dave: July 2005 Archives

Brisbane

By dave on July 25, 2005 8:06 AM |

It's been a relatively enjoyable week in Brisbane so far, with some nice dinners (Cha Cha Char Restaurant) and a show (Topology with Tyrone Noonan at the Brisbane Powerhouse) or two. Oh, and some work of course.

Off for a bit

By dave on July 16, 2005 4:58 PM | | Comments (1)

Things will probably go a bit quiet here for a while - I'm off down under to do a spot of work.

If anyone knows of any cool places to go or see around Brisbane and the Gold Coast at this time of year, let us know in the comments.

I shall, of course, watch out for the drop bears. Vicious little bastards.

Papal Bull?

By dave on July 15, 2005 12:17 PM |

Oh great - it appears that Pope Adolf Benedict thinks that Harry Potter is unchristian.

Pope disapproves of Harry Potter, letters suggest - Yahoo! News

BERLIN (Reuters) - Pope Benedict believes the Harry Potter books subtly seduce young readers and "distort Christianity in the soul" before it can develop properly, according to comments attributed to him by a German writer.

At least the Vatican also disapproves of The Da Vinci Code, a truly execrable piece of twaddle.

Planarity

By dave on July 15, 2005 11:39 AM |

Here's a silly little game I found somewhere: Planarity Flash Game

via: making light (I think)

More Astroturfing

By dave on July 13, 2005 11:42 AM | | Comments (1)

There's an interesting letter in this morning's unlinkable South China Morning Post. The link is, as ever, behind the subscription only firewall.

(You know, I'm sure that the scmp would make as much money from extra views on their advertising as they would lose by dropping the subscription.)

RTHK: another change

I applaud the belated step taken by Hong Kong in discontinuing the live airing of horse racing. It is high time also that Hong Kong took a hard look at RTHK's malpractice in airing a self-made weekly programme criticising, if not humiliating, the Hong Kong government and its staff.

This programme is outrageous by any standard. No other place would have a radio and television outlet using every opportunity to humiliate the very master that funds its operations like RTHK. We Hong Kong taxpayers will no longer tolerate the poor behaviour of RTHK.

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED

So what's this? No government broadcaster should ever be critical of the government? Possibly in the kind of authoritarian society the letter-writer dreams of while he sleeps in his jackboots, this is indeed the case.

In this world though, there's a long history of shows on the BBC and RTÉ (both state broadcasters) which comment on, and are critical of, the government of the day. It's not seen as subversive, just as part of the way things are. After all, if we change our government every few years, they must be doing something worthy of criticism, right?

While Hong Kong doesn't change the government as such, (we elect some members of the Legislative Council, but not the Chief Executive), why should we not at least be able to discuss the government?

The writer of the letter is probably one of those pro-CCP people who believe that you must never criticise the central government; that the CCP can do no wrong. That criticism is treasonous.

Sort of like those right-wing Americans who believe everything wrong with America is the fault of 'liberals' despite the right-wing party controlling all three branches of government (and controlling the press as well).

Upgrading a PC to Fedora Core 4 with no boot media

By dave on July 12, 2005 9:22 PM | | Comments (2)

So, there you are. You've just downloaded the latest version of Fedora, but you've run out of blank CDs or DVDs to burn it to to install it. How do you upgrade it from the CD/DVD images on disk?

  1. Mount the .iso file somewhere

    2. [~]# mount -o loop -t iso9660 FC4-i386-DVD.iso /tmp/fedora/

  2. Dig out the boot-cd image from the mounted image

    3. [~]# cd /tmp/fedora/images/

  3. Mount the boot-cd image

    4. [images]# mount -t iso9660 -o loop boot.iso /tmp/bootdisk/

  4. Copy the files in ./isolinux to /boot/FC4

    5. [images]# cp -rv /tmp/bootdisk/isolinux/* /boot/FC4/

    `/tmp/bootdisk/isolinux/boot.cat' -> `/boot/FC4/boot.cat'

    `/tmp/bootdisk/isolinux/boot.msg' -> `/boot/FC4/boot.msg'

    `/tmp/bootdisk/isolinux/general.msg' -> `/boot/FC4/general.msg'

    `/tmp/bootdisk/isolinux/initrd.img' -> `/boot/FC4/initrd.img'

    `/tmp/bootdisk/isolinux/isolinux.bin' -> `/boot/FC4/isolinux.bin'

    `/tmp/bootdisk/isolinux/isolinux.cfg' -> `/boot/FC4/isolinux.cfg'

    `/tmp/bootdisk/isolinux/memtest' -> `/boot/FC4/memtest'

    `/tmp/bootdisk/isolinux/options.msg' -> `/boot/FC4/options.msg'

    `/tmp/bootdisk/isolinux/param.msg' -> `/boot/FC4/param.msg'

    `/tmp/bootdisk/isolinux/rescue.msg' -> `/boot/FC4/rescue.msg'

    `/tmp/bootdisk/isolinux/snake.msg' -> `/boot/FC4/snake.msg'

    `/tmp/bootdisk/isolinux/splash.lss' -> `/boot/FC4/splash.lss'

    `/tmp/bootdisk/isolinux/TRANS.TBL' -> `/boot/FC4/TRANS.TBL'

    `/tmp/bootdisk/isolinux/vmlinuz' -> `/boot/FC4/vmlinuz'

  5. Make an entry in /etc/grub.conf

    6. [images]# tail -7 /etc/grub.conf

    title Fedora Core 4 Install

    root (hd0,0)

    kernel /FC4/vmlinuz root=/FC4 ramdisk_size=8192

    initrd /FC4/initrd.img

    title FC4 Memtest

    root (hd0,0)

    kernel memtest

    (The memtest entry isn't necessary, but it's useful to check your RAM

  6. Reboot

    7. [~]# reboot

    The system is going down for reboot now!

  7. Select Fedora Core 4 Install
  8. Select a HDD install and supply the path to your images

    9. [~]# df /storage

    Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on

    /dev/hdd1 153837436 93153688 52869204 64% /storage

    This tells me that I need to tell the installer to use /dev/hdd1 as the install device. The path will be /storage/redhat/fedora/core/4/i386/iso/

  9. Answer a few questions

    10. Modern Linux installs are very easy. No more questions about your monitors horizontal sync frequencies or stuff like that.

  10. Drink beer and wait

    11. Ah! Beer! That cool refreshing drink! (Or you could practise your Klingon grammar...)

  11. Enjoy upgraded workstation!

    12. [~]# cat /etc/redhat-release

    Fedora Core release 4 (Stentz)

This method can also be used for network installs, where step 8 involves sharing out the mounted disk image via NFS, and pointing the install over the network to that nfs mount. e.g., select NFS install, give the name of the server, and the exported directory. This may actually be faster than a CD install for older machines, depending on the network cards they have.

Britons proceed as normal, Yankees hide.

By dave on July 12, 2005 10:27 AM |

U.S. tells troops to stay out of London after bombs - Yahoo! News

LONDON (Reuters) - All 12,000 members of the U.S. Air Force stationed in Britain have been banned from visiting London because of last week's bombings, newspapers reported on Tuesday, and one daily slammed the decision as "timid."

It's pathetic, that's what it is. It's also pretty much indicative of the whole US Goverment line since 9/11: "You should all be terrified of terrorists! Hide! Strike back randomly and ineffectively! Panic!" If you're terrified of terrorists and you drastically alter your lifestyle to cope, aren't you just giving into the them?

What!?

By dave on July 6, 2005 11:21 AM |
See also eswn
American sailor cleared of assault after drink may have been spiked NORMA CONNOLLY An American sailor who assaulted a policeman and a taxi driver and smashed their glasses has been acquitted of assault after hearing his behaviour might have been the result of psychosis brought on by excessive drugs or alcohol. Anthony Jon Moore, 27, faced two charges of assault causing actual bodily harm for punching the policeman and the driver after a night of drinking in Lan Kwai Fong. Mr Moore pleaded not guilty on the basis of automatism - performing actions without conscious thought - to attacking taxi driver Wong Ka-hung, 38, after he and a colleague from the USS Kitty Hawk took a cab from Lan Kwai Fong to the Conrad Hotel in Admiralty on February 26. He had been drinking with shipmates when he "started to behave in a strange way", telling them they were in danger and were going to be killed, Magistrate Bina Chainrai said in Eastern Court. The driver said he had been punched three times by Mr Moore, who smashed his glasses, cutting his face. Mr Wong flagged down passing policemen, who stopped to question Mr Moore and his colleague. Mr Moore then punched one of the officers, Chow Pui-fan, 27, also breaking his spectacles and cutting him over his left eye, before fleeing. Mr Moore claimed in court he had no recollection of the events. Ms Chainrai said two civilians that Mr Moore and his friends had met in Lan Kwai Fong testified that "he did not appear to be drunk and it did not appear to them that he had been drinking excessively". Mr Moore's defence counsel, Chris Morley, claimed he might have been given a drug while drinking in Lan Kwai Fong, but urine tests showed no drugs in his system. Mr Moore told the magistrate he had been drinking beer from a bottle and had kept his drink with him at all times. Ms Chainrai said: "That someone might have spiked his drink is purely speculative. There is no evidence to suggest this." But since defence and prosecution medical experts agreed it was possible Mr Moore's actions were the result of psychosis from excessive intake of alcohol or drugs, this meant there was reasonable doubt as to whether he was responsible for his behaviour.

