vsftp is reporting times as GMT

It has baffled me for days that my ftp (vsftp) server shows
file timestamps in the wrong timezone: UTC
After some searching I found that there is a hidden option
for setting it.
(it isn't in the default config file /etc/vsftpd.conf)

Q) Help! vsftpd is reporting times as GMT times and not local times!
A) This behaviour can be changed with the setting "use_localtime=YES

After adding that to the end of /etc/vsftpd.conf, and doing:
sudo /etc/init.d/vsftpd restart

it works now!
Now why isn't this the default???
http://www.flux.org/pipermail/linux/2004-June/015484.html
http://vsftpd.beasts.org/vsftpd_conf.html

This got me thinking is it some sort of a standard that ftp servers return timestamps in utc?

colemak

I have some time off from work and decided it is time to
finally learn and use the colemak keyboard layout.
This is one of my new year resolutions, and I cannot
explain how exited I am about this. I'm actually typing
this post using it, but its still slow going.

I had some trouble getting it to work in ktouch, but I figured it out:
http://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?pid=4378#p4378

I also had some trouble convincing kubuntu to handle the capslock key
as a backspace key. The final solution for me was to make a little script,
and get it to run when kde starts up.
script:

#!/bin/bash

#setup capslock -> backspace (nice for colemak)
xmodmap -e "remove Lock = Caps_Lock"
xset r 66

run it automatically:
system settings -> advanced -> autostart

I practised for 30-45 minutes per day and I learn more keys every day.
Some of the nice things about Colemak for me are:

1. You learn the common keys first, so you can actually start typing quite soon. (You can type a lot by just using the home row.)
2. You are forced to touchtype, because looking at the keyboard doesn't help (assuming you didn't swap your keys, which I recommend.)
3. Most of your short cut keys are in the same position.

I found these finger stretches quite handy:

1. http://ergotrading.net/officeathlete/ergonomics/Nine_Stretches_and_Alternative_Instructions/FingerStretch.htm
2. http://www.rsiwarrior.com/stretches.html
3. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/stretching/WL00030

Symbolic link not allowed

I got the following nasty exception in my /var/log/apache2/error_log,
and it took me too long to figure out how to fix it:

Symbolic link not allowed or link target not accessible: /opt/gforge5/plugins/scmbzr

Where in my case /opt/gforge5/plugins/scmbzr is a symlink to somewhere else.
I checked and rechecked all my permissions, but nothing worked.

So eventually it turns out that for every directory in the path where you have symlinks, you need something like:

<directory>
    Options FollowSymLinks
</directory>

(because I have a symlink in plugins called scmbzr)

Thanks a LOT to Ivan Van Laningham who mentioned this on some mailinglist:
http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users@python.org/msg44430.html