npat's blog

some photos from amsterdam

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 13:33:39 GMT

I' ve been in Amsterdam for a couple of days (went there Friday November 10, flew back Wednesday). The city was great, the weather was... well, not good for photographs, and the joints... just too many. Joke of the day: I was there for business.

two gzips at the same time

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 13:37:11 GMT

What a dual-core system is good for: Two gzips at the same time

Peter Gibbons: What would you do if you had two cores?

Lawrence: I'll tell you what I'd do, man: two gzips at the same time, man.

Peter Gibbons: That's it? If you had two cores, you'd do two gzips at the same time?

Lawrence: Damn straight. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I had two cores I could hook that up, too; 'cause processes dig CPUs with cores.

Peter Gibbons: Well, not all processes.

Lawrence: Well, the type of processes that'd double up on a PC like this do.

Peter Gibbons: Good point.

Lawrence: Well, what about you now? what would you do?

Peter Gibbons: Besides two gzips at the same time?

Lawrence: Well, yeah.

Peter Gibbons: Nothing.

Lawrence: Nothing, huh?

Peter Gibbons: I would idle... I would sit on my ass all day... I would do nothing.

Lawrence: Well, you don't need two cores to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin: he's got a 386, don't do shit.

Source: Slashdot

night at the opera

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 19:02:06 GMT

One floor below. At one side a dance-floor, at the other a bar. Tables and stools around on raised floor levels. Black worn-out carpet on the floor. Walls painted black. Chocking-full of smoke. On the dance floor three girls in full goth-attire---plus the accompanying hair-styles, make-ups, tattoos, and everything. They are moving to the music: A Birthday Party song, followed by "Kick in the Eye" by Bauhaus, followed by something that sounded a lot like Tear Garden (maybe it was). The color spectrum, as sampled on the decoration, the patrons' clothes, and their make-up, consists almost entirely of black, plus maybe some red and burgundy here and there. Faces mostly white and pale. At the bar, a girl with a foot-tall mohican is serving. Then she jumps over the counter to go dancing. I mentally check the calendar: Yes it's 2006, and then my clothing: Thanksgod, it's almost all-black. I spot my company over by the corner. I go there. They introduce me to a guy I haven't met before---I don't remember his name, damn! He asks me what kind of music I listen to. I tell him. He then asks me if I'm into 70's garage and psychedelic stuff. Not particularly, by I wouldn't mind a few good samples. He jots something down on a piece of paper and gives it to me. It says:

lost-in-tyme.blogspot.cnm

Then he gets on the dance-floor and starts dancing...

[[[ This post is for the friend who always asks me "where on earth you find these deranged stuff?" whenever I show him something on the Net ]]]

cafe-racer pictures

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 11:49:01 GMT

Some great cafe-racer pictures. Some look like they were taken right out of the pages of Joe-Bar Team...

And in a similar vein, a short story of the Ace Cafe, London to which the term "Cafe Racer" is probably owed.

lost in tyme

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 02:34:06 GMT

Go visit the lost-in-tyme blog. There you will find showcased, and you can download full releases of, exquisite psychedelic / garage / folk / hippie rarities...

warning signs for the future

Mon, 16 Oct 2006 12:32:58 GMT

Warning Signs For Tomorrow

Source: Chris's Wiki

tour d' athenes

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 11:14:35 GMT

Friday afternoon I took my brand new Honda CBF-250 motorcycle from the dealer's. During the weekend, the weather being excellent, and the engine requiring some run-in kilometers, I took a couple of rides around Athens. By Sunday afternoon the first 500 km were on the odometer.

Saturday, September 30: From Pagrati I go downtown to do some shopping. I buy a jacket---the weather is good but not that good as to ride without one. Back to Pagrati then, and from there, after a quick stop, I set course to cape Sounion. I take the coast-side drive (Poseidonos Ave, etc). After a couple of stops for photographs I'm there. Coffee at the place near Poseidon's temple, and then back to Athens, this time via Lavrio, Paiania, etc... During the return part I hit some rain. Not much but enough to test if my new jacket is waterproof (it is).

