Posts for the 'Life' Category (Feed for this category)
The new addition
After many weeks of discussions... and lust, I would like to present the new addition to my family.
It doesn't need any introduction, this picture says it all.
I have more photos of the launch, which i will upload later today, but it was a great launch by Optus.
Free food, drinks, snacks and massages! It will put Telstras free Apples and Water to shame.
1 Comments
Add CommentiPhone 3G day nears...
Well unless you have been hanging out with Osama and last few weeks, you most likely have heard that on July 11th the iPhone 3G will be released.
Since that announcement, I've been waiting day after day for the pricing to be released ... and finally, last week, Optus and Telstra announced their pricing (the only one who hasn't so far is Vodafone, but the hint that is that it will be Monday ot Tuesday... if you can believe rumours).
So since the announcement of Optus' prices, I've put together a spreadsheet to determine overall costs and pricing on different options on their plans (not prepaid - stuff that! :-).
Here is a screenshot of it in use.
If you want to view all the columns and plug your own figures in, get the Spreadsheet here.
I will update it once Vodafone releases their pricing.
Flight of the Conchords
29th May, 2008
Life, WWW, Music,
These guys are hilarious.
If you haven't checked it out, check out their TV show as well - It has stars Arj Barker and Kristen Schaal.
Here is an example of one of their songs. I think it's one of their better ones ;-)
Iron Man
Tonight I had the pleasure of watching Iron Man. And it really was a pleasure.
It has been a while since I've seen such a well put together movie, which only had very minor flaws. I had seen the trailers for it a few times, and I was looking forward to the movie for some time, but it still managed to beat my expectations many times by the end of the film.
I really suggest getting down to your local cinema and watching it (even if cinemas can be overpriced!).
Check out the trailers for yourself at the official Iron Man website.
PS. The comedy in it helps to break things up - and the robots are just so funny .. especially the one who mans the fire extinguisher.
New System
23rd April, 2008
Gaming, Life, Linux,
I know it's been a while, but I figured I should make mention to my new "rig" I got.
I decided it was time to upgrade, and for now, I will probably most likely use this as a gaming box, and eventually it will become my general desktop machine.
Specs
- Intel Quad Core 2 Processor (Q9450) - 2.66ghz each core.
- 4gb of DDR2 1066mhz (for the technical, 5-5-5-15)
- 2x500G Seagate Sata HDDS (its not really meant to be a storage box)
- Antec Nine Hundred Case (but this case definately has drive space!)
- Gigabyte 9800GX2 1GB (naturally it's PCI-e)
- And for those who care, motherboard is a EVGA 132-CK-NF78-A1 (nF780i SLI A1 Version)
So far, since getting it, I have been playing games on it nearly non-stop, something I have missed doing for such a long time. Sure I had the my Console games, but nothing really beats PC Gaming -- And it's true!
Some of the games I've been playing include Assasins Creed, SWAT 4, HL2, Empire Earth and Battlefield 2142.
I did do a 3d Mark rating of it, and it seemed to perform quite well -- of course no where near what the other machine rates at!! (Yes, that's right, it is running Vista -- not because I really want to, but because unfortunately, if i want to run Windows Games, I'm going to need a Windows Install, and in my honest opinion, Cedega is yet to get you close enough not to need one..)
In the next few weeks I will install Linux on it (onto the second hard drive it has), and will post about how that performs. Hopefully I can find something that will challenge the video card under linux (oh and I will give Cedega another try under this machine to see how it goes).
For now, Adios!
Don't think this is how you repair a laptop
Back in November of last year, I noted that my laptop which was in service for a month, was finally returned back to me, and was as good as new! However, in late January, the laptop locked up, and would not boot anymore. So, it went back in for service, again under extended warranty. From what they told me, the motherboard in the laptop had died, and it needed replacing, but the part was on back order and would take some time to get shipped in. They kept me up to date with the latest on the status of the repair and waiting for the part, which was good, but was often the same thing, "Waiting on the part".
However, on Thursday I got a call in the morning to say that my laptop repairs had been completed and was ready for collection. On speaking to the person calling me, I confirmed with him that the Motherboard was the reason for the problem. I then discussed with him, my disappointment that the laptop had to be serviced again, for a problem that was supposedly fixed last time the laptop was in for service. He didn't seem to care, so I switched questions and asked if they were open on the Weekend. He said they were not, but could organise a Courier to deliver it for me.
It was at this stage I was hesitant, because I could just see them saying they would courier it, but only for $100, at my expense. So i asked the obvious question, "at my expense?". He assured me that it would not be. Great, I thought. About time they took some responsibility for their faulty repair, even if it was just delivery.
Today, the laptop arrived by courier, and I booted it up tonight, expeciting to be able to start reinstalling Linux back onto it.
But this is where the story goes sour..
I noticed as i was getting it out of the box they had shipped it back in, that the cdrom drive (which is slot loading), had some of the plastic facia coming away:
On seeing this, I was quite annoyed, because it seemed that they had damaged the laptop during fixing it. For now I figured, I would check to make it booted, before sending it back to get that replaced^. I was relieved when the computer started to boot, as they definately had fixed the problem. And this is where the relief finishes and ends for tonight.
The screen then came alive and I was greeted by the Acer bios prompt.
And then I became annoyed again, because it looks like the laptop that was supposedly fixed ... was not!
So now, on Monday, another call to the good old Extended Warranty place to tell them what has happened, and then to the repair (Highpoint) on Wednesday to show my disaproval and get it fixed.
Wonder if I can get it replaced for a newer model this time.. atleast that way I can almost be sure they haven't broke it .. yet.
OMG IT ROCKED!
12th January, 2008
Life,
WOW, Not long home from Spicks and Speck-tacular, and I must say it did ABSOLUTELY FREAKING ROCK!
You must go see this if you can if you can (only very few shows in Sydney, and Perth to go).
The show had some great bits, but as to not spoil it for anyone, I won't go into detail. I do however have some memorable moments:
- Shaking Kit Warhust hand while he sang Brother!
- Being less than 60cm away from Myf!! (silly me, I didn't even ask to shake her hand!!!)
- And it must be said, poor Sancha who got dragged up onto stage after admitting she threw her knickers on stage at Dave Grohl once during a Foo Fighters concert. And then preceded to not cross her legs while on stage, and show the audience proof she was still wearing her current pair (which Adam hills keep bringing up for the rest of the night).
Oh, and Myf can dance! .... and Alan just thinks he can :p
We now return you to your regular programming.
Two Thousand and Seven
31st December, 2007
Blog, Life,
A lot has changed in 2007, for me, and everyone. So I figured it was time for a review (and hey, everyone else tries to do one...).
The year started off with me moving to a faster internet service (ie ADSL2), with iiNet, which made things much easier, becuase unlike 2 years before it, 512/128 just did not cut it anymore. But while I celebrated for speed, others celebrated for a totally different reason, but that didn't last long.
In March, Sydney decided to put the environment before itself, and together, we turned off our lights for an hour, and saw drop in usage of about 10%!
In April, America yet again came into the spotlight, when it proved that its Gun Laws really do need a review, when a student at a American University killed 32 people. Unfortunately, violence sometimes comes to play very close to home.
In July, I put the pen down for the last time, as I completed my final exam required to complete my Bachelor of Computer Science. Also in July, I was able to work at and enjoy the atmosphere of Live Earth, Sydney, which ended up not being too bad at the end of the day. Oh and who can forget that also in July, smoking was finally banned in pubs and clubs in NSW and Victoria. Making these places more appealing for non-smokers.
In September, after having received my results for everything, I graduated! In 2007, I was also able to grow some bad habits, which have unfortunately not been able to shake yet. Tho, maybe that is for the best.
In October, I went away with work to at the Bathurst 1000. Fun times were had, and I will never look at a car race the same way again. It is just a tad different to watching it on TV, when you can hear, and smell the atmosphere. Even the toughest of critics may be swayed. It was also in October, that Australia was fasinated by big flying things.
In the lead up to the end of the year, unfortunately this happened. Saddness broke out everywhere, even in Australia.
In the home straight of the year, I was offered a position at work, that I had applied for, and started in early December, and have almost racked up 4 weeks there! :) And I got a PSP (but thats a story for another article :))
In Politics, we saw a few common names go, and new ones come (finally) and hopefully bring about a needed change.
So, like most years, while there was a bunch of good, I sometimes did make a silly decision or two, but in the end, I did achieve some really big goals. Lucky I didn't make this mistake.
To finish off the year in review, a look back at some of those faces that we will no longer see anymore: Anna Nicole Smith, Billy Thorpe, Boris Yeltsin, Bobby Pickett, Stan Zemanek, Benazir Bhutto.
I know I have most likely forgotten some really important parts of 2007, but that will do for now. I know for sure tho, that next year will contain something about this.
I leave you with a song that made 2007.
POP
31st December, 2007
Life, WWW, Music,
Well this year is almost over, and as the year starts to fade into the sunset and while we wait for the sky to be lit up with taxpayers money, I share the following YouTube Clip with you (care of James Dumay).
Houston, the laptop has landed
19th November, 2007
Life, Rants,
As can be noted by the title, my Laptop is now safely at home again, which is the good news.
The bad news is:
- I had to ring them today to find out the status, only to find out that it was "ready since last week"
- When i went to collect it, I was told I had to paid the unpaid invoice - Which should've been paid by the Underwriters. In the end, after I had to stand there and phone the underwriters, It came down to it was a stuff up by Highpoint, who had not invoiced the underwriters to pay. All they had sent was the quote, which was approved, but no formal invoice.
- The above took me 45 minutes! Too damn long. Atleast I made them use their own phone and call me a cab. It's their fault.
Good news:
- Laptop is back
- Battery has been replaced (tho I haven't powered on to check this yet)
- the fan and screen replaced.
If everything works fine, hopefully this is the last you hear from me on this topic :)
Laptop Update and stuff
17th November, 2007
Life,
It's been a month since the original post, and my laptop is still not ready for me to collect it!
They had to get in a part (the mainboard), so they could repair it.. but seems it is taken too long, so they have decided to just attempt to repair it. Thankfully all this labour is on their own time .. doesn't cost me a cent... I just want it back!
Meanwhile, I have ordered a bluetooth GPS Receiver so that I can play around with that on my phone. Fun times definitely to come!
Graduation
25th September, 2007
Life, University,
Today I had my graduation from my Bachelor of Computer Science course. Feels good to finally have it done, and interesting in a way that I should now be looking for full time work. There is the option of going back to studies for a while longer, but at the moment, I don't think I would do that.
I have included a couple of photos in the post below of the testamur and me in my gown, hood and mortarboard!
My Testamur, which will be hung up, as soon as I get a hook....
Me in my Gown, Hood and Mortarboard.
Spicks and Speck-tacular
3rd September, 2007
Life,
I got my tickets to Spicks and Speck-tacular, the Live Show for Spicks and Specks in January today.
It is bound to be a great show, and will be good to see the cast live in person, especially Myf!
Anyone else going?
Let's get up to date
25th August, 2007
XBOX, Django, IRC, Life, Arch Linux, University,
So I noticed tonight that I haven't blogged in over a month, and decided it was about time I did.
Lately I have been working quiet a bit, especially now that I've finished Uni, and have lots of free time. In the other time, I've been working on implementing some changes for an IRC network, as well as test and try to document and get things in order.
I have started using del.icio.us, when I remember atleast, to record some of those sites which contain facts that you really want to store. I also wrote a importer and application so this can be viewed (and commented on!), on this site. You can view it at www.nullis.net/links, tho it does not look very pretty.. yet!
Speaking of Uni, my graduation has been finalised and I am able to add B.CompSc. to my name after the 25th of September! Mind you, I am going to end up spending more than $150 on just plaque and photos from the graduation. But they do look good!
Meanwhile, DNS for all my domains, (except this one ironically), has been switched over to being hosted by myself. For some of the sites, I am using ZoneEdit still as backup nameservers to increase reliability.
I also recently got the Die Hard Game for the XBOX. Graphics suck. When I put it on to play, I had to check I wasn't playing the SEGA...
Also, Facebook is rather addictive! That is all..
Touchdown
17th July, 2007
Life, University,
I now have my uni results for this semester, and I think I should let the following speak for itself:
Total Credit Points achieved for course including academic credit: 240
Total Credit Points required for course completion: 240
So yes, this means I have finished! :) While the university has not sent out the confirmation of graduation letter yet, this means I will be graduating in September.
It is quite good news, and means that I should probably start looking for full time work soon.
Live Earth
Spent Saturday at Live Earth (Aussie Stadium, Sydney) working, but actually had a good time, and quite enjoyed it.
While things did seem to get off to a slow start, once some of the bigger acts came on stage, the concert really did start to pick up.
Wolfmother, Missy Higgins, Paul Kelly and Crowded House, were among just a few of the great names there playing for a reason (see www.liveearth.org for more about the reason).
I did enjoy the ability to be able to work and still yet see some and hear the music, and I think I have grown a liking for Missy Higgins music.
Life Status Update
2nd July, 2007
Blog, Life, Ubuntu, University, WWW,
With my last blog entry being back in March, back when I was just starting my last semester of Uni, a lot has changed, and that semester of Uni is now over, so I thought I would give a kind of status update.
University
The current semester is over, and it will most likely be my last semester at Uni at this time. I did my last 40 credit points (4 units), this semester, so now I just need to wait on results, and make sure that I have passed everything. If I didn't, I am going to have to go back for another semester, but at this stage, everything looks good. fingers crossed.
Work
Still working with the same company, and still enjoying it. Just last weekend, we had the Guns 'n Roses concerts in Sydney, which were an interesting night, but fun none the less. On Saturday is Live Earth, which means a full day for me, hopefully without too many dramas.
Coming up in the next few weeks is Christina Aguilera, Gwen Stefani and Disney on Ice. August is set to be big as well, and most likely will be a busy end of the year.
New Phone
I made mention to a friend a while ago, that I would discuss my new Phone, so now's the time.
Just before the Sydney Royal Easter Show, my Motorola V3, which I had for almost 2 years, suffered a painful death after a night alone with the condensation off a McDonalds drink container.
But thankfully for insurance, I was able to get the same phone, but in black for $0, or pay the difference in cost between that phone and a phone I wanted, and get that instead.
So, naturally, I chose the later, and for now almost the last 3 months, I have a Nokia E61, a great Phone/PDA.
While it does have a few quirks which I can easily live with, it does make a great phone for someone continually on the go. ATM I use it to store rosters for work (as the .xls it comes as, as well as in the calendar), documents and contact info.
I also have PuTTy for Symbian loaded on to it, so i can use its inbuilt WiFi to connect to a box at home, or elsewhere, if I have internet access. Saves carrying a laptop in case a server dies.
The phone also has a SIP Client by default, which means it can also do VOIP calls. I have it set up at the moment, to be a client for my asterisk box at home, which it connects to over the wireless. This means I always can have my Phone book in one place, and with me. Security is not a problem for the WiFi, as it has support for WPA, which I use for all communications.
The keyboard did take a bit of getting use to, but it really is quite easy and friendly, once you use it for a bit. And boy does it make typing a SMS fast. The wide screen is great for playing games (while travelling on trains), and surfing sites (tho that is still costly to do all the time).
It has a Mini-SD card slot for storage, apps or files, and also has a movie and media player, as well as voice recordings.
I really love the phone :)
SCM
Source Code Managment rocks. I don't know why I didn't set one up earlier, as it has really helped with me being more energetic to get this new site up and running. Not sure why, but it just has, and that is for the better.
*
As mentioned above, I set up a asterisk server recently, and It now handles incoming and outgoing calls for both my VOIP line and PSTN line. Wasn't easy to get started, as came to a few problems with Arch Linux's asterisk packages, not really being up to date, or complete. I tried out both TrixBox and Elastix, neither of which I liked, and in the end, installed Ubuntu Server, and tried again with what on Arch Linux, and it worked, first time.
Future
While I am still doing my casual work, as noted above, it is almost getting to the stage, especially once my grades come out for this semester, and I graduate, that I will need to start looking around for full time work, hopefully this can be in the same industry/employer as at the moment, tho I feel that I may need to look outside it.
I am looking at getting some of my projects which I had planned under way, hopefully including some stuff which may generate income.
That is enough for a recap for now, does feel good to blog again, and to have the new site up and working (which you should check out if you are reading this via a RSS Aggregator - www.nullis.net.
iiChurned to iiNet
30th January, 2007
Life, WTF, WWW,
Yes.. Westnet has finally been given the flick, and I have churned (tho techincally not), to iiNet, to their ADSL2 service.
After spending the last 4-5 days waiting for the service to be provisioned, it has finally went thru, and it is now up and running. Seem to be syncing in at about 6/1, which is giving me a nice download speed of about ~500K/S depending on where the download originates.
Have some new toys to play with, (VOIP, Sipura 3000, and a GigE switch), so lots to do until I go back to uni.
In a side story, after having my ADSL2 set up, i got a scan from a curious IP. 207.46.197.32. According to whois, it is a microsoft IP, and if you try and resolve the ip to a hostname, you come up with a stack of domains microsoft seems to own.
Wii couldn't, Wii wouldn't, Wii shouldn't ...
21st December, 2006
Wii, Life,
... but I did.
I certainly do spoil myself at Christmas.
Ignorance is Bliss, apparently.
16th November, 2006
Life, Linux, Programming, Python, WWW,
So, today on a random IRC Channel, the following definition of Django was given:
< freespace> jsp for python
The comparison seems like chalk and cheese. What I do know about JSP, is the fact that to do even little things would require a lot more code than the task was worth, where with Django on the other hand, it is simply a simple task. Create Models, views, and URLs, and you are done.
If you are wanting to know what Django really is (and what wouldn't you? It's fabulous!), have a look at: The Django Overview and Django FAQ
Meanwhile, Linux Australia, has announced that they are going to re-do their current site, and need to come up with something that better integrates, and provides a more modern, look.
Suggestions have already come up, for what should be used as a starting base. Drupal, Django and Ruby on Rails have all been mentioned, with embperl and slashcode being mentioned by people with more time than sense ;-).
Hopefully they go with something sensible (Django), and not end up with something clunky (Drupal).
Hacking Democracy
This is a must view for anyone who votes.
Hacking Democracy on Google Video
It's quite scary to believe it's true.
Uni's over, and fun weeks ahead.
6th November, 2006
Life, University,
So, I thought I better make a entry to note that I am finally on STUVAC, and with only two tests (and one presentation) this semester, it should be a rather easy, but still study-full end of semester.
Mind you, besides for the above, I have some really interesting shows/concerts coming up, which will be fun to work at, including such as: Pearl Jam, U2, AFI & Billy Joel.
Today, mum flew out to see her sister ... well eventually ... the flight was nicely delayed (thanks Qantas!). But I do guess safety is their main concern.
The good thing tho, is that after my exams, I am on holidays till next year... which means that I can finally put some time into getting my new site up and running.
For now, Study and Presentation readiness time.
This weeks better news...
30th October, 2006
Life, Programming, University,
Following one from last week's good news, it seems that this weeks is even better:
ADSL2+ plan puts heat on Telstra
The important thing about that is:
Perth ISP WestNet has signed on to resell PowerTel's ADSL2+ service to its 115,000 residential broadband subscribers.
This is great news, because it means I can get ADSL2+ when its launched, as iiNet already has a DSLAM in my local telephone exchange. And it also confuses the hell out of all those people who believed that WestNet were going to go with Optus' DSLAM/ADSL2+ network.
In other news, I did finish that Java assignment on time, only after it clocked in 1745 lines of code. Not bad for 3 days work.
Best News All Week
25th October, 2006
Life, University,
Well, I guess this is the best news all week:
Police minister forced to quit
Meanwhile, I'm going back to my Programming Assignment in Java :-(
More on Nina Reiser's disappearance
11th October, 2006
Life, Linux,
In a follow up to the post about Hans Reiser's wife going missing, it appears that things have taken a turn for the worse, and Hans Reiser has now been arrested.
It mentions no body has been found, so it will be interesting to see what evidence they do have.
Six from Six
1st October, 2006
Life,
w00t. Broncos won. This means they have won six from six grand final's they have been in.
Image from nrl.com
ReiserFS wife missing
15th September, 2006
Life, Linux,
Seems Hans Reiser's wife, Nina, is missing:
http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_256204954.html
New camera
11th August, 2006
Life,
So, following up from my last post about looking around for a digital camera, yesterday I bought my first one.
It is a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ1. [Reviews: DPReview and DCResource reviews.
So far it seems a great camera, if only let down by the fact it takes a non-standard battery. While I don't think this will end up being a big problem, it needs to be seen when i get into a snapping frenzy.
I have taken some sample shots to not only show the image quality of the camera, but to practice using it. There are both larger and scaled down version in the folder.
A simple question on Cameras.
3rd August, 2006
Life,
Dear Lazyweb,
Having seen the advantages of using a digital camera for many, many years, I think it is about time I lashed out and bought one. However, I have no idea what is really a good camera for between $200 to $500. I want something with good support for linux, so i suspect this is most that use USB or firewire, however I am not really worried about what type of card slot it required (the laptop has all the common ones, if they work yet is another story :)
If you could write back with a suggestion that would be great.
Thanks in advance.
Microsoft proves they don't listen well
It seems that live performances of products never go to key for microsoft.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1123221217782777472
Secure Banking 101, Take 2.
Some of you may remember that it was brought to the light before, the in-security of some password entering schemes, when the Westpac moved to their new system.
When, it looks like another is to follow a similar path, and maybe they have gotten it right.
It seems Credit Union Australia, on the 1st of July, will move over to a new system of where you can enter in your password either by the keyboard, or via their "Scramble Pad". Unlike the Westpac attempt, you can still enter with your keyboard if you so wish. Hopefully this is how it will stay. I have fired an email off to them to find out.
On the down side, they fail to get password security right, with the fact that passwords are only numeric, and only up to 6 digits long.
Google Open House
Tonight, Google held an Open House for people to go along to and help welcome in their new offices in Sydney. It was mainly a night of networking and getting to know people in Google Sydney offices.
It was a great night, and I must thank Google for opening up their doors and putting great food and drink, even if at times, it was a tad squishy :-)
I met some of the people behind Google Maps, as well as other projects, and was quite interesting to hear how passionate they are about their work. Some of the Google Desktop stuff, which I haven't played with, due to it being Windows centric mostly, looked rather impressive, and would be great if there could be Linux versions of it (However Beagle is trying to do something similar for the time being).
