The people behind The Macallan have managed to cultivate an 'exclusive' and luxurious brand perception, even though the distillery actually has the second largest production capacity in Scotland, right behind Glenfiddich. The distillery is Speyside’s best known heavyweight – and constantly embracing a new challenge : its current view is that the reaction between wood and sherry is also of great importance. This appears to wash out the harshest tannins and help release a rich, rounded spiciness. This is felt to be far more significant than any aromas and flavors imparted by the sherry itself. One rather extreme piece of research suggested that barely a third of aromas and flavors originated from the spirit, almost 60 per cent from the oak, and less than 10 per cent from the sherry.


That's why it's no surprise that my whisky reseller praised me the Macallan Gordon & McPhail 1999 vintage edition, as a must in every liquor cabinet. As I'm a man who's fond of good advice, the bottle was mine some minutes later.


The color : amber, dark gold.
The nose : sweet, fruity, typical Speyside. So far no surprises.
The taste : oh so sweet, could be creamy rum for what it's worth. Apples, honey, raisins. Some chocolate and malt, and after that, light sherry tones flowing in, with an amazing caramel candy aftertaste that lingers forever. Wonderfully complex and ditto balanced.


This Macallan is not good, it's excellent ! One of the best Speysides I've ever tasted. So sweet, so friendly, such a marvellous combination of sherry & whisky tastes.

Does Christmas reminds you of snowy weather, eggnog and turkeys ? Not here with us ! We rejoice every year in the arrival of the Perl Advent calendar, this year again also in a Perl6 edition.

Verleden zondag heb ik nogal onverwachts beslist om met onze 9 maand jonge Landseer hond mee te doen met het overgangsexamen van de B- naar de C-klas. En zie, tot mijn grote verbazing zijn we geslaagd - weliswaar met de achterpoten over de sloot, maar geslaagd is geslaagd, niet ? Na amper 2 maand in de B-klas, blijven we door de klassen heen sjezen.
En nu ? In de C-klas wordt het overgrote deel van de oefeningen zonder leiband gedaan, en wordt van de hond een perfecte gehoorzaamheid verwacht. Dat komt wel goed, maar de eerste reeks lessen zullen zwaar uitvallen, vrezen we...

I've previously tackled how Solaris core dumps can be investigated with mdb. There's another utility (comparable with Q4 on HP_UX), called SUNWscat. Scat is a tool to analyze kernel dumps (pun probably intended). Just download the SUNWscat package, install it on your server, and wait for a kernel crash to happen. When this happened, you'll find a unix.0 and vmcore.0 in the coredump directory (default /var/crash). When you fire up SUNWscat, you'll be presented with the following screen :

# scat 0

  Solaris[TM] CAT 4.1 (build 526) for Solaris 10 64-bit SPARC(sun4u)

  Copyright © 2003 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.

  Patents Pending. Use is subject to license terms.

  Sun Microsystems proprietary - DO NOT RE-DISTRIBUTE!

opening vmcore.0 ...dumphdr...symtab...core...done

loading core data: modules...panic...memory...time...misc...done

loading stabs...read_type_db: Wrong number of lines in database, or database

doesn't end in a newline

unable to load any stabs file

patches... - NOT AVAILABLE (No such file or directory) done

core file:      /var/crash/vmcore.0

user:           Super-User (root:0)

release:        5.10 (64-bit)

version:        Generic_112233-11

machine:        sun4u

node name:      boson

domain:         arda.org

hw_provider:    Sun_Microsystems

system type:    SUNW,Sun-Fire-V210

hostid:         837844c7

time of crash:  Tue Apr 22 11:49:52 EDT 2008

age of system:  22 hours 5 minutes 4.48 seconds

panic cpu:      0 (ncpus: 8)

panic string:   free: freeing free block, dev:0x200000016e, block:32032, ino:6057255, 

                fs:/homes

running sanity checks.../etc/system...ndd...sysent...misc...done

SolarisCAT(vmcore.0)>

The first thing you probably want to do, is investigating the crash reason :

SolarisCAT(vmcore.0)> analyze

PANIC: free: freeing free block, dev:0x%lx, block:%ld, ino:%lu, fs:%s

[...]

==== printing for generic panic information ====

cpu 0 had the panic

==== panic thread: 0x2a1003f7d40 ==== cpu: 0 ====

==== panic kernel thread: 0x2a1003f7d40  pid: 0  on cpu: 0 ====

cmd: sched

t_stk: 0x2a1003f7b50  sp: 0x1437751  t_stkbase: 0x2a1003f4000

t_pri: 60(SYS)  pctcpu: 0.000000  t_lwp: 0x0

t_procp: 0x1438518(proc_sched)  p_as: 0x1438400(kas)

last cpuid: 0

idle: 50 ticks (0.50 seconds)

start: Mon Apr 21 13:45:07 2008

age: 79485 seconds (22 hours 4 minutes 45 seconds)

stime: 2132 (22 hours 4 minutes 43.16 seconds earlier)

tstate: TS_ONPROC - thread is being run on a processor

tflg:   T_TALLOCSTK - thread structure allocated from stk

        T_DONTBLOCK - for lockfs

        T_PANIC - thread initiated a system panic

tpflg:  none set

tsched: TS_LOAD - thread is in memory

        TS_DONT_SWAP - thread/LWP should not be swapped

        TS_SIGNALLED - thread was awakened by cv_signal()

pflag:  SSYS - system resident process

        SLOAD - in core

        SLOCK - process cannot be swapped

pc: 0x104a720   unix:panicsys+0x44:     call    unix:setjmp

startpc: 0x11a53f8      ufs:ufs_thread_delete+0x0:      save    %sp, -0xd0, %sp

unix:panicsys+0x44 (0x14a3158, 0x2a1003f74a0, 0x1438120, 0x1, 0x0, 0x0)