Sunday, October 1: I have about 350 km on the odometer, and the fuel-tank is almost empty. I stop at a gas-station near my place for my first refueling. It fills up with 12.9 lt of unleaded. Average consumption: 3.7lt / 100km (or 19.4 km / lt). From there I go north this time: Kifissia, N. Erythraia, Ekali, then turn east towards Dionysos. At the top of the pass I stop for coffee. My brother calls me and tells me he's at the office. I decide to go there. I cut through the mountain to Penteli and Halandri, and after staying there for half an hour or so, I go back the same way. Now I descent towards Nea Makri and from there I head to Marathonas. I stop by the lake for a few minutes, and head back to Athens through Ag. Stefanos.

A couple of hours latter I go to my new house to check on the progress of the works. I'm still in the mood for riding so from there I start climbing-up wherever I see an ascending slope. Soon I leave behind the built-up area and I'm in the Penteli mountain. I pass a monastery and continue going up. The view becomes magnificent and the air cooler. I continue climbing until I reach some military installations close to the top. I stop there for a few minutes and then head back to Pagrati... As I park the motorcycle, I see 495.9 km on the odometer.

my cbf250, first pictures

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 19:58:42 GMT

Today I went to the dealer to ask when my new motorcycle would arrive; sometime next week, probably Tuesday or Wednesday. While there I saw it: A Honda CBF-250 in blue that had just arrived. "Is this available?" I asked. "Yes, you can take it home tomorrow morning". In a couple of minutes I had decided. This would be my first motorcycle. We took it aside, removed the seat, assembled the rear case-rack, filled its battery and put it on the charger. Tomorrow, sometime after noon, I will take it home... Pray for good weather this weekend.

While assembling the rack, I took some pictures.

house pictures

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 10:16:36 GMT

A few photographs of my new house. The concrete frame is ready. Brick-work will soon begin, after leveling the surrounding space...

bread is evil

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 08:52:26 GMT

It's Time Somebody Did Something About Bread!

Did you know:

More than 98 percent of convicted criminals are bread eaters!
Exactly half of all children who grow up in bread - eating households score in the bottom 50% on standardized IQ tests!
In the 19th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 55 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, scarlet fever, smallpox and influenza ravaged entire nations!
Statistics show that more than 75% of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread!
Bread is made from a substance called "dough." Researchers have proven that as little as one pound of dough can choke a large animal like a horse. The average person eats more bread than that in one month!
Bread is known to be extremely addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water, actually begged for bread after just two days!
Bread is a "gateway" food item, which usually leads to such items as butter, jam, peanut butter and even ... bacon!
Bread has been proven to kill. Scientists have now uncovered alarming evidence that 100% of the people who eat bread will eventually die!
Unattended newborn babies can choke on bread!
Bread is baked at temperatures as high as 425 degrees Fahrenheit! Don't laugh...that kind of heat can kill a full grown adult in less than five minutes.
96% of cancer victims eventually admit that they've eaten bread!

Source: A smartmaniacs forum posting

the song of the sausage creature

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 17:51:54 GMT

Hunter S. Thompson had a thing for motorcycles, not much unlike the thing he had for drugs, as well as for practically every forbidden pleasure. Once he found himself with a Ducati super-bike and he had to write a review about it for the CycleWorld magazine. The result was a very characteristic document (a classic gonzo-style piece) titled The Song of the Sausage Creature. I came upon it lately and, for no particular reason, I made an attempt to translate it to Greek. I tried to maintain the overall feeling of Thompson's writing without staying too close to the exact words. Regardless, I'm still not sure if it makes any sense in Greek. Read it if you don't have anything better to do, and tell me what you think about it...