It is also worth noting, that it was mentioned that Google Maps now as of tonight (18th of May), has maps of Australia in it, not only satelite imagery. See this map of Sydney, for example. It doesn't yet let you do searches on landmarks tho. Coming soon I was told.
Having the ability there, to be able to quiz a Google employee on the work environment, and culture, was excellent, and really goes to prove how ultimately different the Google workplace is from elsewhere. I did also get to ask around about the news of the Google internships/university programs, and will be hoping to follow up contact with some people about that very soon.
At the end of the night, as we were leaving, everyone got a Google goodie bag, which contained, a Google flashing badge (as seen here), a pen, some advertising flyers for Jobs @ Google, a pad of Google Post-It notes. We also each got given a Google Open House T-Shirt.
So to recap:
- A fun night was had
- Met great people, google and non-google people
- Got some cool stuff
Hopefully someone will post up pictures of the night soon, and I can edit this article so have some relevant pictures ;-)
[Any typos, mistakes or things that don't make sense are because I was too-tired while typing this out :p]
Edit: I must say the shirts the google employees were wearing, were great! Basically it was the google logo, on black, with an image of a meat pie with peas, potato and gravy on it. As mentioned by one of the Google guys, it sure beats an image of a Kangaroo, Koala, Opera House or Harbour Bridge to represent Australia.
Acer Aspire 1694 and ACPI
So, 3 months in from purchasing my laptop, and I finally decided that i would have another shot at trying to fix ACPI problems with it. This being the fact the battery always reports dead by default, while this statement is conclusively not true (the laptop itself tells me it is full ;-)
So, to resolve this, it requires a custom DSDT file to be read in, and used instead of the vendor supplied one. To do this, required some gentoo patching, with the DSDT initrd patch. Basically this allows you to put a custom DSDT that is read on boot, from the initrd (or more so, the initramfs).
The kernel patching, and recompiling part wasn't overly hard, as the patch for my kernel applied cleanly to gentoo-sources. Recompiling to simply enable support for RAM disk and DSDT from initramfs was painless.
The hardest part in the task, was the creation of the initramfs image. While some other distributions seem to provide a mkinitramfs application, gentoo does not, only a mkinitrd. So this created some problems, with me trying to work out how to create a initramfs manually. In the end I found the solution by emerging media-gfx/splashutils, which contains a script called splash_geninitramfs, which gave me the answer on how to do it. For notes sake, here is how it is done.
Put all your files to be on the initramfs in a directory, for example ~/disk Then, while in directory of the files (~/disk), type the following command:
find . | cpio --quiet --dereference -o -H newc | gzip -9 > ../initramfs.img
From there, you will find your new initramfs image in the parent directory named initramfs.img.
After that, just copy initramfs.img to /boot, and add to your grub.conf
initrd /initramfs.img
And there, now I have a working Battery meter, so i know when the battery is going to go flat in future :-)
Note: These notes were how it would be done on gentoo, some distros might have a easier way of doing it (can it get much easier tho?! ;-)
twenty
24th April, 2006
Life,
Happy Birthday to me!
Going out to dinner tonight to celebrate the occasion of no longer being a teenager.
A brush with fame
21st April, 2006
Life,
While working at the show yesterday, I ran into Supermodel Elle Macpherson, when she was entering/exitting the Royal Easter Show.
The first time she was leaving with her kids, nanny, boyfriend and such, then later on came back to go back into the show without the nanny and kids.
The nanny (referring to the person looking after her kids) was not a bad looker if I must say so :-)
It is mentioned she was at the show here: http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,20281,18873556-5001025,00.html
Thirsty?
Do you have a hard earned thrist, that needs a good cold liquid? And is that good cold liquid not Victoria Bitter? And do you want something that is nice and healthy?
Oh, and you do have 4 legs right?
Then you should try Aqua Dog or Dogade today. (Safe for human consumption too apparently...)
The real reason governments don't want to move to linux....
Thanks to linux_galore for the link:
Have a read, made me chuckle, a lot.
http://www.centos.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=127
In other news...
It seems that a 22 year old Victorian man has been arrested for his attacks on Australian IRC Networks.
It's glad to see the AHTCC and other departments getting involved and stopping these guys who just seem to want to destroy things for all of us.
Happy Valentines Day
13th February, 2006
Blog, Life,
Secure Banking 101
13th February, 2006
Life, Rants,
One way to make online banking less secure is to go with a retarded idea like this
All systems go again
16th January, 2006
Life, Gentoo,
Had some offline time in a sense this last 5 days, when my computer of about 6 years (a P3-900Mhz), decided that it would finally blow-up, but only in a way that would cause me to wonder wtf it was doing.
