I don’t have one.

Posted on November 18, 2006 by Arthur

You may A Playstation 3be aware that this weekend it’s The Ultimate Console Bash, but I won’t rehash what happened or predict which console is going to win mass adoption and that. It’s not interesting either: there are plenty of experts and analysts around who will tell you why the Xbox 360, PS 3 or Wii will make you sing like Pavarotti in 256 million-gazilion colours using “3 seperate processor cores and a microphone”.

However, this article (‘Death of the Disc’) reminded me of a question posed this weekend which DVD platform would make it: HD-DVD or BlueRay. Neither, I said. The article above literally seems to be a copy of what I said with a couple of exception: I don’t see a future in CDs because it’s old technology. Secondly, back in the days the reason for having floppy disks was to move data from one to another location. That became pretty much obnoxious when operating systems like Windows 3.11 were released on 3.5 inch (floppy) disks. Currently, the maximum that fits on a BlueRay disks is in or around 200 GB (triple layer). By the time these BlueRay drives have become affordable, 2.5 TB harddrives are probably just as common as apples. And, did I mention about the speed difference between harddrives and optical drives?

I wouldn’t be surprised if Seagate (picture of PS3 HD) would be bought up by Sony (or maybe I should say ‘merge’), in say 2 or 3 years. And even Toshiba would make a great buy for companies like Apple and Microsoft.

Posted in Ordinateurs | Comments Off on I don’t have one.

Quelle surprise

Posted on November 18, 2006 by Arthur

So, Uh-Oh, the aliens have returned!yeah, just today, I found out that my blog was added to the list of nominees for Best Sci/Tech blog 2006, courtesy of My Blahg. In the same category, the competition consists of A View From The Isle, Amber Mac, BPWrap, Easternblot, Gecko Boggle, Off The Grid, Penmachine, StayGoLinks, Stevensmac On Blog, The Homely Scientist, The Other Bloke’s Blog and The Filter.

To be honest, I have not read any of the blogs mentioned above, so maybe this weekend I might make some time to look around. Or, just as in politics, I could start ‘swiftboating’ the frontrunners. Hell, yeah:

Amber is actually an alien from outer-space who, if you vote for her, will eat your kitty and hamster and kill every scientist in the world. The worst part is that this time Marc Singer won’t be there to save the world!
If you like kitties, hamsters and scientists, vote xsamplex.

1. Swiftboating according to Wikipedia
2. Satire.

Posted in Hyperlinks | 3 Comments

16.what

Posted on November 16, 2006 by Arthur

In this part of the country, Fall appears to have gone through a dip: for the next couple of days, we’re expecting temperatures around the 16 degrees. I read they have the same kind of weather records in the Olde Country.

2006? That’s the year of voting. I’m not joking: first we had the bizarre win of an ex-Sandinisti leader in Nicaragua. Then we had that major electoral overhaul in not one but two US houses. The Dutch go to the polls. And it looks like the French socialists will have a female candidate for the upcoming French elections (next year that is). (Slightly related: French rebuke Canadian stance on Kyoto)

And what happened in the blogosphere? Meh, boring.

Posted in We-reflect-news | 4 Comments

Comment -uh- noes

Posted on November 13, 2006 by Arthur

Earlier I turned off comments to the recent posts because of a ‘sapm’ attack on one of the earlier entries. I’m considering closing comments on a more frequent rate than the now (default) 7 days.

That said, I may have some more time to work through changes to my WP plugin CommentCentral: I dearly miss a feature that (massively) dumps unwanted comments. Yeah, WordPress’ comment thing sucks a bit.

For the ones I host domains and sites for: Per 31st of October, my main host decided to get rid of (default setting of) the daily logs created by Analog. I haven’t decided if I’ll be turning this on in the near future.

Posted in Truro NS | Comments Off on Comment -uh- noes

Libraries

Posted on November 12, 2006 by Arthur

I don’t specifically remember the first day we (Alfons and I) set foot in a library, but I’m almost certain it was at or around age 8 or 9. The rest is history: there used to be a joke going around that claimed that we (the twins) were practically living in the neighbourhood’s library (which happened to be less than a quarter of an hour bicycle drive from our house).

We both apparently read that much that at a certain age we decided that it was time to start reading books that were meant for older members (age 12 and higher). Talking about being caught red-handed. This was actually an innocent incident: we were after all after readingthick books. Preferably the ones with over 400 pages. I mean, that is supposed to be good. If only librarians thought the same those days. With all respect, mr. and mrs. Librarian: if you see a kid with a 400+ page book, you should obviously let the kid read the book.

