When I was getting hibernation working, I went in and disabled the internal gigabit network interface on my motherboard. It occurs to me now that I quite fancy using this.
Time to find out what hibernate under Linux can do. I'm about to hibernate, enter the BIOS, enable the NIC, resume Linux and attempt to probe the NIC.
I hope it works.
Thursday, 30 November 2006
Wednesday, 29 November 2006
SunRay @ Home
At work today I asked Paul about taking a SunRay home to play around with. My plan was to set up the free SunRay server software inside a Solaris Nevada VMware instance.
As I asked Paul, he asked if I was wanting one to try and get SunRay @ Home working. This hadn't actually occurred to me until he mentioned it, but...
by connecting the SunRay directly to my desktop via a crossover cable I could let my desktop PC route traffic between the wired interface and SWAN. I don't see that this would be a problem with the SWAN T&Cs as the SunRay unit can't get to the Internet, can't store data, etc.
For the time being I'm working on my initial plan: the Nevada install is about to start, and then I'll look at the SunRay server software. Unfortunately the latest Nevada DVD I have kicking around is b48, so I'll have to either grab build 53 from work tomorrow, or perform a Live Upgrade.
As I asked Paul, he asked if I was wanting one to try and get SunRay @ Home working. This hadn't actually occurred to me until he mentioned it, but...
by connecting the SunRay directly to my desktop via a crossover cable I could let my desktop PC route traffic between the wired interface and SWAN. I don't see that this would be a problem with the SWAN T&Cs as the SunRay unit can't get to the Internet, can't store data, etc.
For the time being I'm working on my initial plan: the Nevada install is about to start, and then I'll look at the SunRay server software. Unfortunately the latest Nevada DVD I have kicking around is b48, so I'll have to either grab build 53 from work tomorrow, or perform a Live Upgrade.
Monday, 27 November 2006
My watch
My watch is ace. I bought the first one three years ago in Taizhou city, Zhejiang province, China.
Unfortunately I happened to leave that one in the car on the way back to the airport to England. Pretty annoying, especially given how happy I was about having found it.
When I returned to China last year I managed to find the very same watch, but this time in a totally different city. Here it is, in all its glory:
Unfortunately I happened to leave that one in the car on the way back to the airport to England. Pretty annoying, especially given how happy I was about having found it.
When I returned to China last year I managed to find the very same watch, but this time in a totally different city. Here it is, in all its glory:
Sunday, 26 November 2006
I want a Wii
Damn. The more I read about people who have bought their Wiis... the more I want one!
Absolutely awesome concept and, by all accounts, impressively implemented.
Way to go Nintendo!
Absolutely awesome concept and, by all accounts, impressively implemented.
Way to go Nintendo!
Infernal Affairs
Woo! Infernal Affairs == the good version of The Departed.
Looking back at The Departed it kind of worries me that Martin Scorsese managed to ruin such an awesome film.
Looking back at The Departed it kind of worries me that Martin Scorsese managed to ruin such an awesome film.
Saturday, 25 November 2006
Ubuntu Edgy Power Management
I can't remember whether I've talked about this before... but since installing Ubuntu Edgy Eft I've found that my laptop (a Sony Vaio X505/CP) can magically take advantage of all of the good ACPI stuff. I can suspend to RAM and disk (hibernate) and have plenty of control over this.
Power management has long been a Windows strong point, but with this latest release it really starts to look as though Linux is catching up... but there is still a long way to go.
Once I realised that my laptop fully supported power management I began to look at my desktop machine. I was very happy to discover that I could suspend and resume with no problem at all... but only the first time around. Come the second suspend/resume attempt, the system failed to come back -- a fairly useless feature.
Since then I've been investigating how to solve it, but I didn't get very far. I've spent the last few hours playing around with BIOS settings, running through countless fscks on my data disk and generally not getting very far... until I tried a hibernate.
Hibernate is a sleep 4 (unless suspend, which is a sleep 3). In this mode the contents of the system RAM get flushed to disk, along with the state of the CPU registers. The machine is then fully powered down and could be lugged off to the other side of the world to be powered back on. Quite by fluke I discovered that this worked. So far I've had a couple of hibernate/resume cycles without any problem.
Hibernate is a great solution for now, but in the long-term, it would be nice to gain working suspend support for all systems.
Power management has long been a Windows strong point, but with this latest release it really starts to look as though Linux is catching up... but there is still a long way to go.
Once I realised that my laptop fully supported power management I began to look at my desktop machine. I was very happy to discover that I could suspend and resume with no problem at all... but only the first time around. Come the second suspend/resume attempt, the system failed to come back -- a fairly useless feature.
