Archives of December 2004
Upgrading MySQL from 4.0/Latin-1 to 4.1/UTF-8
I upgraded the MySQL database server powering this and a few other sites from 4.0 to 4.1. At the same time, I converted the data from Latin-1 to UTF-8, which proved to be a bit more complicated thing that I had anticipated. This is how it was done.
Backing up data and removal of 4.0
First, backing up of the entire 4.0 database. This was done with the superhandy MySQL utility mysqldump with the following command:mysqldump --opt --all-databases > d:\dump.sqlThere was 420Mb of data in sql form. However, MySQL can INSERT several rows with one command, so there is no one INSERT command per one row; it is much more compact.
Continue reading "Upgrading MySQL from 4.0/Latin-1 to 4.1/UTF-8"... (331 words)
Categories: Computers
Posted by Matias at 06.12.2004 21:47 (5 years ago) | 36 comments | 0 trackbacks
Reality check for security
Recently, I read Bruce Schneier's book Beyond Fear. It was quite an enlightening read: quite a few of the things the book was about were obvious in some intuitive level, but Schneier managed to formulate them in a logical manner. Even better, the formulation was very clear, consistent and easy to follow. Although the book was occassionally a bit tedious, it still was very entertaining to read, thanks to numerous examples. I especially liked those taken from the behavior or characteristics of different animals. Being both enlightening and entertaining is not very easily accomplished.
Continue reading "Reality check for security"... (598 words)
Categories: Literature
Posted by Matias at 07.12.2004 22:37 (5 years ago) | 295 comments | 0 trackbacks
The Rasterbator in the media
ReadyMade magazine is something I never had heard of until one day I got email titled "Press question". My first thought was that something had passed Thunderbird's spam filter, but it was a genuine email from their reporter, who wanted to write an article about The Rasterbator. She asked quite a lot of different things in a few emails and based the half-page article on them. The article turned out quite well, I reckon, she understood quite well all the motives and things behind being enthusiastic about the web and having too much time to do things - at least I'm quite happy about it.
Continue reading "The Rasterbator in the media"... (290 words)
Categories: Art, Creations
Posted by Matias at 08.12.2004 21:37 (5 years ago) | 20 comments | 0 trackbacks
Personification of the iPods
iPodWizard, a supercool application, can change the graphics of iPods thus allowing customization of iPods.
Kati wanted Aladdin Sane onto her iPod Mini (which is titled Ziggy). Naturally, I put the Papal Kekkonen onto mine. Now the flashing "Do not disconnect" signs will emanate papal blessings and rock decadence every second.
Categories: Gear
Posted by Matias at 09.12.2004 20:17 (5 years ago) | 13 comments | 0 trackbacks
Spam elimination by visual pattern recognizion
I'm getting so much junk mail that the sheer amount actually eases recognizing it. Thunderbird does a wonderful job in placing the spam messages into it's Junk folder, but although it never has done a false positive (determining that a non-spam email is spam), I do not trust it completely and want to glance through the junk mail titles before actually deleting them.
Continue reading "Spam elimination by visual pattern recognizion"... (199 words)
Categories: Computers
Posted by Matias at 11.12.2004 17:22 (5 years ago) | 35 comments | 0 trackbacks
The papalest present
Aarne and Stiina gave me a most original and cool birthday present, a book of Pope John Paul II cut-out paper dolls! All the characters in the book represent the Pope, although the two on the right side of the cover are somewhat creepy... The costume repertoaire is very thorough: even the Papal Skiing Outfit is included (however the book fails to mention it's Latin name).
Continue reading "The papalest present"... (91 words)
Posted by Matias at 21.12.2004 22:15 (5 years ago) | 27 comments | 0 trackbacks
Wintry Korpilahti
I spent a few days around Christmas at Korpilahti, which resulted in lots of new photos being added to the gallery, taken in both solar and lunar light.
It's been well over five years since the last time I walked around in Korpilahti and it's quite funny how I now perceived the village in totally different way. In lack of a better expression, things just made sense better than before, history-wise. I think I could disentangle the different layers leaved by different eras in town planning, buildings and infrastructure and deduce why things are the way they are now. The light green signs in red-brick municipal buildings are still ugly as hell and incomprehensible, but maybe they will be remembered in the future as a similar fad of tastelessness than rokoko.
Continue reading "Wintry Korpilahti"... (170 words)
Categories: Photography
Posted by Matias at 26.12.2004 11:18 (5 years ago) | 28 comments | 0 trackbacks
The Church of Horrors
Something to do on a Sunday evening with full moon and clear weather: photograph the Church of Kallio and photoshop the images to make them look like they are taken from an old horror movie. This means desaturation and high contrast. However, I chose not to add any noise, scratches or grain or otherwise lessen the quality.
Continue reading "The Church of Horrors"... (104 words)