Grand Opening: Carbon Computing Ottawa!
Standing in line waiting for the Opening Sale to start..
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Flickr
This is a test post from 
, a fancy photo sharing thing.
Fingerpainting recipe..
I spotted a nice and simple recipe for fingerpaint linked off of swissmiss’s site.. but it contains food coloring, which I would prefer to avoid, seeing as my son is allergic to it.
Alternatives anyone?
“Introduction to Mac” Workshop coming up on January 26th
I will only quote part of the announcement regarding the Workshop Tom and I are offering next weekend… all the details are on Tom’s site: Introduction to Mac course, in Ottawa, Ontario, on January 26th, 2008.
As you can guess from the course title, we will be doing an introduction to the Mac, from the outside in!
Some of the major applications which will be covered include; Mail, Safari, Address Book, iCal, iChat, and the iLife suite of applications. There will be time at the end to address specific questions, which we expect will arise!
As Tom says:
Now that the details are (finally) worked out, I can safely announce that Dave Rostenne and I are offering our first combined course for users who are new to Macs, or have just "switched". The course will take place over at the School of the Photographic Arts: Ottawa (SPAO), and you can find details on their special events page or in this printable PDF file.
When
Saturday, January 26th, 2008 from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM, with an additional hour afterwards (4:00 PM to 5:00 PM) for questions and answers.
The cost and how to register
The cost is a very reasonable $79, and to register, you can either call (613) 562-3824 or email ADMIN@SPAO.CA. Register soon, because seating is limited to 20 people!
We hope to see you there!
Speaking of Ottawa
Speaking of Ottawa is a project I have been working on with Tom. There is now some detail on what we are working on on the site.. go look and while you are there, sign up for the annoucement list!
Bus tracing under Windows.
I’ve used USB Sniffer v1.8 to sniff USB bus transactions under Windows. It works, although generates very verbose output (and I have to copy the .log files to a unix box, where grep/sed/awk can actually make them useful. Yes, I know about cygwin, no, command line editing under windows still sucks).
I was told to give a free version of Bus Hound a try, especially for looking at IDE transactions. (BusHound supports alot more then just usb bus, and I was told that it’s quite good, which is a win, since I am thinking about foregoing using USB to IDE adapter, as using USB introduces extra data in bus traces, by wrapping around CDBs.)
P.S. Reading ATA/ATAPI 7 and MMC 6 specs gave me headaches. So I stopped.
Peter Watts’ Books are licensed under CC
Peter Watts, a Canadian Marine Biologist responsible for Vampire Domesticantion lectures (Which you should spend 40 minutes and listen to, and definitely read the little corporate slogans at the corner of each slide) licensed a bunch of his books under CC license, and made them available for download.
Thank you, Peter! I was looking on Amazon, and at 50 to 90 dollars a copy (per softcover), it was not feasible for me to buy them.
If you liked these, consider buying Behemoth: A-Max and Behemoth: Seppuku. They are also good.
Oh, and regarding slogans: in F.E.A.R, on certain levels there were posters that said “Remember, it’s Quantity, Quality, Safety in that order!”
Kino (Part II)
In Part I I’ve translated some Kino songs for Alan.
I’ve realized that I never translated “Группа крови ” (Gruppa Krovi “Blood Type”), even though I promised.
We aim to please here, so here is the translation:
Теплое место, но улицы ждут
Отпечатков наших ног.
Звездная пыль - на сапогах.
Мягкое кресло, клетчатый плед,
Не нажатый вовремя курок.
Солнечный день - в ослепительных снах.
Pleasant (lit: Warm) place, but streets wait
For footprints of our feet.
Stardust is on our high boots.
Soft chair, tartan plaid,
Firing pin not depressed on time.
Sunny day in blinding dreams.
Группа крови - на рукаве,
Мой порядковый номер - на рукаве,
Пожелай мне удачи в бою, пожелай мне:
Не остаться в этой траве,
Не остаться в этой траве.
Пожелай мне удачи, пожелай мне удачи!
Blood type on the sleeve
My sequencial number is on the sleeve.
Wish me luck in fight, wish me
Not to remain on this grass
Not to remain on this grass
Wish me luck, wish me luck!
И есть чем платить, но я не хочу
Победы любой ценой.
Я никому не хочу ставить ногу на грудь.
Я хотел бы остаться с тобой,
Просто остаться с тобой,
Но высокая в небе звезда зовет меня в путь.
And I something to pay with, but I don’t want
A victory at any cost.
I don’t want to put my foot on anyone’s chest
I want to remain with you,
Just remina with you
But sunrise (lit: High star in the sky) is calling me on my way.
Группа крови - на рукаве,
Мой порядковый номер - на рукаве,
Пожелай мне удачи в бою, пожелай мне:
Не остаться в этой траве,
Не остаться в этой траве.
Пожелай мне удачи, пожелай мне удачи!
Translator’s note: Tsoj wrote songs in a rather terse way, with setenses that are not really complete. He is trying to conjure up imagery, and imagery that he is trying to conjure is not necessarily easy to translate into a different language.
Of course Victor Tsoj is dead (in spite of the “Tsoj lives!” graffitti that pops up every once in a while). However Ленинград (Leningrad) did a kind of tribute to Kino’s Gruppa Krovi:
В магнитофоне играет группа “Кино”,
Ты говоришь мне: “Выключи это гавно”.
Тебя ломает от всякого старья,
Заткнись, это любимая песня моя.
Tape deck is playing group “Kino”
You are telling me “Turn off this shit”
You are getting headache from random old stuff.
Shut up, this is my favorite song.
О, группа крови на рукаве.
О, группа крови на рукаве.