Since then I've been investigating how to solve it, but I didn't get very far. I've spent the last few hours playing around with BIOS settings, running through countless fscks on my data disk and generally not getting very far... until I tried a hibernate.
Hibernate is a sleep 4 (unless suspend, which is a sleep 3). In this mode the contents of the system RAM get flushed to disk, along with the state of the CPU registers. The machine is then fully powered down and could be lugged off to the other side of the world to be powered back on. Quite by fluke I discovered that this worked. So far I've had a couple of hibernate/resume cycles without any problem.
Hibernate is a great solution for now, but in the long-term, it would be nice to gain working suspend support for all systems.
Thursday, 23 November 2006
Wednesday, 22 November 2006
In the evening...
it occurs to me now that there is very little that a single person can go out and do on an evening.
Last week I went to the cinema to see Borat, but past that I can't think of anything worthwhile doing in an evening.
I'm pretty tired right now, and I end up doing little more than watching an episode or two of a TV series, eating, having a shower and finally going to bed between 10 and 11PM.
But sometimes I do feel like heading out, it's just there's not too much to do. Last weekend I headed back up to Manchester for Friday night/Saturday. This gave me chance to sort out the CompSoc stuff (more to come) that desperately needed doing.
It was a really great weekend: Vlad, Karen, Ceyda, Zeynep and I went to Tai Wu on Friday. The food was actually awful, but it was great to catch up and find out what everybody has been doing. After the meal we headed back to Ceyda's flat for a couple of hours, before I stayed the night on Zeynep's sofa.
Saturday was amazingly full... once I'd woken up around 10:30, showered, picked Vlad up and dropped some of Xiaoxiao's clothes off with Lillian it was time for the CompSoc AGM in Kro bar. As expected, the showing was small, but CompSoc have a new chairperson: Inti Ocean, studying CS in his first year. This is great news for the society. Once the meeting was finally over Vlad, Andy and I headed to AMC to catch the new Bond film. All in all, very good, but a little too long for my liking -- not to mention full of shocking product placements. Pizza Express was, as ever, excellent, and meant that I didn't even get onto the M62 until about 11PM.
Back on track... what am I to do? Not a lot. Time for some more Robin Hood and maybe another episode of Heroes.
Last week I went to the cinema to see Borat, but past that I can't think of anything worthwhile doing in an evening.
I'm pretty tired right now, and I end up doing little more than watching an episode or two of a TV series, eating, having a shower and finally going to bed between 10 and 11PM.
But sometimes I do feel like heading out, it's just there's not too much to do. Last weekend I headed back up to Manchester for Friday night/Saturday. This gave me chance to sort out the CompSoc stuff (more to come) that desperately needed doing.
It was a really great weekend: Vlad, Karen, Ceyda, Zeynep and I went to Tai Wu on Friday. The food was actually awful, but it was great to catch up and find out what everybody has been doing. After the meal we headed back to Ceyda's flat for a couple of hours, before I stayed the night on Zeynep's sofa.
Saturday was amazingly full... once I'd woken up around 10:30, showered, picked Vlad up and dropped some of Xiaoxiao's clothes off with Lillian it was time for the CompSoc AGM in Kro bar. As expected, the showing was small, but CompSoc have a new chairperson: Inti Ocean, studying CS in his first year. This is great news for the society. Once the meeting was finally over Vlad, Andy and I headed to AMC to catch the new Bond film. All in all, very good, but a little too long for my liking -- not to mention full of shocking product placements. Pizza Express was, as ever, excellent, and meant that I didn't even get onto the M62 until about 11PM.
Back on track... what am I to do? Not a lot. Time for some more Robin Hood and maybe another episode of Heroes.
Runtime linking
I've had a personally-compiled copy of vim7 sitting in my home directory at work for a while now. It was working really well. However, I then decided that it would make sense to make this available for all of the users. After speaking with David I set about compiling a copy to install in /export/local/sparc (which then gets mounted on /usr/local on the various SPARC SunRays).
Yesterday I finally found the right bits of source to hack to get it to compile properly. Once I'd tested that all was working well I went ahead and installed it. It worked fine on ebusy and for all of the people that I asked to test it. However, when Liam tried it, he received a runtime link error: ld.so.1 couldn't find libncurses. On ebusy this was available in /usr/lib, and I just happened to have /opt/sfw/lib (where another libncurses lived) in my LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
It was obvious that Liam not having LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/sfw/lib was the problem. I set about finding the best way to rectify this. My initial thought was to add a default library path. On Linux I'd edit the /etc/ld.so.conf file; under Solaris the default library path is changed with the crle(1) command. crle output on estale:
This simply shows that libraries will be searched for in /lib and /usr/lib. So why then when I ran ldd(1) on my compiled vim binary was it reporting having found libraries in /usr/openwin/lib?
