The Ukraine splitting up?
The eastern parts of the country are seeking autonomy.
I must admit I’ve totally missed the whole run-up to this.
Posted on Sunday, 2024-11-28,
in the alt » politics category.
Being the thoughts and writings of one Gustaf Erikson; father, homeowner, technologist.
Read about: books » computer stuff » mobile tech » links of interest » everything else
At the end of that handbasket ride
Heavy Weather by Bruce Sterling.
Re-read this for the nth time. The prose and ideas are top-notch, but the story isn’t really up to scratch.
Posted on Sunday, 2024-11-28,
in the books » read category.
Beer night out
David and I went to Akkurat yesterday to sample their extensive assortment of Belgian and British beers and ales.
We started with a Carolus Tripel, followed by a La Chouffe to the meal. Afterwards we each had a pint of real ale. Akkurat has a certificate on the wall saying that they’re at least as good as a British pub in pulling pints, so there was no doubt it was as close to the real thing that it was possible to get. Mine was a Sneck Lifter by Jennings.
I could use more practice in drinking British ales. The prescribed temperature is simply too high for my enjoyment, raised as I am on a diet of cold lagers. And the essential foodiness of the Sneck was a bit much after a full meal.
I’m looking forward to trying more, though.
Posted on Saturday, 2024-11-27,
in the alt category.
ISBN database
Gotta investigate this. Maybe I should bone up on ISBNs first.
Via mobitopia, thanks Jim!
Posted on Friday, 2024-11-26,
in the books category.
4th of July
Today’s the 4th of July
Another June has gone by
And when they light up our town I just think
What a waste of gunpowder and sky.— Aimee Mann
Posted on Friday, 2024-11-26,
in the alt category.
The road not taken
Everytime I see her face
On the street in the hollow of on the hill
Another time and another place
I feel her in my heart still
Everytime I see her face
On the street in the hollow in the bend
I see her in my mind and then
I go down the road not taken…again— Bruce Hornsby
Posted on Friday, 2024-11-26,
in the alt category.
The tech support generation
Should it really be like this?
Posted on Thursday, 2024-11-25,
in the comp category.
Reason to believe
<JimH_Taco> There's a dead fox on the track outside my window
Seen a man standin’ over
a dead dog lyin’ by the highway in a ditch
He’s lookin’ down kinda puzzled
pokin’ that dog with a stick
Got his car door flung open
he’s standin’ out on Highway 31
Like if he stood there long enough
that dog’d get up and run
Struck me kinda funny
seem kinda funny sir to me
Still at the end of every hard earned day
people find some reason to believe— Bruce Springsteen
Cassell Webb’s cover was the first version of this song I heard, and I’ve still got the cadences of that in my head.
Posted on Thursday, 2024-11-25,
in the alt category.
Too good to last
After nearly a week of heavy snowfall and subzero temperatures — i.e., real winter — the temp is back over zero, and untold tons of snow is melting into slush. The sound you don’t want to hear this side of April is the sound of water, dripping from the eaves…
Posted on Thursday, 2024-11-25,
in the alt category.
Happy birthday, Ewan!
Ewan is 30 today! Congratulations!
Posted on Wednesday, 2024-11-24,
in the alt category.
Biting the bullet
Despite the misgivings detailed here I bit the bullet and upgraded from 3.4 to 3.6. I followed the instructions in the upgrade minifaq and added the new users for the privsep services in each step (3.4 to 3.5, 3.5 to 3.6)
I’m a bit vague on how NTP is implemented now, but the machine is simply a terminal and having the correct time is not essential.
The installing and upgrading docs on OpenBSD.org have much more
emphasis on using packages (i.e. pre-compiled binaries) instead of
ports (basically, a make skeleton for installing an app from source)
than before. This is interesting, as I recently ran across this
amusing page lambasting those
clueless lusers who insist that compiling everything from source is
the be all and end all if Un*x computing. I felt a bit stung by this
page, because in the past I have enjoyed cding to /usr/ports and
compiling from source. It’s been painfully slow on occasions, but it’s
felt more real.
My guess is that the OpenBSD community, in its usual level-headed, no-nonsense way, realised that the docs were leading people astray and simply said “use the packages” more clearly. So from now on, I will.
Next up is the Ultra5, which needs a serial cable. Someone at work borrowed it a while back and now it’s gone, so I have to dig up another one in meatspace. Sigh.
Posted on Wednesday, 2024-11-24,
in the comp category.
Literature is a long game
William Gibson:
I would have liked to have gotten [Neal Stephenson] permanently out of the way shortly after reading Snow Crash, of course, but I could already see that I would need him one day to help battle Bruce Sterling. Literature is a long game.
Posted on Wednesday, 2024-11-24,
in the books category.
