This page contains an archive of past postings, in chronological order. In time, the entire history should appear here, but I want to get a few more features into the system first.
There'll probably be all kinds of obscure and pointless functions here before long, knowing me. A search tool, at least, is in the pipeline...
At work, I'm involved in building a kind-of glass cockpit for a small ground vehicle. Since there aren't that many howtos for getting the specific touchscreen I'm using working under Linux (generically, as opposed to a distro-specific package), I thought I'd write up the procedure. I make no pretense that this is a generic howto, but it works in this case, and will hopefully give other people a place from which to start.
My starting point was a mini-itx computer with an eGalax Touchkit-based touchscreen. The touchscreen has a VGA connector for video in, and a USB connector for data output, for which it emulates a mouse. Thus, move your finger on the screen, and the cursor follows it around. Press, and the cursor clicks on whatever is under it. Press and hold to right-click.
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "EETI"
Driver "egalax"
# Where 'X' is the event number of the device, check /proc.
Option "Device" "/dev/input/eventX"
# File to store calibration, must be writeable.
Option "Parameters" "/etc/touchscreen.calibration"
Option "ScreenNo" "0"
EndSection
...and you're done.
I'm currently trying to use Word to rewrite an academic paper. Why not LaTeX? My supervisor has decreed that all collaborative documents (which includes papers, whether single- or multi-author) are to be written in Word 2003, so people can pass documents around without worrying about compatability. Anyway, I'm trying to change the document from two-column to one-column throughout, and to update some wording (which changes the length of certain paragraphs).
So far, I've had to walk away from the computer to avoid breaking something twice. It's such an insanely frustrating experience, you're forced to wonder how on earth Microsoft ever acheived a market monopoly (hell, how they broke even in their first quarter sales). My 'Drawing' editor moves 32 pixels down and right whenever I press the 'Undo' key combination. Seven inserted charts are all kinda jumbled at the bottom left of the bottom page, cast adrift from their moorings throughout the last three pages of the document. Figures and captions have become disconnected, and attempting to reunite them causes huge swathes of empty space to appear (multiple pages long) which the cursor simply skips like page breaks. One of the more complex diagrams has fragmented completely, being now composed of three separate drawings, two of which only contain one element and the third of which has random letters missing from its text boxes. Try as I might, I cannot get any item to end up where I want it (I drag a drawing, or a picture, or whatever, from where it is to where on the page I want it to be, and it vanishes: if I'm lucky I'll find it somewhere else in the document, but I've had images completely vanish before). Come ON, people!
Is a two-column single-spaced article with sparse interspersed images too much for little Word to handle? Would it like a cookie? Why THE FUCK do people use this piece of software for anything other than Church cleaning rosters and letters to grandchildren?
Opinions, anyone?
On Saturday night, I fitted a luggage rack and a rack-pack to my bicycle, in the hopes that I wouldn't have to cart my rucksack around with me everywhere just to carry a few essentials.
I just cycled into uni with it for the first time, and it makes a pretty huge difference. My toolkit, book, spare shirt, locks, wallet, keys etc. fit with a little room to spare, and I can wear the shirt I cycled in at uni! Used to be that I'd have to change as soon as I got there, due to all the sweat that would build up between me and the rucksack, but now...
Best fifty quid spent ever. Now, I just need to get something to hold my laptop...
Well, that was kinda annoying. Overclockers.co.uk, from whom I buy a lot of PC parts, gave me a 10% off voucher as a "we haven't seen you in a while" gift (obviously in the hopes I would spend some money there). This worked out even better than they hoped, since I misread the expiry date... Saturday night, I was all set up to make the order, but figured it was good till the 1st of September, so I'd let it go till tomorrow (Sunday, today). Of course, it actually expired Saturday the 30th. Irritating, but life's like that. Well, mine is, anyway.