Some points I would particularly like some input about:

I really I don't get the Genghis Khan reference, so I have probably totally mis-translated it...
Who the fuck is Ron Zigler?
I'm not comfortable, at all, with the way I translated the title, but still I cannot think of something better. Any suggestions?

death angels

Sat, 16 Sep 2006 16:26:28 GMT

Death Angels: A photographic essay

zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance

Sat, 09 Sep 2006 14:38:20 GMT

Seeing my last post, somebody mentioned in a reply Robert Persig's novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, taking for granted that I would have read it, or at least that I knew about it. I haven't and I didn't. Luckily the text is available online, and since I'm maybe the last person on the planet not to have heard of it, I read the first few chapters yesterday. I'm still too early in the book for a solid opinion, but one thing I can say for sure: I would have enjoyed it immensely had I read it as a teenager. I mean, there are books that when you read at a certain age they expand inside you to something much more that a simple reading, and sometimes even mark whole periods of your life. This, I'm certain, would have been one these books.

It's the story of a father and his son, traveling by motorcycle, together with another couple (Sylvia and John). During their rides the narrator has a lot of time to think about the world, about ancient cultures, about modern society, about science and technology, about the classical, versus the romantic way of thought, about the role of man in the modern world, and so on. So the book often diverts in long philosophical musings which sometimes, while not uninteresting, neither exactly boring, sound a bit too didactic in tone and attitude. Then again, it is twenty-something years since the book was written, the author was a beatnik, people used to write like this back then, and he does call these interludes Chautauquas which, I guess, means that they are supposed to be didactic in style and content. Also remember I have read just a few chapters... Regardless, I find the book a great pleasure to read; I mean in a honest "can't wait to get back to it" way.

Looking for the book, I came uppon this ZZM Quality site devoted to the study and adoration of Pirsig's work. Among other things it features some 12 photographs Robert Pirsig took during the actual trip on which the book is based. The following picture of the author and his son seems to be the most characteristic.

construction time again

Mon, 04 Sep 2006 20:42:32 GMT

I'm building a house. This is neither a figure of speech, nor some geeky jargon to obscure the point. I'm speaking about a real house like those where people live in:

People construct houses as dwelling-spaces for human habitation. Such dwellings generally feature enclosing walls, a roof and one or more floors. This overall structure provides shelter against precipitation, wind, heat, cold and intruders [...] The house often provides a permanent residence for a family or for a similar social unit. When occupying a house routinely as a dwelling, English-speaking people may call this building their "home". People may leave their house most of the day for work and recreation, but typically return "home", to their house, at least for sleeping.
-- From the Wikipedia entry on houses

Yep! It will have all of these: Walls, a roof, more than one floors, the works!

After about 15 years of living in the same 65 square-meters flat down-town in Athens, I took the big decision to change place of residence. Initially I thought that buying a new, spacier apartment in a decent neighborhood would be the most economic way to go. After asking around, and after doing some rough calculations, it became obvious that building a house---in a lot my brother and I had inherited from our mother---would cost about the same and the result would probably be much better.

The lot is in Nea Penteli; formerly a village sitting on the slopes of the Penteli mountains. Now Nea Penteli has become a suburb not too far from the center of Athens, especially given the very good access to Attiki Odos ring road. The area is still surrounded by a lot of greenery (mainly pine-trees forests) and is quite agreeable. The exact coordinates are:

38o 03' 27.36'' N
23o 51' 01.00'' E
Elevation 352m

(you can easily find it in google maps. It's the empty lot on "Digeni Eoka" street, third from the intersection with "Neas Pentelis Ave"). The postal address is:

Digeni Eoka 24,
152 36 Nea Penteli
Attiki

The total area of the lot is 400 square-meters (20 by 20). The building code allows a coverage ratio of 0.4 which together with all other rules and regulations results in a a total of about 300 square meters in two above-ground floors. Since my brother owns half of it, a single building will have to incorporate two residences, 150 square meters each. Constructing two independent buildings is economically out of the question, and also probably impossible due to regulations.

I'm new to all this construction business, but the consensus among friends who have done it before seems to be that in each and every stage---even if you take for granted an engineer that oversees the project, and whom you can trust (something that is usually not so very much granted)---even then there is an enormous amount of work for the owner.

