Kosmokaryote .plan

Thumbnailing in Nautilus

2008-08-31T13:46:00.000-04:00

I was just using my laptop and things started slowing down and swapping like crazy and the other application began freezing. Not this again, I though. So, I switched to doing some tasks on the command-line where I got the notice that there was insufficient space left on my hard disk!

Oh dear, I thought, this must be because of the GNOME source code and my build of it. Well, I went about looking for other sources of junk to remove to free some small amount of space. Eventually. A few megabytes here, a few megabytes there. Actually a rather small lunch, but throwing stuff away can be expensive for my heart. Then, however, I found my free lunch! When I tried to check the size of the ~/.thumbnails directory, nothing happened! It kept working on it, and working on it, and working on it, to no avail. I thought: does the programme do anything stupid that requires more space than I have free? Well, that seemed improbable, so I decided to do a heuristic: find out how many files there are there and the average size of a small set of them. I had about 190,000 thumbnails averaging 50kB each! 36 minutes later, they were removed and I had 9GB back!

Some things I wish thumbnailing in GNOME would do:

prevent thumbnails from being generated for files within ~/.thumbnails. (That way, you won't infinitely generate them for infinitely many of them
either generate the hashed filenames from a hash of the actual file and not its path, so that way, if I move it or make a duplicate, I won't end up with multiple thumbnails; OR, when files are moved (at least in GNOME applications, which doesn't help my terminal behaviour), find the old thumbnail hashed from the old path and then rename it to a hash of the new path. I can see how the first would slow down thumbnailing, though I have a suspicion that the image down sampling isn't that fast either.
Better file system organisation of thumbnails. Right now, tens of thousands will accumulate in ~/.thumbnails/normal :|
A limit and some accurate way to determine when it was last used, so we can purge ones we never look at after a few months.

So, it's Open Source: why don't I try to do some of this myself? Well, I might, once I get work out of the way to-day :)

Back It Up.

2008-08-26T02:53:00.001-04:00

Blogger has changed its user interface slightly again. I am also back to using the "Blogger in Draft" dashboard. Yay.

I'm mostly writing this to document the copy command I use to merge directories these days:

cp -av --backup=numbered foo/* foo2/

I'm terrified of dataloss. That's why I use --backup=numbered. I usually merge too many files to make -i interactivity viable. -v verbosity helps me find out what things were backed up (would have conflicted), and -a preserves permissions and timestamps.

Actually, I think I should further investigate rsync. I want something that won't create backups if the files are truly the same (by checksum, or is time+size enough?) but does create unique backups elsewise. Actually, it sounds like this will do the trick

rsync -abz --progress

Right now, I'm orchestrating back-ups for my girlfriend and me. I have a 500GB external HD and she has a 250GB HD. I'm currently packing up the 500GB's contents onto her HD and then will be backuping up her HD and my own to the 500GB external HD. Going through an old backup, I realised that I had lost some files along the way, perhaps just through gross negligence. I'm not sure. I hope to one day retrieve my girlfriend's files locked away on her dead HD from a few months ago. Sigh.

2008-08-22T03:43:00.002-04:00

Found via Language log:

Question to Radio Yerevan

Is it correct that Grigori Grigorievich Grigoriev won a luxury car at the All-Union Championship in Moscow?

Answer

In principle, yes. But first of all it was not Grigori Grigorievich Grigoriev, but Vassili Vassilievich Vassiliev; second, it was not at the All-Union Championship in Moscow, but at a Collective Farm Sports Festival in Smolensk; third, it was not a car, but a bicycle; and fourth he didn't win it, but rather it was stolen from him.

Spontaneous Update

2008-08-17T15:08:00.000-04:00

I have quite a bit to write, and never any time to write it, all of a sudden. So, let's begin with contentless updates, hint at more, and then not indulge you any farther, hurrah?

Work Shirt Drama

At work, we get to dress casually throughout this summer. However, after that, we need to be more formal, to better impress potential clients who will go "Wow, look at how well dressed these people are! This is but one more point in favour of giving them my business!" It sounds shallow, yes, but apparently it works. Anyway, this necessitates a minor expansion to my wardrobe. It amuses me that, while at TRIUMF, most of my wardrobe would easily have been considered as business casual. I had a lot of formal-looking shirts at the time (though not dress shirts). In the 3 years since, I have a more casual wardrobe (not that I actually purchased much in the way of clothing), and left almost all of my formal wear back at my father's. I am impressed by how much it could change without me actively making any effort. I wonder what I will look like fashion-wise in another 3 years! Oh, the shallow prospects! I wonder whether I am shallow. Anyway, shallowness combined with incredible cheapness makes it very difficult to purchase new dress shirts. My requirements are that they fit (15" collars are too small, 16" collars are almost too big!), that they be black (I have actually put great effort into resisting the accumulation of black clothing- however, as my girlfriend notes: I look excellent in a black dress shirt), and that they cost me $15 or less! I investigated Zellers (poor selection of sizes, but nice prices), the Bay (poor prices, but a great selection of sizes), several miscellaneous outlets (prices or sizes always close, but not close enough), Winners (the worst place to look; it was in utter disarray), and Sears, where they had the best deal: 2 dress shirts for $20. Sadly, any package that came with a black one was accompanied by a white one. White isn't so very bad, but I already own one white shirt. OH THE SHIRT DRAMA.