Also, I was supposed to submit a paper to a journal while I was away on holiday. Needless to say, I forgot. I'll do the tweaks and submit it tonight, I hope, but I'll probably still get reamed for it. I mean, who expects not to have to work on their holiday...
Now, I have to catch a train to go to Worthing. *sigh* With my current luck with deadlines, I'll get to the station just in time to watch it pull out.
Am back in Brighton, following long-arse journey. This time I actually managed to grab a couple of hours' sleep on the plane, which made a welcome change. However, it didn't all go right.
The first inkling that this was going to be a strange flight came when I got from outside the airport to the gate, everything done and ready to fly, in fifteen minutes flat. I left 2 hours to make sure I could check in, drop baggage, get through security and find my gate, and *zip*, done. So I read two-thirds of my first in-flight book while waiting for the gate to open.
I finally got on the flight, only for my seat-back to be incapable of locking upright (which is kinda crucial on take-off and landing), so was moved to another seat. As soon as the pilot fired up the main engines (causing cabin aircon to glitch as its power supply switched from the APU to engine power-tap), the aircon vent above my head ejected a thin stream of condensation on to my shoulder (yes, I was peed on by a Boeing 737). Then it was all good for a bit. I managed to get a couple of hours' sleep, I think (either that or there was a glitch in the matrix: three hours passed really fast).
When I woke up, it was time for a, quote-unquote, "continental breakfast". All I can assume is that BA got their geography wrong, because we seemed to end up with an arctic breakfast... More likely the food stowage lockers were on the fritz, but anyway, we got frozen UHT milk for our coffee and orange sorbet rather than orange juice. The croissant with cheese was ... odd, but as specified on the packet, so ... *shrug*
Despite my missing my coach due to Heathrow airport being an unimaginable badly signed labyrinthine rabbit warren, National Express managed to get me home in good time once I was on the bloomin' coach.
Sleep soon, I think. I didn't really get enough quality sleep on the plane, due to turbulence, so I'm lagging a bit. Nowhere near as bad as no sleep though.
So, every time I come here to Colorado, I tend to end up playing an NPC in David's Garou game. Last year, I ran Agent Smith (psychopathic underworld enforcer with a distinct predeliction for shotguns and arson) and "Mr Satan" (middle-management daemon resident in the Qwest building, and peripherally responsible for a large portion of the Bad Things that take place in Denver). They were a lot of fun, both hypermasculine, powerful, nasty people empowered to do unfriendly things to the player characters, which is where most of the fun in the game comes from as an NPC.
This year... well, this year I stepped it up a gear. I got to play Eshtarra, avatar of Gaia, spirit of the planet Earth. The characters went on a kind of vision quest (with the important exception that it's in a physical reality - they literally stepped into the spiritual realm), travelling through the Umbra to Eshtarra's realm, seeking advice on their current predicament. She's all about story-telling, so the characters went through a series of trials before she'd talk to them. Power level? Well, let's just consider that she owns her own little pocket universe and leave it at that, shall we?
I don't think I player her as well as I did the others last year, but she wasn't too bad. The players seemed to enjoy their experience, which is the main thing.
Another RIP post, one of far too many lately, but there's no particular reason you should know this one. He was my paternal grandfather, and he wasn't terribly well at the end (to the point of having a DNR order in his notes), but while it wasn't really surprising, it's still not ... ok. How can it be?
It's due to him that my family has it's name. As my paternal grandfather, and using standard English name inheritance, that's the way it works. Still, it's not quite true. When he and his Merchant-Navy crewmates left port for the last time in nineteen-forty-something, he was named Fernand Schneider ("Schned-airrr"). While they were at sea, German forces captured their home port, and they eventually put in at an English port, where they joined the war effort. Given that his (French/Belgian) name was spelled the same way as a popular German name (Schneider: "Schneye-der"), and there was a war on and all, he decided to change it and, looking out the window, noted it was a lovely summer's day. That, as they say, is all she wrote, and that's the story. The truth is probably pretty similar.