Naturally, things got more exciting when we set foot in the Central library of the city: 4 floors full of books and plenty of staircases, nooks and corners with chairs, tables and above all, books. That said, I always thought that the science books were well-placed: it was literally above the center part of the library, which meant that you could hang around and watch people come in and walk by. Naturally, around that section was also were we picked up our first computer books.

Posted in Those-wonder-years | Comments Off on Libraries

Gross vs. Good 5

Posted on November 11, 2006 by Arthur

Gross vs. Good, 5

References: Excellent images of Saturn hurricane. Hurricane on Earth photo is Isabel in 2003.

Posted in Gross vs. Good | Comments Off on Gross vs. Good 5

Not my mail

Posted on November 11, 2006 by Arthur

Every couple of weeks, I check the Mother of all Email accounts to discover that all these hundreds of e-mails in that inbox are all just spam. It makes no sense. The more spam, the less I check that e-mail account. Get it?

You may have noticed this, but it appears that the Democrats had a great election this year. And for the first time in US history, a woman will become Speaker of the House. You know, I could link to a US news source, but for the sake of objectivity, I decide to throw in a randomizer which ended up giving me this link: an editorial from a Pakistani newspaper.

There’s a minor thread at Metafilter about Lynch’s latest movie, ‘Inland Empire’. Who knows what it is about1. But hey, if the NYT says it’s fitfully brilliant, it must be a hallucinatory movie. That said, if you think about all the other crap that was launched by Hollywood recently, ‘Inland Empire’ could only do better.

1 Earlier about ‘Inland Empire’ (wikipedia).

Posted in Hyperlinks | Comments Off on Not my mail

Yo, what happened to that sound?

Posted on November 7, 2006 by Arthur

Via e-mail I received a question about the Toshiba P100-SD3 and sound problems on Debian/Ubuntu: I decided to run Knoppix 5.1 [I’m still not sure about which version that is, but it’s the latest for sure] and see what goes on.

Apparently, I never did the sound test: during a clean boot, sound was ‘richly not available’, or as we say, ‘not exactly there’. To get it to work (again), I had to go back to ‘alsaconf’, have it properly detect [and install] the Intel HDA sound driver. You probably should run your mixer up again (since the process will be killed during the detection stage): ‘kmix’ (for KDE).

update: I wonder if the issues I had, have to do with the fact that Knoppix has issues with correctly loading the APIC driver(s). I literally, have to use ‘noapic’ during booting, which at the end appears to be ‘unloading’ the Intel HDA driver. The good news is that the (existing) driver should work with the Toshiba’s Audio card.

Running: Linux version 2.6.17 / (Debian 4.0.3-3)

Posted in Ordinateurs | Comments Off on Yo, what happened to that sound?

Notably. Really.

Posted on November 6, 2006 by Arthur

We had our first snow today, a whopping 2 cms. or so. It surprised the dog too, yes.

Earlier this week, while playing a couple of mp3s I discovered that today’s MP3 players generally don’t work for me. I can’t get used to Windows Media Player, for example: it’s clumsly and bloated. Fair enough: for one of the BBC (video) reports I needed RealPlayer, hence why I decided to download it (once) again. While I find the interface a lot cleaner, I honestly think RealPlayer (nee Helix player) makes a serious contender for the ‘Another obnoxious mediaplayer’ prize, in the category of ‘Me Too™’. For example, RealPlayer has no real random play feature1, however, it has an option to ‘sort the playlist randomly’. No really. It’s almost like that Real Situation when a teacher calls you to the blackboard and you refuse to do so because you don’t Really feel like it. Wait, that’s for Real. That random play feature in RealPlayer is not2.

Maybe I just need a command-line mediaplayer. I’m sure they exist too3.

1 Writing a good randomizer is computer science.
2 ‘Real’ puns not intended.
3 OK. Then.

Posted in Truro NS | Comments Off on Notably. Really.

Yo, what happened to the news?

Posted on November 5, 2006 by Arthur

In Earth and the moonthe run-up to the US mid-term elections, it appears that every minor news item was blown up into political theater: First, Kerry made a jab at the White House, which in turn demanded an apology because Kerry (according to the White House) had insulted the armed forces. OK.

Then, there was the ‘uncloseting’ of an American pastor, who (naturally) vehemently denied accusations he had sex with a male prostitute. A couple of days after, Haggard eventually confessed of having a ‘lifelong problem’. Since he was known for his anti-gay stance and with his ‘lifelong problem’ in the back of his mind, that makes him, let me say this appropriately, ‘not really a credible person’1. What would Dawkins say?

Oh, and then today, Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging, which caused a little distraction (and relief) for the Bush administration. If this news will help the GOP, that remains the question. As of today, the Electoral Vote site predicts that the US congress is going to be a tad blue-ish.