I also acquired snazzy new shoes, but not the snazzy new jackets, found at Zellers. I will upload a photo, or claim to, and then never do it. I have an interest in minimising consumption. I needed shoes, more or less, due to the degradation of the only pair I own. That pair I've only had for four months, though, so they may be called a bad investment. I never really expected them to be very durable, and I abused them. At 4x the price of the last pair (which were $7, by the by), I am optimistic that my new shoes should make at least a year.

Olympian

I don't care about the Olympics, more or less. However, I have, in the past, enjoyed Kendo. Recently, in part due to my girlfriend resuming karate, I am considering resuming Kendo. However, I must find a dojo locally that does not take itself too seriously. The Burnaby one is particularly strict. I cannot bring myself to treat a lot of things very seriously anymore. My irreverence has grown. I seem to take late buses seriously enough, though... Ack! I will become Samurai once more.

I hear from a friend of my girlfriend who has been teaching English in Japan that the cuisine there isn't very vegetarian friendly, due to an inclination to include fish or fish-derivatives in many or most dishes. Yikes! Perhaps I should continue to admire their culture from afar.

Regarding the Olympics, I am mildly disappointed that Canada has started accruing medals. I was pleased to see the National Post list animals who can commonly best our best athletes in speed, weight-lifting, swimming, and jumping. Hurrah for the animal kingdom. They're never invited, mind you.

I have been fascinated by the International situation situated around Russia much more in the past few weeks. Russia seems to have acted rather cleverly. More than I would expect from most modern national governments. Not that my expectations are at all informed.

Dreams

Strangely, I saw my mother in a dream the other day. Do you know how, sometimes, a possibility has passed on, the feeling that, perhaps it might one day just resume being as it was, being possible? In this dream, I saw her at home with my father, and they were both quite happy, and I decided not to draw any attention to the improbability of the situation. I was quite content, despite the illogic, to let it be and be very happy with it. I think it was spurred by seeing a lady who looked like my mother sitting outside of my work the other day. I came very close to approaching her and asking her whether she was German, just to make sure. In reality, logic reigned supreme, sadly. Note to self: sabotage logic.

Sunday's Best

"Sunday's Best" is a neat album released by a friend of mine: Mike Harloff. He's an Ontarian who went to my high school, and the album is very nice. It is a bit mellow but not sad. It is soft but still indie. His Last.fm profile.

More to say

There's more to say, of course, and, of course, I won't say it. I have spent enough time away from bed and I cannot spare anything further! However, I would like to advocate Indie Bird's latest game, Swarm. It's a simple, fun, polished Indie game.

Good night

2008-08-16T13:28:00.002-04:00

When your children borrow your hammer, do you assume that it's to build a fort? a treehouse? Do you ever stop to think that they're just going to smash eggs in bird nests and the skull of your neighbour's poodle? I don't, because I do not have kids. Remember: uncertainty is born of child labour. Sometimes the U.S. seems like a child with a hammer. Unrelated is this comment from John McCain on Russia vs Georgia:

In the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations.

Sir Nils Olav, a knighted member of the Norwegian Guard and resident penguin at the Edinburgh Zoo, captivates me. It is imperative that, should Edinburgh ever be imperilled, that Norway deploy him to its defense, I feel. I do someday home that animals and humans might one day interact on a closer level of understanding.

I have sort of lost my blogging voice. Hmm.

2008-08-03T16:11:00.003-04:00

I am pretty happy right now. I just ate, the sun is shining, I might have acute bronchitis (which is usually viral (but sometimes bacterial) so usually you have to wait it out (but it would suck if it was bacterial (as I haven't submitted my health insurance forms yet :|))). Liv has a short day and will return soon. My jhbuild of GNOME is finally progressing. I am eating some of the best cherries I've ever tasted. And I have a shopping list to focus my afternoon with. Hand-soap, milk, toilet paper. Eventually, lamp, knife sharpener, tiny vacuum cleaner. In future living arrangements, I hope to be amiable with neighbours, so I can abuse their friendship for such conveniences as a vacuum cleaner.

Even things that are traditionally considered bad are a part of my good day. I cut my hand on my mushroom soup tin. The cut is very small and quaint. I wonder what in life has defined my expectations for happiness, because some of them are weird.

