BRMJ's LJ
Aug. 24th, 2009
11:56 pm - Final college preperations, DECs from decades gone by and a question
When I haven't been otherwise occupied procrastinating, I've been quite busy for about a week now packing for college and making sure everything is ready. I'm about 80% done with the packing, excluding clothes appropriate for the current weather and things I use on a daily basis. I leave on Saturday morning.
The giant tear in my laptop bag is being repaired and I've ordered a new backpack that will hopefully hold up better than my past ones. My desktop still isn't here; System76 was swamped with back-to-school orders resulting in considerable delays and no one was home when FedEx tried to deliver it on Saturday. They will be trying again tomorrow. I'm beginning to get somewhat annoyed with the situation but it's not late enough to be a problem yet.
It hasn't been all work for me, however. I recently discovered a system out on the internet that thinks it's a PDP-10 running ITS. I, of course, have no idea how to use this. However, I have read quite a few praise-filled reminiscences from old AI-lab hackers and think it's quite cool that this sort of thing exists. Not surprising, but cool. If I can figure out how to use it well enough, I might try out the original versions of emacs and zork some time. The information about the system can be found at http://up.update.uu.se/ and a java applet to connect to it can be found at http://up.update.uu.se/supdup.html. There is also stand-alone client software available, but it doesn't do telnet, ssh or anything common like that.
While I'm on the subject of old computers made by DEC, here's something tangentially related: I recently had a very interesting conversation with an elderly neighbor I had never really talked to before. It started with him asking about my college plans. When I told him I plan on a CS/physics double major, he mentioned that he had graduated with a double major in electrical engineering and physics back in the early 1950s, just in time for transistors become practical and start making much of what they had taught him about vacuum tubes obsolete. Seeing what was going on, he kept up with the advances and eventually ended up programming and doing hardware repairs on a PDP-8 about a decade and a half later. I never would have guessed he had that sort of background. Interesting.
Finally, I've got a request. Because of the added distance and scheduling conflicts, I'll almost certainly be missing OVFF this year and probably ConFusion as well. I'll try my best to be at Penguicon, but no promises. I'm going to need to get my fandom fix elsewhere. Any chance anyone knows what good conventions, housfilks and fandom-y things in general there are within perhaps 3 or 4 hours of Rochester, NY? Thanks.
Aug. 15th, 2009
04:53 am - You learn something new everyday...
In Cherrapunji, India, living bridges are made from the roots of the Ficus elastica tree.
( Selected images )
http://rootbridges.blogspot.com/
Aug. 12th, 2009
09:27 pm - Where has the summer gone?
It just hit me that I only have about two weeks until I will be heading to college. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that. A little anxious, a little excited, and a whole lot of something I don't really have a name for, I guess. Interesting.
It probably won't be all that much of an adjustment, since I took almost exclusively college courses the past year. Sharing a room with three other people will take some getting used to, though. I'm on the waiting list for the computer science special interest house, so hopefully I won't be in a quad room for long.
I'm not even close to done packing and I still need to get some good boots. Rochester gets quite a bit of snow, and my old set of boots are just about worn out. Come to think of it, there's quite a bit that still needs doing. These should be a busy two weeks.
In other news, the new computer hasn't arrived yet, even though it should have by now. However, the monitors and keyboard have. As a direct result of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
mdlbear 's praise for them and my testing one out at Penguicon, the keyboard is a model M. I am not disappointed. Even though it is quite literally older than I am, it arrived in like new condition and appears to work flawlessly. The typing action is even better than the one I tried at Penguicon. Interestingly, its keycaps feature what appear to be APL hieroglyphics in addition to the regular characters. I didn't see that mentioned when I purchased it, but I'm not complaining; they are light enough colored not to be distracting and I think it's actually kind of cool.
Aug. 2nd, 2009
02:55 am - Anyone want to help name my new desktop?
