Garbage collecting sessions in PHP
In PHP, sessions are by default stored in a file in a directory. Sessions can be specifically destroyed from within the code, for example when users logout explicitly, but frequently they do not. As a result session files tend to hang around, and cause the problem of how to clean them up. The standard way […]
My first Munin plugin
Munin is a great, really useful project for monitoring all sorts of things on servers over short and long term periods, and can help identify and even warn of undue server loads. It is also appropriately and poetically named for one of Odinn's crows (so I suppose I should have written this on a Wednesday). […]
Patent issues with card storage
I read from Slashdot that Microsoft is taking legal action against TomTom over a number of alleged patent violations. Three of these are apparently targeted at the Linux kernel in use by TomTom. Much of the focus of the discussion revolves around the use of FAT and FAT32 storage systems on media cards, and I […]
Importing data from lots of systems with PHP and Regular Expressions
Preamble: I found this article sitting as a draft for several years (2009), so the software release it mentions was years ago! But I figured I'd finally proof read and release the article since the problem it addresses is still a real one. On Friday I released version 4.1.0 of OPUS which has been in […]
Interview by FSFE
The FSFE recently interviewed me about my involvement with free software, and mainly, the education sector. You can read the interview here if you are interested.
Unusual dates
This Friday, the time from the start of the Unix Epoch will be 1234567890, as noticed by Linux Pro Magazine, and no doubt others. Mathematics, being in many ways really the study of patterns is always interested in these kind of things. We are now several years on from 19-11-1999 where all the digits in […]
Cooperation with higher education in open source projects
For some time now, I have been advocating that universities should create more free and open source solutions to fill the gaps needed within the education sector itself. Every year, thousands of computer science and engineering students in the UK alone rack their brains looking for undergraduate final year projects. Most of these will be […]
Free software and its relationship to Quality
Yesterday I was given an advance preview of a document for comment. It finished with a paragraph warning the audience that since it was discussing an open source solution it would require more in-house expertise to cope with it. I won't mention more about the context since while this exasperates me, it's not the fault […]
Destroying Hard Drives
Today, the BBC News website reported on a Which? Computing magazine article that claims that the physical destruction of a hard drive is essential to protect the data on it, citing that they had retrieved deleted files from second hand drives. For most folks in computing, the ability to retrieve deleted files is not surprising, […]
Crashing Cars, an answer?
Every year I attempt to visit my old PhD supervisor Brian McMaster (old in the sense that my PhD is now a thing of the past, I am making no reference to the man in question!) at Christmas time to have a quick natter and exchange gifts. I was squeezed for time this year since […]