I didn't see him very often, and I didn't know him very well. Nonetheless, I'm sad he's gone.
Stupid idea for today... small marine steam power plant on the left side of the rear luggage rack, boiler and bunkerage on the right. Bicycle goes pfft-pfft-pfft...
I really shouldn't, and probably won't, but it's a nice image.
I can get everything but the transmission for a couple of grand, and that's without even trying to save money.
Rest and relaxation? You'd kinda expect that on a holiday, to be fair. No, today's Rs are Riding and Relaxing.
Today was mostly taken up with sleeping late and going over to Rachael's parents' house for BBQ. While I was there (...well, ok, after we were there: I sort of held up our departure) I noticed that Rachael's dad has a new recumbent trike...
I've been considering such a vehicle for some time, as it happens, so I took it for a spin around the block, with permission. Very nice machine, even if the mechanic who last adjusted it miss-set the front derailleur in such a way that it's not possible to shift into the top ring (consequence, severely limited speed). It still feels a little rocky on corners, but I suspect that would come with practice (I either lean like a cyclist or a motorist, and I suspect this machine really wants something in between). Also, it's insanely comfortable after a couple of minutes' adjustment, though the fact that Rachael's dad has longer legs than me meant I did have a weird moment of leg-stretch at the end of each stroke. Adjustment is the key.
On further investigation, I found several companies in the UK that are making them, one of the current market leaders being I.C.E. Soooo... now I need to find an excuse not to buy one. I can actually afford it if I'm careful with the cash for six months or so. The difficulty of hill-climbing has to be a point against in Brighton (you can't stand on the pedals to gain power), but the worst hills are all on the outskirts. The ride to university would be more comfortable and probably faster, so long as I'm careful with the hills. Argh.
Alright, so I seem to have recovered from the cold that's been hammering me for the last couple of days, and it seems that Colorado has decided that I deserve further punishment. Epic rain, most unseasonable and the heaviest I've ever seen here: it's been raining about eighteen hours in twenty-four for the last three days. The drains are barely coping, and atmospheric humidity is way up. Depressingly, there's no thunder or lightning of any kind, except the occasional desultory flicker.
Still, the weather can't stop everything, so today Rachael, Mike and I went over to our mutual friend Isaac's new house. Isaac has ... secured a bargain in his new place, and consequently a certain amount of improvement work is required. We spent most of the day in the basement, replacing 2ft and 4ft sections of drywall, making holes for the power sockets and other discontinuities that get in the way. Drywall is peculiar stuff: it seems to be sheets of highly compressed gypsum clay with a paper backing. It cuts with a Stanley knife, but takes screws, drills and similar without any trouble. It's kinda crumbly, I must have had five or six corners snap clean off today when fitting panels to spaces for which they weren't quite correctly formed, but, since there's a plaster coat going over the top, I'm not too worried about it.
Anyway, the new victim is Rachael. Like many basements, the one in Doom House (name changed to protect the desperately-in-need-of-further-work) has a sump pit at the lowest point to collect any water that seeps in through the walls. Of course, in this weather it's working overtime, and the sump pump that belongs in that pit is out of action (unsurprisingly, it needs some maintenance). There's a temporary submersible pump in there, and it's mostly equal to the job, but there's always a few inches in the bottom of the 2ft manhole. So, to the Fail. Yeah, Rachael carefully marked the position of the sump, stood over it to plaster the half-centimetre gap between two pieces of drywall, then stepped back into it. Hilarious to hear about, of course not so funny to actually do... I suspect I'll go over there at least once more before I go home (I happen to like home improvement projects, ok?), so I wonder who'll get bitten by the house next time.
Assuming it doesn't float away in this rain, of course...
OK, so I've been swimming in the morn.. well, early.. alright, afternoon the last two days, fifteen laps each time, and my arms ache a bit. More irritatingly, I've developed a cough and my ears are partway blocked: I blame the water, though I'd be hard-pressed to substantiate that. I'm taking a day off to see if the rest helps.
