A very good link to know more about ELF files

Was searching the net to learn about the structure of ELF files. This was a godsend:

Linux Forums - understanding ELF

Cygwin + Poderosa = bye bye cmd.exe

Does your job require you to boot up your box in Windows instead of Ubuntu? Do you miss the vi-mode on the command line? Do you become nostalgic at the mention of multiple shell tab sessions? Do you feel like bashing your boss's head if he says he won't shell out any extra money to buy you a shiny new Windows power shell (I think it should be worth a try)

Fear not, for the open source world has made efforts to bring you closer to your $HOME.
 
Cygwin - a Linux like environment for Windows gives you all the tools that you missed on cmd.exe - find, grep, ls and many more. You can download Cygwin from Cygwin home

Just remember one thing - when you install it for the first time - do a basic installation - i.e. do not select too many packages. Let the default installation do its job. You can always add new packages by running the setup again (no - it won't erase the previous setup - that's just cygwin's way of adding new packages).

Speeding up ppm module installation

Now that I have to (not that I want to) work on Windows, I am doing what I can to make my experience on it as comfortable as it was on Ubuntu - at least for the command line part. So a few initial posts will contain links, tips and all that I did to break the barriers of cmd.exe. Irony - I am blogging from my roommate's stylish Dell Studio XPS which is running Ubuntu :)

I recently installed Active state Perl and while playing along I tried to do a few module installations. Invoking ppm-shell gives you a cpan shell like prompt where in you can install all the modules that Active state has to offer. A serious pain in this process is that after downloading and installing each module, it generates HTML as a part of its document repository and this slows down the installation to a great extent.

And what does that deny you? No more under 30 second installs of File::ReadBackwards and trying to see if the apache access log when read backwards spouts out satanic verses. :)

So I did what I do when I am caught in a fix like this - Seek the wisdom of the monks. And as always, I leave the monastery with a happy grin. Following is the link to my post and the replies:

Perl monks query

I have always got a reply to my queries on perlmonks.org within 2-3 hours of my posting a question. I guess that's their unwritten SLA :)