Do you use Debian? I do, for my laptop and servers. It's the coolest.

The problem with Debian has always been, what stream do you use? There's stable (woody), testing (sarge) and unstable (sid). Side note: the releases are named after Toy Story characters, with the unstable release always being called sid - he was the kid next door that used to blow his toys up ;) So what do you do when you're running woody on your firewall, but want the SNMP packages from sarge or sid? You investigate apt- pinning right here!

First thing, you need to change your entries in /etc/apt/sources.list so that you have all three streams shown as package sources. It needs to look like this:

Then you need to tell apt what distribution you want to use as the default. Also, because the cache might not be big enough to handle packages from all three streams, you need to bump its size up a little. You might not have an /etc/apt/apt.conf, so make one

Lastly, we edit /etc/apt/preferences (again, this might need to be made) so it has the pinning order, that is, the order in which preferences will be weighted

Now run an update (apt-get update). You should have now instructed your Debian system to use all three pools of packages, and the preference order in which to use them. To force another pool you use the -t switch, like this:

Hopefully somone will find this useful; I know I sure have. There's more information available on the Debian apt-get HOWTO page, and this Apt-Pinning for Beginners page

I went to Google and entered:

how many pounds in a kilo?

Check out the results. Google rules.

News just in, Charisma Carpenter (who played Cordelia Chase in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and more recently Angel) has apparently had a photoshoot with Playboy! The photos were taken on the 10th of February, and will be seen in a summer issue, relative to the United States that is. The current rumour is that it's likely to be in the May issue.

And for those fans concerned with "taste" apparently it's "nudity from the waist up," which suits me fine. No objections from me :)

Make sure you see if it's out before you head back Withered! :)

Delightful!

Here's a comment I made in reply to one of Emma's recent Live Journal posts. I think it warrants its own post here, because it's something I feel quite strong about. Read her post, then check out what I have to say, and leave some comments.

It's kind of like The Matrix: you're only stressed if you think you are. You've been stress crazy for as long as I can remember (just after Richie got back from his trip last year...), but I really think it's because you want to be. Sadistic? Maybe.

This has been a Matt service announcement, in the interest of healthier, happier friends.

What do you all think? Am I living in Fairy Land, or do people let stress get to them too often? Is stress the whipping-boy of the new milennium?

I was talking with Adam earlier today, and he said there was apparently some news coverage regarding Apple's fixed-pricing structure, even considering the strong Australian Dollar. I've been attracted to the iPods for a while, so I thought they'd be a good base for me to do some currency tests on. Here's what I found.

The iPod comes in 3 models currently (not including the iPod Mini). They are a 15GB, a 20GB and a 40GB model. Here's a quick pricing table I knocked up to demonstrate the differences in cost.

So there we have it... proof that Mark should buy an iPod while he's in the States. For all of us. And the 40GB ones at that.

Edit: 30/3/2004 - 12:27AM
I've found this article from early March which is the foundation for what we were discussing.