upgraded to linux kernel 4.8

I upgraded my Linux Mint 18.1 to the 4.8 kernel and was left without network and sound. To fix that all I needed to do was to install the linux-image-extra, which I don't remember ever needing to install explicitly:


sudo apt-get install linux-image-extra-4.8.0-52-generic


Saving here because it took me a couple of hours until I got to this solution.

update on Gedit plugin to format JSON

what changed: $j->canonical([1]) - this will sort the keys in the json objects

#!/usr/bin/env perl 

use strict;
use JSON::XS;
local $/ = undef;
my $content = ;

my $j = JSON::XS->new->utf8->pretty(1);
$j->canonical([1]);
my $output = $j->encode($j->decode($content));

print $output;

build dstep on Linux Mint 17.2

while trying to build dstep (a tool to convert C header files to D modules):

$ dub
Running pre-generate commands for dstep...
Performing "debug" build using dmd for x86_64.
dstep 0.2.2+commit.121.gf55746e: building configuration "default"...
Linking...
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lclang
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
--- errorlevel 1
dmd failed with exit code 1.

Had all the clang libs (including the *-dev packages) installed but it did not change. Here was the solution:

$sudo su -
#cd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
#ln -s libclang.so.1 libclang.so

setting up printer Brother HL-1212W on Linux Mint 17.2

it was underwhelming:

Click on the Mint button-> search for Printers -> add printer -> Network -> wait 1 second until the printer is found and the name is shown -> add it -> pick the recommended driver -> print test page to make sure. Total time: about 3 minutes.

You need to configure it to connect to the wireless network from windows first though.

using UUIDs as primary keys in MySQL

Using uuids as primary keys efficiently in MySQL: see this Store UUID in an optimized way, it has benchmarks and everything you might need; apparently their way is a bit more efficient than using large integers and a lot more efficient than using the UUID strings.

Also interesting Storing UUID Values in MySQL Tables.

amusing Mojolicious error


Can't use string ("Zug::CMS::Admin::Users") as a HASH ref while "strict refs" in use
at Mojo::Base::__ANON__(~/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.20.2/lib/site_perl/5.20.3/Mojo/Base.pm line 59



The problem was I had a new sub in "Zug::CMS::Admin::Users" ; renamed the new and everything works fine.

poor man's web analytics

"000000-0" is part of the name of a tracking image I use on another personal site. To count unique IPs which visited that site I use the command line

grep 000000-0 access.log | awk '{ print $1 }' | uniq -c