Today I came across (via Digg) some stuff on Linux’s Magic SysRq key. I’m yet to be able to try it, but it’s apparently a low-level way of controlling the system when it goes haywire. You do need to enable it in the kernel, but I’m under the impression it’s enabled by default*.
I’ve been running Compiz on XGL, both of which are experimental software. Certain obscure combinations of activities will freeze it, and the system appears locked up. I strongly suspect that it’s not ‘truly’ frozen, though, but since it’s my user interface, short of pulling up another computer and remotely logging in, there’s not much I can do. Traditionally I just turn the machine off. The “REISUB” method will hopefully let you ‘cleanly’ shut down the system, by getting the kernel to terminate all processes, unmount disks, and then reboot.
It looks like there’s more, though… You could regain control of the keyboard and then just kill everything on the current VT, in theory, at least, letting you just restart X.
You can check if it’s enabled by checking for a /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq, which should contain “1” if enabled. This page also covers making the command ‘sticky’ so you’re not in the awkward situation of trying hold down Alt + SysRq + another key. (And in my case, SysRq is a ‘function’ key, so it’d be Alt+SysRq+Fn+r, for example.)
I almost bought* an office park in Chicago (I think?), and noticed that it was on the intersection of High Street and Gay Street. It seemed ripe for jokes.
WPD is currently at what seems to be a major single-car accident at the intersection of High Street & Moody Street. For added amusement, they’re just referring to it as “High and Moody.”
I think I mentioned that everyone in Ghana ended up copying their photos to my computer. Initially I said I’d post them online for everyone. Then I said I’d just send out a CD, realizing how many there were. Over time I changed the offer to 2 CDs. And then a DVD.
Overall, I have a total of 4,820 photos. They take up 6.3 GB of disk space.
So the question is what to do… I have a few ideas, but I don’t really like any of them:
Resize the photos. Nautilus (the Ubuntu file manager) makes it as easy as right-clicking to resize photos. Dropping everything to 1600×1200 might be enough. This would be very CPU-intensive, though. One photo is quick, but 200 takes several minutes. I don’t want to know how long 4,820 would take.
Send two DVDs. The DVDs are on the school anyway, so this is kind of a good idea. It just seems absurd to send out two DVDs for 14 days of picture-taking. (Assuming, erroneously, that 6.3 GB is 6,300 MB, that’s an average of 344 photos and 450 MB a day.)
Weed out the junk photos. I know I have a lot. I’d just copy everything from the card to my computer, format the card in the camera, and go on shooting the next day. The problem is that this would be somewhat labor-intensive, and that I don’t think it’s my place to decide which of other peoples’ photos are junk.
The other reason I’m averse to burning 2 DVDs is that I want to try using Picasa’s “Gift CD” option so it’s not just a huge mess of folders with photos.
So a month ago I was working until 1am or so. I’d wake up around noon.
Then I traveled to Ghana, which is 4 hours ahead. And we had to get up by 8 every day, sometimes earlier. There’s nothing to do at night, so we’d usually be in bed by 10:30 or so.
So you can imagine how messed up my sleep cycle was when I came back. I’d be exhausted by 9. Not like a little sleepy, but so tired that I felt like I might be sick. It was a struggle to sleep past 6 in the morning. I’ve now had enough time that I can stay up until almost midnight and get up around 8. This is probably what people would call a “normal” sleep cycle.
Two big realizations about this “normal” sleep cycle:
The day seems much longer. When I wake up I haven’t missed half the day. And being up at 3 a.m. really isn’t worthwhile, since there’s nothing to do at that hour.
Mornings, though, are dull. When I’d get up at noon, people would have already replied to the e-mails I sent at 3 a.m. Now I’m sending e-mails at 8 p.m. and checking at 8 a.m., and people haven’t gotten to work yet to reply. My e-mail to Res Life still is unanswered and they’ve had 27 minutes!
The other problem, though, is my schedule next semester. Tuesdays and Thursdays my first class is at 2:10. That’s the earliest. I have Fridays off. (The sign of a good schedule.) I apparently also have Wednesday off. I don’t remember planning that. Mondays I don’t have class until 6:30 at night. I suspect I’ll fall into a later sleep cycle. But boy will I have free time during the day if I don’t!
I was cleaning my car, and figured that, as long as I’m doing the outside, I might as well do the inside. I found a bottle of ArmorAll, so I used that on the interior.
And then I noticed that the label suggests it can be used on tires. So I tried that. They look much better: they don’t have that absurd “really shiny” look that cars in showrooms and car shows have, but they’re a nice deep black now, and make the wheels look even cleaner.
But then, having doused everything rubber and plastic in my car with ArmorAll, I came inside to use my computer. And got to thinking about the Thinkpad’s top. Anyone who’s used a Thinkpad will know what I mean: it’s a really bizarre consistency, sort of rubberized plastic. It scratches easily, picks up oils from your hands if you touch it, and always looks dirty.
So you can probably see where my mind went: can I use ArmorAll to clean/protect the T60’s coating like I do on other plastics?
I figured that the key would be to not use too much, especially since I didn’t know how it would work. So I sprayed a little on a paper towel and rubbed it in. It ended up still looking like too much, so I used a spare cloth to wipe it down, going in circular motions.
I’m on Day 1 so far, but I’m currently very happy with the result. It’s a nice solid consistency, albeit slightly slick. It looks, well, clean, and at least as good as when it was new. The edges are already starting to look a little different (they always have, due to fingerprints where I open/close the lid), but it’s still a definite improvement. I’ll wait a few days and see how it looks then before I decide if this was a good idea or not…
That’s a lemon tree! More accurately, it’s about four lemon plants, a few weeks old. Half as a joke, I took the seeds out of a lemon and put them in some soil. About two weeks went by, and we were just about ready to throw the whole thing out, when one little sprout came through the next day. I now have a total of 11 lemon plants.