However, I am concerned with my recent interest in conveniences. We purchased a $4 popcorn popper the other day at my insistence. A pan is not good enough? Well, if we had a more suitable pan, perhaps it would be. Or a cover for the pan that barely touches the burner would be ideal. Perhaps it's not conveniences, so much as availability of decent tools. We have a pan that is way too big for many simple uses, one that is warped and hardly touches the burner (which is alright), and neither have lids. Regardless, I also have an urge for a blender to make smoothies from all the fruit we buy. I suppose that isn't unreasonable. At least I don't seem to care about a microwave too much. However, this all goes against the simple that I've been planning to lead. Hmm hmm hmm.

For some reason, my interest in ships and samurai has been increasing this year. Perhaps it is time to revisit Shogun.

K2yo234hkjh23r0a: Encryption, privacy, e-mail, and instant messenging

2008-07-25T23:10:00.003-04:00

I am quite pleased to see Google's new option for Gmail to have your Gmail session in https by default. Basically, that means that the data communicated will be encrypted, rather than passed across the Internet in plaintext. Previously, and still, you could explicitly request an encrypted session by designating the protocol to be HTTPS in the URL, like https://www.gmail.com. To ensure your Gmail sessions are encrypted, go to your Settings and scroll to the bottom, and select the option "Always use https".

While there are performance penalties, I think that encryption is generally a good idea. In particular, I find it almost scandalous that Instant Messengers do not offer an option to encrypt your conversations by default. A popular IM encryption software suite, providing plugins for a number of messengers, is Off the Record. Of course, both sides need to be using it for the encryption to work (or how would the otherside decrypt your messages?), so that is a massive barrier to using it commonly.

One "feature" I dislike about OTR is deniability, which I probably don't understand very well. They do not employ digital signatures that would certify messages were from you outside of your current session. This is considered good, I think so that people cannot be held strictly responsible for forged messages purporting to be from them: hence deniability. I can see applications for it, but I think that, while I appreciate the privacy of encryption, I don't necessarily want deniability. I am generally responsible for what I do and say.

the second raid to be discussed another day (but oh, the hair!)

2008-07-14T04:10:00.003-04:00

To-day I got to save a beetle that hissed at me, hissed at me! I saved it from the ground and saved it onto grass. It wouldn't move. It's legs would wiggle, but the only real movement was its hiss vibrating into my ears. It sounded like an empty aerosol can, trying to poison my dinner. Hiss- hiss- hiss! I wonder if it will survive the night or be silenced before the sun returns? Perhaps it was just asleep, hissing its nocturnal annoyance. Sidewalks make poor beds. Shoes make poorer blankets. Picture to follow?

To-day a ghost dryer helped me cheat the system and dried for me without charge. Just a little, here and there. Hopeful that no one would notice. I was complicit. I waited quite a while before betraying this charity to an employee, to whom, effectively neutered by the barrier between languages, couldn't seem to appreciate the consequence of the machine's crimes. 6 minutes/25¢ isn't that shabby, anyway. (Every minute after finishing, it would run for an additional 15 seconds, the door open or not (frightening, having your favourite thong flying out at you) until all your clothing had exited (what senses has it?!)).

To-day Liv and I worked on a culinary masterpiece. It's too good to describe. Photos must be supplied! To-day I got to be.

Yesterday I got wet. Thoroughly. Soaked, drenched, and then cooked alive. Boiled red? Fried dry. I attended a flashmobby romp in the park. Stanley Park, host of Vancouver's second annual waterfight. We came unprepared, but like any good team of mercenaries, improvised. Water-tight bag? Check. Discarded cup? Check. Alliances were made, and summarily betrayed. Wheee. My girlfriend was even a key figure in the background of someone's photograph!

Last week I go to work. A fair deal of overtime. I really don't mind it. I enjoy getting things done. I hope to better manage my non-work time, though. I am having sufficient levels of fun, it would seem, but I'm barely meeting schooling requirements, and Open Source contributions are, let us say, stalled?

Yay for life, and stuff. :)

Right-click on a Macbook

2008-07-08T02:31:00.004-04:00

My girlfriend's hard drive on her Macbook recently crashed, so a new hard drive and installation of Fedora later, we were refaced with "How to right-click?" I have forgotten the name of the application we were using last time, but we had it set up to substitute the Enter key (near the space bar) with a mouse's right click. Searching around for the optimal solution revealed that the kernel by default might have facilities built in to support this redirection of input. Indeed, and this is how we do it:

# cd /proc/sys/dev/mac_hid
# echo 1 > mouse_button_emulation
# echo 96 > mouse_button3_keycode

I tried using dumpkeys to find out which keycode belonged to that Enter. It turned out to be KP_Enter for the keypad which mapped to 96 for us. Yay.

To make the change more permanent, we're setting the following in /etc/sysctl.conf:

dev.mac_hid.mouse_button_emulation = 1
dev.mac_hid.mouse_button3_keycode  = 96

Credit for this knowledge goes to Mactel-Linux.org.