My family recently ordered a new desktop for when I go off to college in about a month(!). It's a pretty nice one from System76. Quad core Intel processor, 4GB of ram, 500GB of hard drive space and one of the fastest video cards that's likely to do 3D acceleration with FOSS drivers any time soon. Also, Ubuntu 9.04 is pre-installed, so there is no windows tax. I'll be ordering a pair of large LCD monitors as soon as I can put together the money for them.
Now, on to the part that will interest those of you who aren't computer geeks: My naming scheme is fictional space craft, and I am currently open to any suggestions that you have for a name for the new one. I don't care if the name comes from a book, tv, a movie or elsewhere and I already have or have had a Serenity, a Galactica, a Gambit (from a random SF book I got at a yard sale), a Delta-Vee (from the same SF book), an Enterprise and an Astron (from another random SF book).
Once I've got some good nominations, I might even set up a poll to let you help make the decision, unless something jumps out at me right away as "right".
![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/smile.gif){kind=small}
contentJul. 31st, 2009
11:06 pm - Happy System Administrator Apreciation Day!
Someone recently brought the fact that today is system administrator appreciation day.
http://www.sysadminday.com/index2009.ht
I'm not sure anyone likely to read this is a sysadmin, but if you are, you get to feel appreciated.
Jul. 21st, 2009
03:44 am - Epic hardware kludges
Since so many of people on my friends list have been saying you wish more was being posted to LJ, here you go. I aim to please. Unfortunately, though, this one may be indecipherable to those without a decent knowledge of desktop PC hardware, or at least electronics in general. Sorry, but this is really all that is going on for me right now.
Yesterday, Enterprise's (the most modern and high end of my desktops (as you may guess, my naming scheme is fictional spacecraft (nesting parentheses is fun!))) power supply failed. It had a rather high wattage 24 pin ATX power supply. Unfortunately, I have no other unused 24 pin ATX power supplies, and the extra 20 pin ATX power supplies aren't high enough wattage, though one is close. Also, I am too cheap to buy a new power supply of the right type unless I can get a very good deal or really, really, need to. I'll start looking for one at a good price so I can fix this the correct way, but for now I'll have to improvise.
Fortunately, I can use a twenty pin ATX power supply because the extra four pins in a 24 pin cable are all duplicates to allow it to carry more power, with the rest of the plug being exactly the same. Unfortunately, the PCI express X16 video card draws enough 12V that at least the extra twelve volt line is at least actually needed. Also, no single one of the extra power supplies will provide enough power for the entire system, though one is reasonably close.
My solution is as follows: Use two power supplies and kludge up an adapter between the extra 4 pins I need and a 4 pin Molex. This adapter can't supply the 3.3V plug with power, so the 3.3V wires in the 20 pin cable will have to suffice. For the actual plug to make this adapter, I literally hacksawed a spare 6 pin PCI express x16 power cable to pieces. I am absolutely terrified that I will screw up the adapter and fry the motherboard. The second power supply will power the fans and drives, and will be located on top of the tower.
Hopefully, this will fix it as opposed to doing nothing, breaking something else or starting a fire. Wish me luck.
![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/tired.gif){kind=small}
tiredJun. 24th, 2009
12:01 am - Life is good
Today has been fairly relaxed but just full enough to be interesting. I slept in until noon, then worked on finishing up the setup for Galactica (the horrifically obsolete box I am using to control some X10 home automation gear), which had been giving me no end of trouble over the past few days. Today, though, I woke up to find a Debian base system install successfully completed, then added the X10 software, as well as emacs, an ssh server and all the other basics I need to get what I want out of it. It worked flawlessly. After that, I interneted aimlessly for a few hours, then met Jonathon at the Can't Stop the Serenity charity screening. Oddly, we both won posters from the raffle. The turnout was good, but not as good as the one on Saturday. After that, Jonathan and I headed over to my house, where he demonstrated a bunch of cool stuff about the ZFS file system with the aid of a 16 GB flash drive that boots FreeBSD. I am deeply impressed and may end up playing with it a little when I have time. Now that he's gone, I had a bright idea and transfered my old morseblink program to Glactica. That program outputs the morse code equivalent of arbitrary text using user defined commands. This can become exceptionally cool when one uses X10 related commands, as you might imagine. As a result, I just spent the last 15 minutes standing outside, staring at a window, holding my laptop with a running ssh connection to Galactica and grinning like a crazy person as my bedside lamp blinked random messages to the neighborhood. What fun.