Currently works on the concrete frame of the building are almost finished. Soon brickwork will begin, after cleaning up and leveling the surrounding area. If you are curious you can take a look at the floor-plans for the ground-floor, the first-floor, and the basement. All plans are in 1:75 scale and were prepared by yours truly using the very nice, open-source program QCAD. If you see anything flaky in them (like "oh my God, the elevator door opens in the bathroom!"), please point it out. Maybe there's still time to fix it.

I'm thinking of occasionally reporting here on the progress of the construction, as well as on experiences gained from it. I'll tag the relevant entries using: "hacks/house".

I hope next time I also have some pictures to show you.

a bloody tale

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 12:27:27 GMT

It's been quite a while since my last post. At least this time I have a good reason. No, it's not that I've been way too busy at work (though I was), neither that I was preoccupied with other personal projects (about which I'll write in another post). It was because during these months I came very close to actually... dying. Of course we all are, all the time, very close to death, but I never was as conscious of this as I became this summer. A few months ago, after returning from a business trip, and following a couple of frantic weeks at the office, I got caught-up in a health-related adventure. One that, had I been less lucky, could have easily killed or incapacitated me.

It started with a rather innocent-looking pain in the back evolving to a strong pain in the pelvis, and then to an excruciating pain in the muscles of my right leg. Still I refused to be admitted to a hospital, despite the constant nagging of my family, my friends, and the doctors I had consulted. Gradually becoming completely unable to walk even the shortest distance, becoming unable to even stand with my leg extended, I gave-in and was taken to a hospital. As it turned out, I was suffering from a rather severe case of DVT: Blood had clotted in veins inside my body, including the deep veins of the right leg and thigh. Apart from causing an excruciating pain (because muscles cannot be properly fueled, so to say) the most serious risk with this is a piece breaking from the clot and going to the lungs causing pulmonary embolism. So there I was, in a hospital for about four weeks or so, with strict orders to avoid any kind of movement or effort that could upset the clots. Four weeks staying in bed, sleeping, trying to read anything interesting---or just distracting---getting pinned by needles a couple of times each day (for every blood test ever devised by human), but mostly... staring at the ceiling. I left the hospital the doctors there being unable to find a concrete reason why this happened to me---which is quite common, in such cases very often they don't. I was instructed to take anticoagulation pills (pills that make the blood clot less easily), and avoid strenuous activity for some time. While the pain was mostly gone, I was feeling very warn-out. I was unable to walk for more than a few hundred meters without getting tired, especially so on a rising slope. This, they told me, would take some time until it got better.

But this was not the end of my adventures. As I told you, I was instructed to take anticoagulation pills. The exact dosage of these has to be frequently adjusted by taking blood samples and measuring the clotting characteristics. Of these characteristics we care for an index called PT-INR. Normal people have a PT-INR of 1.0. I, due to the medication, was to maintain one greater than 2.0 but no greater than 3.0. Up to 5.0 or 6.0, its relatively safe. Above this you are risking internal hemorrhage, and must be treated in a hospital. Well, my luck has it, and something went wrong in this process. I woke up a morning with my mouth filled with blood, my stomach aching (from having ingested too much blood during the night), and my right arm bruised as if it was beaten by a mallet. I went to a lab near my place, and measured my blood clotting index. It was 12.5. So back to the hospital. Same room, same bed, same ceiling. For one week this time, taking blood plasma, and antidotes for the anticoagulation medicine.

It's been a couple of weeks now since I'm back to normal. I have managed to stabilize the medicine dosage (or at least I think so; I hope I don't suddenly turn to Mr. Hyde or something). I'm not feeling too bad---I still get tired more easily than before, but all in all things seems to be getting back to normal. Let's hope they stay in course.

tuttle, oklahoma

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 14:42:49 GMT

See what happens when the City Manager of Tuttle, Oklahoma, with 22 years of computer engineering experience, discovers the default test-page of the Apache web-server included in the CentOS Linux distribution...

