Well, actually I’m just telling you the obvious: der-eremit.de has got a new theme. The header still needs some re-work, and their might be a few rendering issues, but all at all this is the new look.

In my previous post, I already mentioned that I there has been a little clean up. Additionally I’ve added a some new things to page:

• using WP-PageNavi for paging now
• Using qTranslate for multi-language support (theme isn’t ready for multi-language)
• removed widget-support (classic sidebars are quite more simple to style)
• and much more

Better late than never, but I’ve done some ‘house’ cleaning yesterday and today. There have been a whole bunch of plugins that I wanted to get rid off; amongst other plugins that have been NextGen Gallery, WP-PostRatings, WP-Downloads and the Contact Form. Furthermore I shrinked the page amount (Downloads, Sitemap, Gallery, Tools are gone), cleaned up the options as well as the database itself. Finally I also finished the prototype of the new blog theme, which will be online in a few days.

I recently had the problem to install some PERL modules from CPAN with a non-root user. As a non-root user you won’t be able to install modules in non-system locations (system location would be: /usr/bin, /usr/lib). Luckily you can also install modules into your home directory. First you need to determine wether or not you need to configure CPAN.

perl -MCPAN -e shell

This might result in the following error message:

  Your configuration suggests "/root/.cpan" as your
  CPAN.pm working directory. I could not create this directory due
  to this error: mkdir /root/.cpan: Permission denied at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/CPAN.pm line 553

If you don’t get this error message you are already done and you can stop reading. Otherwise you need to re-configure CPAN for your personal use.

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mkdir -p ~/lib/perl5
echo 'export PERL5LIB=${PERL5LIB}:~/lib/perl5:~/lib/perl5/lib:~/lib/perl5/lib/i586-linux-thread-multi/' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
mkdir -p ~/.cpan/CPAN
echo "\$CPAN::Config = {}"> ~/.cpan/CPAN/MyConfig.pm
perl -MCPAN -e shell

NOTE: the shell variable PERL5LIB also contains an architecture dependent lib-path. So it might be that you need to change that part of the lib-path, e.g. from ~/lib/perl5/lib/i586-linux-thread-multi/ to ~/lib/perl5/lib/i386-linux-thread-multi/ or whatever your system matches.

Accept all the defaults (as long as you don’t want to make any special settings) until you reach the following question:

  Every Makefile.PL is run by perl in a separate process. Likewise we
  run 'make' and 'make install' in processes. If you have any
  parameters (e.g. PREFIX, LIB, UNINST or the like) you want to pass
  to the calls, please specify them here.
 
  If you don't understand this question, just press ENTER.
 
  Parameters for the 'perl Makefile.PL' command?
  Typical frequently used settings:
 
  PREFIX=~/perl non-root users (please see manual for more hints)

Give the following answer:

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PREFIX=~/lib/perl5 LIB=~/lib/perl5/lib INSTALLMAN1DIR=~/lib/perl5/man1 INSTALLMAN3DIR=~/lib/perl5/man3
...

That’s it, now you should be able to install PERL modules from CPAN via the CPAN shell.

Drone is a german Trash Metal/Metalcore Band that won the international metal battle contest of 2006 at the Wacken Open Air. Here’s the opening track of their debut album “Juggernaut”:

Just saw an interview with Tim Schafer (Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle) of Double Fine Productions in the weekend about their upcoming action adventure Brütal Legend (or on wikipedia).

The game will feature the character of Eddie Riggs, voiced by Jack Black, a roadie who is accidentally transported to a fantasy world inspired by the artwork of heavy metal album covers. Eddie becomes the world’s savior, leading the down-trodden humans against a range of supernatural overlords using a battle axe, his Flying V guitar infused with magical powers, and a customizable hot rod. In addition to Black, the game will feature voices of both heavy metal musicians including Lemmy Kilmister, Rob Halford, Ozzy Osbourne and Lita Ford and other celebrities such as Tim Curry, as well as several metal songs selected by Schafer for inclusion in the game.

Here’s the E3 trailer:

I’ve to confess that I’m a huge fan of the Elder Scrolls series — I guess I spent 1,5 years on Morrowind and it’s expansion packs and currently I’m deeply into Oblivion and back in the old days, I also played Arena and Daggerfall.

As Elder Scrolls is now celebrating it’s 15th Anniversary, Bethesda decided to release Daggerfall as a FREE download (by the way, there you will also find The Elder Scrolls: Arena, which has been published as a FREE download five years ago).

Arena and Daggerfall can be run via DOSBox — a DOS emulator.

Many thanks to Bethesda for the free download and the great work/games over the years. You are just awesome — not to say: GODS!

Just a few tech related/nerdish jokes, I’ve found over the time here and there. Most of the stuff is quite old, but I thought there are worth to share anyways.

A young programmer and his project manager board a train headed through the mountains on its way to Wichita. They can find no place to sit, except for two seats right across the aisle from a young woman and her grandmother. After a while, it’s obvious that the young woman and the young programmer are interested in each other, because they are giving each other looks. Soon the train passes into a tunnel and it is pitch black. There is a sound of a kiss followed by the sound of a slap.

When the train emerges from the tunnel, the four sit there without saying a word. The grandmother is thinking to herself, “It was very brash for that young man to kiss my granddaughter, but I’m glad she slapped him.”

The project manager is sitting there thinking, “I didn’t know they young tech was brave enough to kiss the girl, but I sure wish she hadn’t missed him when she slapped me!”

The young woman was sitting and thinking, “I’m glad the guy kissed me, but I wish my grandmother had not slapped him!”

The young programmer sat there with a satisfied smile on his face. He thought to himself, “Life is good. How often does a guy have the chance to kiss a beautiful girl and slap his project manager all at the same time!”

Read the rest of this entry »

Nicholas Zakas, Principal Front End Engineer at Yahoo!, posted an interesting read about Extreme JavaScript Compression with YUI Compressor on Slideshare.

Thanks to Josi for pointing my interest to it.