happyJun. 22nd, 2009
01:49 am - Adventures of a sysadmin-by-default
Today I found out that not one of the three computers in my house that I don't actively administrate (as opposed to letting their owners handle the routine stuff and fixing problems that are brought to my attention) actually does what people want it to consistently. The netbook is horrifically slow (which is what generally happens when one runs window$ on an atom processor and rarely if ever uses any security software at all) and will not print on the printer in the home office. My mom's desktop has caught something nasty that appears to mess with DNS requests and direct everything to a broken web page that presumably is supposed to be filled with adds or a scam. This, of course, breaks just about everything internet related. My dad's laptop takes over half an hour to open a web browser. This is what they get for running window$ and not taking proper security precautions! Now I get to fix all of that. Fun. At least I get to put some type of GNU/Linux on the netbook to speed it up.
In other news, I have acquired a new desktop. It's a crappy old pentium box in a surprisingly compact form factor. It will probably be used to control random stuff with some x10 gear a friend gave me a while back, but I might do a few other things with it. We'll see. I'm installing Debian on it as I type this. In keeping with the my naming scheme (fictional space craft) and the fact that it is over a decade old and probably ought to have been "decommissioned", I named it Galactica.
![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/blah.gif){kind=small}
okayJun. 13th, 2009
10:56 pm - My latest waste of time
I've decided to do a little microbiology experiment over the next few months. I'm going to try to isolate iron oxidizing chemolithotrophs from yellow-orange sediment, watter and biofilms at a spring outside of my hometown with watter with a very high iron content. Complicating matters are the facts that this will be my first time dabbling in microbiology and even if there was a common growth medium the bacteria I am looking for would grow on, I wouldn't have it or its ingredients. Instead, I have burnt steel-wool as an iron(II) oxide source, unflavored gelatin as a (poor) agar substitute and whatever else I can scrounge up. This ought to be fun.
EDIT 1: I've acquired actual agar from a local health food store.
07:19 pm - Breaking News: Protests, rioting and civil unrest in Iran
I just thought I'd mention this for those not following this story. I don't understand what is going on as well as I'd like, but here's the story as I currently understand it. Basically, Ahmadinejad won their recent elections by a landslide but there is a widespread belief that he stole the election and many people, including Iran's election commission, have called the election a fraud. There is apparently widespread protests and rioting, with police often clashing with protesters. Meanwhile, all telephone connections to Tehran have been cut off and leaders of the opposition parties have been arrested (CORRECTION: some may have been arrested, while others were put under house arrest.). It's really getting crazy over there. Here's some videos. Just a warning, though: these contain scenes of violence between police and rioters that some may find disturbing.
Just ask me if you need a link to the raw .flv files. I know how to get them off of Youtube videos.
I'll try to keep you posted as this develops.
EDIT 1: Sorry the horrible HTML. Blame copy and paste, the rich text editor and no testing. Here's a new video from the BBC, which appears to be the only piece of Western "old" media with people on site.
EDIT 2: It turns out the protesters and other supporters of Mousavi (the opposition candidate) are using twitter to communicate, organize and get the word out. Oddly enough, the text is in English. I think this is authentic, but I'm not sure. This is an amazing world we live in, isn't it? Here's a link.
Jun. 5th, 2009
10:14 pm - And here's the big event of the week...