Oh, and sysadminblog advised us to set

Option "MaxTapTime" "0"

in the synaptics section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf to disable the trackpad click. However, in her Fedora 9 install, there was no synaptics section. Adding a bare one with the entry stopped the trackpad from clicking, but it also made it unbearably slow. Now the entry for the input device looks like:

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Synaptics Touchpad"
        Driver          "synaptics"
        Option          "SendCoreEvents"        "true"
        Option          "Device"                "/dev/psaux"
        Option          "Protocol"              "auto-dev"
        Option          "HorizEdgeScroll"       "0"
        Option          "MaxTapTime"            "0"
        Option          "MinSpeed"              "0.4"
        Option          "MaxSpeed"              "1"
        Option          "AccelFactor"           "0.02"
EndSection

Three Cheers for Google

2008-06-22T15:55:00.002-04:00

Sure, they might become evil some day, if not already, but as far as companies go, I'm definitely part of the audience they cater to, and they cater well. I will hire them for my 25^th birthday.

I think I might like them as my friend Frank enjoys Apple. I am currently enjoying their Post to Blogger iGoogle gadget. In the future, it might be supported in their other containers (e.g. Google Gadgets for Linux).

The attention they pay to Linux is really phenomenal. I mean, our market share is so relatively slim. The future does belong to Linux, but not the present. They even go to efforts to assist Open Source. Google Code makes me smile all the time. The Google Summer of Code is huge. Oh- my girlfriend beckons- there's a video she wants to show me on Google Video (which I prefer over YouTube (which is another thing- YouTube isn't profitable for them, and they'll still gracefully taking the hit)).

I have more to say, about my "new" computer, my girlfriend's birthday, dead hard drive, and the journey we'll embark upon to retrieve its contents. Yay!

Stilish

2008-06-22T15:16:00.002-04:00

Newsweek

It is kind of sad to see the styles the group has come into. I hope I dress much more like this when I am their age:

GenreOnline

Of Ships and Stars

2008-06-22T13:41:00.007-04:00

For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, "Give me a challenge and I'll meet it with joy." They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us.

And I want to say something to the school children of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them.

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."

Ronald Reagan, or The West Wing,
on Challenger

Secrets

2008-06-09T02:20:00.001-04:00

Biometrics are unique identifiers, but they are not secrets - Bruce Schneier

I have generally felt the same way. I am scared that so many people push towards biometrics in place of passwords. Not that passwords are great.

Chrome, Aural, Technical

2008-06-07T14:49:00.006-04:00

Hello.

Missing Spectrum

Incomplete color choices on web pages are a bane to the existence of dark coloured themes in GNOME and, at least formerly, on Windows. In particular, Blogger's post area explicitly specifies a background of white, which is disastrous when the system's font colour for editable areas is a light colour in a dark theme. You can try to mandate the colours in Firefox, but then some pages will look weird. My ideal solution is to define custom style rules.

In this case, I've installed the Firefox extension EditCSS by Pascal Guimier to modify the stylesheet and remove the white background rule. I used the DOM Inspector to locate the rule, finding out what the id was used to set the style ("#richeditorframe, #RichEdit textarea") copied the style from EditCSS into an editor that could do search :), removed the background declaration, pasted the edited CSS back into it, and voila! A usable editor once more.

Musical

I'm listening to Frou Frou's "Holding Out For A Hero" right now :)

I purchased a K.T. Tunstall's "Eye to the Telescope" the other day. Wat excellence. I still must pursue Rilo Kiley and Regina Spektor. I had been introduced to the latter some time ago, but it wasn't until the credits of Prince Caspian that I understood that I must possess this sound.

Projects

I have a slew of projects I want to work on. A blogger client in Vala, a simple DB-using tool in Vala, a simple cron editor in Vala. As you can see, I am excited about Vala. I don't imagine that I'll find the time to do any of them, though!

Linux and how I restored my file system

So, I lost my partition table, but knew that the file system I covet was still fine underneath. Yay. So, the solution was this:

