Author: Owen

You upgraded to Fedora… what are you missing?

My main computer is a laptop I’ve upgraded from Redhat 9 through Fedora Core 2. The interesting thing about upgrading the OS instead of installing from scratch is that the upgrader only upgrades the packages you already had. It often won’t install new packages that are included in the new version, but aren’t strictly required to run.

The extended entry below contains a list of packages I’ve noticed weren’t installed on my machine, but definitely should have been. I will update the list as I notice new packages I’ve been missing.
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It’s like a chart, only without the data

So Apple announced a new G5-based imac, with the disappointing detail that it contains an 18 month old graphics card. (The graphics industry has 6 month product cycles, so this translates to roughly 3 versions out of date).

Their ad copy claims otherwise of course:

It’s a combination that delivers unparalleled 2D and 3D graphics performance and an immersive, photorealistic gaming experience with three times the frame rate of previous-generation processors.

And so of course they have a graphic to prove their point:

This is probably the worst graphic I’ve ever seen. It looks like it contains information — it’s got system specs and even a benchmark resolution — but that’s just a smokescreen. The graphic is relative, and doesn’t tell you if “baseline” is 60 frames per second or 6.

Apple can get away with this sort of manipulation because its customers tend to be insulated from the rest of the PC industry. The FX5200 is actually an “entry level” version versus its cousins the 5700 and 5900, and has been surpassed by the next-generation 6800 series. If Apple were to post actual framerates it would not compare so well to the x86 world, so they keep everything within their own universe.

ps…

Apple isn’t alone in presenting data poorly. TardOCP is famous for its data-filled, yet totally useless diagrams. Note the inconsistant resolution settings and unreadable colors!

Testing Meme Propagation In Blogspace: Add Your Blog!

This posting is a community experiment that tests how a meme, represented by this blog posting, spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs are most influential in the propagation of memes. The dataset from this experiment will be public, and can be located via Google (or Technorati) by doing a search for the GUID for this meme (below).

The original posting for this experiment is located at: Minding the Planet (Permalink: http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/2004/08/a_sonar_ping_of.html) — results and commentary will appear there in the future.

Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to participate — the more the better. The data from this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs.

The GUID for this experiment is: as098398298250swg9e98929872525389t9987898tq98wteqtgaq62010920352598gawst (this GUID enables anyone to easily search Google (or Technorati) for all blogs that participate in this experiment). Anyone is free to analyze the data of this experiment. Please publicize your analysis of the data, and/or any comments by adding comments onto the original post (see URL above). (Note: it would be interesting to see a geographic map or a temporal animation, as well as a social network map of the propagation of this meme.)

INSTRUCTIONS

To add your blog to this experiment, copy this entire posting to your blog, and then answer the questions below, substituting your own information, below, where appropriate. Other than answering the questions below, please do not alter the information, layout or format of this post in order to preserve the integrity of the data in this experiment (this will make it easier for searchers and automated bots to find and analyze the results later).

REQUIRED FIELDS (Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers)

(1) I found this experiment at URL: http://planet.gnome.org

(2) I found it via “Newsreader Software” or “Browsing the Web” or “Searching the Web” or “An E-Mail Message”: “Browsing the Web”

(3) I posted this experiment at URL: http://ywwg.com/photolog/

(4) I posted this on date (day, month, year): 03/08/04

(5) I posted this at time (24 hour time): 16:32:00

(6) My posting location is (city, state, country): Boston, MA, USA

OPTIONAL SURVEY FIELDS (Replace the answers below with your own answers):

(7) My blog is hosted by: my dad

(8) My age is: 24

(9) My gender is: Male

(10) My occupation is: Online Editor

(11) I use the following RSS/Atom reader software: Straw

(12) I use the following software to post to my blog: Movable Type

(13) I have been blogging since (day, month, year): 18/5/2002

(14) My web browser is: Galeon

(15) My operating system is: Linux

unwordwrap a file

I hate when I get a text file that I want to load onto my Palm device, and I find it’s already full of newlines. When I use txt2pdbdoc the pre-wrapped lines end up making the display of the file a headache to use. It’s like old emails you used to receive:

Hi, my name is Owen
Williams
and for some reason
my
software is a little narrower
than
yours so everything
looks
like crap.

Well here’s a python script that will remove newlines from any text file. It’s really quick and stupid. (See extended entry)
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New York Trip

Char and I took a weekend trip to New York City last weekend, using the
hip, uber-secret-except-everyone-knows-about-it chinese bus. The idea is, you pay
10 bucks and they take you to New York. Good deal.

I didn’t take many pictures, because I’m lame. I had planned to buy a film camera
at the gigantic B&H Pro photo/video store, but
as two separate people told me later, “they’re all Jews” so it was closed on Saturday.
So I wasn’t able to get a camera.

Our inability to get into B&H was a theme repeated throughout the weekend, as we would try
to find stores and invariably they were closed, in Brooklyn, or otherwise unlocatable.
Eventually we accepted our fate and just went into the stores we could find, but at the
end of the whole thing we felt we were only “moderately successful.”

The part of the trip that went ok was seeing Rent. Like the chinese bus, Rent is
sort of a hip thing to do, although unlike the bus we’re late to the Rent party by about
eight years. The show was pretty good. I don’t see a lot of musicals, so I don’t
have an internal set of standards to go by, but I enjoyed myself. The script is very 90s,
including such memes as: everyone has AIDS! a CYBER-somethingorother! Everyone lives in a loft!
“Living in America at the end of the Millenium!” Somehow we can afford film and processing for
our hip 16mm camera! Something else that probably dampened my enjoyment was that I knew I
would have trouble understanding what was going on, so I was concentrating perhaps a
little too intensely on understanding the lyrics rather than just relaxing. I still
managed to miss a key plot point, but it could have been worse.

Anyway so here is the one good picture I managed to take.

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Duck cleaners!

pcmcia network device not working in fedora core 2

symptom: In Fedora Core 2, a pcmcia networking card doesn’t work on boot. This is with kernels 2.6.6 and greater. Oddly, 2.6.5-385 (which came with the distro) works fine. After boot, it is impossible to get the card to start up, and shutting down causes a hang. iwconfig seems to hang. Sometimes completely restarting pcmcia and reloading the yenta_socket module solves the problem.
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Fahrenheit 9/11

We went camping last weekend, and of course I suck so there are no pictures, but
when we got back we saw Fahrenheit 9/11. We tried to see it at 7:30, but forty-five minutes
before showtime it was sold out and there was a huge line for it. We got tickets for the
10:00pm showing, and got in line at 9:00pm. It was worth it — I hate getting crappy seats at
a good movie.

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From left to right: me, Jesi, Mike, Char, Adam “W” Katz, and Kate

Extreme Engineering

The show I’ve been working on starts airing next week! I was in charge of Online Editing, which is to say I converted the edited show from low-quality standard definition to pristine HDTV which no one will see anywhere. I get an Assistant Editor credit for this first one, but I’ll get the full credit starting with show three. 🙂

Here’s a little flyer they had me make up for the announcement: