SCons

    Background

    At CamVine we've been using the scons build utility as a replacement for our old make-based system. Sometimes it can be slightly non-intuitive, but we haven't had anything like the depths of confusion that can occur in a big complex system using make. If you haven't tried scons, I'd recommend it. I'd also recommend that you stop reading this and go and learn how to use it first, because this will assume some familiarity.

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  4. Getting up to speed with Ensim WEBppliance

    If you rent a linux-based server from a hosting company now, there's a fair chance it will come with a 'friendly' web-based interface. For a few years, I've been using a Cobalt RaQ3, which was lovely. I'm now moving onto a machine which uses Ensim's WEBppliance software and which isn't nearly so nice, though you could argue that it has more features.

    It's moderately easy to find your way through the web interface, but it's less obvious what's going on under the skin, particularly if you're used to a normal RedHat machine.

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  5. Locking down the GNOME desktop

    I was setting up a multi-user Ndiyo system, which was based on the Ubuntu Linux distribution. But this was going into a public internet-cafe-type situation where I didn't want users to be able to do things like reconfigure the network or delete items from the menus. I gather this is easier to manage under KDE, but we had gone far enough with the default Gnome configuration that it didn't make sense to change.

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  6. How I survived the move from Palm to Windows CE

    Quentin Stafford-Fraser
    July 2001
    Update - epilogue, May 2002

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  7. The Web - the Absolute Basics

    Note: I've no idea when I first wrote this - but I've kept it around for historical interest!

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  8. Creating Drupal content using Python

    I wanted to import data into Drupal from elsewhere - in my case, from XML exported by another system.

    Perhaps the easiest way to interface with Drupal at a simple level is to use the Services module. This lets you, for example, create applications in other languages which can create, list, or update Drupal content. There is a mix of documentation for it, some of which is a bit dated.

    So here's a quick example of how you can use a Python program to create a node in Drupal. Hope this helps to get you started if you need to do something similar.

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