Git magic
Another Git article : Git magic, the Swiss army knife document about the version control Swiss army knife called Git.
Scapa, 13yo
Scapa is a whisky made on the island Orkney; the distillery’s location was the final resting place for some of the German fleet scuttled there at the end of WWI. In 2003, it seemed that Scapa's days were numbered. It is really with gratitude to neighboring Highland Park and crew that Scapa has stocks from the years between 1994 and 2004. They used to come to the run-down distillery and fire up the stills for a few weeks each year. That way, Scapa is still available, though still difficult to find, which I experienced sadly enough. The Scapa 12yo is almost out of sale, but I obtained a 1993 edition which got bottled in 2006.
First the bad news : this whisky is expensive. The 13 yo had a price tag of 48 Euro, which I find insanely high, but I yielded because I knew Scapa is a renowned brand (and because it was so hard to find).
The good news : it is worth every penny of it. Uncorking the bottle and smelling the scent, is a real pleasure, and already indicates that this is a great whisky : soft, a hint of honey, lemon and maple sirup. Light, but sofisticated. Immediately reminds me of Glenmorangie and Tullamore Dew, though Scapa is more complex.
The taste : very fresh. If Laphroaig is something you would drink on a winter evening before the fireplace, with a snow storm raging outside, then this is something you would drink on a freshly mown lawn on a summer evening. Sweet, but not too sugary. A hint of brown sugar and some undefinable exotic fruit (maybe pineapple, but I'm not sure).
The verdict : excellent ! A classic whisky, only shame about the price.
First the bad news : this whisky is expensive. The 13 yo had a price tag of 48 Euro, which I find insanely high, but I yielded because I knew Scapa is a renowned brand (and because it was so hard to find).
The good news : it is worth every penny of it. Uncorking the bottle and smelling the scent, is a real pleasure, and already indicates that this is a great whisky : soft, a hint of honey, lemon and maple sirup. Light, but sofisticated. Immediately reminds me of Glenmorangie and Tullamore Dew, though Scapa is more complex.
The taste : very fresh. If Laphroaig is something you would drink on a winter evening before the fireplace, with a snow storm raging outside, then this is something you would drink on a freshly mown lawn on a summer evening. Sweet, but not too sugary. A hint of brown sugar and some undefinable exotic fruit (maybe pineapple, but I'm not sure).
The verdict : excellent ! A classic whisky, only shame about the price.
Guns + hardware = fun !
PC LOAD LETTER ! Don't you hate that laptop with the flaky Shift button ? Is your Treo the device from hell ? Is your phone dialing you nuts ? Wouldn't it be fun to crash all the misbehaving crapware to their righteous place in hell ? Do you crave for your own Office Space printer footage ? Check out the Gadget abuse for your sweet revenge.
I had my fair share too with misbehaving hardware, but the abuse stayed limited to a keyboard, two mice and one printer.
I had my fair share too with misbehaving hardware, but the abuse stayed limited to a keyboard, two mice and one printer.
Blocked
Crap. My employer has blocked all access to web based email services, including GMail.
And there was weeping, and gnashing of teeth.
And there was weeping, and gnashing of teeth.
Programmer's Pandora box
I just encountered a situation which I like to call a programmer's Pandora box : imaging you're testing a fix for a small bug in an otherwise bug free, beautifully coded program. A routine job like any other. Suddenly, during the tests you discover a new bug in a completely different part of the program. You fix that bug too, but during the next test run, another bug pops up which leads to a chain of bugs and fixes with an increase in anger, hate and suffering.
I discovered that you should stop after 3 encountered bugs, after which you should take a break/coffee/nap. Stopping will give you an uncanny and unhappy feeling, during which the Pandora box will continue to haunt your mind, but failing to do so will lead to a completely mutilated program.
I discovered that you should stop after 3 encountered bugs, after which you should take a break/coffee/nap. Stopping will give you an uncanny and unhappy feeling, during which the Pandora box will continue to haunt your mind, but failing to do so will lead to a completely mutilated program.
Haagse kopjes
Toch wel wat problemen met mijn Senseo overlaatst : die geeft soms geen warm water, of vult de kopjes slechts half (de zogenaamde Haagse kopjes). Ik heb wel gemerkt dat hiervoor een eenvoudige oplossing voor bestaat : duw de watercontainer goed aan, en vul die toch met een redelijke waterhoeveelheid (minstens 2 kleine koppen). Sindsdien geen last meer van Haagse kopjes !
Solaris' format coredumps on EFI-labelled disks
I tracked a nasty problem on a Solaris 10 host, which refused to start up format after adding extra disks :
Tracing the format command revealed that it barfed while reading a specific disk. Using format with specific disks worked flawlessly, but with that one disk, format kept segfaulting :
Digging further into the dump, it revealed the true reason why Solaris' format was crashing :
Apparently, format was choking while trying to read an efi label. An octal dump of the disk also revealed the label :
Fact is that Solaris cannot cope with (probably corrupt) EFI labels; there are some patches lying around for x86, but this is a sparc machine, with no patches apparently :
"It's a nasty series of bugs that apparently have been lingering around since 1993, and were never completely fixed. Nowadays they are obscure bugs, and if you look into bugs.opensolaris.org, for most of them there is no fix, on SunSolve there is no patch, etcetera, etcetera."
# format
Segmentation fault. Core dumped.
Tracing the format command revealed that it barfed while reading a specific disk. Using format with specific disks worked flawlessly, but with that one disk, format kept segfaulting :
# format c2t1d42
Segmentation fault. Core dumped.