[...]

unix:thread_start+0x4 (0x3000026e828, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)

-- end of kernel thread's stack --

SolarisCAT(vmcore.0)>

The proc command, for example, can tell you about the processes that were running at the time your system crashed. These processes are listed by default in reverse PID order.

SolarisCAT(vmcore.0)> proc

    addr       pid    ppid   uid      size      rss     swresv   time  command

------------- ------ ------ ------ ---------- -------- -------- ------ ---------

0x30003c8e040    283      1      0    3776512  1646592  1302528  90118 /usr/sbin/ssmon

0x30003c96a50    279      1      0    9306112  2514944  1769472     19 /usr/sbin/ssserver

0x30003bee030    256      1      0   27656192  2596864  1138688     57 /usr/sbin/nscd

0x30003c8ea58    243      1      0    2506752  1703936   466944      7 /usr/sbin/cron

0x30003c96038    240      1      0   18874368  2170880  2711552      7 /usr/sbin/syslogd

0x30000f60010    225      1      0    7217152  2400256  1146880    170 /usr/lib/autofs/automountd

0x300020c4a40    217      1      0    2260992  1572864   598016      3 /usr/lib/nfs/lockd

0x300020c5458    213      1      1    4677632  1974272   876544      2 /usr/lib/nfs/statd

0x300020c4028    201      1      0    2629632  2048000   835584     12 /usr/sbin/inetd -s

[...]

Advanced use of scat requires an in-depth understanding of the Solaris kernel. However, you can get a lot of useful information by using just the basic commands.

I upgraded my machines to Maverick - nothing much too say, except that the upgrade went pretty smooth. The upgrade on my netbook was the most interesting : the Ubuntu Netbook Remix interface (UNR) was about to be replaced with a brand new interface, called Unity. Now, I still don't like the fact that Ubuntu forces the user interface with every last upgrade to the standard one, but with Unity, all now makes more sense :

• The placing of the close-minimize-maximize buttons is excellent for minimal mouse gestures


• The dashboard alike interface of UNR gets replaced with a vertical Windows7/OSX alike dock. With the default maximization of windows, this works great.

However, in Unity, there are still some annoying bugs :

• I sometimes need to click twice on a startup button before the application starts, as if the dock is too less sensitive.


• The window title sometimes gets overwritten with other stuff


• The Ubuntu logo should display a menu if clicked, instead of minimizing all windows. If you want to fire up a non-docked application, you need to go to the Applications button, which displays all installed applications with their icon (which is kind of a mess)

Apart from that, very neat interface.

I've been working a while on a Windows 7 machine, and one of the nice desktop blings there is the rotating wallpaper item. There are quite some sets available, and you can download many more (eg like the famous Bing backgrounds). Linux has this functionality already since some time, but the sets of available wallpapers there are quite limited.


I've played around with Drapes, but the rotation time is quite small (I want maximum one wallpaper rotation per day). So why not write a script which downloads automatically some wallpaper from sites like APOD, Bing or National Geographic ?


Here are some scripts I found on the internet which do this for you. Place them in your crontab with a frequency of your liking.


Bing

#!/bin/bash

# modify this, if you want to save to other place

#  - $HOME: your home dir

#  - %F: full date (%Y-%m-%d)

#  - other date format: man date :P

OUTPUT=`date "+$HOME/Pictures/bing_bg.%F.jpg"`



# get the bing.com page, and separate the background image (DONT touch this)




# get the background image to the output (DONT touch this)

wget -q "http://www.bing.com$IMG" -O "$OUTPUT"

# error handle

if [ $? -gt 0 ]; then

        echo "there is a problem with downloading.."

        exit 1

fi

# Setting background-image.

# NB: Use an absolute URL

gconftool-2 -t string -s /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename "~/Pictures/bing_bg.%F.jpg"

gconftool-2 -t string -s /desktop/gnome/background/picture_options "zoom"

National Geographic

#!/bin/sh

#Based on code of APOD, you can really find everywhere on the web.



#Downloading html of the Picture-Of-The-Day

wget -N http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/ -O /tmp/ngpod.html

#Getting the URL of the image

img_location=`egrep -o "http://images.nationalgeographic.com/[^<]*[^>]*.jpg" /tmp/ngpod.html


rm /tmp/ngpod.html



#Download image

TODAY=$(date +'%Y%m%d')

wget $img_location -O ~/Pictures/$TODAY.jpg



# Setting background-image.

# NB: Use an absolute URL

gconftool-2 -t string -s /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename "~/Pictures/$TODAY.jpg"

gconftool-2 -t string -s /desktop/gnome/background/picture_options "zoom"

Hoera ! Onze jongste hond Jitta, een goeie 7 maand oud ondertussen, heeft met vlag & wimpel de overgangsproef doorstaan voor de B-klas. De saaie oefeningen zijn voorbij, vanaf nu begint de training zonder leiband...

