See recent comments. RSS feed of all comments. Raw dump of all comments for research purposes.
ImageMagick book
MythTV book
|
 |
|
 |
|
Fri, 30 Dec 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Mon, 26 Dec 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sun, 25 Dec 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
It's not intentional, I think it's more that I haven't had anything interesting to say since I moved to the US -- all of my time has been devoted to training at work, moving into houses (two now, no more of that please), and sustaining the other two activities by going shopping. I promise now that most of that is done that I will be 100% excitement from now on.
In fact, I'll take my camera to Andrew and Sarah's Christmas lunch, and then post some pictures online... Promise.
Tags for this post: blog( ) Related posts: As pointed out by a friend at work; Christmas morning; I like Christmas
posted at: 10:13 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Tue, 20 Dec 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Mon, 19 Dec 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Andrew and Sarah's air freight arrived on Saturday, and thanks to their kindness that means my bike arrived too. I reassembled it on Sunday, and went for a short test ride, which was a mistake as it reminded me how much fun riding is. Now I need to find time to ride here, despite the fact that it appears to want to rain all of this week.
I'm considering bike commuting and just getting wet.
Tags for this post: bike( )
posted at: 13:11 | path: /bike | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Fri, 16 Dec 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
When I created my USB2 mirrored LVMed disk array I go asked a few questions about performance of the disks, how long it took to setup, and stuff like that.
At the time it was too late to get that data as I already had things I cared about on the disk array. Now it's time to grow the array so I've picked up two more disks. I've collected some data, so I now have data on the setup process for a new LVM from two USB 2 disks, and bonnie results for the filesystem on those disks. I don't have the date with me though, so I will write it up in the next few days.
Is there anything else people would like to know before I put these disks into action?
Oh, and yes this does mean that there is now a terrabyte of disk in that array. That brings the total amount of storage I have online at my house to 1.2 terrabytes. That doesn't include the old disk array still running in Australia either. Fun fun fun.
Tags for this post: linux( ) Related posts: Building my new disk array; Adding space to the disk array; Large inodes = faster samba; Linux USB quandary
posted at: 09:28 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
I've been setting up MythTV, and my test show was an episode of "Dirty Jobs" which I am watching now. The process for shrimp trawling is the current victim, and it seems to involve grabbing everything from the bottom of the ocean, and then throwing the vast majority of it back while looking for the relatively small number of shrimp in the catch.
So, does this suck environmentally or not?
Tags for this post: blog( ) Related posts: Extreme Machines: Eirik Raude; More on burial methods
posted at: 09:22 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sun, 11 Dec 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
I spent some time this morning wrapping the presets for the kids. They get two Christmases you see -- the one in Australian, and then another smaller one when they get to the US. Now, it might be the nostalgia speaking, or the fact that I haven't seen my family in nearly a month, but it occurred to me that I really like Christmas.
Or to be more precise -- I really like giving my kids stuff. Although, it turns out that I am crap at wrapping. There is something really cute about the kids being excited to be moving to the US -- because daddy said there were presents waiting for them. That's cool.
Oh, and next time I'm only going to buy rectangular presents so I stand a chance of being able to wrap them. Ever tried to wrap a stuffed toy?
Tags for this post: christmas( )
posted at: 10:06 | path: /christmas | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Fri, 09 Dec 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
I got a very good price on a Dell e310, so I have been trying to install Linux on it for about an hour now without much joy. It turns out (or at least this is my current theory) that the USB chipset in the machine isn't supported by the Ubuntu 5.10 installer, and that causes the kernel to crash on boot. There certainly seem to be other people experiencing this as well.
Unfortunately, I really need USB on this machine, as there are no legacy ports and I really like keyboards. Specifically, the Ubuntu install CD needs me to enter a boot line before it boots the installer kernel, and I can't do that with my spare USB controller installed and the on board one disabled, as the BIOS wont allow me.
I'll keep you posted when I come up with a solution.
Tags for this post: blog( ) toys( ) dell( ) e310( ) Related posts: Update on the Dell; TECRA M4 P-M 770 and Ubuntu live CDs; Nice touch; What packages are taking all my disk?; MySQL Workbench; Ubuntu Breezy and Dovecot hate me; Upgrading Ubuntu Feisty now that its end of lifed; Installing X11 on MacOS X; MySQL Workbench; Ubuntu, Dapper Drake, and that difficult Dell e310; Update on the Dell e310 ; Adventures in Ubuntu Breezy Dovecot; Debian / Ubuntu packaging; Compiling MythTV 0.19 for Ubuntu Dapper; Via M10000, video, and a Belkin wireless USB thing; I got MythBurn working!
posted at: 22:06 | path: /diary/toys/dell/e310 | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
The Definitive Guide to ImageMagick arrives in bookstores 26 December 2005, but Apress has already started sending out PDF versions of the book to some reviewers (let me know if you're interested in doing a review and I will see what I can do), and there is a sample chapter available for download from the Apress site.
We worked hard to make the book as good as we could, including having a technical review team, several layers of editors, and me reading all of the chapters more than I would like to admit. That doesn't mean that it's impossible that errata slipped through though, so if you see something like that then please send either me an email, or even better send an email to the address reserved for such things.
Each error found, if I agree with it, will result in a thank you email, the error being corrected in any future editions, the error being listed online (I don't know where yet though), and a credit in future versions of the book.
Tags for this post: imagemagick( ) book( ) Related posts: Errata: Tweak to homework, new VMWare image
posted at: 07:38 | path: /imagemagick/book | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Fri, 02 Dec 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
I have a directory full of thumbnails of the rental tour I went on the other day while looking for a new apartment, and I want to put them online. Instead of putting each photo online, which I thought might be boring, I wanted to build a stack on images on a background.
I'm not really describing the effect well, so here's the output so you know what I mean:
This was remarkably easy to create with a simple script that uses ImageMagick. Here's the code:
#!/bin/bash
# Setup the random number stuff
LOBOUND=1
HIBOUND=600
RANDMAX=32767
# Create a white image to start with
convert -size $HIBOUND"x"$HIBOUND xc:lightgray output.png
for img in img*jpg
do
echo "Processing $img"
# Rotate the image if needed
rotate=""
if [ `exif $img | grep Orientation | grep bottom | wc -l | tr -d " "` -gt 0 ]
then
convert -rotate -90 $img img.png
else
convert $img img.png
fi
imgwidth=`identify -ping img.png | cut -f 3 -d " " | cut -f 1 -d "x"`
imgheight=`identify -ping img.png | cut -f 3 -d " " | cut -f 2 -d "x"`
# For more information on bounded numbers with bash, see
# http://www.stillhq.com/bashrand/
x=$(( $LOBOUND + (($HIBOUND - $imgwidth) * $RANDOM) / ($RANDMAX + 1) ))
y=$(( $LOBOUND + (($HIBOUND - $imgheight) * $RANDOM) / ($RANDMAX + 1) ))
# Put the image on top of the accumulative image
mv output.png input.png
convert -draw "image atop $x,$y $imgwidth,$imgheight img.png" input.png output.png
rm img.png
done
First the script creates an empty image to place the thumbnails over. Then for each image it checks if the image needs to be rotated, and what size it is. I use the size of the image to determine what the maximum value for the two random values I need are (the random values from the coordinates of the top left of the thumbnail image, and I don't want any images falling off the edge of the new image). The the image is placed on top of the accumulating image.