I graduated from high school yesterday. I suppose I'm expected to be overjoyed about it, but I'm not. I've effectively been a college student for the past year or so and the way I think is such that "right of passage" rituals don't do much for me. In fact, I found the whole thing kind of boring and probably would have skipped it if my family hadn't wanted to take pictures. Much to my surprise, they used my song, "Abusive Monopoly", in the class video. That was certainly kind of cool. After the ceremony, I was actually approached by a classmate's father, who is apparently quite the GNU/Linux guru. It's kind of interesting that I had never met him before, given that I live in a village of about 5,000. We had a pretty good conversation and exchanged contact info.
The big controversy of the day was that the valedictorian didn't get to give her speech. I had talked to her about it several times in the past and knew it was going to be (justifiably) critical of the school, so it seems likely that this was censorship, plain and simple. We've known this was going to happen for the past week or so and there were no less than three separate plans to have the speech read anyway, one of which I masterminded. None ended up happening, however, because she stopped working on her speech when they told her it wouldn't be read and she wasn't able to finish it in time after she learned of the plans. Censorship sucks.
I had a small party afterwards. The guests consisted mostly of relatives and family friends, but with a few people I know from school showed up. There really isn't much to report from that, other than the fact that I got some good SF paperbacks, a lot of money for college and a pair of Ubuntu shirts as gifts. I suppose my classmates are throwing a number of parties this weekend, but I don't anticipate going to any of them.
okayJun. 3rd, 2009
03:42 am - Overheard at a grocery store
First of all, let me apologize for not posting anything substantial for weeks. Unfortunately, this post will not change that sorry state of affairs. I found this amusing enough to decide it was worth posting anyway, though.
Here it is. Today I was at a large grocery store near Wright State when a group of three slightly scruffy looking people (two male, one female) who appeared to be in their mid to late twenties flagged down a store employee about twenty feet from me. I over-heard one of them say the following, word for word, in exactly the tone of voice and fake accent one might imagine it being said in for maximum comedic value:
"Well met, good sir. We are grad students from the great and noble department of chemistry. We seek bulk packages of ramen and other comparable foodstuffs. Will you aid us in our quest?"
They managed to pull it off with straight faces, which is more than I think I could do in their places. I did not get to hear how the store employee replied, but I doubt it was as funny.
amusedMay. 12th, 2009
09:17 pm - Robots evolve communication, including lieing
This is absolutely fascinating.
I think it says a lot about evolution and the emergent properties of certain types of systems that this can even happen, though I'm not quite sure what.
![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/thinking.gif){kind=small}
contemplativeMay. 1st, 2009
08:27 pm - Greetings from Penguicon (part 1 of ?)
After an uneventful drive, I arrived at the con around 15:00. I wandered at random and helped on the chaos machine for a while, then went back to wandering until the interesting stuff started happening. They have the best consuite I have ever seen, by the way. There was also a keysigning party earlier. Right now, opening ceremonies are going one and I am elsewhere, learning about bug triage in Launchpad.
So far, have run into several people I know, includingfilkertom , lukeski , Wyn and the guys I worked on the chaos machine with last time. I also saw several people I know primarily by reputation, including Eric S. Raymond and Frank Hayes. I'll probably have ask him or filkertom about where the filking tonight, if any, is going to be.
The internet access has been a bit crappy and my cell phone has been unreliable at best. If you need to contact me, use email if possible. Even if I can't get online at any given point, I will eventually.
Apr. 29th, 2009
08:33 pm - PenguiCon this weekend!
In case you didn't know, I'm going to PenguiCon this weekend. For anyone who doesn't know, it is a Science Fiction and Free and Open Source Software convention. Kind of an odd combo, I guess, but there is a lot of overlap in the communities. This is perhaps my favorite con because it combines several of my interests obsessions. Last year there wasn't all that much filk, though, with the exception of filkertom and the FUMP people doing concerts. I hope that will be different this year and will be prepared to try and start a filk circle if I can't find one. This ought to be interesting. Unfortunately, I just got word that Candyfab, the "Hack of Honor", broke down. Too bad.