Model railroad
My dad came up from Halmstad to help out a bit with the house. In the car he had two boxes of old toys from my childhood. Among these were a Fleischmann HO model railroad (starter set + station expansion). Viking had a great time playing around with that.
He’s a bit too young for model trains, but I figured that this particular set is already payed for, so a little toddler vandalism can’t hurt.
I’m going to get a big sheet of plywood and screw the tracks in place so that he won’t knock them askew. I’m also planning to glue Lego plates around the tracks so that he can build tunnels and houses.
For my future reference, here are the track parts.
Starter kit (6315)
- 8 x 6024 curves R1
- 2 x 6001 straights (204 mm)
Station kit (6090)
- 2 x 6044 turnout
- 2 x 6032 curves R2
- 2 x 6005 straights (165 mm)
- 11 x 6001 straights
Update 2024-11-23: I laid out the tracks again today and found out that one of the turnouts didn’t work anymore — must have taken a hit when someone stepped on it. Also, minimally laid out, the tracks cover our dining room table, and that’s not a small table. I’m shelving the plans for a board for the time being.
Posted on Tuesday, 2024-11-23,
in the alt category.
Mobile Gmail
Tarek has written a nice article on how to access gmail from a Series 60 phone. Worth a look if you’re on the move.
Posted on Monday, 2024-11-22,
in the comm category.
The dead can dance
Johnny and the Dead by Terry Pratchett.
An enjoyable non-Discworld novel.
Also short, I finished it in a day.
Posted on Sunday, 2024-11-21,
in the books » read category.
Mobitopia redesign
Russ finally broke down and redesigned Mobitopia. It’s now a communal linkblog, where the denizens of the #mobitopia IRC channel post interesting URLs, with comments.
Additionally, it now has a fresh look, with the classic Nokia 7650 as visual signature.
Posted on Thursday, 2024-11-18,
in the comm » weblog category.
Gods and monsters
Ilium by Dan Simmons
An absolute corker of a book, weaving together Homer, Shakespeare, and the far future in a heady mix.
I haven’t read Simmons’ earlier Hyperion novels, but now that I’ve found he’s a great writer, I most definitely will.
Posted on Thursday, 2024-11-18,
in the books » read category.
New feature: soundtracks
Sometimes when I read a book, I listen to a new album at the same time. This mostly happens on the subway on the way to and from work. The music becomes entwined with the book. I first noticed this a long time ago, listening to Mahler’s Fifth Symphony over and over again while reading The Silmarillion. Similarly, Midnight Oil’s Diesel and Dust is associated with Gene Wolfe’s The Shadow of the Torturer.
So now I’m going to add a Soundtrack note whenever this happens in the future.
Posted on Wednesday, 2024-11-17,
in the books category.
There’s something out there…
Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo.
A “novel of ideas” that still stays pretty suspenseful. Granted, some of the ideas went over my head. I think a practising Christian would have more enjoyment of those parts of the book. But still an effective SF thriller.
Soundtrack: Anna Ternhiem, Somebody Outside.
Posted on Wednesday, 2024-11-17,
in the books » read category.
A caul of tortured space-time
Revelation Space by Alistair Reynolds.
Space Opera in the hard SF mould. Full of cool neologisms (lighthugger, reefersleep) and well-written, despite a predilection for the word caul.
Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve read it before, but the scenes of carnage and mayhem seem a little bloodless, and the characters aren’t as fleshed-out as they could be. Entertaining none the less.
Soundtrack: Lisa Loeb, Cake and Pie and The Way It Really Is.
Posted on Wednesday, 2024-11-17,
in the books » read category.
Helpdesk software
Time for a new category, I think: work.
I was looking at the comments in Russ’ blog and found a comment by a guy named Ian Landsman. Apparently his company is developing a helpdesk package.
Let’s face it, I’m a one-person helpdesk. That’s not too much fun, I’d rather be a developer. But if I can find some software that makes that part of the job easier, I’m going for it.
We have a little perl hack that keeps track of all emails to the support box, and allows us to post comments, cancel, and close tickets. But the knowledge behind solving issues is buried in the email conversations relating to that ticket. It’s not very integrated, but then, not many things at work are.
So a package that can take a request from a mail message, plonk it in a DB, and track each and every response and annotation to the ticket would be a big help.
Some other packages referenced:
- MyHelpdesk — no incoming mail interface
- OpenIT — Same here
Posted on Monday, 2024-11-15,
in the work category.
Working in the gaming industry
Well, my job may not be the must fun one in the world, but at least I’m not working in the gaming industry.
Posted on Friday, 2024-11-12,
in the work category.
Disenchantment
Yesterday I realised that both the Stinkpad at home and the Ultra5 at work were running OpenBSD 3.4, 2 point releases behind the current release. Browsing through the upgrade minifaq I found that the time-honoured procedure of updating by compiling the source tree is deprecated.
