Older blog entries for bneely (starting at number 16)

Hooray for lame bitterness!

I have an mp3.com station called get whipped. It features deep house. I haven't updated it in about 3 weeks, but I should be able to get around to it this weekend. Enjoy.

Example of a moron.

Everything

If you happened to be at the Robin compound last night, you would have thought I was being antisocial. I was, sort of. I was actually in my room recording an ambient mix. (Mail me for the URL of the mp3.) It was fun.

Yesterday I started reading up on XML. A cow orker referred to XML as OTT. I told him to Go Away.

Music

Have I mentioned how much I love music? I probably have. Well, on Friday I took the opportunity to teach myself some python. My initial reaction was mixed. I'm still not sure how I feel about the language. My initial reaction with perl was, "Woah! This is pretty powerful. The syntax is similar to C, too, so that makes it easy." My reaction with python is more like, "Gee, that took a bit of effort. My program works now, I guess, but, er .. well, *shrug*." No, those aren't very scientific evaluations, but that explains how I felt at the time.

What I do know is that O'Reilly's Learning Python, First Edition is a terrible book. The online documentation is considerably better, and costs a lot less than $29.95. Case in point: I was completely unable to learn how to use python lists by just using the book. However, a lot of effort was required to find the right place on python.org to learn about lists. I'm confused about the distinction between the language reference and the tutorial, and it cost me quite a bit of time.

OK, now for the part that actually relates to music. I have written muf.py - a music fader. The README tells the story, but if you're too lazy to hit that link even though I took great care to craft that URL by hand, I will share the story with you. I like to put a CD on when I go to bed. But I needed a way to gradually fade it out so the sound wouldn't keep me up. I learned python by writing this program. I should mention that muf.py is a front-end to aumix, which uses /dev/mixer.

The program needs a lot of work, but it functions correctly now. And I can honestly say I've written a program that I might use every day of my life. :)

Abstract

Wow.

The New Office

The new office rocks! It is well-lit, comfortable, reasonably spacious, and most importantly, feels like a place where work gets done. Two thumbs up -- way up. I moved with three cardboard boxes of stuff, and have unpacked/condensed it down to one. I even found a little picture of Bullwinkle on a candy bar wrapper to hang up in my cube.

Disclaimer

I only talk about software in my diary entries once in a while. If this bothers you, please look for other diaries to read.

VMware

This command hard-locked my system yesterday:

rmmod vmnet

I closed gkrellm (which was monitoring activity on the vmnet1 interface) and disabled the interface with ifconfig vmnet1 down, but still the crash. I know, stupid me, use "/etc/init.d/vmware stop" next time. But instead (after reboot) I opted for "mv /etc/rc2.d/S90vmware /etc/rc2.d/K90vmware". :)

Mutt bug (versions 1.01 and 1.2)

Mutt's advance-on-message-tag action in the index mode doesn't work as I would expect. For an example, let's imagine a mailbox with three messages:

1. "j"ump to message 2.
2. "d"elete message 2.
3. "j"ump to message 1.
4. "t"ag message 1.

This should put you to message 3, but instead it moves to message 2. The problem is, if you wish to tag the message, you can. But to un-tag the message, you have to use the "j"ump command and specify message 2 explicitly, because cursor keys will skip over "D"eleted messages by default.

Possible fixes:

• Make the "t"ag feature advance-on-tag with recognition of deleted messages, skipping over them (preferred)
• By default, skip over "D"eleted messages, but do not skip over "D"eleted and "*"-tagged messages. (I guess this is only useful if there is a good reason to delete and afterwards tag a message, but I don't suppose people tend to do this. I only end up doing it by accident because of the problem described above :D )

clyde

clyde is the name of my home machine. It is running well, and everything seems to be happy. I have been tracking the sblive driver snapshots every few days. It's great to have sound. Hey, what would anyone recommend for wav-recording in Linux? I would like to take the line-out from my mixer and try to record a dj mix. I'm too cheap/lazy to go out and get a DAT recorder right now. Some of you might want to know who clyde is.

Music

As much as I once thought I hated drum'n'bass, I found a mix CD that I really enjoy. It is the instrumental version of LTJ Bukem's Progression Sessions vol.4. I guess this isn't straightforward drum'n'bass, but it is more melodic and atmospheric. Whatever it is supposed to be called, I like it.

Abstract

Happy.

Intro

Congrats Elise on your new job. (Whoops, when I was typing the URL, I accidentally wrote "elite" the first time.) Thanks Seth. Welcome, Dan!

