02014/06/25 (localtime) // (emitlacol) 52/60/41020

Hello, and, if you can hear this, welcome to levels 76 - 80 // 08 - 67 slevel ot emoclew ,siht raeh nac uoy fi ,dna ,olleH
This is your captain speaking. // .gnikaeps niatpac ruoy si sihT

Within this ship, I'm the closest to having reached // dehcaer gnivah ot tsesolc eht m'I ,pihs siht nihtiW
the center, the closest to having removed my heart // traeh ym devomer gnivah ot tsesolc eht ,retnec eht
from my chest by turning myself inside-out like a dirty // ytrid a ekil tuo-edisni flesym gninrut yb tsehc ym morf
sock, the one closest to having removed my brain from // morf niarb ym devomer gnivah ot tsesolc eno eht ,kcos
my skull solely by relying upon computers for external // lanretxe rof sretupmoc nopu gniyler yb ylelos lluks ym
memory a lot, and the man with the dirtiest feet. // .teef tseitrid eht htiw nam eht dna ,tol a yromem

But, levels 76 - 80, can't possibly be all that there is. // .si ereht taht lla eb ylbissop t'nac ,08 - 67 slevel ,tuB

Where is the true, original, irreplacable, japan ? // ? napaj ,elbacalperri ,lanigiro ,eurt eht si erehW

--- Am I posting while drunk? Does it matter ? // ? rettam ti seoD ?knurd elihw gnitsop I mA --

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Toaru shojo daisuke

Dear Fusion-san of the fusion-dan fansubbing group,
You WILL find me.
You WILL marry me.
---
Am I posting while drunk? Does it matter ?

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A simple puzzle

A simple puzzle.

What is the meaning of

• mint chocolate chip ice cream
• macadamia nut chocolate brownies
• parmalot milk
• beef jerky
• wakame
• miso soup

being capable of coexisting at the same table ?

Fun stuff to read

• Ender's Game, by Orsenn Scott Card
• The dragonriders of pern (original trilogy) by Anne McCaffrey
• A stainless steel rat is born, by Harry Harison
• So long, and thanks for all the fish, by Douglas Adams

Still don't get it?

Tomorrow, love a stranger from Somali or Taiwan.

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A cautionary tale.
( Enough introductionCollapse )

Now, for a cautionary tale.

A few years ago, I was taken to newton-wellesley hospital, their locked-room, no-exit, psychiatric ward.

I didn't remember how I had gotten in here; but did remember at least three other facts.

• "the earth was without form, and void" (from the bible)
• "anime would make a lot more sense in lower gravity" (from watching anime)
• "the gravitation within a uniform spherical shell, is zero" (from math and physics textbooks)

So, I concluded,

• "The earth is a thin spherical shell, and an anime-like world exists within. Now, if I only I could reach it."

And, I tried to flush myself down the toilet, several dozen times. Didn't work, any time. Only once, did I get into any trouble for this behaviour. None of the staff at the hospital, bothered to verbally explain, that the earth is solid.

In conclusion, teach your kids atheism.

(  . . . Collapse )

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Cool
From Jim Kerr:

Steering columns are designed to retract during an impact by shearing some plastic pins and allowing the outer column tube to slide down the inner tube. This often happens when the driver impacts the steering wheel. To further reduce the possibility of injury, Volvo's S40 uses a pyrotechnic charge to pull the steering column away from the driver.

With 140 millimetres of travel, the steering wheel can be moved away before the driver hits it, reducing upper body injuries. Sensors in the driver's seat monitor seat position in relationship to the steering wheel and sophisticated software activates the charge to retract the steering column only when necessary. Every collision and every driver is unique. The system is designed to react differently for each situation.

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ouch - VLC on win98
After getting annoyed with windows 98 for not supporting submenus in vlc, I noticed that nearly everything that can be done with submenus can also be done by right clicking on the video, gimp style, which does work on win98. Ouch.

Current Mood: annoyed

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Another tiny perl script
===prefix===

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
if ($#ARGV < 0){
    print STDERR "Usage:  | $0 \n";
    exit(1);
}
while(){
    print "@ARGV$_";
}

I used it for background 'tail -f bochsout.txt | prefix "bochsout: "'

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*sumdir
There are a couple of ways to find out how large a directory is, but
there's always room for three more.
( jsumdirCollapse )
( psumdirCollapse )
( psumlistCollapse )Update 2004/06/01: new and improved psumlist.
Another example: rpm -ql <some-package> |
psumlist <some-package>

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background.pl
I wrote this after having an application quit when I closed the terminal window that it was launched from.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
$P=fork();
if ( $P == 0){
    exec "@ARGV";
}

---

syntax highlighted by Code2HTML, v. 0.9.1

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27
screws need to be removed to get the base off my laptop. 6 of these have funny hollow hex heads.