But the best news item (saved for the last paragraph, of course) was that photo of Saturn made by spacecraft Cassini. It shows the pretty Saturn rings and a tiny dot in space called Earth (direct link to image). I mean, it’s not as pretty as that image of Earth and moon shot by Voyager 1 in 1977, but it surely puts the US ‘political scenery’ in perspective. On a scale from 1 to 10, US politics is as interesting as 10-29.

1 I was thinking of another word, but I leave that to the readers. For some kind of reason, I do feel sorry for his family.

Posted in We-reflect-news | 3 Comments

Com0Com

Posted on November 2, 2006 by Arthur

For the uninitiated: Framework 2.0 nowadays sports genuine Serialport communication (via an extra class/component called SerialPort) [MSDN link]. The class supports both blocking and non-blocking forms of communication.

A good way to test serial port communication (without the need of plugging hardware to your serial port, that is if you have one1) is by using a virtual serial port driver. A fairly good one is the (open-sourced) com0com driver, which you can find around this area. If you’re not used to poking around the registry, here a brief outline of how to install the driver under Windows XP (tested on both Home/Professional editions):

  1. Download the driver (you can also download the sources if you wish)
  2. Unzip the driver to the folder.
  3. Launch the ‘Add Hardware wizard’.
  4. ‘Have you already connected your bla-bla’ – Yes, Next.
  5. From the installed hardware list, scroll down and select ‘Add a new hardware device’.
  6. ‘Install the hardware that I manually select from a list’.
  7. ‘Select all devices’ (this takes a while)
  8. ‘Select Standard port types’ – ‘Communications Port’.
  9. Select ‘Have Disk’, go to folder and select the com0com.inf file.
  10. At this stage Windows will add to try 2 extra com ports CNCA0 and CNCB0. It will ask to install the hardware. FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS AND DON’T PRESS CANCEL. Remember, two ports are supposed to be added.
  11. When done, it’s time to rename the ports. C# doesn’t like silly names for COM ports, so check your hardware list and find out which port numbers are still available. Add these ports to the registry (as described in the readme file). We at xsamplex made it easier for you, of course. You can copy and paste the following fragment to a file (save with .reg extension). Once again, choose the portnumber of your liking: 
    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\
Services\\com0com\\Parameters]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\
Services\\com0com\\Parameters\\CNCA0]
"PortName"="COM5"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\
Services\\com0com\\Parameters\\CNCB0]
"PortName"="COM6"

    (Note: Remove extra line breaks after CurrentControlSet key)

  12. Restart your computer.
  13. Do a test using two Hyperterminals: connect one to COM 5 and the other to COM 6.

And that’s it!

1 Most laptops might not even come with a serial com port…

Posted in Ordinateurs, Programming | Comments Off on Com0Com

No subtitles.

Posted on October 31, 2006 by Arthur

I watched the October 30th show of Pauw & Witteman (Dutch only), for which I apparently have to thank the IT department of the Dutch broadcasting crew for. The show featured the guests Henny Vrienten (earlier at xsamplex), JunkieXL, politician Kant and podcasting priest mr. Roderick Vonhogen (you can find his [catholic tinted] podcasts at sqpn).

I watch the program so once in a while: it provides a sort of ‘litmus’ test to see what is playing in that old country overseas. Obviously, with the upcoming elections, the main discussion theme was the healthcare system. JunkieXL had some interesting remarks about what living on a different continent means. Kant (who apparently is an epidemiologist ) was the choice-candidate for minister of Health in a future center-left cabinet (according to the influential Dutch association of physicians and family doctors). Obviously, she struck a note when she said that this was obviously an honour: after all, family doctors are literally closer to the electorate than, say (ed: paradox alert), politicians?

I do find Dutch shows rude so once in a while: I think I’ve mentioned this before, oh, maybe many months ago. I also believe that the public broadcaster should provide subtitles for their shows, preferably in 10 different languages, including Canadian1

1 My Firefox spelling checker apparently is geared to only support American English words.

Posted in Hyperlinks | 2 Comments

The Update

Posted on October 31, 2006 by Arthur

Today, apparently the IE 7.0 update made it into a Windows XP patch. I say ‘apparently’, because while it appeared to be installing right (plus it deleted the previous Beta version of IE 7 I had installed a couple of months ago), upon restart, I found out that the original IE 6.0 had been ‘reinstated’ from the realms of Windows Uninstall Labyrinth.

I’m not kidding. I guess this may serve as a warning to others: if you have a beta version of IE 7.0 installed, consider uninstalling it first before accepting the Tuesday patch. If that didn’t help either, then there’s probably a bug in the Windows Update system.

11/21/06: Huzzah: the IE7 update finally made it through!

Posted in Ordinateurs | Comments Off on The Update