More digging with ldd and I found that the -s flag displayed the search path. Using this I quickly found that it was searching in more than the default paths that crle was telling me. There was also mention of RPATH: specifically a binary's RPATH was telling the runtime linker to look in certain library paths. Excellent!
I then found a very interesting article at http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/notes/rpath.html that covers shared library search paths in detail.
RPATH has much the same effect as LD_LIBRARY_PATH, except that it is resident in the binary, rather than as an environment variable. I recompiled vim with LDFLAGS="-R/opt/sfw/lib" to add /opt/sfw/lib to the RPATH and Voila! The resulting binary now searches for libraries in /opt/sfw/lib. Needless to say it now finds libncurses and I've installed vim7 across all of our SPARC SunRay servers.
This was a very interesting discovery -- I always struggle at getting source compiled "properly" and this is one big step in the right direction. Time to work on recompiling vim for x86 :)
Yesterday I finally found the right bits of source to hack to get it to compile properly. Once I'd tested that all was working well I went ahead and installed it. It worked fine on ebusy and for all of the people that I asked to test it. However, when Liam tried it, he received a runtime link error: ld.so.1 couldn't find libncurses. On ebusy this was available in /usr/lib, and I just happened to have /opt/sfw/lib (where another libncurses lived) in my LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
It was obvious that Liam not having LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/sfw/lib was the problem. I set about finding the best way to rectify this. My initial thought was to add a default library path. On Linux I'd edit the /etc/ld.so.conf file; under Solaris the default library path is changed with the crle(1) command. crle output on estale:
Default configuration file (/var/ld/ld.config) not found
Platform: 32-bit MSB SPARC
Default Library Path (ELF): /lib:/usr/lib (system default)
Trusted Directories (ELF): /lib/secure:/usr/lib/secure (system default)
This simply shows that libraries will be searched for in /lib and /usr/lib. So why then when I ran ldd(1) on my compiled vim binary was it reporting having found libraries in /usr/openwin/lib?
More digging with ldd and I found that the -s flag displayed the search path. Using this I quickly found that it was searching in more than the default paths that crle was telling me. There was also mention of RPATH: specifically a binary's RPATH was telling the runtime linker to look in certain library paths. Excellent!
I then found a very interesting article at http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/notes/rpath.html that covers shared library search paths in detail.
RPATH has much the same effect as LD_LIBRARY_PATH, except that it is resident in the binary, rather than as an environment variable. I recompiled vim with LDFLAGS="-R/opt/sfw/lib" to add /opt/sfw/lib to the RPATH and Voila! The resulting binary now searches for libraries in /opt/sfw/lib. Needless to say it now finds libncurses and I've installed vim7 across all of our SPARC SunRay servers.
This was a very interesting discovery -- I always struggle at getting source compiled "properly" and this is one big step in the right direction. Time to work on recompiling vim for x86 :)
Wednesday, 15 November 2006
Project work
On the whole today was fairly ordinary. I had an early start at work (7:55) which gave me time to sort out a V20z for a BT engineer. Getting up at 7:10 was a bit easier today, thanks to an early night yesterday -- I'll probably do the same this evening, as I'm still feeling tired.
We had two short meetings today: the first with the guys in Singapore (where David and William are for the week), and then a lab team meeting in the afternoon to discuss the small projects we've been working on.
Each of the students have been "assigned" a production server to look after: I've got enonet, which is a NIS+ replica zone server. The global zone provides no services, but each of the (roughly) five zones is configured as a NIS+ backup server, mirroring the config for each of the primary production NIS+ geos.
A quick look suggests that enonet shouldn't be a lot of work: it's a more or less standard Solaris 10 (latest == good) install, with a single service in each domain. The only worry is that I'll be asked to perform a live upgrade to a newer version of Solaris: a real pain when Zones are involved.
We also discussed our "work from home" day, and with any luck we'll be starting this in a few weeks. The big problem for me is finding a project to work on. Right now I'm more or less down to do some JLT (our system booking tool) work related to post-booking, i.e. providing suitable notification to the labstaff when a booking expires, allowing us to remove non-default cards, storage, etc.
This post-booking work should be interesting to do: it'll involve messing around with some Java, some Sybase SQL, Perl and the API for our ticketing system, ServiceDesk. But really this isn't what I'd like to spend the bulk of my time doing... I need to come up with a decent project to work on, hopefully something that will save us all plenty of time, make our jobs easier, etc.
All suggestions welcome.