So now I have to find a floppy and a serial cable for the Ultra, and
try to find out which PC-card that I can use to upgrade the
Stinkpad. Then I have to get the install floppy, upgrade the userland,
then upgrade /etc, and finally re-install ports.
Sigh.
I’m so tired of this. No offense to the OpenBSD team, but I can’t be bothered anymore. But I also don’t want to go the Debian way on the lappy and lose all my customisations (X, desktop stuff, Terminal font…. the list goes on and on).
Maybe it’s time to get a Mac.
Posted on Friday, 2024-11-12,
in the comp category.
Buyout
The company I work for has been bought by a much larger American company. No drastic changes are expected in the near future. Maybe the new owners will feel that flat screens are vital for the corporate image, but I doubt it.
Posted on Friday, 2024-11-12,
in the alt category.
Men and Spiders
A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge.
An absolutely brilliant SF novel, with the right mix of hard science and sense of wonder. If it has a fault, it’s that the central love story is a bit weak. But the aliens are well realised, and the apparent anthropomorphism in the beginning of the novel is really part of the plot.
What am I reading now? The reading list has been updated.
Posted on Friday, 2024-11-12,
in the books » read category.
Linux font primer
Good roundup. I haven’t played with fonts in Un*x for a long while. My current desktop only runs at 800x600, and I nearly only use terminals there anyway.
Posted on Wednesday, 2024-11-10,
in the comp category.
Fifteen years
Has it really been that long since the fall of the Wall? Already the memories are fading. My clearest are visiting my friend Björn in his student home in Lund, on a typical Skåne November evening. The fog was yellowish-orange from the streetlights, and Björn, who has a German mother, was dancing around in excitement.
In today’s DN there’s an article describing the bewildered reactions of the Swedish elite, confortable in the realities of the Cold War, suddenly adrift in a new unknown world:
Berlinmuren har varit öppen i nästan ett dygn. På kontinenten är det karneval med flygande champagnekorkar och segerdruckna DDR-medborgare som gör v-tecknet på Kurfürstendamm.
Men svensk nyhetsjournalistik, känd för sin nolltolerans mot allt som är uppsluppet, jublande eller partiskt, följer sin egen dramaturgi och därför ska vi nu höra vad en säkerhetspolitisk expert från Militärhögskolan har att säga om den hotfulla situation som uppstått i Europas mitt.
Han sitter där i sin uniform och är tämligen lågmäld, men hävdar ändå med viss skärpa att murens fall är början till slutet för Warszawapaktens dominans och Sovjetunionens herravälde över Östeuropa.
Halvt häpen, halvt chockerad utbrister reportern: “Men det är väl ganska farligt, det? Det är ju många som funnit ett slags trygghet och ro i kalla kriget. Man visste ändå var parterna stod. Nu är det slut på det och många känner sig villrådiga.”
Experten: “Ja, många längtar tillbaka till kalla kriget. Men det tycker jag är en idiotisk inställning. För då längtar man tillbaka till en tid då halva Europa hade ofrihet.”
Stämningen blir snart mycket infekterad, och intervjun slutar i osämja.
(Jens Christian Brandt, DN 2024-11-09)
Update Quick and dirty translation of the above:
The Berlin Wall has been down for nearly a day. On the Continent, it’s a carnival with champagne corks flying and victorious citizens of the GDR making V-signs on the Kurfürstendamm.
But Swedish news media, known for it’s zero tolerance of everything wild, crazy, or partisan, is following it’s own internal dramatic logic. We therefore have a foreign affairs specialist from the National Defence Institute who’s going to tell us about the new threatening situation in the heart of Europe.
He’s sitting there in his uniform and is quietly insistent that the fall of the Wall is the beginning of the end of the Warzaw Pact’s and the Soviet Union’s regime in Eastern Europe.
Half surprised, half shocked, the reporter exclaims: “But it’s rather terrible, isn’t it? Many people have found a sort of security and peace in the Cold War. You knew where the players stood. Now that’s to an end, and many feel bewildered.”
The expert: “Yes, many people are yearning for the Cold War. But I think that’s an idiotic feeling, because in that case you’re yearning for a time when half of Europe wasn’t free.”
The ambience soon becomes antagonistic, and the interview ends in acrimony.
In our disregard for the rights of East Germans, we showed the same callous attitude that has bedevilled Swedish realpolitik since the Second World War.
Leo, 12, asked me today about the picture showing people attacking the Wall. He didn’t realise it was ancient history. I felt wholly unable to explain the concept to him. I hope his school does better.
Posted on Tuesday, 2024-11-09,
in the alt category.
A visit to the dentist
I have bad teeth. Part of it is simply bad saliva, or at least saliva that’s less hostile to caries bacteria than the norm. Another part is all the fillings I got in Malaysia as the result of that sub-standard saliva.