It's just a little ImageMagick hack I thought I would share.
Tags for this post: imagemagick( ) Related posts: Solar panel reflection effects in satellite imagery
posted at: 17:25 | path: /imagemagick | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Mon, 28 Nov 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
I've just started working through Dive Into Python, so I don't really have an opinion of the book yet. I did notice that Example 2.1 produces different output on my machine than from the example...
The example says I should get:
server=mpilgrim;uid=sa;database=master;pwd=secret
I get:
pwd=secret;database=master;uid=sa;server=mpilgrim
It's interesting that this is exactly the reverse of what the book says I should get. I have no idea why, as I can't read Python yet, but there you go.
Tags for this post: python( ) diveintopython( )
posted at: 11:16 | path: /python/diveintopython | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Thu, 24 Nov 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
sed: can't read /etc/inetd.conf: No such file or directory
This first error is because of this poorly implemented test:
# The init script should do nothing if dovecot is being run from inetd
for p in `sed -r "s/^ *(([^:]+|\[[^]]+]|\*):)?(pop3s?|imaps?)[ \t].*/\3/;t;d" \
/etc/inetd.conf`
do
for q in `sed -r "s/^ *protocols[ \t]*=[ \t]*(([^\"]*)|\"(.*)\")/\2\3/;t;d" \
/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf`
do
if [ $p = $q ]; then
exit 0
fi
done
done
You can see from the comment that the intention is that the init script doesn't do anything if dovecot is running from inetd. The error message is kinda bogus though, in that the code keeps executing after that failed line with the sed call in it. If you find the error annoying, then make it go away:
touch /etc/inetd.conf
In a perfect world, you'd hope that the packager would change the script to do something more like this:
for p in `sed -r "s/^ *(([^:]+|\[[^]]+]|\*):)?(pop3s?|imaps?)[ \t].*/\3/;t;d" \
/etc/inetd.conf 2> /dev/null`
Moving right along...
It doesn't start the service
I had enabled the imap_listen variable in the dovecot.conf file, but not put it in the protocols variable. The init script checks this, and bugged out without an error message. I would think an error message would be nicer.
And now it works.
Tags for this post: linux( ) ubuntu( ) Related posts: Ubuntu Breezy and Dovecot hate me; Dovecot index cache problems
posted at: 20:40 | path: /linux/ubuntu | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
I've been working with publishing people recently, and they're all Macintosh users. There is a trial version of Stuffit expander for linux, but they really want me to give them money after 15 days... I've googled for an open source alternative, but can't find one. Is that because one doesn't exist?
Tags for this post: linux( )
posted at: 14:30 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Wed, 23 Nov 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Tue, 22 Nov 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sun, 20 Nov 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sat, 19 Nov 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
So, Andrew and I arrive in Santa Clara from Canberra yesterday. It took about 24 hours of travelling, and a lot of queueing to make that happen, but we're here finally. I must admit I'm really liking things so far, I was a bit worried about the expense of rent until we went and saw am apartment complex this morning, and I'm not worried about that now.
The mall is nice (the local one that is), the temporary apartment is nice (photos soon), and the rental car is crap, but that's ok.
On a musical note I only just recently discovered the Black Eyes Peas, so I picked up Elephunk this morning. Damn that's a good album -- it's rare for me to find a disc that I like every track on, but this is one of them.
Anyways, here. Alive. In Santa Clara for now. Must wander off now...
Tags for this post: travel( ) usa( ) california( ) santaclara( ) Related posts: Dragonsinger; Dragondrums; On home sound systems; Dragonsong; The Ship Who Sang
posted at: 16:17 | path: /travel/usa/california/santaclara | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Wed, 16 Nov 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Someone at university once told me that you remember things best when you're in the state that you learnt them in... You recall things about driving best when in a car, how to yell at your boss when stressed, and how to code while highly caffinated.
That's why he always showed up to exams in the same state as he had studied for them -- stoned.
I guess this means I'm going to have to unpack (and remember where I put everything and why) when tipsy. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
Tags for this post: blog( )
posted at: 03:31 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Tue, 15 Nov 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Mon, 14 Nov 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sun, 13 Nov 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sat, 12 Nov 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
A good breakfast will hopefully stop me from starving during my bachelor phase in the US.
Tags for this post: work( )
posted at: 19:52 | path: /work | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Fri, 11 Nov 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
So, I am an unemployed bum by the way. Yesterday was my last day at TOWER, today is our family's meta-Christmas, and then I have a little under a week to pack my stuff and help start packing everyone else's stuff before I fly off the Americania to start work with the G thing. So, now I just need to slot some good solid panicking into my schedule, and all shall be well.
Tags for this post: work( )
posted at: 23:33 | path: /work | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
lvextend -L+6G /dev/data/datalv
e2fsck /dev/data/datalv
resize2fs /dev/data/datalv
Very nice.
Update: Fixed the command line above to be correct. Additionally, I had some troubles with the fsck eating all of the RAM on the machine (it didn't have much), and I've had to add more RAM to the machine to get the commands above to work.
Tags for this post: linux( ) Related posts: About to resize my LVM; Building my new disk array; Large inodes = faster samba; Tick of death; X.org doesn't support dynamic resize of the screen?; SMART and USB storage; Linux USB quandary
posted at: 21:21 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Wed, 09 Nov 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Twiddling page layout style...
posted at: 16:13 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Tue, 08 Nov 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Mon, 07 Nov 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Gordon's blog gets quoted by Fortune, which is really cool, although it does worry me that Fortune seems to think that journalism is blogging about other people's blogs. Does this mean that real journalists have abdicated their responsibility to collect new information?
Tags for this post: link( ) Related posts: Interesting quote; Quote
posted at: 01:52 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Fri, 04 Nov 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Thu, 03 Nov 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Gordon at work asks me what is happening with www.frozenchicken.com. If you hit the site, then you get the Google search interface. This is because of the DNS configuration for the domain:
challenger:~# host www.frozenchicken.com
www.frozenchicken.com is an alias for www.google.com.
www.google.com is an alias for www.l.google.com.
www.l.google.com has address 66.102.7.147
www.l.google.com has address 66.102.7.99
www.l.google.com has address 66.102.7.104
www.frozenchicken.com is an alias for www.google.com.
www.google.com is an alias for www.l.google.com.
www.frozenchicken.com is an alias for www.google.com.
www.google.com is an alias for www.l.google.com.