Of course, without the swimming, I'm not really doing much with my day. Browsing the internet, fiddling with various bits of code, reading one of the several million books I bought at WorldCon and playing Guitar Hero. It's a hard life.
Hmm. Every time I think I've gotten a handle on American suburban living, something odd happens. A little while ago, an ice-cream truck (which appeared to be a converted USPS delivery vehicle) jangled merrily around this little housing development, then wandered off again. Hmm.
So... WorldCon's over, now I just have to somehow fill the time till I go back to the UK... ;)
What am I gonna do with all this free time? Hmm.. *shuffles feet* ... Ah, yes.
Yesterday, I went down to Colorado Springs to see my friends Kat and Aki, and their new baby. Minami is a worryingly cute little scrap of flesh. I'm not really a baby person, as some of you may be aware (put a child of most any age pre twelve or so in a room with me, and shortly there will be some kind of Error), but I've got to go with what a couple of other people have said. I think I'm a Minami person. She's really sweet-tempered, quiet, etc., although to be fair she's barely mobile yet and can't really say anything but "Eh!" so far (does that qualify her for Canadian citizenship? Hmm.).
Great to see Kat and Aki, too. Kat's more or less as I remember, and Aki's English has improved vastly since last year (he's recently-imported Japanese, as you might guess, and conversations with him used to get a bit tortured as the occasional word went awry and accents got in the way - not any more). They fall into the category (which contains quite a lot of people in this area, irritatingly) of people I would see a great deal more often if they didn't live over 3000 miles away...
The Kat's cats of the title are, of course, Shun and Kamatari. Shun is as sweet-tempered as ever, and a little thinner than I remember (he's been put on a special diet, and no longer weighs as much as a small child). He's the cat I would like to have some day, not least because he's got a pretty nasty past and seems to be very happy where he's at. Kamatari... well, Kam is mostly as I remember. She's got some bad wiring in her head, and is normally in a pretty nasty mood as a result: she'll let you stroke her head for a couple of seconds, then the blades come out and she starts going for blood. "Fortunately" she's been declawed at the front, so you just have to be careful of her mouth (and boxing with her can be kinda funny, so long as you remember to pull your punches). She's better than she was, though, and seems to actually be capable of showing some affection when she feels like it. She recently had a tooth out, and I have to wonder if that was bothering her for a while - she has definitely mellowed, if not by a lot.
Today, we brunched with Keeley and Chris (more excellent people, though I've only just met them), then went swimming. I managed 15 laps, which is... *thinks* 375 yards. Not bad at this altitude, but I can do better.
Now, Rachael and Mike are playing World of Warcraft, and I'm about to play Guitar Hero. Rock on!
...and, that was the end of that. Worldcon is over for this year, the Hugos awarded and it's past time to get some sleep after five days of fairly frenetic activity.
The Con was a lot of fun, but very tiring, given that it essentially ran without breaks from 1000 until 1900 every day, a session-break every half hour. I, being a bit dense, went to as many panels as I could fit in: of all the 27 panels I could have attended (4 days of six, then three on Sunday), I only missed two, during which I was in the Dealers' Room and Art Gallery instead. Lots of complex topics, lots of notes taken, but overall it was a good time. Putting faces and personalities to the names of the authors I read is an interesting experience, as is hearing some of the issues involved in publication. Hearing the same people discussing potential star-drive technologies, the influence the Cthulhu Mythos has had on modern fiction and attempting to figure out what future civilisations will remember as the defining features of this one was equally interesting.
I am, however, more or less incapable of coherent speech, since between the sessions, the travel to and from and the late-night World of Warcraft I seem to be playing when Mike isn't using his account I have gotten very little sleep these last few nights. Thus, I sign off to go to sleep. Going to see some friends in Colorado Springs and their new baby tomorrow, so I need to be at least minimally conscious.