The story is now also in the Tuttle, Oklahoma Wikipedia entry, covered by the The Tuttle Times, by the Register, and probably by every other site on the planet.

pavement drawings

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 12:20:05 GMT

Anamorphic 3D illusions, and other pavement-art by Julian Beever

post gutenberg galaxy

Thu, 23 Feb 2006 17:57:06 GMT

This is a link to an essay by Stevan Harnad titled "Post Gutenberg Galaxy: The fourth revolution in the means of production of knowledge".

Who is Stevan Harnad, and what kind of psychedelic essay is this, you may ask?

Harnad is a cognitive scientist and can be considered the father of the Open-Access Movement, a movement that evangelizes the free publication and free distribution of academic writings; something akin to the Free Software movement, but focusing on academic output instead of computer software. As a matter of fact, Harnad is sometimes likened to Richard Stallman. In the essay linked above he presents his vision that the free flow of academic knowledge, empowered and accelerated by the modern electronic communication technology, and the global network, will result to a revolution in the way knowledge is produced. This is what he calls the "fourth revolution" (the previous three being: speech, writing, and typography).

In 1994, Harnad published a subversive proposal (Scholarly Journals at the Crossroads: A Subversive Proposal for Electronic Publishing), presenting methods that can be used to hasten the arrival of the day when esoteric, peer-reviewed, electronic publishing becomes ubiquitous. From this proposal is the quote that follows:

We have heard many sanguine predictions about the demise of paper publishing, but life is short and the inevitable day still seems a long way off. This is a subversive proposal that could radically hasten that day. It is applicable only to ESOTERIC (non-trade, no-market) scientific and scholarly publication (but that is the lion's share of the academic corpus anyway), namely, that body of work for which the author does not and never has expected to SELL the words. The scholarly author wants only to PUBLISH them, that is, to reach the eyes and minds of peers, fellow esoteric scientists and scholars the world over, so that they can build on one another's contributions in that cumulative, collaborative enterprise called learned inquiry. For centuries, it was only out of reluctant necessity that authors of esoteric publications entered into the Faustian bargain of allowing a price-tag to be erected as a barrier between their work and its (tiny) intended readership, for that was the only way they could make their work public at all during the age when paper publication (and its substantial real expenses) was their only option.

Source: lwn

respect what you 're pirating

Thu, 23 Feb 2006 01:35:59 GMT

You know of course that all this bitching by the studios, the publishers, and the record companies is about protecting and compensating their beloved artists. Here's what Terry Gilliam says about it:

It's hard for me to worry about the studios losing money. I'm not very sympathetic to their money problems, because they certainly haven't been sympathetic to mine.
When you look at one of their accounting sheets you realise you're never going to see a penny, so if someone wants to rip them off that's fine with me.
If you're going to pirate, though, make sure the quality's good. Have some respect for what you're pirating!

Source Bit of News

manifestoes

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 20:44:57 GMT

I came upon this proclamation of digital rights (document in Greek) through Asteris Masouras's "Non-Linear Complexity" blog. While I'm not against any of the points in the text, I would not sign it.

Come on guys, this is not a manifesto!

What a weak, lukewarm, confused, boring, and mostly meaningless text is this? A manifesto is supposed to be the masthead of a movement, not a timid list of bureaucratic suggestions. It must be militant and political, incisive and incinerating, bold and polemical. It must be able to serve as a call to arms, not read like a shopping list. It must bind its followers together, and draw the line between them and their opponents. Above all, it must make clear, in no vague terms, the ethical and political position of the movement it represents. You cannot mince your words when you write a manifesto.

I repeat that I have nothing against the ideas and political positions of the proclamation, it's the execution that's lacking, and it's lacking badly.

Follows a random list of some famous political and artistic manifestoes. Use them as examples of what true manifestoes read like.

Manifesto of the Communist Party, by Karl Marx, and Frederick Engels
The dotCommunist Manifesto, by Eben Moglen, January 2003. A direct adaptation of the former to the electronic rights and digital freedom movement
The Futurist Manifesto, by F. T. Marinetti
The GNU Manifesto, by Richard Stallman
Manifesto of Surrealism, by Andre Breton

fun with linux

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 23:15:09 GMT

This entry is a story about a Linux installation adventure I had the other day. The whole experience was frustrating, and it made me think of several stuff. One of them was how great it would be if personal computer technology, twenty or so years after it took its first steps, had reached to a point where stuff simply worked. Sadly, it hasn't.

Apple insists on running MAC OS/X only on its own hardware for various reasons. One of them, one that is rarelly expressed openly, has to be this: Other than owning, being responsible for, and being able to control the hardware that your software will run on, there is absolutelly no way to make sure that a system will work. Any working computer system owes the fact that it is working to the efforts of on one, and only one, engineer. This engineer, be it a single person, a group, or a company, can delegate parts of the job to others, can use the results of the work of many, but he must always have the full responsibility, and must always maintain overall control, of the final complete system. His job may be easy, or it may be hard. It may be trivial, or it may be demanding. It can never, though, be elliminated. If this engineer is missing then either the system will not work (as is the case with most PCs), or the engineering resposibilities will fall on the hands of a capable "user" who is a able, and willing, to respond to them (as is the case with the few PCs that do work). Whether it is good or bad to have the "user" take the role of the engineer (and call him "system manager", or "administrator", or whatever) is debetable, but we must never trick ourselves to believe that we can do without this essential role. If we understand this then we may start designing machines that are less flaky, safer, and less frustrating.

The PC of a colleague at work stops working. A malfunctioning motherboard, or something. Since it is an old system, about to be replaced anyway, we don't bother fixing it. We go to the guy who handles these things to order a new one. Lucky us, he has one already there that we can take. It's an HP desktop system, AMD64 CPU at two point something gigahertz, 512MB of RAM, 40GB HDD, typical stuff. Will it do? Sure it will! So we take it.

We set up the hardware, take a quick glance at the BIOS settings, and ask-arround for a Debian Sarge network installation CD. We have a Debian "package proxy" set up somewhere in the company LAN, so the network install will probably be as fast as installing from DVDs. I find a CD with the "Sarge 3.1r0 netinst image". We put it in, boot the system, type "linux26" at the boot prompt (by default Sarge still installs 2.4 kernels), and go through the first few configuration screens. When the time comes to partition the hard disk, an error message appears informing us that no partionable media were found. The installation process stops there. WTF?!? How long has it been since Linux, well, any Linux, was unable to detect a hard disk? It turns out that since the installation of a basic non-graphical system had been uneventfull for quite some time, PC manufacturers decided to do something about it: SATA is what they did. SATA brings back the joy in Linux installations. If your SATA controller happens to be supported by the kernel you 're trying to install, then you 're good. Otherwise, tough!

The next logical step is to get a more recent Sarge netinst image, to see if it fixes things. Ok, debian-31r1a-i386-netinst.iso seems to be the latest officially available image for Debian stable. I look arround to find some info about what hardware it supports, what kernel version it is based on, what modules it contains, anything. But you know... who am I to ask these things? We should be grateful that its available and not ask for more. Anyway it's only a 120MB download, so after a little more that an hour (we are located in Greece, so our Internet connection is lousy) we have a new installation CD ready.

Boot from it...
Say linux26 at the boot prompt...
Pass through the first configuration screens...
About to partion disk...
!! No partionable media found, blah, blah, blah !!
*FUCK*

Ok, time to do some digging. Since the Debian site has no specific info as to what hardware it supports, lets first see if the Linux kernel (in general) supports the controller at hand. If it doesn't then we can forget about it, and return the PC for replacement. First lets find out what kind of SATA controller our system carries. I locate the model-number written in tiny letters on a sticker on top of the case, and look it up at the HP website. It seems to be one of the HP dx5150 Microtower Desktop PCs. Looking at the spec-sheet for the dx5150 series, I see that all the models are equiped with the ATI Radeon XPRESS 200 chipset. So it's easy: All we have to do is go at kernel.org, fetch the "supported hardware" list, look at the "HD controllers", "Serial ATA" section, see if the one in the Radeon XPRESS 200 is in fact supported. If so, see what kernel version is required, and whether there are issues with it. Yeah, sure... In a dream-world, maybe!