Luckily, my dentist Jörgen Brandell is an old buddy and former lodger. He’s opened a new clinic, Gubbängstandläkarna, a mere 5 minutes away by car, and rightly sees my teeth as a sort of gold mine.
I’m going to try to cut down on the snacking, and to chew flourine tablets after eating. I’m also going to keep a close eye on Viking’s teeth and try to prevent him from having the same problems when he gets older.
Posted on Tuesday, 2024-11-09,
in the alt category.
Maciej Cegłowski
Idle words is a very well written, funny blog.
I think I got this via Dave Winer back in the day.
Posted on Tuesday, 2024-11-09,
in the comm » webloggers category.
The Shrub prevails
So it looks like four more years of everyone’s least favourite Yale graduate. I know a lot of people who are shocked and disappointed at the result, but, barring any nasty surprises coming out of Ohio, the outcome looks legitimate.
Americans will have to accept that their country is pretty deeply divided on a lot of issues. The Democratic Party hasn’t really risen to the challenge, while the Republicans have rallied around the leader with a “say no evil, hear no evil, see no evil” attitude. Both sides will have to develop their arguments and politics in the years ahead.
Posted on Wednesday, 2024-11-03,
in the alt » politics category.
New Nokias
The release of new Nokia models is a big event over at #mobitopia. Today Nokia announced three new models:
The 6020 looks like a common-sense business communications device. “Just a phone.” Runs Series 40.
The 7110 is the long-awaited Series 90 phone.
The 3230 is an “entry-level” Series 60 phone with megapixel camera.
The 3230 especially looks interesting. As Christian Lindholm notes it has the potential for being the hottest selling smartphone ever.
Posted on Wednesday, 2024-11-03,
in the comm » mobile category.
When you’re a jerk, you’re a jerk
And no amount of legal blustering will change that.
Posted on Tuesday, 2024-11-02,
in the alt category.
Take that, RIAA
From the article:
“The Copyright Owners urge a re-examination of the law in the light of what they believe to be proper public policy, expanding exponentially the reach of the doctrines of contributory and vicarious copyright infringement,” the court wrote. “Not only would such a renovation conflict with binding precedent, it would be unwise. Doubtless, taking that step would satisfy the Copyright Owners’ immediate economic aims. However, it would also alter general copyright law in profound ways with unknown ultimate consequences outside the present context.”
Exactly.
However, this means that the RIAA/MPAA will continue to go after individual file traders, instead of trying to cut down the software behind the networks.
Posted on Tuesday, 2024-11-02,
in the comp category.
Content-Type soup
So here I am, validating all my pages as XHTML 1.0, when I read these links:
- Content-typing XHTML
- Sending XHTML as text/html Considered Harmful
Basically, XHTML 1.0 isn’t mature enough to use on the web. Use HTML 4.01 instead.
The problem is that I’d like my blog to be readable on mobile devices,
who expect XHTML content. And the mod_rewrite trickery mentioned is
way overkill according to me.
Who knew it was such hard work being a good Netizen?
Posted on Tuesday, 2024-11-02,
in the comp category.
mOlympics.com
Russ has hacked together mOlympics.com with the help of Erik and Matt.
It’s a mobile-ready Olympic news aggregator.
Development time: 1 day. Go Mobitopians!
Posted on Tuesday, 2024-11-02,
in the comm » mobile category.
New feed URL
The new URL for a feed for this site is
http://gustaf.symbiandiaries.com/weblog/index.vrss10. Thanks
to Matthias for fixing the rss10 plugin!
Posted on Tuesday, 2024-11-02,
in the comm » weblog category.
Ned Batchelder
Great blog, very interesting common-sense writings about the nitty-gritty of writing code. Nice design too.
Thanks Jim for the pointer to this one.
Posted on Tuesday, 2024-11-02,
in the comm » webloggers category.
Frank Hecker
Interesting approach to text-based design, using blosxom. I’m definitevely going to look closer to this site as it evolves.
Posted on Tuesday, 2024-11-02,
in the comm » webloggers category.
OpenNTP released
This just hit my inbox:
OpenNTPD 3.6 has just been released. It will be available from the mirrors listed at http://www.openntpd.org/ shortly. This is our first formal release.
This is really cool. NTP is the Network Time Protocol, useful for making your computer as accurate as an atomic clock. Essential for logging stuff across the network, detecting net anonomalies, et cetera. But it’s also complex and hard to get right. I’m sure the OpenNTP team have applied their usual mix of code auditing, clear coding, and crypto integration as in OpenBSD and OpenSSH.
The OpenBSD project is fast becoming the OpenTLA project — freeing the world, one protocol at a time.
Posted on Tuesday, 2024-11-02,
in the comp category.