Computer

With Robin's generous hardware recommendations and configuration assistance, I now have a home computer. It is an AMD Athlon 700mhz on an Asus k7v motherboard. It has 256mb of PC133 RAM, a 20.5gb udma/66 hard drive, a 40x/10x slot-load ATAPI cdrom/dvd drive, a Matrox Millennium G200/16MB videocard, an SBLive Value soundcard, and a Netgear FA310TX network interface. I'm still tweaking my Debian potato install.

same-gnome

Look for my same-gnome scorefile merger script in a couple of hours. must ... get ... to ... 6000 ...

The Move

My salary now comes out of the Technical Support budget once again, and in conjunction with our move out of this temporary office space in SF a few blocks from the main office, I will be rejoining the tech support department. To start, I will be working on technical writing, documentation, and "web stuff." Understatement to the Linuxcare web team: It's been fun.

Abstract

Time.

Cactus Watering

Today I released my cactus_watering script. It is a little hack to grab the Tucson, AZ weather report from cnn.com and suggest whether or not it is time to water your cactus plant. I forget who suggested I do this -- probably Robin.

Abstract

There is water in the sky waiting to fall. It does not plan to fall, however. Not for quite some time. It is happy to float and drift and be thrown around by the wind. It only wants the minimal benefit of floating by because other benefits require a great leap, or descent. It may belong somewhere other than where it currently is, and people want that so. But these changes take time, and also the cooperation of the wind. When the wind is blowing, the air is moving, and when the wind dies, the movement grinds to a halt. Sometimes it is sunny and clear out. Sometimes the fog will drift through. But delivery is only an option. It is not a necessity; it is not being contemplated.

Ask the rocks and trees and roads and flowers and grass, and they will agree with you.

Ask your friends, and they don't know what you're talking about.

Ask your parents, and they think you need a vacation, and time to think things over.

Ask your brothers and sisters, and they mostly want to agree with you.

Ask yourself, but the answer never changes. You already determined what you want, and that is hard to change. Your beliefs are not always the best thing for you, however.

Ask a stranger, and they will come up with the best answer.

Seth, please don't write "click here" anywhere, ever again.

:)

The Window

Outside the window, I see a blue sky, the Berkeley/Oakland hills, a ton of houses on that hill, some buildings, some rather lethargic clouds, people attempting to park on 280 for some reason (never did understand the traffic around here), and not much else. I like being to see several miles of landscape in one view. I've been seeing things too close to my own face recently.

</P> Tags

I wonder why advogato strips </P> tags from my diary entries and notes.

Vacuum Cleaners

I appreciate their cleaning powers, but not their noise. I have very sensitive ears. Go away, vacuum cleaner.

Parties

I thought I was all cool in inviting 10-15 non-cow orkers over this weekend for a chillout party. My next-door neighbours are having a couple hundred people over, multiple DJs, and expect to party on for 10+ hours. I feel like an ant trying to climb the Transamerica building.

Deep Dish

I love house music. Even more, I love Deep Dish. Yeah, that's the stuff. Their new Yoshiesque 2CD mix is just fantastic. Maybe none of you like house, but I'm telling this to everyone anyway. It's awesome.

Source Code

This is what source code looks like:

static void t21142_start_nway(struct device *dev)
{
        struct tulip_private *tp = (struct tulip_private
*)dev->priv;
        long ioaddr = dev->base_addr;
        int csr14 = ((tp->to_advertise & 0x0780) << 9)  |
                ((tp->to_advertise&0x0020)<<1) | 0xffbf;

         dev->if_port = 0;
        tp->nway = tp->mediasense = 1;
        tp->nwayset = tp->lpar = 0;
        if (debug > 1)
                printk(KERN_DEBUG "%s: Restarting 21143
autonegotiation, %8.8x.\
n",
                           dev->name, csr14);
        outl(0x0001, ioaddr + CSR13);
        outl(csr14, ioaddr + CSR14);
        tp->csr6 = 0x82420000 | (tp->to_advertise & 0x0040 ?
0x0200 : 0);
        outl(tp->csr6, ioaddr + CSR6);
        if (tp->mtable  &&  tp->mtable->csr15dir) {
                outl(tp->mtable->csr15dir, ioaddr + CSR15);
                outl(tp->mtable->csr15val, ioaddr + CSR15);
        } else
                outw(0x0008, ioaddr + CSR15);
        outl(0x1301, ioaddr + CSR12);           /* Trigger
NWAY. */
}

 

...Just an example from drivers/net/tulip.c.

Meta

Sorry, I don't have anything.