These are only the ones mentioned in the warning label. (Mentioning both that it’s extremely flammable and that it contains chemicals known by California to cause cancer and birth defects.)
I’m going to go out and apply the touch-up paint right after I update my will.
I guess I’m supporting Obama. He was pretty high up on my list, but I hadn’t necessarily made up my mind yet. But between marching in the parade with his campaign and attending a session with him today, I guess the choice is made. But boy, it’s the right one.
I didn’t ask any questions, but he answered some of mine anyway. He wants, for example, to get out of Iraq. He’s not a pacifist: he suggests that we should have some troops in places where the Taliban is. I went in with my big worry being that he really doesn’t have the experience to lead the country. I left convinced, beyond any doubt, that he’s the right man for the job. You have to hear him speak: in addition to concluding that he’s the right man person (wouldn’t want to exclude Hillary) for the job, I left today with a sense of hope. It’s really hard to describe. You’ve just got to hear him.
We ended up in a nearly-perfect spot for photos. (For a little bit I was literally rubbing elbows with a newspaper photographer. It was neat to see how he worked; two cameras with different lenses [one is one of the newer Canon DSLRs with the huge screens]. The cameras have a nice high frame rate, so he was snapping several photos a second. At one point, he wanted some photos from above, so he just held the camera above his head, held down the shutter, and moved it around. In a few seconds’ time, he probably ended up with about 30 pictures, at least one of which, by sheer chance, had to have been good.)
Anyway! I’ve put many of them up on Flickr, but I’ll go over some highlights here.
To start with, on the way in, we drove by WMUR’s studios. They need to send a gardener up onto their roof. Is that thing an antenna overgrown with vines?
When he was first walking out, everyone was clamoring for a view, and all the photographers, casual or pro, were desperate to get a shot. I snagged this one, and was pretty proud of myself:
After everyone took their seats, though, I think we all realized that everyone could see fine. We were standing right behind the last seats, so I had a great view:
He’s so happy! I think that’s one of the things that people like about him so much, even if no one mentions it. While other politicians talk about how we’re all going to die in the upcoming terrorist attacks, Obama, as one of the parade chants went, spreads hope and cheer:
He took a lot of time—probably at least half the total time—for questions. One guy didn’t really ask anything, as much as mention that America shouldn’t be about dynasties, and talked about the Bush dynasty and the threat of a Clinton dynasty. The guy then sang a song, which was actually really good, and got a great response from the crowd. And Obama:
The questions were good. One woman, probably in her mid 20s, talked about how she’d been forced into bankruptcy after a slew of medical bills for surgery. And Senator Obama listened to her, and seemed to even care, something that truly seems unusual in politicians.
He introduced himself as a Vietnam vet, which drew applause. He then explained all the trouble he’s had with health care and hospital bills; I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I think it’s fair to say that he felt that the nation he’d defended didn’t really care about him anymore. Senator Obama mentioned that he was troubled because he was hearing that throughout the country.
Not too long ago, Dean Kamen came to Bentley as part of a panel to speak about the role of business in making the world a better place. As someone who got a lot out of FIRST, despite a roster of big-name executives, it was Dean Kamen that I was most excited about seeing.
He mentioned that he’d invented “two boxes” that could help the developing world, but that the fixed costs of production were too prohibitive; without a ‘mass market’ for them, he couldn’t move beyond prototypes.
The first box, he explained, had two hoses. You fed liquid into the first, and pure water came out the second. (Not water with most contaminants removed, but 100% pure water: he told us that it met the standards for water used in injections.)
The second box would burn anything flammable and generate electricity. He talked about how, in a remote village, it led to a mini-economy: someone ran the machine, someone else provided them with manure, and someone else resold the electricity.
I think there are plenty of applications for both of these, though. Imagine:
RVs and boats have two tanks: one for potable water to drink / shower in, and one to collect ‘waste’ water. You, of course, have to work on emptying the waste container often, and on filling the potable water one. With Box #1, you could get potable water out of waste water, reducing how often you have to fill/empty the tanks.
We’ve gone through a bunch of old junk here, and I’ve been working on shredding boxes of old financial documents before we throw them out. How handy would it be to take them into the back yard, throw them into Box #2 to be incinerated, and get a little break on our electric bill in the process?
I’d imagine that human waste could be flammable, at least after water was extracted from it. (But I’ve never tried?) Box #2 might have its place on an RV.
And, if that works, why not build an awesome Port-a-Potty? You could have a sink with clean water for hand-washing, and electricity to power a fan / heat / air freshener. And you wouldn’t have to empty any tanks.
Do you have any idea how many places in the world don’t have clean water? It’s not a problem that only exists in a couple little ghettos. Even though you and I have an endless of clean water when we turn on our faucet, an enormous part of the world doesn’t. The machines might be expensive, but I bet entrepreneurs would love to sell clean water.
We have a Brita water filter at school, so that we don’t have to drink tap water. Imagine if we had a building-wide machine that would take ‘tap water’ into the building and make the water coming out of all the faucets pure. (Well, I suppose you’d have to clean out the pipes first, but I digress.)
We could cut down on our water usage, by ‘reusing’ water. Feed the pipe going to the septic system back into the machine. (And what doesn’t become water might be able to be burned to generate electricity.) Surely there’s some loss, but it could at least reduce your use on the water supply. Those with wells wouldn’t have to worry as much about running out, and those who had town water could see a savings in their bills.
I’m convinced that both of these machines could be pretty popular if they ever went into mass-production.