You can see that www.frozenchicken.com is an alias for www.google.com, which in turn points to what is presumably my local cluster.
So why do all the links of the Google page then point via www.frozenchicken.com? Well, because they're relative URLs, they use the hostname from the browser.
Tags for this post: google( ) Related posts: Compendium of TLD domain access agreements; Parked domains; Talk about a support life cycle...; Python DNS modules
posted at: 15:21 | path: /google | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
More details later, but I had a badish bike crash on Wednesday night, and spent a lot of yesterday at doctors and being xrayed. More details when I get the time to write them up...
Tags for this post: bike( ) Related posts: Adium crashes on launch; My first commuting crash
posted at: 15:12 | path: /bike | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Tue, 01 Nov 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
It seems to me that it might be time to document my database of test PDFs and various parsing results that I have had online for quite some time. This entry is an attempt to do that for the current state of play.
Adding a PDF to the collection
You'll need the pdfcollection code (tarball). This is all the code I used to manage the database.
Run the addpdf script to add a new PDF to the collection. Here's an example:
mikal@lapel:~/opensource/pdfcollection$ ./addpdf /home/mikal/pdfa/This\ is\ a\ sample\ PDF.pdf
Where is the PDF database? /home/pdfdb
Publish? (y/n) y
Adding /home/mikal/pdfa/This is a sample PDF.pdf
New object id is 649 (000649)
Moving PDF
Processing PDF
Extracting pages
Number of pages: 0
Extract info
mikal@lapel:~/opensource/pdfcollection$
The text in bold above is what I typed. The local copy of the PDF database on my machine is in /home/pdfdb/. This command relies on ghostscript, imagemagick, ghostview, and pdfinfo (from the xpdf utilities package) being installed, so make that happen. It displays the PDF with gv, makes sure you really want to add it (i.e. you own enough of the rights to the document to do so), and then does it's thing.
In this example, ghostscript failed to extract any pages from the document, which is a little sad.
But I don't want to view the document before adding it
Then use the --force flag to addpdf and all will go well. Use a command line like this:
./addpdf doc.pdf --force
Recreating the page count and thumbnails for existing documents
A lot of the PDFs have been in the database for several years, and in that time I assume that ghostscript's ability to view PDF documents has hopefully improved. You can therefore easily regenerate the page count, thumbnails and metadata for a PDF document with the processpdf command. This command was actually used by addpdf under the hood. Let's give it a go:
mikal@lapel:~/opensource/pdfcollection$ for item in `ls /home/pdfdb/ | grep 0`
> do
> ./processpdf /home/pdfdb $item
> done
This simple script regenerated all of the metadata for all of the PDFs in the database, and hammered my machine while doing it. The command line arguments are the location of the PDF database, and the id number of the PDF to process.
This command has basically the same dependencies as the addpdf command.
Conclusion
I've run out of things to say for now, but later I'll show you how to rerun the pdfomatic regression tests.
Tags for this post: pdfdb( ) Related posts: PDF/A; PDF/A sample documents?; Expect to see some sample documents soon; Trying out the Apress e-book system; Random fact for the day; Thinking about IDL style descriptions of document formats; Recovering lost MythTV recordings; Unjustified fun making; CD ROM; Random idea; This is a pointer; Interesting technique for finding leaks in code; MythBuntu 8.10 just made me sad; Open Source document management from Alfresco; Converting a bunch of TIFF images to a PDF using ImageMagick
posted at: 22:21 | path: /pdfdb | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Dad I were riding a week or so ago, and I had just come down a nice hill where I had been going over 50 kilometres and hour... Towards the end the brakes on the rear wheel started to make a grinding noise as I slowed down. I'm a bit of a bike newbie, so it seemed to me that there were a couple of options: my brake pads were worn out; the brakes had over heated; or there was grit stuck under a pad.
We stopped and had a look, and the pads seemed to have heaps of rubber left on them, so we went for the grit theory. This was reinforced by the ride home, where the grinding stopped after a little while.
Time passes and I have the same experience last night. Except this time the grinding happens all the way home, so I decided to take the brakes apart when I got home.
It turns out that the brake pads were worn out, and that I had been damaging the rear rim. I don't think the damage is too bad - -I've probably reduced the life of the rim a little, but it's still usable. The problem was that the break pad has these metal spikes through it to hold it together, and the amount of usable pad is much smaller than it looks from the outside.
I suspect that the grinding went away the first time because the metal spikes in the pad changed shape as it heated up going down the hill, and then changed back as I rode on.
So, new bike brake pads today, and you live and you learn.
Tags for this post: bike( ) Related posts: Tick of death
posted at: 18:41 | path: /bike | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Mon, 31 Oct 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sun, 30 Oct 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
I'm very proud of myself at the moment... For the first time in a very long time my TODO list is short enough to fit vertically on a 17 inch LCD monitor. This might not sound like a big deal to other people, but it is to me.
Normally what I do is I have all of the things I need to do in tasks on my iPaq, and then have a classification called "today" which is all the stuff I should try to work on today. I do this because otherwise it is too easy to become daunted by the seemingly endless list of things to get done.
Things have two ways to getting onto the today list... If I am in interrupt mode, as I have been recently, then it is a list of things which really truly need to be done today. If I am in polled mode, then it is the four of five things I can reasonably expect to get done today.
I often don't manage to clear the list out daily, but it gives me a more manageable feel for what needs doing.
Tags for this post: blog( ) Related posts: Life hacking; PDF/A; Historical revisionism; Perl sample source code; Average build time for a PC; Open Source document management from Alfresco; Scott Adam's blog: the boner theory of management
posted at: 22:24 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sat, 29 Oct 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
I'm watching the Discovery channel as I am occasionally want to do, this time instead of working on page layout review for the book, and I am quietly amazed by the commentary. This is a documentary about the world's most advanced oil rig -- the Eirik Raude. It's meant to be complimentary. It's about how cool this thing is...
The commentary starts "Everyone needs power. Our insatiable desire for oil forces the oil companies to drill in stupider and stupider places." (or something like that). The Eirik Raude is built to drill in deeper water than before, in rougher seas.
Given that there is general consensus that we're using too much oil, as shown by even this pro oil rig commentary, you'd think we'd start doing something about it. But no...
Tags for this post: environment( ) Related posts: New Orleans and sea level; Kern County oil wells on I-5; What is the point that people's morals evaporate?
posted at: 21:36 | path: /environment | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Tue, 25 Oct 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
I have an opportunity to build a new disk array for when I move house. I made a few mistakes when I built the last one (although perhaps they were because it was the best that could be done at the time), and I don't intend to repeat those mistakes. I put out a call for suggestions a little while ago, and now I've built an array I'm pretty happy with. Let's walk through it.