We had two short meetings today: the first with the guys in Singapore (where David and William are for the week), and then a lab team meeting in the afternoon to discuss the small projects we've been working on.
Each of the students have been "assigned" a production server to look after: I've got enonet, which is a NIS+ replica zone server. The global zone provides no services, but each of the (roughly) five zones is configured as a NIS+ backup server, mirroring the config for each of the primary production NIS+ geos.
A quick look suggests that enonet shouldn't be a lot of work: it's a more or less standard Solaris 10 (latest == good) install, with a single service in each domain. The only worry is that I'll be asked to perform a live upgrade to a newer version of Solaris: a real pain when Zones are involved.
We also discussed our "work from home" day, and with any luck we'll be starting this in a few weeks. The big problem for me is finding a project to work on. Right now I'm more or less down to do some JLT (our system booking tool) work related to post-booking, i.e. providing suitable notification to the labstaff when a booking expires, allowing us to remove non-default cards, storage, etc.
This post-booking work should be interesting to do: it'll involve messing around with some Java, some Sybase SQL, Perl and the API for our ticketing system, ServiceDesk. But really this isn't what I'd like to spend the bulk of my time doing... I need to come up with a decent project to work on, hopefully something that will save us all plenty of time, make our jobs easier, etc.
All suggestions welcome.
Tuesday, 14 November 2006
Fear my crazy face
I had a big whole blog entry written about all of the stuff I've done today. Then, when I attempted to attach a photo of my mug, it crashed. I am unhappy. I shall demand a refund shortly.
In the meantime, here's a mugshot. It's called Quasimodo.
In the meantime, here's a mugshot. It's called Quasimodo.
Monday, 13 November 2006
Chinese Christmas
Today I booked a British Airways flight to Shanghai. I fly out from London Heathrow at 14:15 on December 22nd and should arrive in Shanghai at 09:25 the following day.
The return flight takes off on January 2nd at 10:55 and arrives in Heathrow at 15:25 the same day.
Christmas in China will surely be an odd experience. Maybe we can head north, in search of snow.
The return flight takes off on January 2nd at 10:55 and arrives in Heathrow at 15:25 the same day.
Christmas in China will surely be an odd experience. Maybe we can head north, in search of snow.
Sunday, 12 November 2006
Homemade rollercoaster
Check out http://www.uberreview.com/2006/11/video-homemade-roller-coaster-with-360-degree-loop.htm/ for one of the most awesome projects I've seen in ages.
Homemade rollercoasters are clearly the way forward!
Homemade rollercoasters are clearly the way forward!
Books, books, books
Last Tuesday I caught the Sun fun bus to Farnborough town centre so I could grab a couple of new books from WH Smiths.
Normally I wouldn't shop for books at WHS, but there were extenuating circumstances: now that I spend so much time of the bus to/from work I'm reading a lot more.
I've enjoyed three Haruki Murakami books recently: Dance Dance Dance, which I bought quite a while ago, but didn't get around to reading; Norwegian Wood and South of the Border, West of the Sun, both of which were birthday presents from James and Kim.
Norwegian Wood is the book that shot Murakami to fame in Japan. He became an overnight celebrity but didn't fancy it... his response was to shut down his jazz bar in Tokyo, Peter Cat, and move away from Japan with his wife. It's a muddled story (as all of his books are) about... hmm, love, commitment and death.
I'd have to say that Murakami is my favourite author. I've read a lot of his books: the three I've just mentioned, as well as The Elephant Vanishes (a collection of short stories), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and Kafka on the Shore. I like the way he describes scenes and events, turning common situations into extraordinary happenings.
But. I've read a lot of his books lately... I decided that instead of picking up another one, I'd try something else. I got a little carried away in WHS and in the end walked out with three new books: The Life of Pi, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and a complete collection of Franz Kafka's short stories.
I hardly know a thing about any of these books but because the selection at the small WHS was so poor (plenty of crappy trainjourney novels, Mills and Boon, and other assorted trash) I was sort of thrust into picking up something I might normally skip over. The Life of Pi was different from the rest, so I picked it up; Kafka's short stories were easy: Murakami has made reference to this author in his book Kafka on the Shore; and In Cold Blood... well, I've seen the film Capote and that is as good a reason to pick up a book as I need.
I'm on Pi now and so far it is interesting but nothing as extraordinary as Kafka on the Shore... yet.
Normally I wouldn't shop for books at WHS, but there were extenuating circumstances: now that I spend so much time of the bus to/from work I'm reading a lot more.
I've enjoyed three Haruki Murakami books recently: Dance Dance Dance, which I bought quite a while ago, but didn't get around to reading; Norwegian Wood and South of the Border, West of the Sun, both of which were birthday presents from James and Kim.