The title quote was Geoffrey Landis in the same conversation as the previous title, by the way - Geoffrey was complaining about how little science is in science fiction, that most of it is technological rather than research-scientific, and thus not really science at all.
The title being a muttered excerpt from John Scalzi, during a panel at WorldCon today.
WorldCon is good so far. I've been to a few panels, and already spent too much time in the Dealers' Room (but no money yet, go me!). Had a pretzel and an iced coffee for lunch. Now I feel like an American.
Tired.
Oh, and it took me forever to find a way into the convention centre this morning (and I eventually did it by persuading someone to open a fire door for me, then scuttling to the registration desk before anyone saw me strolling the halls without a badge). Not well sign-posted.
Then, when it came time to go home, I got out of the Con (via another fire door, wtf? I'm convinced they have a guy that sleeps there just to open the first fire door in the morning to let everyone else in: THE BUILDING HAS NO NORMAL DOORS), and it was raining. I went to Peet's at 16th and Glenarm, where I heard that the Peet's in Westminster did in fact close due to lack of custom. Saddening, but understandable. Then, I walked the length of 16th St to the bus station in the rain, because I am Smart. Finally, the bus arrived half an hour late, and I got soaked on the way back from the Westminster Park'n'Ride. Maybe this is why I'm so tired.
Final note, my formal shoes need to be stretched a bit. I wore them to the Barn Dance on Saturday, and they rubbed my ankles at the back, which all the walking about at WorldCon is making worse. My shoes are too tight. I may have forgotten how to dance, I'm not sure.
EDIT: Aaaaaaaand, that's tomorrow's panel attendence planned. I've no idea where I'm going to chisel out twenty minutes to eat in there: have to hope one or more of the sessions runs short.
Well, I landed last night, eventually. Sorry, people who may have been wondering if my plane even arrived: I was really tired and have only just got online properly. Narrowly dodged becoming the main event at the vomiting child exhibit in the last twenty minutes of the flight (but washed my clothes immediately just in case), and spent a godawful amount of time sitting down, being slept on/in/under (?) by the tiny Indian woman in the seat next to me, but I suppose it could have been worse.
I reeled into bed about 11PM local time (that's circa 6AM UK time, for those counting), and woke up at 0730, pretty refreshed and ready for the day. The day consisted of watching DVDs and buying milk (and, more importantly, adjusting to the altitude, temperature and lack of humidity here).
Then, out of the blue, badness happened. I like Peet's Coffee and Tea (a cafe chain in the US). Their coffee is chain coffee, but good coffee, undoubtedly better than Starbucks'. Every year when I come here, I drink several (a week) from the branch in Westminster town centre, which is five minutes' walk from the house in which I'm staying. This year, on my first day, I went out to get milk for the house, and a coffee. And the Peet's in Westmin is CLOSED. Signage removed, windows papered, the whole nine yards. Gone. The next nearest one is in the town centre. Life is hard. I may be forced to go to Starbucks instead.
Alright, so the second half of today was a little less manic, but just as energetic. My neighbour (whom I shall call David, for that is his name) went out to Japan to teach English as a foreign language, and managed somehow to get married while he was out there. He and his lovely wife Rie got married in a traditional Shinto ceremony before coming back to this country, then they had a Christian wedding blessing today in David's old church, surrounded by his friends.
The ceremony itself was ... well, Christian, but when in Rome, do as the Romans, right? You don't have to follow a religion to respect its practices. Afterward, the reception, which consisted of a rather nice professionally-catered meal and a barn dance.
I have not seen a funnier thing in quite some time than a pair of traditional Japanese parents, still sitting at the high table after the meal, becoming gradually more and more puzzled and disapproving as an English barn dance got properly under way.