One of my friends who no one reading this knows might also be coming, and wynj also plans to be there. Any chance anyone reading this is going?
excitedApr. 27th, 2009
04:32 am - Yet another college update
Where to start... CMU still isn't offering a cent. Unless something changes, I'm going to have to turn them down. I simply can not afford $150+ student loans, especially with a 15 year repayment time. They are quite frankly insane if they think that that is a reasonable thing to expect of me, and deluded if they think my family can provide the full $54,000+ each year. Too bad. They were basically my dream school.
On the plus side, RIT threw an additional $7,000 at me for no particular reason. Going there now seems quite do-able. Also, I visited them this weekend and was rather impressed. Their physics department is nothing special, but their computer science department looked excellent. I liked what I saw of the campus and students, but it was kind of an atypical weekend so it was hard to tell. The campus was flooded with hundreds or thousands of cosplaying anime fans. Apparently the anime club was hosting a con that weekend.
I got to see their computer science special interest housing, which takes up one floor of one of their dorm buildings. Together with the engineering floor in the same building, it forms sort of an isle of turbo-geekery. A typical dorm room there was outfitted with two or three monitors per person, an unbelievable array of electronics and gadgetry, and a pile of empty soda cans or coffee cups. My kind of place. The people their were great. The floor featured two hacked-together networked soda machines, at least four old arcade machines, gigabit Ethernet to every room, a lounge, a "meeting room" typically used for assembling large things on the table, two workshops kept stocked with everything from FPGAs and microcontrollers to sheet metal and two-by-fours, along with appropriate tools, a computer lab and a server room with more high end silicon than I have ever before seem in one place. Half-finished "projects" were scattered about at random and most white-boards had scribbled notes from someone's latest program. The walls were adorned with old computer disks of the sort rms uses as a halo when he is being "Saint IGNUcius", signed by past residents of the floor. Residents of the floor reported that typical sleeping hours are generally as close to vampire hours as one's class schedule permits. The students administered their own little network and all the systems on it, and just about everything was running Debian.
Needless to say, I was in nerd-vana. I think I know were I'm going to college unless something drastic changes.
sleepyApr. 19th, 2009
01:46 am - Random thought of the day
If someone brings a laptop to an SCA event, is it two separate anachronisms or does it cancel out?
amusedApr. 16th, 2009
11:31 pm - I give you... Bacon-torch!
The world is apparently even weirder than I had thought. Somebody built a thermal lance out of bacon. It will melt holes in metal without too much difficulty. Why? I guess it's a "because I can" thing.
amusedApr. 14th, 2009
06:42 pm - Thought I'd share something funny that happened today.
I was programming in an unused classroom at Wright State, almost without interruption, between the hours of 3:00 PM yesterday and 11:00 AM today. I went through perhaps 15 cups (as in unit of measurement) of coffee total. Yeah, I find that alarming too.
As one might expect, when I finally came shambling out of the building to get to my one and only class today, I looked like a complete and utter wreck, with bleary eyes, greasy hair, dirty, wrinkled, coffee- and food-stained clothing, and presumably the unmistakable odor typical of an insufficiently washed teenager. All this is par for the course when I stay up that long programing. Apparently, though, I went beyond the usual levels this time. How do I know this? Someone, apparently thinking I was homeless, attempted to give me their pocket change.
amusedApr. 12th, 2009
02:17 pm - Live LISP programming as an art form?
Andrew Sorenson does live Lisp coding as an art form, generating music and often openGL graphics on the fly, in real time. He's doing some amazing, truly beautiful stuff with surprisingly little code. Take a look at these videos. It's quit cool. Even if you can't program in LISP ( I can't) or even at all, you will probably find these interesting. I know I did. I just wish he had files of his source code, through all the changes he made as it was running, which I could review at my lesure to see how he was doing all of it.
( Using Gnash or don't have Flash of any sort? )
These videos were the final push I needed. I am going to learn LISP over the summer.
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