Norwegian Wood is the book that shot Murakami to fame in Japan. He became an overnight celebrity but didn't fancy it... his response was to shut down his jazz bar in Tokyo, Peter Cat, and move away from Japan with his wife. It's a muddled story (as all of his books are) about... hmm, love, commitment and death.
I'd have to say that Murakami is my favourite author. I've read a lot of his books: the three I've just mentioned, as well as The Elephant Vanishes (a collection of short stories), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and Kafka on the Shore. I like the way he describes scenes and events, turning common situations into extraordinary happenings.
But. I've read a lot of his books lately... I decided that instead of picking up another one, I'd try something else. I got a little carried away in WHS and in the end walked out with three new books: The Life of Pi, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and a complete collection of Franz Kafka's short stories.
I hardly know a thing about any of these books but because the selection at the small WHS was so poor (plenty of crappy trainjourney novels, Mills and Boon, and other assorted trash) I was sort of thrust into picking up something I might normally skip over. The Life of Pi was different from the rest, so I picked it up; Kafka's short stories were easy: Murakami has made reference to this author in his book Kafka on the Shore; and In Cold Blood... well, I've seen the film Capote and that is as good a reason to pick up a book as I need.
I'm on Pi now and so far it is interesting but nothing as extraordinary as Kafka on the Shore... yet.
Seven Samurai, Criterion 2006
It was going to happen soon. I've just paid £20 for the new three-disc region one version of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai.
Anybody that's ever talked to me about films knows that this is my favourite film. It's an amazing story of villagers hiring masterless samurai (ronin) to protect their village against bandits expected to arrive after the harvest.
This new release by Criterion blows away all of the previous transfers, including the dodgy Korean version that previously held the crown. From dvdbeaver.com:
I really can't wait to sit down and watch the film again with the improvements the new transfer should bring!
Anybody that's ever talked to me about films knows that this is my favourite film. It's an amazing story of villagers hiring masterless samurai (ronin) to protect their village against bandits expected to arrive after the harvest.
This new release by Criterion blows away all of the previous transfers, including the dodgy Korean version that previously held the crown. From dvdbeaver.com:
"Frankly though, there really is no competition -- this is so far ahead that visually (screen captures) comparing it seems to report it as an understatement. Criterion should be given a huge grant as what they are doing is helping pristinely archive some the greatest cinema the world has ever known. What they are achieving is really quite incredulous. The comparative improvement in this coveted films' digital rendering is one of the most flagrant I can recall. What adds to my amazement is that we are comparing it to 4 (no 5!) other editions -- all of which drastically pale beside the REISSUE."
I really can't wait to sit down and watch the film again with the improvements the new transfer should bring!
Saturday, 11 November 2006
Waverley Abbey
I drove the 15 or so miles from my house to Waverley Abbey just after lunchtime today. When I arrived at the site there was not a single other car parked -- I almost wondered if I had the wrong spot.
Waverley Abbey was the first Cistercian abbey to be founded in Britain (1128). The little signpost talked about the fact that these Cistercian monks, unlike "regular" monks, wore undyed garments and were known as the "white monks".
Beyond that I didn't really pay too much attention. There were about four buildings on the site: one of them was in pretty good condition with an impressive roof structure. I'd provide some photos, but none of mine were any good ;)
Here's a shot of the Waverley Abbey bridge, which crosses over into (I presume) Waverley Abbey House.
By the time I'd had my fill of photos and headed back to my car, there much have been at least ten cars parked in the (small) car park. I hadn't really expected to see so many people visiting, but there were quite a few families and couples looking around.
I headed back home via a pub close to the Sun campus. Scampi for main course followed by a filling chocolate ice cream thing for dessert -- now I know where it is, it's a possible alternative to the pub we've previously visited on our lunch break at work.
Don't forget to visit the official Waverley Abbey website at http://www.waverley.gov.uk/abbey/wav_click.htm if you're interested to know a little more.
Waverley Abbey was the first Cistercian abbey to be founded in Britain (1128). The little signpost talked about the fact that these Cistercian monks, unlike "regular" monks, wore undyed garments and were known as the "white monks".
Beyond that I didn't really pay too much attention. There were about four buildings on the site: one of them was in pretty good condition with an impressive roof structure. I'd provide some photos, but none of mine were any good ;)
Here's a shot of the Waverley Abbey bridge, which crosses over into (I presume) Waverley Abbey House.
By the time I'd had my fill of photos and headed back to my car, there much have been at least ten cars parked in the (small) car park. I hadn't really expected to see so many people visiting, but there were quite a few families and couples looking around.