boot the computer (perhaps from the OS that broke the partition table for the coveted partition, or from a USB key or Live CD.
download gpart (man page)
```
$ gpart -vvvf /dev/sda > logfile
```
find the partition (I guessed based on side and faint idea of its partition position) in the output that you want to save. Get the sector start and the # of sectors for it.
Either use this information to fix your partition table (Google for that- if the new partition layout that gpart recommends at the end of its output seems desirable, gpart could write that for you.), or, do what I did and copy it to a remote media:
```
$ dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/sdb1/sda2.bak bs=512 skip=<sector start> count=<number of sectors>
```
. It might be advisable to copy over, say, the first 32MB of it and try mounting that to see if a valid ext3 superblock exists at those numbers (described a bit more below). If it doesn't, the values might be wrong.
(if you don't want it to take over a day, you might consider converting the sector start and # of sectors into your FS's block numbers (and don't forget to change bs as well!). I went much faster for me then :) (in my case, my block size was 4096-bytes and the sectors were 512-bytes, so I divided the start and # values by 8 :) - hope that at least the start sector starts at a whole block :D (would it not?)
Once you have have copied the coveted partition into a nice pretty file safely on some remote media, you will probably want to try to mount it!
```
$ mount -t auto -o loop /mnt/sdb1/sda2.bak /mnt/sdb1/sda2.dir
```
(if you did a test mount of the start of your partition, you might want to remember to unmount it or to try a different dir ;)
I then copied all the contents of that partition out to yet another external media, my backup HD. I did this with rsync so I could preserve things, so the command was like
```
$ rsync -va --progress /mnt/sdb1/sda2.dir /mnt/sdc1/sda2.root
```
This will late be restored to the computer in question when I get things configured a new.

After getting the sector values from gpart, I actually dd'd over the first 32MB (very small) of the alleged partition onto my remote media, and then I tried to mount that (

$ mount -t auto -o loop /mnt/sdb1/sda2.test /mnt/sdb1/sda2.dir

) to see if it indeed contained a valid ext3 superblock :D The first time I did all this, it didn't quite work, because I dd'd over /dev/sda1 rather than /dev/sda (so the values were off by sadness :$) Once I got the right portion over and tried to mount it with success, I did get error messages, because inodes could, of course, not be found, as I had only copied over a relatively small portion of the actual filesystem. The errors were not reproduced after I copied the entire thing over :)

And this is how I restored my tentatively lost but not overwritten partition replete with complete filesystem :D Originally, I thought that this might be a case for ext3grep by Carlo Wood which does wonders for helping undelete files on ext3 partitions. However, that was not the case, but I still recommend the tool if you think you'd find it necessary.

Details on how to ruin your partition by installing Fedora 9 via net install to follow in a later post. (To summarise again, my coveted partition was in the later 18GB of a 40GB HD, and the Fedora 9 net install came promptless (as I failed to anticipate), installing a fresh Fedora and replacing the partition table :D. I am quite lucky not to have had any of my coveted data in the earlier blocks of my HD where the Fedora installation would have overwritten it. :|)

What I read.

2008-06-06T23:53:00.000-04:00

I plan on updating the layout a bit later this weekend. Fun!

C-A-L-L Calling me, calling me now!

2008-06-06T23:02:00.002-04:00

Wow, what an action packed adventure. Work is going very well. Progress is a very nice language but it makes real the many complaints about proprietary platforms I have heard in the past. I am also dabbling quite a bit in JavaScript for something internal. It's a more pleasing language than I used to think, and I haven't ever disliked it.

Something sad computery was that my attempt to install Fedora via net install failed, in that the installation went perfectly REPLACING MY EXISTING PARTITION LAYOUT. Thanks to gpart and dd, I have rescued my original Ubuntu partition- I think. I am very fortunate that I did not have it at the start of the disk. (Rather, than tragic honour went to an already corrupted Windows installation.) I will write some details about how to manage the net install and then how to rescue partitions later.

Amusingly, I got an e-mail notifying me of the availability of an old domain of mine, except as .com rather than .net. I am fairly certain that it was available previous to this e-mail, and has now been purchased by hucksters hoping they can sell it to me at a profit. Hahaha.

I have a new BC number, and will apparently hug(?). More later!

Oh, one last thing- I spent the day imagining other people's perspectives, something I should do more often; it brought my surroundings all the more to life.

From the 19th

2008-05-24T17:21:00.002-04:00

Life

Pending

Harbour seals are what we saw from within that kayak. Purple starfish below. A jellyfish. Rocks that rise up from below to rip us apart. The sun. Geological and oceanic history. Milk chocolate Aero bar air pockets from the crunched-off rock face. Deer in the garden, banging on the fence. Sailboats sitting nicely in the sunset. A quiche, olives, egg salad sandwiches. The latter two once made me go "Yuck" but Michelle has mystic Montrealer powers to invert that reaction. Fritz and his fatal follies, welcome weeds and relatively economical ice cream.

It's partway stressful, partway calming to visit Pender Island and my girlfriend's grandparents (and sometimes uncle). Conversation does not flow so finely as among my own age group. But people can still marvel at eyeing the eye from withincomraderie the focal range of the concave speaker. Some opinions are out-moded and bite at the senses. I suppose it isn't easy sticking to the latest thinking fashions when you're isolated on an island. But are you? CBC radio plays podcasts on the Creative Commons. What a wild ride! Planet Earth plays on CBC in the evenings, what marvels! Wi-fi waves squeak between the floor boards and aromatise the first floor. As long as people thrive, it will be hard to isolate yourself on this planet :)

Oh, by the way, I don't really believing in so strong a segregation between this animal species and the rest of them - I hope that was clear.

And here I am, the environment I am paying attention to are a bunch of elemental right-angled divs with a flat solids of the coloured variety. Orange without(?) the cancer.

Discomfort and the Retreat

I retreat more from potentially uncomfortable situations. I used to be emboldened by them. Stand loud and stand proud. It was easier in Guelph, in Flesherton. Fewer consequences, perhaps? Now I'm wary, of what I know not. Perhaps I am descending into madness and paranoia :) Not really. I think that, perhaps, there are just too many people around and many fewer restrictions protecting me from them. I have to protect myself in a town full of freedom. Foolishness leaves me open as a target, I think I fear. How foolish s that!

Tim Tams and associated Edibles

I continue to be amazed at our ability to hunt down the inexpensive. We finally discovered a sane supplier of pitas. 1.09, 1.79! No more will we balk at the 4s and 5s we witness near everywhere else. Oh me, oh my! We had hummus (not humus, BoFIIers) again! And a jar of olives! I don't think the olives were the greatest deal (coming from SuperValu) but it was good to have them again. A little luxury to relax? How much relaxing can I afford? A lot of debt to repay right now. NOTE TO SELF: notify OSAP that I am taking a DE course :D.

I never thought I'd find crêpes as fast food, but low and behold, three Cafe Crêpe Expresses across a 3-block stretch! And, dun dun dun, we finally hit the recipe book down here! Onions, potatoes, and egg, oh my. I think I liked it more the second time around, at that. I need another cherry.

Oh, addendum: cheap cheese was secured! Well, relatively "cheap". Big bricks for $7. Almost an Ontario price, but just over half the BC fare. That and milk are proving difficult to secure at reasonable costs. I mean, I thought 4L of milk was expensive in Ontario: they won't even it sell it in such quantities here! Glass bottles are a pleasantry, at least.

Adventures ho!

I have only been writing about a fraction of the joy I've found out here. I wish I could show you all the late night view. There's so much to say and do, and I naively continue to believe I will fit it all in :) Mwahaha. Let me just get a day to set up my photo stream, eh? But even that will fair to capture Pascal, the non-hostile hosteller and pizza Subway champion.

I wonder what friendship will be like out here. There are few at my work who are quite my age, or share my Open Source aspirations. I don't have the fortune of fellow co-ops for auto-camaraderie. There are the pre-installed type, Ruth and Aidha. However, the former's a bit put out and doesn't seem very social, while the latter is too enveloped by the awesomeness of grad-osity at present. Fortunately for me, my girlfriend precludes the Old Anxieties with ease and agility unknown to mere mortals. I hope her home planet doesn't try to retrieve her.

Well, now to go on this righteous day for a walk to meet her and see the surrounding sites and sights. Maybe we can climb a mountain, too.

8 bookmarks

2008-05-24T16:58:00.003-04:00

More updates!

New Zealand

For those unaware, my NZ plans are on indefinite hold. The supervisor I wanted cannot accept me for the next year, I am not eligible for most forms of financial support for International students, international tuition is prohibitive, I feel I don't know enough about the field, and my girlfriend is also now considering UBC. Also, I found something a little closer by ...

Employment

Hello working world! I am now gainfully employed by a company that develops software for brokerage firms. I get to use an esoteric platform which I might never use again, but which is very effective at database access and manipulation.

One neat thing about the position is I get to take note of a lot of differences between the proprietary and open source worlds. The platform lacks a lot of niceties I find in the Open Source world. There are strange limits to characters, software used to get around feels limited, shared drives?! While the software that we develop and ship seems to be managed well, we of course use a lot of packages in our work that I can only describe as unmanaged. I can imagine, in an open source environment, someone regularly updating one metapackage that depends upon all the real packages we need to work, and we just install that to set-up. Also, from a Getting Thinds Done perspective (not related to the book/website/philosophy of the same title), I wonder why companies go with proprietary Unix rather than Linux. I have yet to access a Unix that didn't feel combersome, lacking, and limited. And it's not just that I'm more familiar with Linux-based systems. One prominent example would be the shell. Maybe it is more that that adminstrators don't bother supplying useful defaults? I don't know. Perhaps we use a proprietary Unix because the platform doesn't support Linuxes.

The Platform

Now this is pleasant. I generally dislike custom SQL languages, like PL/SQL. And this is somewhat like it. Especially in its "I look horribly ugly and no one has bothered to love me" kind of style. However, its capabilities are swell. How oft I have wanted to create an arbitrary, temporary table to stuff in a bunch of related data (records) into a double array of varying-typed data. Perhaps there are simple systems to achieve this in C and Java, but I have yet to find them. As well, I dislike heavily having DB access constructs stuck inside /strings/ that go unchecked until runtime! Clumsy and lousy! Give me support for the DB in the language, please! This is a reason why, despite not really caring about C#, I enjoy LINQ :)

I wonder what things I will discover as my ignorance shrinks?

