Note to self: direct rendering on G33

If you cannot find out why oh why the Xorg server refuses to play nice and enable direct rendering, remember to check if libgl1-mesa-dri is installed...

So I'm almost there, installing debian on the G33 motherboard (an intel DG33TL) was non-trivial (I'll file a di bug soon), but now the advantages are becoming clear: the video is quite fast, very clear (DVI output) and the Q6600 cpu is just too fast.

Now to restore my backups and I'm back in the game!

The patient is healthy but dead

Three weeks ago I was scanning in all our old analog pictures from the APS cartridge. I've found a nice guy who rents out an APS capable scanner in .nl.

While I was scanning this in on Adele (my iMac) I thought: let's reconfigure Frost (the Debian build machine, backup server, iTunes server and fileserver), so I did a final backup to a FW external HD and inserted a Debian net-install CD. Which failed to install.

A bit confused I tried an older Debian release, which got slightly farther, but it still failed with a write error. So in the end I booted a recent Ubuntu installer, apt-getted the smart utilities and got a report on the disk. The disk claimed it was healthy. However it used 100% of its replacement sectors and gave read errors all over the place. Oh and a write error on sector several sectors.

Lessons learned:

1. Ask for smart support in the Debian installer
2. Install the smart daemon on the next server

So now I'm looking round for a nice Q6600 based server, using an intel motherboard with buildin graphics (maximum Linux compatibility) 4GB ram and 1TB of disk. This turns out to be a problem. None of the big vendors want to sell me a powerful, silent, computer with only Intel buildin graphics, they all insist on throwing in some nVidia or ATI incompatible POS :-(. And the smaller companies all want to sell me 'Gamer' PCs, with the same POS cards. So I have to find somebody who will build to spec but will still give me some warranty...

Not having Frost means that I am not able to do any Debian uploads :-(. Not that I'm not buzzy: I've got 3000 pictures to name, tag and date... (and in some case reimport because iPhoto things that they are raw pictures instead of the 48 bit tiff images that they are)

enter the permuted index

Wouter did you ever see the two indexes of the Common Lisp Hyperspec? There is a normal index and a "permuted" one, which almost always does exactly what you want.

to iceweasel or not?

At $employer I have to use meetingplace a lot, so it was rather irritating that it did not work.

After a bit of digging I hear that it works with firefox 2.0 and java 1.6. But only the original firefox, if you use iceweasel (or any renamed version I think) the 'browser test' works, but then it will tell you that you have no java installed. Clearly the application searches for firefox, does not find it and decides to give a bogus error message.

Now. Is this a iceweasel bug? I think not, but having browser detecting and adapting pages will always exist I fear so changing them all seems difficult. So let's call it a safety feature :-)

Finally online again

My new employer pays for an ADSL line for me. A second line, adding a ADSL connection on another copper pair I was told. Perfect I though, let's order it. Little did I know what problems I would get into.

Two days ago our ADSL went dead. No messages, no calls, no nothing. I call the provider (mobistar) who tell me we cancelled the contract and then hang up on me! The day after I contacted the company that does the ADSL stuff for $employer, asking them if this was their doing. Their reply: "search, search... no we have no documents on you, it must be something internal to $employer, we know nothing". Two hours later I get an email from them asking for dates for the installation of the ADSL modem. On the 21st at the earliest.

Coincidence, right? I send an "un-fuck this right now!" email shortly after. 24h later I still have no reply.

No looking forward to 2 weeks without internet we started searching. So after some hacking and a good idea from my wife it turns out skynet "just" re-enabled my account of 2 years ago, same userid, same password. As if I never left.

Not good...

gone is sarge

from my CL repositories I have at my p.d.o pages. I will now track etch (and will try to get the packages into backports.org too), sid and ubuntu's dapper and edgy. I expect to track feisty after it is released.

Hmm. No release party in Belgium planned yet...

modern times

A colleague at work got his 'final end of year bill' from his electricity supplier. In Belgium you pay every month an amount based on the guess of the supplier of your usage. Because , he claims, his new house is drying out, so requires less energy to heat up, he consumed about 20% less energy then last year so their estimate was too high. Good: he gets 400 € back. Bad: the amount he has to pay a month goes up.

So he phones them up and asked why. The reason: the program to adjust the guess based on the usage of last year cannot handle a negative amount (you payed too much) so the program thinks the last estimate was 400 € a month too low instead of too high, so it adjusts it upwards. Next year it will adjust it even more up :-).

Now I know that the ABS function in FORTRAN exists already since the late 1950's so I think the problem is not their programs, but that this is an easy way to get an interest-free loan out of people that don't watch their bill with a eye for details.