So it turns out there is no straightforward way to find the information we need, so lets look for it XXXX. Lets goole a few combinations of the "XPRESS 200", "Linux", "Linux kernel", "SATA", and so on, keywords. Sadly, regarding the question "Does Linux support the SATA controller in the Radeon XPRESS 200 chipset?", no conclusive and dependable answers seem to come up.

Ok, lets regroup then, and try to approach the problem from another angle. Let's first try to answer the question: "What SATA controller does the Radeon XPRESS 200 chipset carries"? The initial urge to do a couple of google queries turns out nothing usefull. Several glosses and a few reviews or XPRESS 200 come-up, but none seems to contain the information we seek. So let's phrase the question differently: "What SATA controllers has ATI shipped, that Linux knows about?". Luckily this is a question that can be answered in a relativelly reliable manner. We go at the Linux PCI ID Repository, fetch the Online List of IDs, and browse for the manufacturer "ATI". OK, the manufacturer ID for ATI is 0x1002. Now we search in the respective model-IDs list for "Serial ATA" devices. There are two entries:

0x1002, 0x436e : ATI 436E Serial ATA Controller
0x1002, 0x4379 : ATI 4379 Serial ATA Controller

So it has to be one of them. One way to verify this, and find out which of the two, is to boot our system from a rescue CD (which doesn't have to support the controller, neither to be able to detect the hard-disks), and do an lspci(1). Indeed, I find out that our system carries the SATA controller with PCI-ID 0x1002 0x4379!

The next step is to see if Linux supports this device, and if so starting with what kernel version. The only reliable method is to... look at the source! Since I don't want to download a couple of Linux-kernel source tarballs (for different kernel versions), I'll have to find a place where the source is available in an online-searchable format. The Linux Cross-Reference Project (LXR) will do fine. I select the i386 architecture, the latest version available (that would be 2.6.12 in lxr) and do a free-text search looking for the string "0x4379". The string appears in two obviously irrelevant files, and... tada!... in "drivers/scsi/sata_sil.c", in a context that looks like this:

  static struct pci_device_id sil_pci_tbl[] = {
      { 0x1095, 0x3112, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, sil_3112 },
      { 0x1095, 0x0240, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, sil_3112 },
      { 0x1095, 0x3512, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, sil_3112 },
      { 0x1095, 0x3114, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, sil_3114 },
      { 0x1002, 0x436e, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, sil_3112 },
      { 0x1002, 0x4379, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, sil_3112 },
      { }     /* terminate list */
  };

This is definitely what we 're looking for. Now we know that linux-2.6.12 supports the SATA controller in our system, using the "sata_sil.ko" driver. How about older kernel versions? Looking at the same file in linux-2.6.11 I see the same list, looking in 2.6.10, though, I see:

  static struct pci_device_id sil_pci_tbl[] = {
      { 0x1095, 0x3112, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, sil_3112 },
      { 0x1095, 0x0240, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, sil_3112 },
      { 0x1095, 0x3512, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, sil_3112 },
      { 0x1095, 0x3114, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, sil_3114 },
      { }     /* terminate list */
  };

So we 've managed to establish that:

The Linux kernel supports the SATA controller (ATI Radeon XPRESS 200) in our system (HP Desktop, dx5150 series) starting from version 2.6.11

I don't know if it's just me, but I feel that things could have been a lot more, and I mean A LOT MORE straightforward.