C++, Perl, and JavaScript

I still think C++ is a terribly ugly language, but at the local Value Village, I recently acquired three books, one of them is O'Reilly's "Practical C++ Programming". I might as well be decent at it, even if it is ugly. Who knows when I'll have to use it for something important. The other two books are JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, and Learning Perl. I previously had the luxury of access to O'Reilly's Perl Cookbook. I think my Perl skills, despite regular use, have actually waned a little since then. Read more, Richard, read more!

Duplicity

I haven't done much programming on this in a while. 2 weeks, since jobness began to interfere. I must allocate more time before I lose where I was :(

Life stuff

Coming in a following post!

2008-05-12T23:12:00.000-04:00

Aha. The reason why Firefox's UI blocks: fsync.

BackTrack3 lilo bootloader issues and a solution

2008-05-11T03:46:00.003-04:00

A friend of a friend recently tried to install BackTrack 3 from a LiveCD. It's based on Slackware Linux, apparently. He ran into some issues I helped him solve, and I thought I would reproduce the problem and solution here in hopes that it might help someone else.

He had run the LiveCD, run through the Install as he thought he should, but was hoping for a dual-boot. This was apparently causing him issues (that perhaps a sole BT3 installation would avoid?

After running the installer, and having the distribution installed to his new Linux partition (in this case, /dev/sda4; /dev/sda1 was Windows, and 2 and 3 were for swap and something else), he encountered the following when trying to install a bootloader using lilo.

bt etc # lilo
Fatal: creat /boot/map~: Read-only file system

The issue here seems to have been that his mounted root file system is on the LiveCD. This makes it non-readable, and also means it's not the file system he wants to be installing the boot loader in.

solution 1:

lilo -r /mnt/sda4

This makes lilo use /mnt/sda4 as its root directory (yay, chroot). This is important, because /mnt/sda4 is mounted to /dev/sda4 where his actual on-disk BT3 installation is.

Unfortunately, there's another problem.

bt etc # lilo -r /mnt/sda4
Warning: LBA32 addressing assumed 
Fatal: raid_setup: stat("aufs")

We were find with the LBA32 addressing being assumed, but how did RAID concern his laptop? And why another union FS? Apparently his "boot=" line in his lilo.conf referred to aufs, so he changed it to refer to /dev/sda instead. That didn't help:

bt etc # lilo -r /mnt/sda4
Warning: LBA32 addressing assumed 
Fatal: raid_setup: stat("/dev/sda")

Eventually, it occurred to me that dev/ inside /mnt/sda4/ wouldn't be populated with anything, now that it's dynamically populated (I think). However, /dev/ in the LiveCD environment was. After some googling, this was done:

# mount --bind /dev /mnt/sda4/dev
# mount -t proc proc /mnt/sda4/proc

I'm not sure about the necessity of mounting the proc, but we definitely needed to dev to be populated on sda4. After doing this, `lilo -r /mnt/sda4` was successful. Yay.

summary

If you're having issues installing a bootloader for your dual-boot BackTrack3 installation, and are getting either of the following two errors, try the following command sequence (replacing sda4 with your target partition).

error 1

Fatal: creat /boot/map~: Read-only file system

error 2

Fatal: raid_setup: stat("aufs")

Fatal: raid_setup: stat("/dev/sda")

solution

# mount --bind /dev /mnt/sda4/dev
# mount -t proc proc /mnt/sda4/proc
# lilo -r /mnt/sda4

And you might have to set the line "boot=/dev/sda" in lilo.conf.

If this helps anyone, please let me know. If you seem to have the same problem and this doesn't help, then really please let me know. I don't want useless instructions remaining useless forever.

fatal optimism

2008-05-11T02:13:00.004-04:00

I frequently get really stupid, really optimistic ideas about what's possible. I still think it should be able for a single individual to write an entire operating system in good time, if they thoughtfully approach it, and spend most of their time to developing methods to reduce work elsewhere. Defining new languages, libraries, toolkits, etc. All very small, all very generative. Of course this is foolishness. Ah well.

I have just been reading again on closures, polyglot programming, and the evils of large code bases. It makes me hungry to try Vala again.

RMI and ClassNotFoundException

2008-05-10T22:16:00.002-04:00

<DuplicityServer>.localBind(): RemoteException occurred in server thread; nested exception is: 
 java.rmi.UnmarshalException: error unmarshalling arguments; nested exception is: 
 java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.kosmokaryote.Duplicity.DuplicityServerRI

So, I reckoned that this had something to do with either the Remote interface not being public, or a classpath issue. I think it has turned out to be a classpath issue that I didn't really expect, but probably should have. Ultimately, it came down to where I was starting rmiregistry from, which I really did not expect. Starting it at the base of my package meant it had my package neatly present in its classpath. However, I was doing it in its parent directory. Boo. Error fixed!

