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.

[800×600][1600×1200]
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:

a backtrace with umph

not what you expect to see when debugging an app:

Unhandled Exception: System.DllNotFoundException: sqlite
in <0x00053> (wrapper managed-to-native) Mono.Data.SqliteClient.SqliteConnection:sqlite_open (string,int,string&)
in [0x00031] (at /cvs/mcs/class/Mono.Data.SqliteClient/Mono.Data.SqliteClient/SqliteConnection.cs:157) Mono.Data.SqliteClient.SqliteConnection:Open ()
in [0x00063] (at /home/owen/src/gnome/dashboard/index/sources-manager.cs:101) Dashboard.Index.SourcesManager:.ctor (string)
in [0x00070] (at /home/owen/src/gnome/dashboard/index/index-manager.cs:93) Dashboard.Index.IndexManager:.ctor (string)
in [0x00013] (at /home/owen/src/gnome/dashboard/index/text-indexer.cs:38) FuckNut:Main (string[])

Grueling work

I’ve been putting in a ton of hours at work trying to get a show out the door to Discovery Channel. Here is what happens while online editors are waiting for complicated effects to render.

Windows jump around when clicking on workspaces in pager

If you are running Fedora Core 2 with Sawfish as your window manager, and you notice that when you click on workspaces in the pager your windows jump around randomly, there’s an easy fix to get it working again:

Download the source code to libwnck, build it, and install it on top of the rpm Fedora Core 2 provided to you. This was an old bug that was fixed long ago, but for some reason the RPM of libwnck still has it.

software I need

I often have ideas for software projects, some of which I even think I might be capable of writing. I don’t make time for writing software, however, so they never get done. In case I get amnesia and forget, here are some programs I wish I had (you can also interpret this as lame-o nerd posts wishlist):

  • GNOME panel rss ticker applet: Straw should integrate with the gnome panel to provide a ticker applet. Headlines would run by, and a click could either bring up the article in straw or the link in a browser. Perhaps it could sense mouse proximity and slow down the ticker as the mouse gets close. You could do cool things like make make stories which are repeated among multiple blogs bolder or bigger (could look at link targets or common keywords)
  • Live squencer / sampler for DJing: You could do live electronic music based on the idea of initiating samples and letting them loop. You could gang loops together and alter them (pan, pitch, etc) in real time, allowing a dj to do live production. The interface should be totally keyboard driven for convenience. On import, loops would be bpm’d so that they all line up perfectly
  • GStreamer-based video editing: Obviously people are working toward this and thinking about it, but after being trained on an Avid Nitris DS I think the OSS community should really aim high and look at what other people have done. Things like unbiquitous keyframing and a line graph view for those keyframes are extremely powerful features. This is one application where the HIG might have to go out the window. Editors don’t care about discoverable, they want every possible way to color-correct their video. The HIG is important, but don’t let it stand in the way of a top-class app. In other words, aiming to be an Adobe Premiere replacement isn’t going to cut it. If you can replace a 150,000$ package you’re going to be attractive. The product doesn’t have to have chroma-keying with spill mattes from day one, but someone on the project should at least know what that means, and the software should be extensible enough to support it.
  • Web-based RSS feed reading for mobile phones. oh wait I wrote that

Oops

This is why you should know the language before you buy the shirt. This gentleman’s shirt says ‘italian princess boston’

Excitement in davis!

Of course you can’t tell by my crappy photo. But they’ve blocked off a street in davis square. Supposedly due to a bomb scare or something. That’s where the post office is, so it’s not surprising