I headed back home via a pub close to the Sun campus. Scampi for main course followed by a filling chocolate ice cream thing for dessert -- now I know where it is, it's a possible alternative to the pub we've previously visited on our lunch break at work.
Don't forget to visit the official Waverley Abbey website at http://www.waverley.gov.uk/abbey/wav_click.htm if you're interested to know a little more.
Wednesday, 8 November 2006
A weekend in Nottingham
At the very last minute on Saturday night I decided to drive up to Nottingham to attend Corinne's birthday party. I'd been invited to this quite a bit earlier on, but I just kind of ignored the invitation without properly reading it through.
The ability to just "get up and go" is truly one of the wonders of having a car.
In the end the evening was absolutely great fun: a real break from the monotony of living here in Blackwater. It was brilliant to see friends I've not seen in about three years: obviously Corinne was there, but so was Elspeth, Tom Wells, Adam Nunan and Neil Fullard. I also met a couple of people I've spoken to on the Internet before now.
For the first time in ages I got my camera out and got one or two decent shots... one in particular that I'm still struggling to get "right". Once I've sorted it out I'll get it posted here.
The next big trip will be to Manchester next weekend for the CompSoc AGM. I'll be driving to work tomorrow as I'm going to give the Wey Kayak Club a shot in the evening -- I have no idea how one kayaks in near pitch black... not to mention practically sub-zero temperatures.
I guess this is something I'll figure out tomorrow.
The ability to just "get up and go" is truly one of the wonders of having a car.
In the end the evening was absolutely great fun: a real break from the monotony of living here in Blackwater. It was brilliant to see friends I've not seen in about three years: obviously Corinne was there, but so was Elspeth, Tom Wells, Adam Nunan and Neil Fullard. I also met a couple of people I've spoken to on the Internet before now.
For the first time in ages I got my camera out and got one or two decent shots... one in particular that I'm still struggling to get "right". Once I've sorted it out I'll get it posted here.
The next big trip will be to Manchester next weekend for the CompSoc AGM. I'll be driving to work tomorrow as I'm going to give the Wey Kayak Club a shot in the evening -- I have no idea how one kayaks in near pitch black... not to mention practically sub-zero temperatures.
I guess this is something I'll figure out tomorrow.
Tuesday, 7 November 2006
FreeBSD-CURRENT...
.. an exciting place to be!
Having just skimmed through the June-October 2006 status report there are three very exciting new developments:
* Nss-LDAP and nsswitch updates. FreeBSD are writing a new nss-ldap PAM module, which is good to hear. As part of the work nsswitch is being updated: one of the changes is a nameservice caching daemon. The aim is to get nss-ldap included as part of world, which is good news all round. Maybe passwd(1) will finally be able to talk the LDAP lingo!
* DTrace support is coming along nicely. From what I understand Sun have been a big help with this project, which is also good news.
* ZFS. zvol is supposedly complete and now that Sun have open sourced the test routines work will hopefully speed up. ZFS is something that just can't be ignored: sure, it has its teething problems, but these will go away with time and we'll be left with a highly redundant and reliable filing system.
FreeBSD 7 should certainly be interesting. In terms of "features" it lacks behind Solaris, maybe, but with DTrace and ZFS I think it will give Linux a run for its money.
Having just skimmed through the June-October 2006 status report there are three very exciting new developments:
* Nss-LDAP and nsswitch updates. FreeBSD are writing a new nss-ldap PAM module, which is good to hear. As part of the work nsswitch is being updated: one of the changes is a nameservice caching daemon. The aim is to get nss-ldap included as part of world, which is good news all round. Maybe passwd(1) will finally be able to talk the LDAP lingo!
* DTrace support is coming along nicely. From what I understand Sun have been a big help with this project, which is also good news.
* ZFS. zvol is supposedly complete and now that Sun have open sourced the test routines work will hopefully speed up. ZFS is something that just can't be ignored: sure, it has its teething problems, but these will go away with time and we'll be left with a highly redundant and reliable filing system.
FreeBSD 7 should certainly be interesting. In terms of "features" it lacks behind Solaris, maybe, but with DTrace and ZFS I think it will give Linux a run for its money.
Monday, 6 November 2006
Jools Holland
The guy is a genius. Or, at least... whoever writes the lyrics and composes all of the stuff is.
Great stuff. Get Swinging The Blues, Dancing the Ska now :)
Play.com. And you're done!
Great stuff. Get Swinging The Blues, Dancing the Ska now :)
Play.com. And you're done!
MSN Music purchases not compatible with Zune
I am incredibly surprised that Microsoft won't be supporting MSN Music purchases on their Zune media player.
BBC News are carrying the article, which suggests that not even replacement files will be provided.
