Satya's LJ archive 200306

Event time: 2003-06-01 12:22:00
Log time: 2003-06-01 09:22:35

So I'm riding along yesterday, and I pass Calhoun going north on Coming, starting from the lights. Apparently my bicycle is too slow, cos this dude first comes up close behind me, and when I move aside, passes close in on my left side and beeps at me! I mean, fuck you, but the Field Manual says that I'm supposed to follow traffic rules, and you're supposed to treat me with some respect.

Event time: 2003-06-03 20:43:00
Log time: 2003-06-03 17:43:57

NGE disc 7, around 49 minutes in, there's a scene with what looks like a photograph hanging over Misato's desk. It looks like someone put a real photograph on the animation cel.

Event time: 2003-06-05 20:34:00
Log time: 2003-06-05 17:34:43
Subject: Well that was interesting

Well that was weird. After running fdisk to delete 4 partitions and make 1 big one, I was warned that the kernel was using the old partition table. Ignoring that, I ran mkfs.ext3 and mounted the new partition. It was only 17 megs or something, so I rebooted. Then I got kernel panics, unable to mount root. I figured, oh no, the entire primary hard drive is hosed, time to restore from month-old backups. But first I decided to try booting from rescue disks and all that.

After some random rebooting (and pulling the forgotten lilo password out of a backup disk), I found that I could use some old kernel images and loadlin to get in and see the files, at least the ext2 filesystems (the kernel predated ext3). So I figure the files and partitions are alright, so why can't the current kernel boot? Then I forced root= on the lilo command line, and presto, we have init! Everything's fine now, except that the new partition, which ought to be empty, has mysteriously used up 33 megs of space. I assume it's for the ext3 journal.

Event time: 2003-06-07 01:37:00
Log time: 2003-06-06 22:37:07

INS was nice and short. ins.gov was nice and short. Why is it now immigration.gov? Can't they CNAME it?

Event time: 2003-06-07 22:15:00
Log time: 2003-06-07 19:15:14
Subject: Weirdness

On boot, Debian shows a prompt: wait 5 seconds, or hit enter for a shell prompt. On my system, if I hit enter I get a shell prompt but none of the commands work (everything: not found). Anyway, if I then exit the shell, it eventually says cramfs: wrong magic and kernel panic: unable to mount root fs blah. But if I don't drop to the shell, don't touch anything, it still says cramfs: wrong magic, but boots anyway without any panics. What's going on?

Event time: 2003-06-08 19:59:00
Log time: 2003-06-08 16:59:11

http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum-docs/DCForumID1/1181.html Eyrie's take on Neo. No comment on the Matrix.

Event time: 2003-06-09 13:19:00
Log time: 2003-06-09 10:24:18

Is the RIAA crazy? Is this no longer a free country? What the hell is going on?

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/TechTV/techtv_RIAAvsteen030609.html

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/09/1311255

Event time: 2003-06-09 16:25:00
Log time: 2003-06-09 13:29:53

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3028387471&category=41012 people are crazy, bidding on game characters and items in the game, for real money on ebay. That item is going for over $250!

Event time: 2003-06-10 09:08:00
Log time: 2003-06-10 06:08:49

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/06/07/solar.system.road/index.html
http://www.umpi.maine.edu/info/nmms/solar/index.htm
Scale solar system model

Event time: 2003-06-10 20:30:00
Log time: 2003-06-10 17:29:55

One of these days, MS is going to buy up all the free software and we non-MS folk going to be stuck.

Can we say "anti-competitive"?

Event time: 2003-06-12 21:01:00
Log time: 2003-06-12 18:01:14

Yay, Rangeela on TCM right now yay!

Event time: 2003-06-13 17:56:00
Log time: 2003-06-13 14:56:19

Yay Eminem said he got mail on those weird MTV or whatever awards yay

Event time: 2003-06-13 11:57:00
Log time: 2003-06-13 09:02:12

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.07/40gates.html

WRONG!

I don't wnat a smart house. I don't wnat it to lock me out because it has a bug. I trust a physical old-fashioned key more than a smartcard reader + biometrics. I don't want RFID tags in my flour. I don't want XP-controlled heating, music, media, or anything. I don't want an embedded PC in my car. I don't want anything bigger than a microcontroller in anything except a chunky PC tower on the floor next to my desk.

Event time: 2003-06-13 18:09:00
Log time: 2003-06-13 15:09:51

Okay, there's a movie on Sci-Fi channel. I just walked into it, but someone's talking about jumping to the Vega sector, meeting the Tiger's Claw, and about Kilrathi destroying the Pegasus. I didn't know there was a Wing Commander movie.