2 Gentoo installs later, I realised it was not the hdd's going, but it was the motherboard (sigh).
So now, I have spent some money, and upgraded to a new fast machine (xorg compiled in 36 minutes!). So I am slowly catching up on email and things that have happened over the past week.
For those who are interested, some stats about the new computer:
- AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+ (2211.355 MHz)
- 1 Gig of ram
- 4 x 250G HDD's
- 6600td graphics card
- asus motherboard with on board gigabit (nforce4 chipset)
- nice coolmaster 531 case.
Gentoo seems to run okay on it (running in actual 64 bit mode), with some apps requiring emulation due to no 32 bit support for now.
nforce4 drivers took a bit to get working - once i realised they used OSS instead of ALSA, things became much more apparent.
Will post some more info about the system in a week or so, to let you know how its going in 64 bit stuff.
Mac OS X: How to reset your users password
7th January, 2006
Life,
[Do note, this isn't the easiest option, but it is the option that works when you do not have a Mac OS Install CD lying around.]
A friend brang over his iBook today, after forgetting his username's password, and thus being unable to login. I figured this would be easy. Boot into single-user mode, reset the username's password, reboot.
I was so wrong.
Booting into single-user mode wasn't that hard. Hold command + s on startup. (Command for any normal mac user is the apple-cloverleaf key right next to the spacebar).
After booting in and trying to get niutil to talk to me (which i found i had to use), it refused to listen.
Playing around with a few google methods for a while, lead me to this page, Which is fine if you use Mac OS X 10.2 or lower, but useless with any newer version.
So a bit more googling and I get this even better page.
It explains that i need to run a few scripts and start the netinfo daemon. Fair enough.
Then that didn't work, because it couldn't find the user.
Great.
Then I realise that the username contains an i not an l and that solves that. Reboot and the user can now log in. I'm happy, the friend is happy, and I decided I want to keep my gentoo box. :-)
(PS. Before i noticed the username had that i, I tried about 20 different other ways to change it. Maybe that's why i'm annoyed with it :p)
On Engin and VOIP and !Sleeping
Andrew, It may not be much, but I have a log of a IRC Chat that took between members of the AtomicMPC IRC Channel, and Steve and Rudd from Engin if it reveals any answers (probably won't).
Meanwhile, to more important matters, cheers for the early rising links. This was posted at 20 past 4 in the morning. Not because I just woke up, but because I haven't slept yet :-)
Merry Christmas
24th December, 2005
Blog, Life,
... and a Happy New Year.
:-)
Work
7th December, 2005
Life, Rants,
I started a "3 month contract" on the 26th of november. So did 120 other people. We were all working in a call centre for a new product that was launching.
Today (Wednesday 7th December), they put us all off because the client who organised the product and the call centre to handle the demand for calls, miscalculated the number of calls they expected.
So I'm unemployed again.
Anyone got work for me until end of February? I'll do basically anything, as long as the pay is decent.
Prefer to do call centre or programming work, or even helpdesk, but yeah, anything would be nice really.
PS. I'm annoyed.
Better late than never....
22nd November, 2005
XBOX, Life,
... to buy an XBOX.
So if I seem to be slow to reply to comments or emails over the next week or so, it may be because I'm at work, or because I hopelessly addicted to playing my XBOX.
PS Battlefield 2 runs and plays great.
Hoff it up
19th October, 2005
Life, Linux,
Given the idea by Tony, I hoffed up the SLUG logo.
Google, Talk and more.
24th August, 2005
Google, IRC, Life, Linux, WWW,
For those that have been living in a cave this week, Google has announced it's Instant Messenger client, namely 'Google Talk'. While it is in beta (is anything at google not in beta?), thanks to its use of the Jabber/XMPP protocol, it means that already there are clients for all operating systems available (well, any that supports Jabber, naturally).
This means that you don't need to download yet another IM Client, or wait for GAIM or BitlBee, to update the source, to include the protocol and functionality for it. However, BitlBee users should note, that they will need to apply this patch to order to be able to use the gmail service, due to minor account differences in gmail's set up. See www.bitlbee.org for more info. (Yes port 5223, the default Jabber port works for me, where 5222, the google talk port, doesn't).
Meanwhile, I now have another means of contact that I will never use. I do use bitlbee for my instant message conversations, as it moulds nicely into my IRC Client, but i still converse mostly thru IRC. I guess IM is just there for the people who need to contact me and are bedazzled by all the shiny parts of IM clients (fuck you emoticons).
And while I have your attention, on a side note, has anyone noticed that Google is doing similar things to what Microsoft do, in regards to how they name their applications or services. That being, naming the product simply after the task it does, in order for it to become more "easier to remember", I would imagine. To compare:
Microsoft Products: Word, Paint, Office, Messenger Google Products: Talk, Search, Desktop Search, Alerts.
