The story continues at FebruaryBlog
Bernie's brain backup for January 2008 ¶
Sun 27th ¶
Down Under ¶
Yesterday I had to clear my room, pack my stuff at OneCambridgeCenter, and say goodbye to many, many good friends and colleges. I don't even know when I'll be able to see them again. Not exactly a happy day, you may have guessed.
Today, after 22 hours of flight, I started to have visions. At the baggage reclaim, I thought I was talking with the kernel god LinusTorvalds. He said that userspace is easy and that he cannot exactly agree iwith some of the choices made in Python. We'd really get along if it wasn't just a dream :-)
Later on, I reached the hotel and got into the elevator with a ginger guy that looked vaguely familiar. I asked if he was going at LCA.
— Yes.
— Are you a software developer?
— Well... not primarily...
Blink!
— Oh, you must be JonathanCorbet, the editor of LinuxWeeklyNews!
- Indeed.
Today was a really exciting day! I needed something like this to compensate, at least partially, for leaving Boston.
Hi Bernie! Just stepped here looking for the photos of XOs hanging from the ceiling (i wanted to show them to my father) and found you leaving!
So, have a nice journey, enjoy conf.au and see you soon!
— PiroPiro
Sat, 19th ¶
Another trip to NY ¶
I'm planning to go to NewYorkCity tomorrow with a bunch of friends. But this time I guess we'll catch a different transportation: we were booking the FungWah (aka ShittyBus), when ChrisBall came and looked at us funny. "Are you sure? Those buses have a habit of catching fire on the highway".
Apparently, it is really true:
Sun, 13th ¶
Bernie the rockstar ¶
If you were considering hiring me, or entrusting me to do anything serious, you'd better watch this first:
- BernieIronMaiden - [1.8MB] if you have the free OggTheora codec
- BernieIronMaiden - [3.6MB] if you're stuck with proprietary QuickTime codecs
- nothing - [0MB] if you're stuck with the proprietary MediaPlayer or RealPlayer codecs
Q: why doesn't my browser play the link right away rather than asking me to download it?
A: because my wiki doesn't support mime-magic yet
Q: why don't you just let apache serve media files?
A: because a CGI has no way to "handoff" a file to the web server once they've been invoked
Food and Power ¶
Here's a stupid movie by SamuelKlein, ArjunSarwal and myself:
- FoodAndPowerHigh - [62MB] OggTheora stream, quality 10
- FoodAndPowerMed - [26MB] OggTheora stream, quality 7
- FoodAndPowerLow - [16MB] OggTheora stream, quality 5
If your computer cannot play the above links, you should really consider installing a free media player, or just switching to Linux which comes with all the free media players and codecs out of the box. Meanwhile, here's a workaround:
- FoodAndPower - [103MB] original AVI stream from our shitty camera
These also prove the quality of the OggTheora codec. After seeing this, I think I'd recommend using it for its technical advantages in addition to its legal advantages.
In producing these movies, I found out that:
- mencoder has bad support for ogg-theora
- transcode kinda sucks
- ffmpeg seems the best command-line encoder of the three I tried
- The easiest solution if all you need is encoding anything to Theora is ffmpeg2theora.
All you have to do is:
ffmpeg2theora FoodAndPower.avi
Sat, 12th ¶
Cow power! ¶
My good friend ArjunSarwal recently made the Slashdot front page with his story about Cow Power!
Fri, 11th ¶
Crank, Crank! ¶
Today we got this pleasant surprise.
See the movie: StephenReillyCranking. The guy cranking is DanielDrake, Gentoo kernel maintainer and wireless guru.
Larger versions of these pics are available at OlpcCrank.
Sat 5th ¶
The little computer that just won't die! ¶
OneLaptopPerChild is not enough. There should definitely be
My good old friend MicheleConsoleBattilana, CEO of CloantoCompany, recently sent me the latest edition of AmigaForever 2006 Premium Edition.
While the OpenFirmware can't boot off a plain CD-ROM designed for the legacy 16bit BIOS, it didn't take too much hacking before I could get the actual UAE binary to start from the Terminal activity:
- Plug in a USB CD-ROM unit
- Open the Terminal activity and type:
sudo mount /dev/scd0 /mnt cd /mnt/Emulation/UAE ./uae -f af_boot.uaerc
You may want to configure the system for the very high resolution of the XO display:
- Open the System disk
- Open to Prefs drawer
- Use the Screen preferences editor to set a higher screenmode (uaegfx:1152x864x16 is close to full-screen and neat)
- Use the Font preferences editor to enlarge the Workbench and Screen fonts (Topaz-11 is a good choice)
- Use the ToolManager preferences editor to enlarge the font of the Dock
- TODO: The mouse pointer could also use a bigger sprite, but you'll have to design one yourself
The emulation is fast and smooth. I didn't have much success with the demos, mostly because I was unable to reach an adequate emulation speed on the Geode while running UAE with legacy 680x0 processors, which disables the JIT CPU emulator.
Look here for additional details. A big thankyou to MicheleConsoleBattilana for providing a free copy of AmigaForever, a fine tribute to the coolest platform ever!
Thu 3rd ¶
The XaoS strikes back! ¶
I enjoyed bundling this OldSkool activity for the XO:
See: XaoS
It certainly needs some more sugarization work for which I have no time.
Wed 2st ¶
Haiku Laptop ¶
Today we shipped our machine affected by dlo#5575 (touchpad mostly unfunctional) to Japan for further inspection by ALPS. Just before closing up the plastic case, I've left inside a little fortune cookie for them:
If you're wondering what it means, it's a piece of japanese poetry called a HaikuPoem. Google for it.
Tue 1st ¶
Trip to Walden Pond ¶
This really happened on Monday 31st Dec, but who'd go read last year's blog entry now?
So, Adam, Arjun and myself went to this Walden Pond place, where the famous American poet Thoreau lived in complete isolation for 2 years in a cabin made of wood.
On this very nice lake, I stupdily tried to run on the ice and fell badly, hitting my jaw and cheek on the hard ice. Little cut, big bump... no permanent consequences. Maybe I should consider a health insurance?