Event time: 2003-06-13 18:15:00
Log time: 2003-06-13 15:15:59

The TCS Tiger Claw looks like a real working spaceship (or submarine), like the ships in Alien and unlike the ships in Star Trek.

Event time: 2003-06-13 18:28:00
Log time: 2003-06-13 15:28:11
Subject: Wing Commander

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0131646 <-- Wing Commander the movie

(Traced by noting that a guy in WC (David Suchet) played the main bad guy in Executive Decision, tracing ED, clicking through DS's entry, and searching the filmography by eye. imdb is the google of movies.)

Freddie Prinze, jr playes the lead. Matthew Lillard (Scooby Doo movie's Shaggy) playes maniac.

And no, the TCS Tiger Claw looks nothing like the ship from the games. The interior certainly looks like a real aircraft carrier. Rapier cockpit is believable -- although I plaed the game years ago.

Ooh, Kilrathi dogfighting (catfighting?) techniques from Angel.

Event time: 2003-06-14 22:13:00
Log time: 2003-06-14 19:13:14
Subject: Linux and "others"

IBM eservers ad says they're for "Linux, and others too"!

Event time: 2003-06-14 14:44:00
Log time: 2003-06-14 11:44:32

Okay, all you people (all one of you) who wanted to know how to export the livejournal entries: http://www.livejournal.com/export.bml

Event time: 2003-06-14 22:01:00
Log time: 2003-06-14 19:01:42
Subject: The war on piracy

If we're not supposed to copy music and video, why do we have all this DVD-RAM stuff on the market? Why do Microsoft advertise the "copy and edit" capabilities of their software and Panasonic advertise DVD-RAM players?

Event time: 2003-06-15 20:34:00
Log time: 2003-06-15 17:34:54
Subject: Light switch

It's amazing how this entire country has one standard type of light switch for residential use.

Event time: 2003-06-17 22:27:00
Log time: 2003-06-17 19:27:02
Subject: AoTC in-jokes

So I'm watching Attack of the Clones again, and discounting C3PO and R2D2's lame attempts at comedy, anyone else notice Jango Fett put away his pistol exactly like Robocop? And didn't someone else use the 'aggressive negotiations' line before?

Event time: 2003-06-18 10:34:00
Log time: 2003-06-18 07:39:00
Subject: Pirates and spammers

I wish all the effort expended on stopping piracy would be spent on stopping spam.

While we're at it, I've got jabbermail to get mesages and pass them to smtp....

Event time: 2003-06-19 12:56:00
Log time: 2003-06-19 10:01:31
Subject: image manipulation

Imagemagick is the da bomb.

http://www.imagemagick.org/

Event time: 2003-06-20 22:58:00
Log time: 2003-06-20 19:58:32
Subject: Bins -- make albums

Bins is also da bomb. I'm editing its templates right now to get stylesheet support, and also to remove the bling-bling and make it the suck. Then it'll the same way as the rest of my site.

http://bins.sautret.org/

Event time: 2003-06-21 23:29:00
Log time: 2003-06-21 20:29:42
Subject: Coffee

I picked up a 2-for-1 set of Breyer's ice cream tubs, which turned out to be almond mocha. I sorta didn't read the label or didn't realise that it contains almonds and mocha i.e. nuts and coffee. I don't like to eat almonds etc. because the stuff sticks in my teeth. And I'm not much of a coffee drinker -- I drink hot chocolate on the ITLab's morning coffee run. So I'm all hopped up on coffee now and making new templates for bins.

Event time: 2003-06-22 22:06:00
Log time: 2003-06-22 19:07:07
Subject: This weekend

This weekend was spent in updating my website. Well, no. Over half was spent in making a new template for Bins so that it would work with my website. The rest was spent in tweaking the template and editing the XML for the album descriptions. I'm still not finished.

Event time: 2003-06-27 23:17:00
Log time: 2003-06-27 20:17:22
Subject: network weirdness

How the heck did the broadcast address get set the same as wintermutex's address? It's supposed to be .255!!

Event time: 2003-06-28 16:04:00
Log time: 2003-06-28 13:04:39
Subject: Wargames

So I'm watching the movie Wargames after several years, and now I actually understand what the kid (Matthew Broderick is so young!!) is doing: social engineering, war-dialling, phreaking.... all on what looks like a C64 or something similar, with 8" floppy drives and an ancient modem.

Event time: 2003-06-28 19:00:00
Log time: 2003-06-28 16:00:30
Subject: Wargames error

They scramble "F-16"s, but in the next shot they show F-15s. They're very distinctive, and I have subtitles turned on. Trust me on this.