Digging further into the dump, it revealed the true reason why Solaris' format was crashing :
# pstack format.s0001620.6924.core
core 'format.s0001620.6924.core' of 6924: format -d c2t1d42
ff2542ec _malloc_unlocked (3c78, 5f188, 5f188, 5f188, 0, 0) + 22c
ff2540a4 malloc (3c78, 1, 94224, 0, ff2e8284, ff2f09b0) + 4c
ff240e68 calloc (1, 1, 3c78, 0, 0, 0) + 58
ff350aac efi_alloc_and_read (5, ffbfe64c, 3c00, 1356c, 0, ff364000) + 24
0001f6c4 read_efi_label (5, ffbfe6b8, 0, 0, d, 543f0) + 8
0002d8c0 ???????? (ff315a12, ffbfee68, ffbfe8ec, 5, 54360, 0)
Apparently, format was choking while trying to read an efi label. An octal dump of the disk also revealed the label :
0000000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
*
3140000 I A 6 4 _ E F I 0 0 0 b 0 0 0 0
3140020 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fact is that Solaris cannot cope with (probably corrupt) EFI labels; there are some patches lying around for x86, but this is a sparc machine, with no patches apparently :
"It's a nasty series of bugs that apparently have been lingering around since 1993, and were never completely fixed. Nowadays they are obscure bugs, and if you look into bugs.opensolaris.org, for most of them there is no fix, on SunSolve there is no patch, etcetera, etcetera."
Vlaamse volksverhalen databank
De Vlaamse volksverhalen databank bundelt lokale volksverhalen in een zoekbare lijst. De streek van Leuven en Tienen biedt met zijn vele kastelen een grote bron van verhalen met spoken, heksen en aardmannen.
HP-UX is GNU unfriendly
I'm trying to install a reasonable young rrdtool onto a HP-UX 11.11, but I'm almost giving up in despair : there's a HP-UX depot in the contribute section of the rrdtool downloads, but that's a very old version. There are very few sites which offer prebuild HP-UX GNU binaries, but the HP-UX porting and archive center is the most well-known. Unfortunately, there are three current versions of HP-UX, spread over 2 architectures, which means that the archive is rather thin. A prebuild recent rrdtool version is unavailable, which implies I get the pleasure of building the thing.
HP-UX carries the css cc compiler, which dislikes rrdtool (or the other way around), so configure is barfing out the following :
Time to install gcc, but that means installing its dependancies too : libiconv, libgcc and zlib; after a successful gcc installation, time for a new configure run :
Hmmm, that's weird, let's check out gcc :
That's even weirder; why's gcc linked to this library ? Let's double check :
But there's a libintl.sl lib in the /opt/gnome/lib dir, hopefully that one can be used :
Damned, HP-UX won't accept the $LD_LIBRARY_PATH or $SHLIB parameter; maybe this dirty hack will work :
/me kicks the server. Bah.
We coped with this crap on Linux 10 years ago. Maybe I'm with the ignorant, but does anyone knows a way out of this mess ? Sun is giving away companion CD's with GNU tools on it, maybe HP does the same ?
HP-UX carries the css cc compiler, which dislikes rrdtool (or the other way around), so configure is barfing out the following :
configure: error:
Your Compiler does not do proper IEEE math ...
Time to install gcc, but that means installing its dependancies too : libiconv, libgcc and zlib; after a successful gcc installation, time for a new configure run :
# export CC=gcc
# ./configure
[...]
checking for gcc... gcc
checking for C compiler default output file name...
configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables
See `config.log' for more details.
Hmmm, that's weird, let's check out gcc :
# gcc
/usr/lib/dld.sl: Can't open shared library: /usr/local/lib/libintl.sl
/usr/lib/dld.sl: No such file or directory
Abort
That's even weirder; why's gcc linked to this library ? Let's double check :
# ldd `which gcc`
/usr/lib/libc.2 => /usr/lib/libc.2
/usr/lib/libdld.2 => /usr/lib/libdld.2
/usr/lib/libc.2 => /usr/lib/libc.2
/usr/local/lib/libiconv.sl => /usr/local/lib/libiconv.sl
/usr/lib/libc.2 => /usr/lib/libc.2
/usr/lib/dld.sl: Can't open shared library: /usr/local/lib/libintl.sl
/usr/lib/dld.sl: No such file or directory
But there's a libintl.sl lib in the /opt/gnome/lib dir, hopefully that one can be used :
# export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/opt/gnome/lib
sh: LD_LIBRARY_PATH: Parameter not set.
# gcc
/usr/lib/dld.sl: Can't open shared library: /usr/local/lib/libintl.sl
/usr/lib/dld.sl: No such file or directory
Abort
Damned, HP-UX won't accept the $LD_LIBRARY_PATH or $SHLIB parameter; maybe this dirty hack will work :
# ln -s /opt/gnome/lib/libintl.sl /usr/local/lib/libintl.sl
# gcc
/usr/lib/dld.sl: Unresolved symbol: libintl_bindtextdomain (code) from gcc
Abort
/me kicks the server. Bah.
We coped with this crap on Linux 10 years ago. Maybe I'm with the ignorant, but does anyone knows a way out of this mess ? Sun is giving away companion CD's with GNU tools on it, maybe HP does the same ?
The elegant universe
The elegant universe is an interesting website, which looks like a modern version of the Cosmos series by Carl Sagan. It explains about string theory and elementary particles, and has even some online miniseries to watch.