xsamplex

I didn’t break the Internet today. It was him!

Really.

update (Apr 16th):We did it.

Last night, I watched the premiere of the NBC series ‘Revelations’ and I’m not really impressed. That’s mostly because of the fact that the premiere was only one hour long, marginalizing Bill Pullman’s and Natascha McElhone’s (links after pressing the infinity symbol link) highly anticipated acting skills.

Another thing that leaves me thinking is the question, why Revelations? Being (slightly) known with the background of that ominous section of the Bible (and having heard of other films about that subject from scare-crowing relatives), what is the point of these mini-series?

Talking about the Apocalypse, my parent’s encyclopedia (the ever wise WinklerPrins) called the Revelations an insignificant part of the Bible, written by a disciple who was penning down the life, struggle and persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire.

The dragon, Satan, as the Roman Empire: now, that is a view I can live with.

I was listening and watching the NBC documentary about the ‘Da Vinci Code’ and thought I heard a musical piece I recognized.

Wasn’t that music from Ultima 7?? No really, you say (mp3)?

Thinking back of playing Ultima 7, if I recall correctly, the Avatar’s mission was to dispel a sect called the ‘Fellowship’. It was one of the better Ultima’s of the set and I’ve always wondered how Garriot could get away with this in America. Brilliant.

Caudium is a webserver, written in C, sporting a non-forking kernel. That’s really good, but why the hell does it needs to be installed for, when apt-getting php4-gd?

I’m talking about Debian’s super package manager, you know, the one with Super Cow Powers. Moo. It’s broken. No: really.

If you want to install the GD packages for PHP4, you get Caudium for free. In the real world that would be great. In the world of dependencies, it just raises question marks. Where are the bloggers/pundits when you need them? This is earth shattering, non-partisan, technicality-bickering and not-so-fantasticodelicigracicomical.

upd 1: 04/11/05: It’s fixed!

upd 2: 04/11/05: I had an ugly update using the latest test snapshot: apache ended up returning an error everytime php tried to make a connection with mysql:
/usr/sbin/apache: relocation error: /usr/lib/php4/20020429/mysql.so: undefined symbol: php_sprintf

Apparently the php.ini file in /etc/php4/apache/ was replaced. I uncommented the mysql.so line in this file.

upd 3: 04/11/05: And finally managed to correct that devilish imagecreat…() function undefined error on the debian install: added the (gd) extension to the same php.ini line. (which is weird, because a test with php_info() definitely suggests it has been compiled within PHP.

Earlier this day, I completed the task of putting the WAP together and got it to work with the new router (tip: over at Staples they have wireless routers on sale (ranging from 30 -40 dollars), which saves you from buying a router and WAP altogether). I was surprised about the strong signal (anywhere in the house) around the house.

Practically everywhere I can connect to the network which lead me to invent new words like ‘Porchblogging’, ‘videoblogging’, ‘live-tv-blogging’ (oh wait, that’s what bloggers already do), ‘drivewayblogging’, ‘kitchenblogging’, ‘deckblogging’ and ‘couchblogging’. Did I forget ‘gardenblogging’?

Now, if only I had a Winer complex, I’d be pushing those words so I could become just as important as Tim lord Sir Berners-Lee. However, you can keep them. Don’t mention me.

I managed to get a LinkSys router and put it in between the hub and this laptop and it seems like it’s working. I had a couple of problems with the internal firewall: apparently there was a conflict between ZoneAlarm and the router itself, but happened to find that an ipconfig /refresh (overriding the defaults) seemed to help.

I can even access my normal sympatico mail once again. Note that I don’t think it’s particularly smart to let the Wizard figure things automatically: better do it by hand (I did this before too with the WAP: had no problem). Though fancy looking, I doubt if it does a good job.

There’s a couple of things I have to do after: first of all reset the Debian server and assign it a better IP address. Secondly, update that server. Lastly: actually see if the other connection goes through or not.

(Update: 12:17 PM): Re: Debian. Got it. I had problems routing first. I misnamed the resolv.host file (had it called resolve.conf). Apt-Updating as we speak.

Looking for details for a houseplant we bought last year, I discovered it was a Flowering Maple, or better yet, an Abutilon striatum.

Ours is growing pretty good, but needs some kind of trellis to support all the twigs. Half jokingly, I refer to it as the Ivey. Luckily, now we know what it actually is, we can focus on its predicament: it has a virus. Those funny yellow specks on its leaves? It’s caused by a virus, a virus that particularly likes Abutilons.

Flowering Maples, although infected, do not seem to suffer in regard to vigor and flowering. In fact, the virus is responsible for most of the species’ ornamental value. Thus, the question arises – Is AMV a disease? According to Webster’s definition of a disease as “an impairment of the normal state of the living animal or plant body that affects the performance of the vital functions”, one could argue that it isn’t.

I always wondered why that cat of ours is chewing those leaves.

(picture courtesy of UCC Biology Department)