First off, let's start with a reminder of the requirements. Here's what I said in the previous post:
- Reliable: be that mirrored or RAIDed
- Expandable: I want to be able to drop in a new disc when I run out of space. I don't mind needing to add two identical discs if that makes point 1 easier
- Rethingable: I want to be able to remove unreliable discs from the set. If there are paired discs, then I can handle having to cycle out both at the same time.
- Non-sucky
The hardware
I now have two identical USB 2.0 external hard disk enclosures, each with a 250gb Seagate Barracuda drive in it. I picked USB 2.0 because I want the disks to be easy to move, and I picked external enclosures in the hope that this would ruggedize the disks for the trip to the US just a little. They'll be travelling in my carry on luggage.
The mirroring
Both of the disks are part of a MD mirror pair, and I must say that MD is a lot nicer than last time I played with it. Here's all I needed to do to set it up (sdb2 and sdc2 are the partitions with the MD on them):
mdadm --create /dev/md1
--raid-devices=2
--spare-devices=0
--level=1
/dev/sdb2 /dev/sdc2
mdadm --detail /dev/md1
No config files in /etc like you used to. No need to do more configuration. It just works. What happened to the first partitions on the discs? They're each an 8 megabyte FAT partition with nothing in it but a meaningful name. This is so that I can tell which disk is which no matter what if they end up falling out of their labelled cases or something.
So, we have redundancy... Let's make it expandable and shrinkable
Then I used LVM to create a volume group and a logical volume on md1, which is where I will store the data. This is so I can expand and shrink the filesystem as my storage needs grow and disks fail. I currently get a disk failure per year with the current disk array (which is currently four disks), and I currently consume a little over 230gb. Yes, I know I'm going to need to buy more disk real soon, but I thought I would wait until I am in the US.
Creating the LV:
pvcreate /dev/md1
vgcreate data /dev/md1
lvcreate -L<size> -ndatalv data
vgdisplay data
mkfs -text3 /dev/data/datalv
And we're done. Any comments?
Tags for this post: linux( ) Related posts: About to resize my LVM; Adding space to the disk array; A filesystem which will resize over more than one disc whilst being reliable; Large inodes = faster samba; My first interview; LCA CD continues; Mirror traffic during the last day of LCA 2007; We're getting there; Thanks for the kind word Pia; Mirroring the Linux Update podcast; The Linux Australia mirroring project; SMART and USB storage; Linux USB quandary
posted at: 00:49 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sun, 23 Oct 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Fri, 21 Oct 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Thu, 20 Oct 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Wed, 19 Oct 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Given I'm moving, I had a great opportunity to sort out my home disc storage. Here's what I want:
- Reliable: be that mirrored or RAIDed
- Expandable: I want to be able to drop in a new disc when I run out of space. I don't mind needing to add two identical discs if that makes point 1 easier
- Rethingable: I want to be able to remove unreliable discs from the set. If there are paired discs, then I can handle having to cycle out both at the same time.
- Non-sucky
So what are my options? I'm currently leaving towards two identical discs, with a meta disc that is mirrored between them, and the some sort of filesystem over the top. I suspect that LVM offers something here, but I need to learn more about LVM before I can give it a go.
I want to have something sorted out by the end of the weekend. I don't mind building something to play with and then tearing it down later it if sucks, but it must be ready to roll within the next two weeks for real.
So, thoughts people?
Tags for this post: wanted( ) Related posts: Trying out the Apress e-book system; Interesting quote; C sample source code; clusterssh; Building my new disk array; SMART and USB storage
posted at: 21:30 | path: /wanted | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
We own a dog and a cat. We've had the cat, Taffy, for a long time and he's quite old now. The dog, Spike, on the other hand hasn't been with us for very long. So, when we move to the US, what are we going to do with the pets? Well, the cat is relatively easy, as he's too old to cope with a move, and is quite attached to my father. He'll be staying in our current house, which dad will be renting from me.
The dog, Spike is harder. The kids are now quite attached to him, having been initially scared of him (we got him as a puppy, and the kids didn't like that puppy phase too much). He's now a year old or so. On the other hand, he didn't like the flight from Sydney to Canberra when we acquired him, so a 14 hour flight to the US is too much for him. If we don't like the US and want to come home really, soon then he would also end up in quarantine, a four hour drive away from us, for a very long time (around three months I believe).
Worse than that, we're probably going to end up in an apartment in the US, and that would mean that he wouldn't have a yard to play in...
In the end we ended up deciding that it was better if Spike staying in the US. we contacted the breeder and had a chat, and found a lady in Sydney who has been looking for a Labradoodle for a while. After her visiting us and meeting the dog, and us interviewing her, we decided to just give her Spike. It felt really wrong to even discuss money.
Spike now has a dog's dream job -- he's a mascot for a Sydney school, and plays with the kids at before and after school care (which are urn by his new owner). he also gets to go for long walks every day, and play on the beach, which something we were somewhat lax about.
That's what the trip to Sydney that I blogged about earlier was about. Spike was dropped off, and then we went to my father in law's house for the night. The boys got skateboards in return for being strong about the whole thing. They still ask after Spike a little, but I think that they understand that we're going on a bit of an adventure and that Spike is best off where he is.
That's why I was at Freshwater breach for that surfing competition that day as well... That beach is about a five minute walk from Spike's new home.
I honestly think we've done the right thing, but it's still sad when I think about it.
Tags for this post: travel( ) usa( ) california( ) mountainview( ) relocation( ) Related posts: Travel details so far; Slack talk at SLUG; In Sydney!; Don't use Jetbus Sydney if you want to catch your flight; JJJ's hack; Two more weeks to go; Frank Arrigo discovers Steve Walsh's free wireless; On a bunker kick; On home sound systems; Sydney 1, Mikal 1; In Canberra; Sounds like Andrew's cat is allergic to something in it's food; Dell e310 upgrade; Mont 24 hour race; Sydney redeems itself, if only a little; Google? Sydney?; Planes at 600 meters!; Getting ready to leave Sydney; On the potentially sorry state of second hand science fiction book stores in Sydney; Working from home today; Back in Canberra again
posted at: 17:31 | path: /travel/usa/california/mountainview/relocation | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
I just got this from a work mate:
What's going on with you lot?
I've sat down at my desk for about 15 minutes, and there are NO new blog posts, and no mail.
You all need to pick up the pace. If you have a blog, you should post to it every day, so that I don't have to start doing any work until AT least 10 o'clock.
(If you don't have one, well get one, so I can read it.)
I don't care what crap you post - It's important to my general getting-slowly motivated morning routine
Now I'm going to have to start 'work' earlier.
Grrrrrrr.
That Is all. Thankyou.
Sorry. I'll work on some sort of inane post now. (Well, it's done in fact.)
Tags for this post: blog( )
posted at: 17:14 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Tue, 18 Oct 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Mon, 17 Oct 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sun, 16 Oct 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sat, 15 Oct 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Fri, 14 Oct 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Thu, 13 Oct 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sat, 08 Oct 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
So, now that I am starting to feel a little better, let me tell you of the journey of discovery that was my illness. I didn't know until about two days ago that you can have allergic reactions to anti-histamines (which are apparently the only difference between day time cold and flu tablets and the night time ones). I found out that you can by having such a reaction...
The first night, I went to bed and spent the first two hours after having the tablets tossing a turning in a hallucinogenic night mare. The topic of the nightmare? ISO standardisation of PDF/A, which is the topic of the standardisation riff I have been on recently (and will continue when better). I certainly care about PDF, but I'm not sure that hallucinogenic nightmares are the right way to deal with the problem.
The same thing happened the next night, except it was a two hour extravaganza of sweat over how to best run analytics on the 4.2 million lines of Apache web server logs that this domain have created on Andrew's machine since the last box upgrade. More on that later too.
Anyways, I've returned to sanity now that I'm not taking the night tablets any more and just using day tablets in their place. I think I will be careful around those blue pills from now on. More red pills for me!
Tags for this post: blog( ) Related posts: Sick; TECRA M4 P-M 770 and Ubuntu live CDs; More nuclear bunkers; Getting ASP.NET working on Windows XP Tablet PC edition; Thinkpad x41 tablet PCMCIA IO; One thing about Microsoft Tablet PCs that Scoble didn't mention; Excitement in the office; The Greenbrier bunker opens for tours!; New laptop; I didn't realize that the US was a third world country
posted at: 01:20 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Fri, 07 Oct 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
So, Google has released a beta of their bloglines equivalent service, and given that Liferea crashes about four times a day for me I thought I would give it a go. Login et cetera is easy, and the user interface is nice and AJAXy. It's fairly intuitive as well, although when I was importing my OPML file from Liferea I missed the message at the top saying the import was in progress as first.
That said, it's been 30 minutes and it still says it's importing my 460 line OPML file. I just refreshed the page for the import, and the import stopped and said that I now had 54 subscriptions. So, I guess that means I should wait longer for the import. I'm now going to try importing over the top and see if it's smart enough to squelch duplicates.
Tags for this post: google( ) Related posts: Sony Reader (an ebook reader); MythIPTV Beta 2; MythNetTV beta 4; MythNetTV release 1; MythIPTV Beta 2
posted at: 14:35 | path: /google | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
I thought I wasn't getting any better, but I feel a little better this morning. I'm really hoping to be up to work on Monday. Meh.
If I haven't answered your email, please be patient, I'm trying to get through them all.
Tags for this post: blog( ) Related posts: Australian Health Insurance; Non-budget funded work
posted at: 13:38 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Wed, 05 Oct 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Tue, 04 Oct 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
I've come down with a cold, so I'm going to go quiet for a bit... Somehow I don't think I'll be going to work tomorrow. Exciting topics to be more fully explored when I feel better include: my exciting adventures with a broken laptop; more on that standards riff; how I've just finished the last chapter of the book and now just need to do the front matter and an appendix; and whatever else I think of.
And now I'm going to bed.
Tags for this post: blog( ) Related posts: I didn't realize that the US was a third world country; A little story from my sickness
posted at: 02:20 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Mon, 03 Oct 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sun, 02 Oct 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
So, apparently I tempted fate, just as the CVS commit of the work on the final chapter of the book finished, and I got around to writing the blog post about the machine, it locked up again. What happens is that the screen goes blank (except for some random red and blue dashes this time), and the power and disc lights stay on. The machine doesn't respond to any input.
I'm wondering if it's temperature related, as the machine worked ok until I went out into the sun to do some work. The machine is out of warranty, and having played around with the memory, and knowing that the disc isn't the problem that really leaves the logic board, which probably means it's not worth repairing.
I've got an older ThinkPad without a working battery that I can use for now, but I guess it's time to start thinking about a new machine. I really want to get the book out of the way before getting distracted on that kind of stuff though.
Tags for this post: blog( ) toys( ) Related posts: Thinkpad x41 tablet PCMCIA IO; r51 update; New laptop; ThinkPads return to bricks and mortar retail in the US; Pain with the ThinkPad; Alan Cox's IBM ThinkPad explodes
posted at: 18:09 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Thu, 29 Sep 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
...but your employer doesn't? Well, the answer that I've come up with is that standards do matter, and that they shouldn't be controlled by companies for corporate gain. So, I'm going to pursue membership of the standards committee as an individual (which means that I wont be going to any of the meetings I guess), and advocate what I honestly think is the right solution, instead of what nessesarily makes things easier for my employer to implement.
I'm kinda keen to find some time to implement some tools around the standard too, especially as I am not aware of any implementations online at the moment...
Tags for this post: work( ) Related posts: PDF/A; PDF/A sample documents?; Should small ISVs be involved with the standards process?
posted at: 15:21 | path: /work | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
(I know that's not an entirely accurate description of what he said).
Robert Scoble talks about the latest Microsoft MVP summit, and some of the backlash over VB 6.0 not having a recompile path to .NET and Vista. He tried to make the argument that sometimes things have to break for revolutionary change, and he's right. Then again, I'm not sure that Vista is a revolutionary change. Anyways, one aspect that Robert completely ignores is that he makes the assumption that if people are forced to do a rewrite, they'll do it on a Microsoft platform.
There are only so many times Microsoft can make you rewrite some code, before you decide to go elsewhere.
Tags for this post: dotnet( ) Related posts: SQL Server is incompatible with Windows Vista?; Leon, get with the program; Microsoft taints bloggers with free laptops... or, whiney bitches win again!; Windows Vista, now with nagging; Leon, my point remains
posted at: 15:15 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Tue, 27 Sep 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
I always find that when I have to work with documentation, that I do it better somewhere quiet. It's hard to think about prose when you have someone else waffling on in your headphones. We don't have enough meeting spaces at work, so I am working from home today... I must admit it is also nice to eliminate the hour commute from my day once in a while.
Tags for this post: work( ) Related posts: JJJ's hack; On home sound systems; Dell e310 upgrade; What are we doing with the pets?
posted at: 15:50 | path: /work | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Mon, 26 Sep 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sun, 25 Sep 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Subject: imagemagick: If the trailing character of a montage label option is a percent sign, the output image is erroneous
Package: imagemagick
Version: 6:6.2.3.6-3
Severity: normal
*** Please type your report below this line ***
Executing this command line:
montage -geometry +10+10 -tile 2 -label "-sepia-tone 15%%" \
ImageMagick_Chapter5_Insert20a.jpg -label "-sepia-tone 35%%" \
ImageMagick_Chapter5_Insert20b.jpg -label "-sepia-tone 55%%" \
ImageMagick_Chapter5_Insert20c.jpg -label "-sepia-tone 75%%" \
ImageMagick_Chapter5_Insert20d.jpg ImageMagick_Chapter5_Insert20.jpg
Whereas this command line:
montage -geometry +10+10 -tile 2 -label "-sepia-tone 15%% " \
ImageMagick_Chapter5_Insert20a.jpg -label "-sepia-tone 35%%" \
ImageMagick_Chapter5_Insert20b.jpg -label "-sepia-tone 55%%" \
ImageMagick_Chapter5_Insert20c.jpg -label "-sepia-tone 75%%" \
ImageMagick_Chapter5_Insert20d.jpg ImageMagick_Chapter5_Insert20.jpg
Produces the expected output:
-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.11
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)
Versions of packages imagemagick depends on:
ii libmagick6 6:6.2.3.6-3 Image manipulation library
imagemagick recommends no packages.