The only products which seem to have a unique names, are products they have gained due to the purchase of/from other companies.
Your thoughts on google talk and the rest are welcomed.
GNUpod
24th August, 2005
Life, Ubuntu,
Since buying my iPod Photo months ago, I have never updated the songs on it, because I haven't been able to find a decent tool for Linux that works well (atleast for me).
I had tried GTKpod previously, but had found that it overall, it didn't work as well as it should, or maybe it was me not understanding its functionality right.
Anyway, skip forward to the a few days ago, and I was finally getting sick listening to the same songs (and podcasts), over and over again. It was time to change the songs on the iPod. I gathered this meant one of two things; installing gtkpod and trying to get it to work, or borrowing a friends computer with windows on it, to copy on some songs.
Deciding against the later, I was going to install gtkpod again, when i realised that gnupod was there. Tho it is text based, i decided to try it out.
After some minor difficulties with the scripts, mainly relating to case sensitive nature (see the end for more info), due to the default ubuntu flags when it mounted, i finally got the scripts working, and I must say, I am impressed. The advantage is they are perl scripts, so they are changable to customise a bit how I want them.
So this weekend, I might actually put some new songs on my iPod, and be able to listen to fresh G'Day World podcasts on the train each morning.
Note: The problem was because of the default Ubuntu settings for mounts. I didn't have my iPod set up in fstab, so whenever it plugged it, it got these default settings. To fix, it was as simple as adding the "check=r" flag to the mount options, either in fstab, or mounting it manually. See this email thread for more information.
Also, Ubuntu also by default adds the flag "iocharset=utf8", when mounting. It seems that this flag, overrides the check flag. So for now, I have simply removed it. If anyone has a solution to this, would be great, thanks.
Is IRC, Isn't freenode.
9th August, 2005
IRC, Life, Rants,
freenode, an IRC network by any other name (no, I will not call it a "Discussion network").
I hang out on freenode, to talk with some friends that I have made over the years, and also to get help and assist with some open source projects, namely Ubuntu and irssi, when I can.
However, I am most likely classified by Rob Levin, as one of the people he calls a 'Traditional IRC User'. What is a Traditional IRC User? Well you can read his thoughts on them on this wiki page. Do that before reading on. It should be noted that Rob Levin has not always been popular with everybody.
OK. Now that you have read the wiki page (and the quotes which are considerably biased to what a Traditional IRC User would call an 'idiot'), you might understand some of my disagreements with the stance.
The reason I have mentioned Traditional IRC Users, is because the following is going to detail annoyances that Traditional IRC Users and myself are going to have with freenode in a very short period of time.
NOIDPREFIX
Many IRC networks use nickname registration services. I don't have a problem with nickname registration services as they have their benefits and disadvantages. However, freenode will soon be implementing a policy, which will mean that people will not only be able to register a nick they want, but by doing so, all variants of it are automatically registered to them. This means if you register the nickname 'foo', you also have the exclusive right to own nicknames with 'foo' in them. For example, and not limited to.
foo
foo_
foo`
foo
foo-1
[foo]
foo|ATHOME
foo[WORK]
People can say "this will help, because I then i don't have to register each of those nicknames", but their is a major problem with this.
Say you wanted the nickname 'Foo_Fighter', well, you could not have it, because someone, in this case, already owns the nickname 'foo'. Why? Well because 'foo' is registered to someone, and 'Foo_Fighter' is a variant of 'foo'. Sure, he could use 'FooFighter', but that may already be taken.
A more problematic example, is one expressed by The_Tick (I think you can see already what his problem is going to be).
The_Tick also makes a good point about nick changes being used to indicate if you are away or not. Something again, that Traditional IRC Users have complained about before.
I know a number of people who are going to have similar problems, and would prefer to use the nicknames they already have for years, then having to pick another one. It would be easier in these cases for us to use elsewhere, simply because no other network has problems of such a scale, other than freenode.
I could add more to this, but i suggest instead that you complain to policy@freenode.net, especially if you use the network, to complain about these changes.
You can see the full policy draft on the freenode site.
Blogging
It's about time I really got into the blogging scene. Not just to be cool, but because there is often thoughts on my mind, which I want to write up.
So now, with my new webhost coming into play, I have decided to set up Wordpress so I can blog to my hearts content.
Of course, the content which is going to be posted on here, will be varied... even I don't know what I will start posting yet. All I can guarantee is that there will be things related to Programming, Linux, and all things nice.
Hope you have a read every so often, might read something interesting one day.