Still, despite the eye-lasers (tm) that swept the hall periodically, I think we all managed to have a good time ... which brings me to the subject of friends. A few people there that I haven't seen in years. Too many years, since my old phone got toasted, and I lost all those numbers after I came to uni (epic telephone failure, since you ask). Some of those old friends are doing well, some not so well, and I'm a messed up, tangled ball of emotion as a result of meeting them. Well, more so than usual.
I found myself falling back into old patterns in that environment: behaving like the malfunctioning, barely socialised eighteen year-old I was when I left instead of the confident, fairly human twenty-five year-old I somehow became at university. I don't think I want to lose those people. Even though something tells me I already have.
Yes, that was me, helping to carry a float in the Pride Parade today, for those of you who noticed. No, I'm not gay, or bi, or trans (though I know members of all of those groups). I'm pretty sure I'm not lesbian either, since last I looked being male excluded me from that category. To be fair, I'm sufficiently in touch with my inner fabulous that I can see occasions when confusion could arise, but I call that being a rounded individual.
Lemme 'splain. One of my friends in the engineering department is gay, and was basically the driving force behind the Green Party float in the parade (a stressed-paper structure on a sedan chair that looks just like a giant onion, hence the title, with the names of capital cities in Europe emblazoned on the sides). She mentioned that there were very few attendees expected, and that there might not be enough to carry the float. Thus, I stepped in to fill the gap, since carrying things is one thing I can do all day if the need arises.
As it happens, only slightly over half the Green Party group was actually LGBT to my knowledge, so I feel a little guilty about hijacking a little bit of Pride to make a political statement. I'd feel guiltier if I were actually a member of the party, rather than a hanger-on :)
So there we go. Not Gay, but Green (in answer to a shouted question from a friend).
Now, I have to rush off to Worthing for a friend's wedding blessing. Funfunfun. More later, perhaps.
"Could not open default font 'fixed'"
This very special message caused my Xorg 7.2 server to crash on startup, repeatedly. It turns out that Slackware 12.0 has a known bug whereby it doesn't quite get the X fonts install 'right' the first time around. The fix is simple: reinstall the packages "fonts-misc-misc" and "fonts-cursor-misc". Fault confirmed in Slackware 12.0, unknown in 12.1. Since this bug only appears to really be triggered when the X server is installed into an existing Slackware system, but not when a system including an X server is installed all at once, I don't imagine this will be a problem for many people. Still, I thought I'd scribble the fix down somewhere public, to add my voice to the throng of people making this suggestion.
Curious. One of the unfortunate side-effects of the new, shiny, modularised X-server is that the input modules (you know, keyboard driver, mouse driver and so on) are not considered part of the core, at least not under Slackware. Thus, if I want full X server functionality, I have to install all the x packages, then all the optional x packages separately. Finding this empirically is a real pain, since at the moment I have a two-hour turn-around on installations (update image, flash 4GB image on to Compact-Flash card, load card into machine and test - that middle step just isn't quick, even over USB 2.0). So, now to lunch, and hopefully the flashing will be done by the time I get back.
On the up side, I finally finished rebuilding the rear axle on my bicycle last night, having worked out what I can use for containment washers. Y'see, with this hub design while the bearings are held into the hub by the cone-nuts, the back faces of the bearings are open to contamination, which can't be good. The last set of cones fixed this with a metallic washer 'skirt', but one skirt is completely wrecked following the accident at Coldean Lane last year, and the other one is fused to the cone that is, in turn, jammed firmly on to the axle. After a fair bit of work with a stanley knife, one of the foam inserts from a cake-box of CDs does the job nicely, preventing grease from leaking out and dust, gravel and stuff from getting in. Win.
So, we're back again, now that the network at the new house is finally ready, servers installed etc.
Hot damn, I have too much stuff. I've been shifting it downhill by the boxload and there's as much there as there was before. Something has to give, or else I will. When I come back from holiday, I'm gonna have to sort a shelf a week or something...
Speaking of, I'm off to Denver on Monday. Man, that's crept up, what with the attempting-to-move and the workload and everything. Hope I can sleep on the plane...