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More on dvds
I upgraded my laptop to a Samsung SN-324FEN and the first two Lain dvds play nearly perfectly on VLC. VLC has the nifty feature that it's possible to hear the english dubbing and watch the english subtitles at the same time. Try that with windows media player.

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Don't run this
perl -e 'while (1){local $foo = 5; fork();}'

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Project looking glass@sun
Watch this movie.

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Wacky cable
A 4.5 inch, red-black-black-yellow 4-strand cable came with a copy of Corel Wordperfect 11; around it was a sticker stating:

This piece of hardware is included to complete the OEM licensing agreement

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Detroit
I'm leaving for detroit, michigan to meet dad's parents and won't be able to update this till Wednesday night. Livejournal users mark356 and opal581 will also be going.

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Update to last post
Upgraded gdm through vnc;

ssh -l jonathan 192.168.1.106 

su

shutdown -r now
(Connection closed)

Repeat as needed.
The exact error message thrown by red-carpet is :(red-carpet:1940): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "bluecurve",
Error: Couldn't import gtk.

The exact error message thrown by vlc is: VideoLAN Client 0.7.0 Bond
[00000198] main input: playlist item `dvd:///dev/dvd@0:1'
libdvdread: Using libdvdcss version 1.2.8 for DVD access

libdvdread: Attempting to retrieve all CSS keys
libdvdread: This can take a _long_ time, please be patient

libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.VOB at 0x00000155
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_0.VOB at 0x000003a8
libdvdread: Error cracking CSS key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_0.VOB (0x000003a8)
libdvdread: Elapsed time 1
( more of the sameCollapse )
The mplayer error message is :
Playing dvd://1.
Reading disc structure, please wait...
There are 22 titles on this DVD.
There are 19 chapters in this DVD title.
There are 1 angles in this DVD title.
DVD successfully opened.
Cache fill: 19.14% (1605632 bytes) LMLM4 Stream Format not found
MPEG-PS file format detected.
VIDEO: MPEG2 720x480 (aspect 3) 29.970 fps 8080.0 kbps (1010.0 kbyte/s)
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [liba52] AC3 decoding with liba52
Using SSE optimized IMDCT transform
AC3: 5.1 (3f+2r+lfe) 48000 Hz 448.0 kbit/s
Using MMX optimized resampler
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, 16 bit (0x10), ratio: 56000->192000 (448.0 kbit)
Selected audio codec: [a52] afm:liba52 (AC3-liba52)
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [mpegpes] MPEG 1/2 Video passthrough
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 480 (preferred csp: Mpeg PES)
Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale...
Opening video filter: [scale]
The selected video_out device is incompatible with this codec.
VDecoder init failed :(
Opening video decoder: [libmpeg2] MPEG 1/2 Video decoder libmpeg2-v0.3.1
Selected video codec: [mpeg12] vfm:libmpeg2 (MPEG 1 or 2 (libmpeg2))
==========================================================================
Checking audio filter chain for 48000Hz/2ch/16bit -> 48000Hz/2ch/16bit...
AF_pre: af format: 2 bps, 2 ch, 48000 hz, little endian signed int
AF_pre: 48000Hz 2ch Signed 16-bit (Little-Endian)
AO: [oss] 48000Hz 2ch Signed 16-bit (Little-Endian) (2 bps)
Building audio filter chain for 48000Hz/2ch/16bit -> 48000Hz/2ch/16bit...
Starting playback...
a52: CRC check failed!
a52: error at resampling
a52: CRC check failed!
a52: error at resampling
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 480 (preferred csp: Planar YV12)
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is 1.78:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [xv] 720x480 => 854x480 Planar YV12
a52: CRC check failed! 2.175 ct: 0.000 1/ 1 0% 0% 0.0% 0 0 1%
a52: error at resampling
a52: CRC check failed!
a52: error at resampling
a52: CRC check failed!
a52: error at resampling
a52: CRC check failed!
a52: error at resampling
repeat the last two lines as needed.
( Xine's error messageCollapse )

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Help!
I now have a somewhat borked fedora system. Here is a list of events that happened before it, in no useful order.