Live 8

By dave on July 4, 2005 8:16 PM |

It was Live 8 Over last weekend. There was no coverage on any Hong Kong television coverage apart from some very brief mentions on the evening news. We had Live Wimbledon instead of our Saturday and Sunday night movies, but not a peep of Live 8. Why?

UPDATE: Apparently, there was some coverage on ATV world, but who watches that? Apparently (according to a letter in yesterdays South China Morning Post), TVB flat out rejected any approaches to show Live8 coverage. Was it too political for them? Did their management think that it was too subversive? Or did they just think it wouldn't make them any money?

Suspended animation?

By dave on July 3, 2005 5:06 PM |

SCIENTISTS have created eerie zombie dogs, reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death in attempts to develop suspended animation for humans.

...

Pittsburgh's Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research has developed a technique in which subject's veins are drained of blood and filled with an ice-cold salt solution.

It all sounds very similar to the science-fictional techniques used in, for example, the Miles Vorkosigan adventure "Mirror Dance", by Lois McMaster Bujold:

He rose to hear the medic muttering, with his ungloved hands plunged deep into the gory mess that had been Miles Vorkosigan's chest, "I can't find an end. Where the hell's an end? At least the damned aorta, something..."

"It's been over four minutes," snarled Quinn, pulled out her vibra-knife again, and cut Miles's corpse's throat, two neat slashes bracketing but not touching the windpipe. Her fingers scrabbled in the cut.

The medic glanced up only to say, "Be sure you get the carotid and not the jugular."

"I'm trying. They're not color-coded." She found something pale and rubbery. She pulled tubing from the top of one of the insulated jugs, and jammed its plastic end-nozzle into the presumed artery. She switched the power on; the tiny pump hummed, pushing lucent greenish cryo-fluid through the transparent tubing. She pulled out a second piece of tubing from the jug and inserted it on the other side of Miles's neck. Blood began to flow from the slashed exit veins, over her hands, over everything; not spurting as from a heartbeat, but in a steady, inhuman, mechanical fashion. It spread on the floor in a shimmering pool, then began to flow away across some subtle drainage-slope, a little carmine creek. An impossible quantity of blood. The clustered clones were weeping. Mark's own head throbbed, pain so bad it darkened his vision.

Quinn kept the pumps going till what came out ran greenish-clear. The medic meanwhile had apparently found the ends he was looking for, and attached two more tubes. More blood, mixed with cryo-fluid, welled up and spilled from the wound. The creek became a river. The medic pulled Miles's boots and socks off, and ran sensors over his paling feet. "Almost there... damn, we're nearly dry." He hastened to his jug, which had switched itself off and was blinking a red indicator light.

Does it go up to 11?

By dave on July 3, 2005 1:44 PM |

I spotted this the other day: US $485 for a volume control knob!

It's time to meet the muppets...

By dave on July 3, 2005 2:27 AM |

Atrios skewers CNN's talking heads in this post comparing Novak and Valenti to Statler and Waldorf.

West Island Line

By dave on July 1, 2005 1:47 PM |

hongkong.scmp.com - South China Morning Post online coverage of Hong Kong politics and news (Subcsription required - sorry.)

The Executive Council has approved the long-awaited MTR West Island Line, which will cut travelling time between Sheung Wan and Kennedy Town by at least a half.

About bloody time!

« dave: June 2005 | Main Index | Archives | dave: August 2005 »

Some Blogs

Environental Sites

Apple News and blogs

Linux News

Photography News and blogs

News and Politics

Podcasts

Web Comics

About Me

Contact

  • Unsolicited Bulk Email (spam), commercial solicitations, SEO related items, and abuse are not welcome here.
  • email the webmaster
  • Any email to the above address may be made public at the sole discretion of the recipient.

Other Stuff

Search