Category: Uncategorized

Creating and sending your patches | drupal.org: “The easiest way to get set up for making and sending patches is to get CVS working. Then you can just type: cvs diff -u -F^f [file to patch] to generate a patch. To output it to a file, go: cvs diff -u -F^f [file to patch] > [outfile]”

PhysOrg: The best meteor shower of 2004 peaks on Dec. 13th: “Make hot cocoa. Bundle up. Tell your friends: the best meteor shower of 2004 is about to peak on a long cold December night.
It’s the Geminids. The best time to look is Monday night, Dec. 13th. Sky watchers who stay outside for a few hours around midnight can expect to see dozens to hundreds of ‘shooting stars.'”

Update 2004-12-13:
this post on slashdot suggests: “If you have an old-type film camera, put it on top of a tripod and set it to Bulb mode (in most cameras marked as B). If it is really old, take the battery out, they will function without any power (Mitra, I love these old Prakticas and Zenits). Point it towards gemini or zenith, if you don’t know where gemini is. Leave it for 15-20 minutes running, aperture around f/2-3. Move to a new frame after the period is finished. The chances are you will capture more than a couple of shots. if you leave it pointed to Gemini, the shots will be more spectacular.”

another article says: “The Geminids get their name from the constellation of Gemini, the Twins. On the night of this shower’s maximum, the meteors will appear to emanate from a spot in the sky near the bright star Castor in Gemini.”

the sky fell open crazy this morning, full of pinks and purples, glaring like a mall airbrush kiosk. but because this was somehow and effect of the atmosphere or maybe the frigid cold, and not of pigment or chemical, it is beautiful.

pytagger API

python modules/packages

typedef struct {
 unsigned char *data;
 int storage;
 int fill;
 int returned;

 int unsynced;
 int headerbytes;
 int bodybytes;
} ogg_sync_state;

typedef struct vorbis_comment{
 /* unlimited user comment fields.  libvorbis writes 'libvorbis'
    whatever vendor is set to in encode */
 char **user_comments;
 int   *comment_lengths;
 int    comments;
 char  *vendor;

} vorbis_comment;

http://www.cheston.com/pbf/archive.html
http://www.americanelf.com/
http://www.serializer.net/

defianceohio.terrorware.com

• upload share what ya’ got mp3s – done
• tag demo mp3s with creative commons tags, fix id3v2 tags, upload, and add rdf to http://defianceohio.terrorware.com/audio.php – done
• create torrents for mp3s
• write python code to update ogg/vorbis tags
• modify cctag tool to tag ogg/vorbis files
• create torrents for oggs
• add information about european release, 10 fingers comp to audio page

boxcarbooks.org

• add store photo to website
• add volunteer profiles to website
• remove message about messed up orders from online store
• improve online store search so it’s less picky
• add logging facility

xiph.org: Ogg Vorbis documentation: “Ogg Vorbis I format specification: comment field and header specification”

so, I haven’t been able to keep track of what i’ve been working on formally, but here’s a general overview.

linux kernel upgrade

I wanted ftape support and I wanted loopback encryption, so I had to do a kernel recompile anyway, so I figured I’d upgrade from whatever 2.4.x kernel is the default for debian testing to 2.4.8. I learned a thing or two about building kernel packages for debian which is kind of a slick system. I’ll post the helpful links later.

I ran in to a slew of problems trying to select the right kernel options, mainly forgetting to compile certain modules or compiling things as modules what should have been in the kernel. The biggest problem was that I kept getting a

kernel panic: VFS: Cannot open root device hdb1 or unknown-block (0, 0) please append a correct “root=” boot option
kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block (0,0)

This was because I wasn’t using an initial ramdisk and had forgotten to compile ext2 fs, ext3 fs, ide support, and support for my PIIX4 into the kernel and not as a module.

Then, X wouldn’t start. I don’t think that I compiled the kernel modules correctly for framebuffer support. That’s okay though, because you don’t need fb support to run X. I just modified my XF86Config-4 file to comment out the fb use and X was okay.

Finally, I didn’t have support for my USB mouse. I had compiled the mouse drivers, but forgot to compile in support for my OHCI USB controller.

After fixing those things, all the functionality that I need seems to be there, though I haven’t set up ALSA for sound yet.

terrorware.com

I upgraded the main terrorware.com site to the newest version of drupal. This has user roles which allows the news aggregator blocks to show up for anonymous users.

ranstr – bash script to generate pseudorandom alphanumeric characters