RRDtool is extremely popular, and we don’t have any problems with it crashing… once it is installed. I must say, it can be quite difficult to get compiled and running properly on different operating systems. It seems like every time I try it on a new Linux distribution there is a whole new host of issues to deal with, more so than most mature open source projects.

We’re willing to put up with these problems because we haven’t found anything better at this particular problem.

I found this note when googling with words “gnuplot” “rrdtool”.
And all I want to say is: Rrdtool is more like a pioneer’s (aka newbie’s) project.
For example: rrdcgi tool (intended to process html-templates) randomly segfaults without any reasons leaving no notices.
Actually I was searching for a rrdgraph-scenario to gnuplot-scenario converter and still being unsuccesful.
rrdtool is best at collecting, preprocessing and storing data values, but it’s graphing capabilities,
being so cool-looking, still are too poor, when compared to real graphing software.
Still, I do not understand why Tobias (rrdtool author) had to reinvent it’s own grapher instead of making
good templates (or even better - template generator) for software like gnuplot or any other.
It smells like a pioneer’s approach…

Right now I’m stuck on rrdtool; the perl bindings won’t work. Ugh.

Just today I wanted to show off my new SMS tone to a coworker. While I was tapping away at buttons trying to get a sample of the sound, another coworker sitting next to us sent me an SMS and it rang before I could find the tone. This is not an efficient interface.

One thing I was really expecting to miss switching from the BB to the iPhone is the ability to dial without looking at the phone. The physical feedback meant I could dial a phone number while driving (that would be picked up on my car’s bluetooth) without taking my eyes off the road. No can do with the iPhone (with the exception of putting one person on speed dial with the CallMe app - requires jailbreaking).

I do miss the ability to forward select mail to the device and have it reliably show up there. I could use the data connection for things like nagios pages without having all my work mail showing up on the blackberry. Again, no can do with the iPhone - I’m stuck using SMS (which is actually turning out ok, now that I have a good alert tone).

Anyway. Thanks for the blog.

@deadbum, that alarm kicks butt, but it was a bit too much for me. I was threatened with getting kicked out of bed if it ever went off in the middle of the night…

I made my own which actually is pretty loud, though it doesn’t seem so during the day. It’s linked from my blog post about it: http://blog.hartshorne.net/2008/10/new-iphone-sms-alert.html

For those out there for whom the klaxon is a bit too much, you’re welcome to steal http://ben.hartshorne.net/random/Japanese_Bell.aif (changing its name, of course, to sms-received#.caf - I chose 4 because I hate that horn).

-maplebed

dosen’t work!

1. Unix is from the 70’s primarily, and not the the 60’s. In fact, an amusing artifact of the unix time system is that it doesn’t really acknowledge time before Jan 1, 1970, at least not in the primary time API. (I also once worked with an OS that didn’t believe in time before 1980, but that system is pretty much defunct now.)

2. People have been working on Unix for 30+ years; the unix of today is probably as different from the original kernels as today’s microprocessors are from the mini-computers of that time. (Mini-computers are the size of a large refridgerator up to a small van)

3. My rant (which is 3+ years old now) says nothing about usability. I’m generally of the opinion that Windows as a UI is perfectly fine in general, far superior in usability to pretty much all others that have ever come along. In fact, I would say that in terms of making computers approachable to “normal” people, only Windows and Mac OS succeeded in a big way. (And by “big way,” I don’t mean money; I mean in actually enabling normal people to use a computer productively.)

4. Note that I also said nothing about “installing and customizing systems.” This rant is not “gee, everyone should use Linux” rant. I love Linux as a server OS, or as a basis for making a stable embedded appliance (e.g. Tivo, phones, whatever). But it’s not, by itself, a solution for desktop computers for normal people. And it won’t be unless a single company with a clear vision invests vast amount of time and money to make a GUI, like Microsoft and Apple have done. I don’t know if such a company exists.

5. The OS is not the UI. Mac OS X is built on a Mach/BSD base. Various Linux UIs (though I think they are not sufficiently clean for the general population) are all built on Linux. Windows, unfortunately, was built on the parochial kernel that is Windows, and actually derives a lot conceptually from VMS, another proprietary OS that was popular back in the 70s and 80s. Microsoft engineers, while smart, are not as smart as the world’s entire computer science population put together.

Cheers,

billo