2008-05-09T02:25:00.004-04:00

Duplicity

The map descriptor loader now works, and works well. Yay. It took longer than I had hoped, but so has everything else so far. It also showed some major weaknesses in the design of my system :) I think I have two many two-way relationships. Objects contained in another object have references to their container, and I think this might ultimately prove undesirable in quite a few cases. Ah well.

The underlying logic seems to be mostly done now. Everything compile cleanly still. The few tests I have are passing. I need more tests! Apparently Donald Knuth isn't fond of Unit Testing, but I think I have a use for it :| I lack the experience to be very sure of my code, especially given its many evolutions. I hope I will be able to make a release with a text UI soon. I would like to have something of note to point to on my resume as I carry on my job search.

Update the Great

2008-05-05T14:11:00.003-04:00

Virtual Jobs

My memory will work against me. I learnt many principles and their definitions throughout University. While I have integrated most of the principles (I hope) and can apply them as necessary, my ability to associate specific terms with appropriate definitions is questionable. I just had a phone interview with a job that asked me to explain a few concepts that I remember learning but couldn't recall what they refer to. In hindsight, I did know a couple, and I could properly define one of them now and could have defined the other then if I had a few moments to compose myself. A couple other ones I have had to look-up again. They concerned databases, and the principles that underly them are intuitive to me. I need to keep up better on my terminology, but I do not know how. Perhaps read more technical books? I suppose I should have my father mail me more of my textbooks :)

Virtual Play

I started work on a Java project called Duplicity for now. It's proving very fun, but it would be simpler if I could do something like this:

class CatOwner {
  ...
  public ArrayList getPets() {
    ArrayList cats = this.getCats();
    return cats;
  }
}
class Cat extends Animal {
  ...
}

However, I cannot convert a collection with a type into a similar collection of its supertype. It seems as though I logically should. Any Cat is also an animal, so why can an ArrayList of Cats not be known as an ArrayList of Animals. I am sure there is a good reason and I'm bound to find it eventually, but right now it's a nuisance.

Physical Location

I have migrated to Vancouver! My girlfriend and I departed Ontario on the 23rd via Greyhound and arrived in BC on the morning of the 26th. It was a spectacular drive. In summary, Winnipeg is sexy, Medicine Hat is funky, and Canmore is cool. Have you heard of the Legend of White River? If you're ever there and that awkward boy dances desperately before you, it's his method of speech and sustenance. Aid him! Most of my photos are spectacularly blurred or spotted (through the dirty Greyhound windows), but I intend on uploading a large amount to Picasa Web once I can afford a decent account.

We spent the first little while in Victoria among my sisters and my nephews. They are nearly 10 or 7 months old now (born 3 months early, so I say 7, going from when they should have come out). I don't get along very well with the younger of my two sisters, and her dog less, so it might be a good thing that I am aiming to gain employment in Vancouver. We are there now, borrowing my girlfriend's uncle's apartment for the month of May. It's situated downtown and on the 19th story. I am spoiled.

We've been trying to walk most places, including from Granville Island to Stanley Park. It's a blast. The weather has been fair and sometimes welcoming. The shops are all very neat. One bad thing that I'll discuss more upon below are the food prices, though.

Fan club

I am pretending I have a fan club. An acquaintance and a friend have moved to Vancouver, and another friend from Ontario has gone to BC to Vancouver Island, hoping to work on an organic farm. It's nice knowing other humans in the area.

I wonder, if I ever manage to accomplish all the things I hope to, whether I really will have a fan club, in the sense that the GNOME developers have fans like me. That aloof respect and admiration. Shock and confusion when someone criticises them. Hmm. ^_^

The Cost of Eating

Food prices here seem on average to be 25-50% greater than in Ontario. A 700g brick of cheese averages out at around $13 in most of the larger stores I've been into, while in Ontario I found it pricey at $9. Milk is sometimes cheaper, but we have a hard time finding 4L of organic milk. We're going to soy this week. The cheapest source of our vitals has proven to be Chinatown, and definitely not Granville Island. However, upon our wandering walks, we discovered a number of smaller shops that had the odd item at much better prices. We thought through most of the day that we had triumphed with Strawberries, 2 for $4! But before the day's end, we found 3 for $5.

In consequence, we are now cataloguing prices we encounter and tabulating them in a spreadsheet. We're doing it via Google Docs, and we if we can find any other suckers^wfriends to contribute, we'll share it with them as well. I feel almost certain that such a website must exist for Canadians (I know of one for the US) but I cannot find it yet. Hmm.

Late in the labs

2008-04-16T02:25:00.000-04:00

Now I'm all wet :'(