-- no debconf information
Tags for this post: imagemagick( ) Related posts: Why Debian?; Samba and MacOS X 10.4 (Tiger); PNGtools 0.4; Update on the Dell; Kernel report video; What packages are taking all my disk?; Debian bootstrap complete; Dear Lazyweb: how do I check SSL keys for vulnerability?; We're 80% complete. If only we could get the code to compile we would be done!; Bad blog, bad bad blog; This is why I went to MythTV; Weird paramiko problem; Status; Time for a status update?; X.org doesn't support dynamic resize of the screen?; Slugging away
posted at: 20:43 | path: /imagemagick | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Thu, 22 Sep 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
This week I asked my employer to fund a trip to a standards meeting. The meeting is in the US, so it's a little expensive to attend, but it's an important meeting. The meeting is important because:
- The standard in question has just had it's first version accepted by ISO
- There are clear problems with that first version
- I have a lot of expertise in the subject area (not to beat my own drum or anything, but I really do)
- The standard has a lot of potential, if pushed in the right direction
- The meeting is to discuss the future development of the standard, so this is the right time to do that pushing
Update: I forgot to mention that the standard is also directly related to what we do.
The proposal was met with sarcasm in the office. This raises an interesting question that I've been pondering overnight. I've been working on the assumption that small software companies should be part of the standards process, both because standards compliance is important, and because being an early implementor of these standards can make a big difference to the acceptance of your software.
Then again, perhaps I've been wrong all this time. Should standards development be left to the customers, Microsoft, Adobe and so forth? Should a standard be about what the customer and large vendors want, not what is possible?
I suspect that large vendors certainly use the standards process to produce standards they know are hard for their competitors to implement -- the ODMA specification is certainly an example of one specification written by a large vendor, which is fairly closely tailored to how their code internally works, and is therefore harder for everyone else to implement.
So, are standards about the customer? Should they be used as a competitive tool? Whatcha think?
Tags for this post: work( ) Related posts: Software patents; PDF/A; "Other than the fact our child will be bright, text-based and sarcastic, we will otherwise be a normal family."; Ruby sample source code; Melbourne; The book process continues; Free kitchen designer from Ikea; Is it good when the directors of your former employer start suing each other?; PDF/A sample documents?; What do you do when you care about a standard...; Life hacking; Non-budget funded work; Some details about the publication process; Funny; I didn't get my shirt!
posted at: 16:58 | path: /work | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Wed, 21 Sep 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Mon, 19 Sep 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
It's been a while since I wrote one of these chapter summaries here, and the reason for that is that I've been busy writing chapters, attending conferences, caring for a sick wife, and stuff like that. The book is still pretty much on track (I'm currently running about a week behind on the chapter deadlines, but I think I can have the whole thing done by the overall deadline).
Chapter 4 is an interesting one as it discusses all the tools which aren't going to be covered elsewhere in the book. The reality of ImageMagick is that 95% of the functionality is exposed in the convert command, so you can discuss most things there. There are however some cool things which happen in commands of their own, and those are the things discussed in this chapter. The chapter is so early on in the book because I don't want to give the impression that ImageMagick is a one trick pony, and because any book claiming to be a complete coverage of ImageMagick really does have to discuss them.
I wont go into a blow by blow account of what commands are covered, as that would be quite dull to read. Let's just leave it as "the rest".
Tags for this post: imagemagick( ) book( ) Related posts: ImageMagick book - Chapter 2: Basic Image Manipulation; ImageMagick book - Chapter 1: Installation and Configuration; Working on review comments for Chapters 2, 3 and 4 tonight; MythTV Chapter Ready: Selecting Hardware; MythTV Chapter Ready: The Easy Way: Installing MythBuntu; ImageMagick book - Chapter 3: Compression and Other Metadata; MythTV Chapter Ready: Introduction
posted at: 14:18 | path: /imagemagick/book | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sun, 18 Sep 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Given I'm the top hit for this problem description, I should I should provide a status update. I have a samba server, and a MacOS Tiger machine. When I upgrade to the latest samba offered in Debian, then Tiger machine can no longer connect. The samba logs show the following error:
[2005/07/19 10:42:32, 0] rpc_parse/parse_prs.c:prs_mem_get(537)
prs_mem_get: reading data of size 2 would overrun buffer.
[2005/07/19 10:42:32, 0] rpc_server/srv_pipe.c:api_pipe_bind_req(919)
api_pipe_bind_req: unable to unmarshall RPC_HDR_RB struct.S
This is from the bug report from the previous time I discussed this problem, which is why the time stamps are old. There is a samba bug raised for the problem, it has in fact been closed as resolved in 3.0.20. Annoyingly, Debian is still shipping 3.0.14a, which dates back to April is year, despite having a bug in their own tracker, which even tells them the problem is fixed.
Apple suggests turning off the encryption requirement on the Tiger machine, which I tried to no effect. They also suggest turning on user authentication and encrypted passwords on the samba server, both of which were already on for me.
I'm going to download the samba code later today and try running the newer version to see if that fixes the problem. Does anyone know why the Debian package is so old?
Tags for this post: samba( ) Related posts: Why Debian?; Automator and iTunes hates me; Podcasts and iTunes 4.9 on Mac; ImageMagick bug?; Macintosh backups; Adium crashes on launch; PNGtools 0.4; Update on the Dell; Solving a slow app startup on MacOS; External monitor resolution on Os X; What packages are taking all my disk?; Normalising mail server package names; Debian bootstrap complete; Hey, the Macintosh bloggers rock more than the Linux bloggers; Dear Lazyweb: how do I check SSL keys for vulnerability?; Merging entries in an iTunes library; Apple remote for older ibook?; Bad blog, bad bad blog; Ubuntu Breezy and Dovecot hate me; Installing X11 on MacOS X; MacOS' RSS screen saver really unreliable?
posted at: 14:16 | path: /samba | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Catherine's dog (not the current one, but an older one) was allergic to chicken, and suffered similar symptoms to what Andrew describes for his cat. It took a while to determine the allergy, but it sounds like that might be the next step for Andrew. I'd start with a really simple diet, and build up from there.