We 're not done yet, though. We now have to locate a Debian Sarge netinst image that features kernel 2.6.11, or latter. Failling this we have to either build our own installer image, or forget about the whole thing. Sadly, there seems to be no straightforward way to do this. There is no one place for someone to look for Debian netinst images (other than the "official" images, which won't do). It all resolves to running several google searches, following links, doing more searches, following more links, until you run out of energy, or until you find what you want. I managed to locate a seemingly suitable image (sarge-amd64-2.6.12-netinst.iso), at this page. How I ended up there? I don't even remember anymore. Problem is, this image installs the unofficial Sarge port for AMD64, which is not exactly what we want (our package-proxy is already primed with the packages for i386, and it would be terribly slow to download everything from the wild). So queue this for download (just in case nothing better turns up) and keep looking. After some more digging I find something that might be what we are looking for. It is an entry in Kenshi Muto's debian-related blog. The entry contains a link to a Sarge netinst image based on kernel 2.6.14. Our troubles seem to be over:

Download Kenshi Muto's image
Burn a CD with it
Boot from freshly burned CD
Say linux26 at the boot prompt
Pass through the first configuration screens
About to partion disk...
!! No partionable media found, blah, blah, blah !!

This time though, we know it should work, so we don't despair that easy

Alt-F2, to switch to a shell console
Say: lsmod | grep sata_sil (it is not loaded)
Say: modprobe sata_sil
Say: modprobe sd_mod (just in case)
Alt-F1, to go back to the installer
Go back one step
About to partion disk...
!! IT WORKS !!

From here-on the installation proceeds smoothly. The graphics card as it turns out is not supported by XFree86, but there are two straightforward solutions for this:

Use the generic VESA driver.
Download the proprietary drivers from ATI

But this is another story, altogether...

the tech industry's girlie men

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 16:56:13 GMT

A 3GSM World Congress discussion on digital rights management (DRM) about protecting copyrighted content on mobile phones veered from friendly technical bickering to a blast of refreshing outrage when audience member David Birch called the panelists "a bunch of big girls" for buckling under to the demands of Hollywood studios and record companies:

Why are you such a bunch of big girls? Why don't you tell the content owners to just get stuffed? You're too seduced by the content industry, Hollywood is not even a $10 billion industry. Hollywood is small compared to the telecom industry. Why don't you take a stronger line? Consumers don't want DRM at all. You can't sell DRM.

Source: arstechnica, eetimes

the best blonde joke, ever

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 19:28:30 GMT

There are many blonde jokes arround, but this has to be the best, ever. Yep, the best blonde joke, ever.

a study of the effects of celery

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 12:54:48 GMT

Source: Cynical-C Blog

nuit de noel

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 01:27:33 GMT

Once more I sent to you a letter
Tenderly kissing its pages
And opening the bottle of your evil perfume
I'm inhaling its intoxication
And then oh so clearly I see
These thin black birds that are flying
From the bottle they fly to the South
From the bottle of Nuit de Noel

And soon once again comes the spring
When the youthful violins of Venice
Will dance out your grief and your sorrow
Will dance out your gloom and despair
And then your sins seem not as bad
And your blue mistakes will become lighter
Please don't be afraid to share all your spring kisses
When almond trees begin to bloom

Please don't cry for me my dear friend
I'm a bird that is frozen and sulking
My Sharmanshik master he shows me no mercy
He makes me dance non-stop all day
And picking up the lucky tickets
I stare at the unhappy faces
And accompanied by cries of the Sharmanka
I'm falling asleep on my feet

Once more I send to you a letter
And tenderly kissing its pages
Don't be angry at me for an unhappy end
So seductive are my bitter tears
And due to your evil perfume
All this is because of those black thoughts
Flying like birds from the bottle to the South
From the bottle called Nuit de Noel

Sappy, sentimental, and more than a little juvenille. I know, but some moments I'm a sucker for this kind of... bitter gayness. Don't worry, it usually passes quickly.

Lyrics from Marc Almond's "Nuit de Noel". Originally by Alexander Vertinsky. Translated from the Russian original by Olga Lutskaya.