BBC News are carrying the article, which suggests that not even replacement files will be provided.
Friday, 3 November 2006
Database changes
I was tasked with updating the database that backs our lab tools about two weeks ago. The work was relatively straightforward: update hostnames in the database so they used the DNS suffix, rather than NIS+. For example: a host v4v-t1000a-gmp03.eu (a T1000 in our lab) should become known as v4v-t1000a-gmp03.uk. Obviously the suffixes were different for the various labs: some .singapore, .germany, etc.
All in all things went very smoothly: I tested the queries out some time and and then ran them on the production Sybase database at 7PM today. A bit of a last minute update needed to be incorporated: changing the name of a logfile associated with each host to use the new hostname. Again, this went fairly well.
With that out of the way I'm fairly sure this was my longest day of work so far. In order for me to catch the bus I leave the house at 7:40AM, and I'm taking the view (for now) that if I drive to work, I may as well leave at the same time. At this time in the morning, the time between leaving home and walking into the office is about ten minutes: i.e. I get to work at about 7:45. This leaves plenty of time for me to mess around, eat some toast, make fun of Chris, read and reply to email, etc. before the real work begins.
I left more or less on time today, which was good. But obviously with the database changes scheduled for 7PM and taking about 45 minutes (including plenty of time for checking things were working before committing the transaction), not to mention sending out reminder emails to the engineers around the world... my day was quite a bit longer.
It's odd really, but I can't really concentrate on anything when I get home. I could sit down and watch a film, but it's not always possible to find the time in the living room (sofas beat desk chairs in comfyness tests :). So most times I just sit about and do... well, nothing.
A project is what I need. I enjoy nothing better than a good project: not too difficult, but definitely not too easy (I just think "I can do this by doing x, y and z" and promptly lose interest) either. If only I could come up with a good one to work on during my "work from home day" due to start in the new year...
All in all things went very smoothly: I tested the queries out some time and and then ran them on the production Sybase database at 7PM today. A bit of a last minute update needed to be incorporated: changing the name of a logfile associated with each host to use the new hostname. Again, this went fairly well.
With that out of the way I'm fairly sure this was my longest day of work so far. In order for me to catch the bus I leave the house at 7:40AM, and I'm taking the view (for now) that if I drive to work, I may as well leave at the same time. At this time in the morning, the time between leaving home and walking into the office is about ten minutes: i.e. I get to work at about 7:45. This leaves plenty of time for me to mess around, eat some toast, make fun of Chris, read and reply to email, etc. before the real work begins.
I left more or less on time today, which was good. But obviously with the database changes scheduled for 7PM and taking about 45 minutes (including plenty of time for checking things were working before committing the transaction), not to mention sending out reminder emails to the engineers around the world... my day was quite a bit longer.
It's odd really, but I can't really concentrate on anything when I get home. I could sit down and watch a film, but it's not always possible to find the time in the living room (sofas beat desk chairs in comfyness tests :). So most times I just sit about and do... well, nothing.
A project is what I need. I enjoy nothing better than a good project: not too difficult, but definitely not too easy (I just think "I can do this by doing x, y and z" and promptly lose interest) either. If only I could come up with a good one to work on during my "work from home day" due to start in the new year...
Thursday, 2 November 2006
Borat
Not sure how, exactly, but I had the idea to go out and watch a film this evening. I checked out what was on at MovieTickets.com and settled on Borat -- pretty much only because there was nothing else.
I have to admit I was pretty impressed with it -- although it pokes maybe a little too much fun the way of the Jews, Christians and the Kazakhstani people themselves. Especially the Jews.
On the way I had a little car trouble: if I sit at a set of traffic lights with my foot on the clutch sometimes the engine revs will vary quite a bit, sometimes even cutting out. Not an encouraging sign for a "new" car. I spoke to my Dad and he seems to think it could be the battery on the way out (it's very very cold here right now). I'm going to try and stick it out until February, when I'm due for a service.
I've yet to decide whether to catch the bus or drive to work tomorrow. In fact, I've yet to decide what to do at the weekend. Now I can get about, the possibilities are quite literally endless!
I have to admit I was pretty impressed with it -- although it pokes maybe a little too much fun the way of the Jews, Christians and the Kazakhstani people themselves. Especially the Jews.
On the way I had a little car trouble: if I sit at a set of traffic lights with my foot on the clutch sometimes the engine revs will vary quite a bit, sometimes even cutting out. Not an encouraging sign for a "new" car. I spoke to my Dad and he seems to think it could be the battery on the way out (it's very very cold here right now). I'm going to try and stick it out until February, when I'm due for a service.