Tags for this post: blog( ) Related posts: Goat demoted; What are we doing with the pets?
posted at: 02:57 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sat, 17 Sep 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Thu, 15 Sep 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Wed, 14 Sep 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Each month, Feedster brings you a list of 500 of the most interesting and important blogs. Enjoy browsing to see what people are reading, to find feeds that will bring topics of interest to you on a regular basis, and to discover new voices in the Blogosphere.
If Feedster is updating the top 500 monthly, why is it still displaying the August results halfway through the month of September? Don't they care about the whole thing any more? If so, it only took them a month to get bored with it...
Tags for this post: blog( ) Related posts: Eat my dust, Groklaw!; Feedster Top 500
posted at: 23:35 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Tue, 13 Sep 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Mon, 12 Sep 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sun, 11 Sep 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sat, 10 Sep 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Mon, 05 Sep 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sun, 04 Sep 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sat, 03 Sep 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sorry Apple that it took a while to write this, I'm fighting an addiction at the moment, and am a little busy. Apple declared the iBook dead on arrival on Wednesday, and I picked up a new machine that day. They promised to have the old disc in a caddy by the end of Thursday so I could get my data back, which I am still waiting to happen as I write this. I of course had to build a new machine.
So, what went so wrong here? Well, the initial contact was terrible "ring Apple". Then two calls to Apple with about 20 minutes on hold. Then being sent to a service center which didn't exist. Having to sign a form telling me that they would destroy my machine at will, and being told it would take two weeks for the machine to get assessed. Lack of knowledge on the part of the staff -- they never asked me to boot the machine, and demo the fact that it clearly didn't work.
If they'd said that it would probably be DOA'ed, and I could have a new machine within three days, all would have been well.
Why did I get this outcome in the end? Perhaps it's part of the standard deal. Perhaps it's because I'm lucky enough to have a developer relations contact at Apple who I could send a very grumpy email to. Perhaps it's this site and the traffic it gets. Dunno. I would certainly still say avoid ANUtech and Mac1 like the plague, which effectively means don't buy an Apple in Canberra.
And why is it so hard to put the old disc in a caddy? Lord only knows...
Tags for this post: blog( ) toys( ) Related posts: Let the Apple service ranting continue; More on Apple service; Apparently terrible warranty service is par for the course with Apple; The excitement of Apple service; Did I mention that Apple service sucks?; Buy Toshiba!; Excitement in the office; Apparently I should pay more attention to pingomatic
posted at: 03:51 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Andrew, my understanding from basically no research is that New Orleans didn't start below sea level. As the city grew, they needed more land, so they built levies and pumped water out of the basin. This meant that the city started to sink further below sea level. Additionally, another problem is that the city is cited on a major oil deposit, which they're pumping oil out of. To get the oil out, they dug canals, with removed the natural barriers which protect from storms. The city sinks about an inch a year. So, the problem is the world's greed for oil, not poor city planning.
Oil canal reference.
This isn't a well researched piece. Please feel free to leave a comment if I need educating.
Tags for this post: blog( ) Related posts: Extreme Machines: Eirik Raude; Pacifying New Orleans; Hmmm, even more Police Academy; Kern County oil wells on I-5; What is the point that people's morals evaporate?; Hmmm, this seems a little bit too much like a Police Academy movie to make me comfortable
posted at: 03:36 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Wed, 31 Aug 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Tue, 30 Aug 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Mon, 29 Aug 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Scott is a random TRIM customer in Canada, who a couple of us found by having technorati watch lists for the name of our product. I have a policy of subscribing to blogs of users when I find them. It's been educational reading Scott's blog -- not just for us developers, but for the company as a whole working through how to deal with customers having a much more public voice for their thoughts.
Scott mentions that now TOWER machines are about a third of his subscribers... Let's work out who those people are for a second:
- Liferea: that one's easy. It's my Thinkpad R51 running Debian Unstable. As an introduction, I'm a senior software engineer in the research and development section of TOWER, and am currently in charge of the TRIM Connectivity Toolkit development.
- Sharpreader: that will be Little Headed Simon, who is a developer on the TRIM Connectivity Toolkit project. Oh, Simon also prefers the moniker "Normal headed Simon", but that doesn't have the same ring to me.
- Newsfire: will be Lindsay on her Macintoy (which appears not to have broken Apple like me, not that I'm ranting about Apple service at the moment or anything). Lindsay basically runs our marketing section's day to day operations, but leaves the company tomorrow.
- And Onfolio: is Gordon, the project manager on the TRIM Context ICE web product team. And apparently Grant, our lead DBA as well.
Hi Scott.
Tags for this post: work( ) Related posts: On customer support
posted at: 16:42 | path: /work | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sun, 28 Aug 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
So, to summarise from my previous post about Apple service, I called the store I bought my iBook from 13 days ago. They said they weren't interested in helping, and gave me the Apple tech support number. I called that number and waited 15 minutes on hold. I was then told that I should try booting off the OS X cds, which were of course at home, despite the fact that the machine didn't boot at all.
My wife drove the CDs in. The machine is so broken that it wont even suck the disc in when the machine is powered up, so I called Apple again and said so. The dude on the phone said that I am now allowed to take the machine into the nearest service center. How good of him. The nearest service center is of course the store I bought it from, so I jump into the car and off I go.
When I get there, I'm told that there is in fact no service center there, and the nearest one is 30 minutes drive away (in the other direction of course). I wonder why Apple thinks there is one there then? Anyways, they say that they can ship it to the service center for me, but it will take two weeks for them to decide whether or not to fix the machine. Did I mention the machine is 13 days old?
I check the machine in for the service, which involves signing this disclaimer:
Please carry out at my cost as soon as you conveniently can the repairs listed on the job sheet with the corresponding number to this slip and any other work you consider to be undertaken at your current rates for the parts and labour used. You will not be responsible for the loss or damage to the equipment, its accessories, software or data however caused. ...
I've skipped the rest of the disclaimer, although it did also say that there was a minimum fee of $99 for the service. The emphasis above is mine.
So, this is my first Apple computer, and it's 13 days old. It's going to take then 14 days to decide what to do to the machine, which is dead, in which time they may also lose the machine, jump up and down on it, or whatever they like.
This is my first Apple purchase, and I'm thinking it will be my last. This level of service for a brand new machine is simply unacceptable, and I'll be going back to IBM. No wonder Apple doesn't have many corporate customers -- would you put up with this?
Tags for this post: blog( ) toys( ) Related posts: Let the Apple service ranting continue; Apple update; More on Apple service; Apparently terrible warranty service is par for the course with Apple; The excitement of Apple service; Buy Toshiba!; Excitement in the office; Apparently I should pay more attention to pingomatic
posted at: 19:51 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
I bought an Apple 12 inch iBook G4 from the ANUtech Apple Center less than two weeks ago. Last night the machine locked up, so I rebooted it with the power button. After booting, the machine would crash after about a minute with what looks a lot like a kernel panic, saying something about bad RAM. I wondered if I had done something to cause it, but it would consistently happen when I booted the machine and left it at the login screen, without me touching anything.