Oh, blood type on the sleeve.
Oh, blood type on the sleeve.
Ты можешь помолчать хотя бы пять минут,
Или пожелай мне удачи в бою.
Группа крови - моя любимая песня,
И когда мне плохо, её я пою:
Can you be quite for just 5 minutes,
Or wish me luck in the (upcoming) fight.
“Grouppa Krovi” is my favorite song,
And when I feel down, I sing it.
О, группа крови на рукаве.
О, группа крови на рукаве.
В магнитофоне играет группа “Кино”,
Ты говоришь мне: “Выключи это гавно”.
Тебя ломает от всякого старья,
Заткнись, это любимая песня моя.
О, группа крови на рукаве.
О, группа крови на рукаве.
О, группа крови на рукаве.
О, группа крови на рукаве.
О, группа крови на рукаве.
О, группа крови на рукаве.
repeat first verse and reprise as needed.
MP3 is available while it’s available.Translator’s (mine!) notes:
ломает is a conjugated form of ломать - to break. However it is also used as slang for ломка (literally: breakage), which is the general unwellness feeling one gets when one is craving drugs (or coming down from a trip).
On a separate note about drugs…. Don’t do them, m’kay? I don’t really want to project my morals onto anyone else on the interweb, however not too long ago I’ve read a book by Eugenij Roizman (Евгений Ройзман), called “City without Drugs” (Город без наркотиков). Oh, my…. He talks how in the late 1990s city of Ekaterinburg in Russia got flooded with drugs of all kinds, and how he got involved in fighting drug distribution, rehabilitating addicts, and generally fight the lack of care by law enforcement (that was commonly bought off by the drug dealers and distributers).
Most effective method that actually worked was to handcuff the addict to the heating radiator for a month, feeding him, and once the initial craving got broken, getting him into hard physical labor - construction, etc.
Parents that had “connections” and had clue, were arranging, paying even, police to arrest their teenage kids, and jail them for a year. Jail their children! That’s because even though situation in Russian jails is not great, and cases of tuberculosis and hepatitus are common, people with clue realized that chancing that in jail is infinitely better then guaranteed death from OD, AIDS or hep C in 2 - 3 years. “Normal” rehab didn’t work, and people were back to being on the street and addicts in weeks after leaving care. So people without connections were bringing their children to Mr Roizman, into the care of a NGO fund that he created. Many of addicts to whom Mr Roizman helped went on to lead normal lives - finished universities, married, have kids, and now are thankful to him.
Identifying unknown PCI devices
If I ever want to identify unknown device installed in a system….
First I’ll attempt to obtain a PCI device ID:
Under Linux, I’ll use lspci.
Under Windows, I’ll use Unknown Devices (And ignore any other piece of software that claims to be called “Unknown Device Identifier”, and that was stolen from Mike Moniz
Under MacOS X, I’ll use system_profiler
Under Solaris, I’ll use /usr/X11/bin/scanpci -v
Then I’ll reference the PCI device ID with the Canonical list of PCI device IDs from Craig’s site.
At that point I can grep the pcidevs.txt, and learn exciting things.
For example, suppose I wonder what an unknown device in a PowerMac G5 is.
From system profiler I know this:
pci8086,1012: Type: Ethernet Controller Bus: PCI Slot: SLOT-3 Vendor ID: 0x8086 Device ID: 0x1010 Subsystem Vendor ID: 0x8086 Subsystem ID: 0x1012 Revision ID: 0x0001
So I do a bit of grepping:
stany@gilva:~/Desktop[01:54 PM]$ grep V.*8086 pcidevs.txt V 8086 Intel Corporation stany@gilva:~/Desktop[01:54 PM]$ grep ^S.*1012 pcidevs.txt S 1012 SiS650 GUI 2D/3D Accelerator S 1012 DFE-580TX 4-Port Server Adapter S 1012 PRO/1000 MT Dual Port Server Adapter S 1012 PRO/1000 MF Dual Port Server Adapter S 1012 PRO/100 S Server Adapter (D) S 1012 PRO/100 S Server Adapter (D) S 1012 Realtek AC'97 Audio S 1012 Intel USB 2.0 Enhanced Host Controller S 1012 PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection stany@gilva:~/Desktop[01:54 PM]$ grep ^D.*1010 pcidevs.txt D 0020 LSI53C1010-33 PCI to Dual Channel Ultra160 SCSI Multifunction Controller D 0021 LSI53C1000/1000R/1010R/1010-66 PCI to Ultra160 SCSI Controller D 1010 SST-128P Adapter D 1010 Duet 1S(16550)+1P D 1010 C101/PCI Super Sync Board D 1010 82546EB Dual Port Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) D 0003 SG1010 6 Port Serial Switch & PCI to PCI Bridge stany@gilva:~/Desktop[01:54 PM]$
(V stands for Vendor, S for subsystem and D for device ID)
So logic would imply that this is an Intel Corporation PRO/1000 MT Dual Port Server Adapter, specifically 82546EB Dual Port Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper).
An excercise for the reader is to identify the following device:
pci bus 0×0006 cardnum 0×04 function 0×00: vendor 0×1106 device 0×3044
VIA Technologies Inc VT6306 VIA Fire II IEEE-1394 OHCI Link Layer Controller
Merging Keychains?
Does anyone know how to merge multiple Keychains in Mac OS X?
I know I can copy items from one keychain to another, but that involves authenticating twice.
I tried going in and adding those other keychains to be part of my list, but they don’t stay. Frustrating.
Why am I doing this? I replaced my computer, and was not able to transfer my account at setup time, so I ended up with some old keychains that got copied over.
Suggestions, comments, rants?
All are welcome!
Dave