Netbooks are laptops done right. I had no idea how true this was before I actually bought a netbook myself. While only being slightly larger than a DVD-cover, my eeePC-900 was so portable, I've taken it with me around the world, both for work and holiday trips. My eeePC has been indeed so successful, it has completely wiped out my need for my laptop, which has been mostly gathering dust since the netbook purchase.
However, a (first generation) netbook still has some serious disadvantages :

• disk is mostly a combination of SSD and SD, and very limited in space.
• the keyboard is way too small to type comfortably
• the battery is very limited in life expectancy.

My new netbook had to overcome those three limitations. Not a big deal, since most current netbooks deal with this already. In addition, I wanted a minimum of 2GB RAM and a CPU with virtualization possibilities. As I was very happy with the eeePC line, I almost opted for a eeePC-1201HA, which sports the Z520 CPU, which had Intel-V support. Unfortunately, the netbook got slaughtered in every review because of its slow performance. My final choice was the Samsung N220 Premium Plus, a N450 based laptop with 2GB RAM and a 350GB hard disk. As the laptop is red, I feared a bit for too much of hardware bling, but the color is nicely darkish red, so it doesn't scream out in a meeting room. So far, I've been really happy with the netbook itself. The following are only (very) minor annoyances, but indeed are things that could have been better :

• If some netbook manufacturer brands a netbook with a Premium label, I expect the least they can do, is to include a pouch with it. As a netbook gets carried along everywhere, you want a cover for it to avoid excessive scratching, unless it is not made in plastic. No pouch with my edition, though I've heard that latest Samsung netbooks come again with this addition.
• The Power button comes in some sort of a slide button, which is on the front of the netbook. A true button would have been better, and would have been better if been protected by the lid.
• If the lid is closed, it is very hard to see if the netbook has been suspended, as the LEDs are hidden by the lid itself.

What is exellent is that netbook is completely silent : the hard disk is perfectly mute, and the fan makes only a slight noise under high stress. The netbook comes with Windows 7 Home Premium Edition, which starts its installation when you power on for the first time. The good thing is that it lets you choose the partitioning, so the hard disk is split by default into 3 partitions :

• first partition carries the Windows7 OS
• the second partition is a 14GB restore partition
• the third is an empty D-drive, which can be used for data & installed programs.

In a next post, I'll describe what tweaks were necessary to install & use a 64bits Ubuntu on the 3rd partition.

Since the upgrade to Karmic on my desktop, graphic performance has gone down considerably. I solved this in the past by downgrading Nvidia, but since Lucid, this has become impossible. It's not that I cannot live without the desktop bling, but suspend-resume is impossible without running the Nvidia drivers. The problem manifest itself by very high CPU bursts by kernel processes (kondemand, ksoftirqd), which makes the desktop unworkably slow.
I tried everything, from disabling PAT, KMS modesetting, switching framebuffers, all without success. I even tried to enable Lenny's Nvidia drivers, but that pulled in a 2.6.26 kernel, which I cannot use, because my filesystems are ext4.
I eventually turned in despair to the Nvidia website, looking for older drivers. The 173 release was still available in the archive download section, which came as a ncurses-based installer. These Nvidia based drivers are famous for messing up a Linux system, so I was rather reluctant to use those. I still decided to give them a go, which rather went surprisingly really well.
Finally a performant system again !

Dear Nokia,
the times I give advice to companies are quite seldom, so please shut up & listen. The next time you announce an 'important phone software update' on my N97 mobile, make sure that :

1. I don't have to do the upgrade with my computer, especially if it's a minor update. FOTA will do fine, thank you.
2. when starting the Nokia software updater on my computer, I don't want to be forced to upgrade this POS 'software' called "Nokia Software Updater"
3. when upgrading this Nokia Software Updater software, I don't want to have to wait 20 minutes for it to finish - this is a dualcore with 2GB, not one of your Symbian turtles, for cryings sake !
4. after the upgrade of the upgrade software, I don't want to reboot my computer
5. after reboot, and starting the upgrade software, I don't want to receive a warning that OVI suite is already running.
6. No, for crying out loud, I don't want to upgrade OVI suite !!! Can we finally update my mobile firmware, pretty please ???
7. when finally be able to start the Nokia Software Updater, I do want you to find my USB-connected phone, it's the only USB-connected thingy, goddammit !
8. I don't want to reconnect my mobile 5 times before your POS software finally recognizes it
9. I don't want to see your 'important phone software update' to be the most minor upgrade I've ever seen
10. And most of all, when pressing the 'Upgrade' button, I don't want to receive a final message 'Phone software already on latest level' after this whole irritating procedure !!!

Nokia, please fire your Symbian QA management. It's incompentent !
Now where's my aspirin ?