I gave up and went to bed.
This morning, I was hoping the machine was magically fixed, so I tried to turn it on. It didn't boot. So I tried again, and this time it booted, but with a mouse that didn't work. So I tried booting again. It didn't work at all.
I rang the Apple Center, thinking that a two week old machine is simply a case of swapping the machine over or something. The guy basically told me to go away and call Apple. Something like "Oh, well we can't do anything for you -- ring Apple". This is very disappointing to me, I would expect a lot better from a retailer. Anyways, so I rang Apple.
15 minutes on hold. Some simple questions. The machine still doesn't boot. Booting with Apple-Option-r-p doesn't help. Now apparently I need to boot with the OS X CD I left home. So I get to call back later after being on hold for ages.
Two week old machine doesn't make me happy.
Tags for this post: blog( ) toys( ) Related posts: Let the Apple service ranting continue; Apple update; More on Apple service; Apparently terrible warranty service is par for the course with Apple; Did I mention that Apple service sucks?; Buy Toshiba!; Seriously pissed someone off?; Excitement in the office; Apparently I should pay more attention to pingomatic
posted at: 17:13 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sat, 27 Aug 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Thu, 25 Aug 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
...I'm not sure if I should join in the clapping. Perhaps. Perhaps not. It would be a big life change. But I'll always wonder if I should if I don't. Meh. Worst case I can always stop clapping if I don't like it. Ok, I formally accept your offer of clapping.
/me claps
Tags for this post: blog( ) Related posts: Random fact for the day; Hamster powered mobile phone charger
posted at: 14:42 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Wed, 24 Aug 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Tue, 23 Aug 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
I'm getting:
challenger dovecot: IMAP(test): Corrupted index cache file /home/test/mail/.imap/netfilter.lists.netfilter.org/dovecot.index.cache: field header points outside file
In my logs, and Googling doesn't return anything. Does anyone else get this? I'm going to try upgrading to see if that helps.
Tags for this post: dovecot( )
posted at: 00:49 | path: /dovecot | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Mon, 22 Aug 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
I've always wondered where the SUV proliferation in the US came from. This article assures me that it's because the US federal government tried to make cars more fuel efficient. Interesting, if it's correct. Nick Hac.
Tags for this post: link( )
posted at: 18:30 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sun, 21 Aug 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Clarke Scott (who once applied for a job as a Microsoft evangelist, although we should note that I don't hold the Microsoft job application moral high ground) blogs about repeats verbatim without verification a post from a Microsoft evangelist based in New Zealand about Linux Australia's support for Linus' trademarking of the Linux trademark in Australia. He ignores of course that Linux Australia has been running one of the most successful Linux community events in the world for the last four or five years, or that Linus is genuinely behind the trademarking effort. He doesn't look into how the Linux Mark Institute (the international body behind the trademark) is structured. Or what their goals are.
He just comments that the community is less free as a result.
Windows is a trade mark too. How does having Linux trademarked any more restrictive that Microsoft owning the Windows mark?
Update: Clarke commented on this post to mention that I had missed that this was a quote from another site, which I am happy to concede. He also suggests the post was tongue in cheek, despite the fact that I can see no indication of that having re-read the post.
Update: Fixed broken link
Tags for this post: dotnet( )
posted at: 22:57 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sat, 20 Aug 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Thu, 18 Aug 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Wed, 17 Aug 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Tue, 16 Aug 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sun, 14 Aug 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
One of the problems I grappled with early on with was how do you come up with a table of contents for a book? It's a complicated process, and it's really important. If the book doesn't flow, then people are left confused about what goes where, and the book is a lot less useful. Additionally, when you sit down to actually write, then you need to know what is covered where so that you can refer the reader to the right place to find out more about a specific topic -- even if you haven't covered that topic yet.
So how did I come up with the first cut of the table of contents for the ImageMagick book? Well, I started by looking at all of the command line options to the various ImageMagick commands. I wrote this down on a stack of old business cards, and then distributed those cards in logical sounding piles on the floor. Those piles pretty much became the chapters that I originally submitted.
That's the card mound. Anyway, once that was done, Matt (the editor) and I sat down and worked on the table of contents description until it flowed nicely, covered everything we could think of, and had approximate page counts. It turns out in hindsight that the table of contents wasn't completely correct, but that's ok because I've been tweaking it as I go along, and it was more of a help than a hindrance in that it tells me stuff like which chapter to refer the reader to for certain kinds of information, and that sort of thing.
So what's the point I'm trying to make here? When you're writing something big, it's important to have a feel for where you're going in the document, the point you're trying to make, and how you're going to get there.
Update: Fixed my spelling in the title line, as per the helpful comments from Peter.
Tags for this post: imagemagick( ) book( ) Related posts: Chapter seven of the shop manual; When I go to Vegas, I should stay here; Mark is right; Interesting technique for finding leaks in code
posted at: 16:03 | path: /imagemagick/book | permanent link to this entry
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Sat, 13 Aug 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Michael Carden asks in a comment to my previous post to the book if I had considered making draft chapters available for public comment before printing. To be completely honest it hadn't occurred to me until Michael suggested it, and it does fit well with all the open source stuff I have done over the years. It's a hard call though, because there is already a review team of four or five, and there isn't much spare time in the process because we really want the book published in time for Christmas.
This is why I'm going to say no this time to the offer of a more public review, and I'll do my best to take that on board next time when I know more about how long this sort of thing can take (I'm actually only about two days over schedule at the moment, but I really don't want to slip any further).
Sorry Michael.
Anyways, I'm working on review comments for three chapters tonight, which is one of the things that made me think about this more. I'm really rather surprised about how positive the review comments have been so far given how I feel about the manuscript (I've always viewed myself as a bit of a perfectionist, and it's always possible to improve something, so it's really hard to turn the chapters in on time, because that means letting go).
I have independently decided that I want to include more in chapters three and four though, and the review team without my prompting suggested more content for chapter four, so it's now a case of sitting down and making that happen. Well, back to work.
Tags for this post: imagemagick( ) book( ) Related posts: More reviews; Book reviews; Status of the book; ImageMagick book - Chapter 2: Basic Image Manipulation; ImageMagick book - Chapter 1: Installation and Configuration; MythTV Chapter Ready: Selecting Hardware; MythTV Chapter Ready: The Easy Way: Installing MythBuntu; Review; ImageMagick book - Chapter 3: Compression and Other Metadata; ImageMagick book - Chapter 4: Other ImageMagick Tools; The Wild Palms Hotel; MythTV Chapter Ready: Introduction
posted at: 04:25 | path: /imagemagick/book | permanent link to this entry
| |