I've yet to decide whether to catch the bus or drive to work tomorrow. In fact, I've yet to decide what to do at the weekend. Now I can get about, the possibilities are quite literally endless!
Wednesday, 1 November 2006
This week in words (heh)
It's been quite a bit of time since my last entry. A lot has happened.
Obviously the "big thing" is that I've now got a little car. It's a nice blue car. A 1.2L Fiat Punto with a 53 plate (it's actually an early 2004 car though).
I headed home early on Friday afternoon and made the lengthy train journey to Manchester Piccadilly, where I had a great evening out at the cinema (The Departed) and then on to Pizza Express with Vlad. Saturday morning I'd hoped to make a quick trip into the CompSoc office to set up a new UPS we bought on eBay, but unfortunately I couldn't get into the building out of hours (what with not being a student any longer and all).
In the end Vlad and I spent the next couple of hours chatting over a couple of drinks, before we headed to New Medlock House (where I lived in my final year) to meet my Dad and Uncle, who had driven the car from Liverpool. I dropped Vlad off and then drove back to my parents' house near Leeds -- the M62 isn't exactly an ideal first drive.
Didn't do too much at home -- out for a meal and then visited my grandparents on Sunday morning. I set off pretty early on Sunday afternoon for the drive back to Blackwater -- again a pretty interesting first "solo" drive. Fortunately I had no problems or diversions, thanks to the wonders of TomTom!
I've been travelling in to work on the bus for the past week and a bit. I got pretty annoyed with James when he started rushing me one morning, so I decided I'd just catch the bus instead. For the most part this is great: I have to get up pretty damn early (my alarm goes off at 7AM now, instead of 8AM; but I always spend an extra ten minutes in bed waking up), walk the ten minutes to the bus and then enjoy the 30 minute drive to Sun by reading a book. On the way back it goes more or less direct to Blackwater station, which is about 15 minutes, at the most.
So, today I drove myself to work for the first time: I was up at the same time as normal (for the bus), so in the end I got to work a little before 8AM to give myself some time to sort out an engineer's V880 before a big shake up in the GMP02 lab. The drive (both ways) went pretty well, really. I had a drive around on Monday evening for the hell of it, but got pretty annoyed with myself for driving too fast: not speeding, but going around roundabouts and corners too quickly. It wasn't so fast that I was about to lose control and crash; it just wasn't a comfortable maneuver in general. Fortunately everything felt much smoother on my commute today: it's obviously because I'm getting more used to the car's quirks :)
Obviously the "big thing" is that I've now got a little car. It's a nice blue car. A 1.2L Fiat Punto with a 53 plate (it's actually an early 2004 car though).
I headed home early on Friday afternoon and made the lengthy train journey to Manchester Piccadilly, where I had a great evening out at the cinema (The Departed) and then on to Pizza Express with Vlad. Saturday morning I'd hoped to make a quick trip into the CompSoc office to set up a new UPS we bought on eBay, but unfortunately I couldn't get into the building out of hours (what with not being a student any longer and all).
In the end Vlad and I spent the next couple of hours chatting over a couple of drinks, before we headed to New Medlock House (where I lived in my final year) to meet my Dad and Uncle, who had driven the car from Liverpool. I dropped Vlad off and then drove back to my parents' house near Leeds -- the M62 isn't exactly an ideal first drive.
Didn't do too much at home -- out for a meal and then visited my grandparents on Sunday morning. I set off pretty early on Sunday afternoon for the drive back to Blackwater -- again a pretty interesting first "solo" drive. Fortunately I had no problems or diversions, thanks to the wonders of TomTom!
I've been travelling in to work on the bus for the past week and a bit. I got pretty annoyed with James when he started rushing me one morning, so I decided I'd just catch the bus instead. For the most part this is great: I have to get up pretty damn early (my alarm goes off at 7AM now, instead of 8AM; but I always spend an extra ten minutes in bed waking up), walk the ten minutes to the bus and then enjoy the 30 minute drive to Sun by reading a book. On the way back it goes more or less direct to Blackwater station, which is about 15 minutes, at the most.
So, today I drove myself to work for the first time: I was up at the same time as normal (for the bus), so in the end I got to work a little before 8AM to give myself some time to sort out an engineer's V880 before a big shake up in the GMP02 lab. The drive (both ways) went pretty well, really. I had a drive around on Monday evening for the hell of it, but got pretty annoyed with myself for driving too fast: not speeding, but going around roundabouts and corners too quickly. It wasn't so fast that I was about to lose control and crash; it just wasn't a comfortable maneuver in general. Fortunately everything felt much smoother on my commute today: it's obviously because I'm getting more used to the car's quirks :)
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