• Got the Equilibrium dvd out of the library; I have it for one week now.
• Tried installing VLC; my windows laptop doesn't have a dvd drive, and this was the first time I've tried playing a dvd on fedora.
• The first time I ran vlc, I selected the wrong mode and the it froze the whole computer. Not even the ssh client that I had connected was responding. Reboot with the power button.
• Finish installing Open-carpet. When starting, it beeps some **GTK WARNING** and refuses to start.
• Try vlc again, this time selecting a different format. Gets as far as showing a black window before yelling "Alsa error: no soundcard configured" or something of the sort.
• Boot up into Knoppix to see if it detects the sound correctly. It does, and I play far too much Frozen Bubble. Knoppix + phoenix bios hangs on shutdown (Knoppix thinks the box is off, but it doesn't turn off), so I turn it off by yanking the power cable.
• Try to boot up, and find that I get an error message instead of a normal graphical login prompt. The error is "There already appears to be an X server running on display :0. Should I try another display number? If you answer no, I will attempt to start the server on :0 again. (You can change consoles by pressing Ctrl-Alt plus a function key, such as Ctrl-Alt-F7 to go to console 7. X servers usually run on consoles 7 and higher.)", selecting no makes the same message appear, selecting yes makes it reappear with a :1 instead of :0. A google search suggests that this is related to gdm, the gnome display manager.
  One of the nice things about having multiple computers is that I can still SSH and VNC into it normally, even though I can't login!

Side note: GNOME has not been that stable for me since upgrading to Fedora Core 2, test 1 (release 1.90). When nautilus runs on display :1, none of the normal file icons show up; just the same generic white icon, and the logs are flooded with stuff like "** (nautilus:1649): WARNING **: No description found for mime type "text/x-log" (file is "hs_err_pid26159.log"), please tell the gnome-vfs mailing list. ** (nautilus:1649): WARNING **: No description found for mime type "text/x-log" (file is "hs_err_pid11572.log"), please tell the gnome-vfs mailing list. ** (nautilus:1649): WARNING **: No description found for mime type "text/x-log" (file is "hs_err_pid11572.log"), please tell the gnome-vfs mailing list."
Other side note: I was running the up2date applet during this time, upgrading about 3 or so packages at once, and it complained about a few a the packages not having valid signatures. I just clicked ok; not sure if that has anything to do with this mess. The Ars OpenForum would probably be a better place to post this.

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Painful image of the day
Anyone what to celebrate Ashoura this year?
Whacky sig
Slashdot user pizza_milkshake has perl -e'$_=q#: 13_2: 12/o{>: 8_4) (_4: 6/2^-2; 3;-2^\2: 5/7\_/\7: 12m m::#;y#:#\n#;s#(\D)(\d+)#$1x$2#ge;print'; when run that evaluates to

 
             __
            /o{>
        ____) (____
      //^--;   ;--^\\
     ///////\_/\\\\\\\
            m m
 

Nifty!
Mild car accident
I've been learning to drive and last sunday while I was backing out of our driveway in my dad's 1988 blue manual transmission accord, I hit a red saturn. Not how I would have liked to start a week.
Canonical vs. absolute paths in Java
When I tried running my filesystem scan utility on my redhat box, it got stuck in an infinite loop because /home/jonathan/.openoffice/user/work/ pointed to /home/jonathan/, so it quickly gets stuck repeatedly scanning paths that begin with /home/jonathan/.openoffice/user/work/.openoffice/user/work/.openoffice/user/work/.openoffice etc. However, requesting the canonical path instead of the absolute path renormals it.
Hosting?
I'd like to post links to files that I write in here; anyone have any recommendations?

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My latest DROD.net/forum addiction side effect . . .
. . . Was the creation of a piece of software that can read a *.demo file, and display statistics on time taken and types of moves made in a tree format, mirrored in a text pane for easy pasting. Get it here(zipped exe) or here(jarred java source). ( Sample outputCollapse )
Note: since free geocities accounts are have so many limitations, you might have to paste the address into a new window to download it. When enough people read my journal, I'll buy a better site.

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Cool news of the day
Mentioned at trnmag, nature materials, and Philips
Philips has built a 64 x 64 monochrome flexible organic transistor display that's 1/3 of a millimeter thick. They've managed to integrate some of the control circuits into the plastic as well, starting with shift registers. It's been bent back and forth 100 times without noticeable degradation. It has a white reflectivity of about 35% and a contrast ratio of 9, being based off of E-ink More detail here
and here.

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