Speaking of MariaDB, that has to be one of the best About page photos I've seen in a long time!
In my part of the world, it appears we have MariaDB developers in Japan, Korea and Australia. The way the Malaysia developer has his feet in Borneo and the Peninsula is very cute :).
Contrary to my outward obsession with the latest and greatest gadgets, computers and peripherals, I also revel in the challenge of maintaining older devices. That's fluff speak for "I'm a nostalgic fool who sees no need to replace devices that continue to serve me so well".
I have a Mac Pro 1,1 pictured above on my loungeroom desk (not this one). It's not particularly fast by today's standards, but it serves its purpose as a iTunes, file, print and scanner server admirably. I often delegate longer compression or build tasks to it to keep my MacBook Air from toasting itself. The simple hard drive sleds allow me to routinely swap out storage whenever we get a capacity boost. It's dependable, easy to administer and reminds me of my long lost PowerMac G5.
If you can't tell by now, I absolutely adore this machine.
Unfortunately, it also can't officially run anything past Lion. While otherwise being a 64–bit machine, it still requires a 32–bit boot loader which Mountain Lion and Mavericks no longer provide. It's rather ironic that my lower performing unibody MacBook is able to run an OS that my Mac Pro can't.
While innocently searching for pictures of kittens, I saw a guide on MacRumours. The living legend tiamo has posted a replacement 32–bit EFI that lets you install and run Mavericks on these early generation Mac Pros. There's no need to use Chamelion or other "hackintosh" solutions, its otherwise a vanilla, legitimate install of OS X running on real Apple hardware.
I won't say what I did and didn't do.
For starters, I certainly didn't follow these instructions from the same thread to create a bootable Mavericks memory key. I didn't then replace the 64–bit boot loader in the two required places, add my Mac Pro's "Mac-F4208DC8" board–ID to the required plist files, then boot from the key and install it on my Mac Pro.
I didn't then realise the key needed to be imaged on a partition of the key, rather than the key root. Which certainly didn't lead me to reimaging the Mavericks installer on a partition and rebooting to install again.
And finally, I certainly wasn't overjoyed to see my venerable friend booting Mavericks, with performance and boot times I hadn't ever seen from this machine before! The new memory management in Mavericks is marvelous.
A few things to note, if you attempt this. Firstly, I've read mixed reports that such a setup doesn't work with iCloud or iMessages. I haven't had a chance to try, given I didn't do it (and neither should you, and if you do, I'm not responsible), but be aware of it.
Mavericks has also since removed accelerated drivers for several of the graphics cards in the original Mac Pros, including the X1600. I was lucky enough that I upgraded to a cheap 8800 GT a few years ago, so I still have full hardware acceleration. I'd almost swear performance is better, especially with Hi10P anime.
And finally, there's no reason Apple couldn't change your lovingly replaced boot.efi with a future software update. You'd be wise to keep a bootable memory key with the altered boot.efi available in case you ever need to boot with it and swap it back. I would think.
Welcome to 2014, my aluminium friend.
This is a cross–post from Anime@UTS, the University of Technology Sydney’s best (and only) anime club. Desu~
Hello club members! Over the coming days, your humble second term webmaster will be unfurling the new site design and back end. Developed with Kiri, it will be bolder and more interesting than the current theme, along with a few new features I hope will make the site more awesome for all ^_^.
As part of a behind the scenes look into the Daily Lives of Webmasters (and Webmistresses), I thought I'd share a local issue I had, and the solution so absurdly simple it'd make any other webmaster and sysadmin enter hammerspace to retrieve a weapon to beat me senseless with. Alex knows what I'm talking about.
I'd been rebuilding my local (and increasingly misnamed) LAMP stack on my MacBook Air to test prior to deployment. The world seems to be moving to MariaDB for reasons that are beyond the scope of this post, so rather than updating MySQL I figured I'd give it a shot.
The following errors in the log file said OH NO YOU DON'T:
140208 21:39:37 mysqld_safe mysqld from pid file /usr/local/var/mysql/iYuki.local.pid ended 140208 21:39:47 mysqld_safe Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /usr/local/var/mysql 140208 21:39:47 InnoDB: The InnoDB memory heap is disabled 140208 21:39:47 InnoDB: Mutexes and rw_locks use GCC atomic builtins 140208 21:39:47 InnoDB: Compressed tables use zlib 1.2.5 140208 21:39:47 InnoDB: Initializing buffer pool, size = 128.0M 140208 21:39:47 InnoDB: Completed initialization of buffer pool InnoDB: Error: log file ./ib_logfile0 is of different size 0 50331648 bytes InnoDB: than specified in the .cnf file 0 5242880 bytes! 140208 21:39:47 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' init function returned error. 140208 21:39:47 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' registration as a STORAGE ENGINE failed. 140208 21:39:47 [ERROR] Unknown/unsupported storage engine: InnoDB 140208 21:39:47 [ERROR] Aborting 140208 21:39:47 [Note] /usr/local/Cellar/mariadb/5.5.35/bin/mysqld: Shutdown complete
Well darn, I said, as I stroked my non existent beard. Frank would do that better than me.
The problem, as is perennially the case, existed between my keyboard and chair. In the process of uninstalling MySQL and installing MariaDB, I'd failed to remove MySQL's logfiles which differed in size to what MariaDB was expecting.
Removing these logfiles solved the issue. Once removed, MariaDB was able to recreate them to its taste:
% rm /usr/local/var/mysql/ib_logfile* % echo Everybody's Heard that The Bird is The Word % echo Desu
What does this have to with anime? Baka, it's everything! Which means, I got nothing. Happy Saturday!
After over a year of soul searching, Microsoft has a new CEO in the form of Satya Nadella. From the internal cloud computing division, he relieves Steve Ballmer. As with most groundbreaking infocomm stories like this, the story isn't nearly as interesting as the way it's being reported.
Sometimes I feel as though we've all stepped through some sort of magical transporter, where opinions made and certainties cemented evaporate as quickly as the steam from this lovely cup of hot water.
I don't mean to rain on the parade of the technology press, but whatever happened to Stephen Elop? Last year, all we could read was that Microsoft was buying Nokia in some sort of Apple-NeXT deal. With a former Microsoftian coming back into the fold, we read it would be just like Steve Jobs returning to the company with the aim of turning it around. He was hailed as Microsoft's savior, bathed in bold Lumia colours.
It didn't make a whole lot of sense to me at the time, given Nokia's performance with their technically interesting but poorly received (at least in the market) smartphones. Still, this line of reasoning echoed throughout technology news outlets and blogs. Even my fellow Apple and *nix bloggers with whom I generally agree had resigned themselves to this being fact, with most questioning just how long Steve Ballmer would keep the seat warm for him.
Some sites such as VG247 are saying sources close to Mr Elop were responsible for starting the rumours. While we've seen no proof of this, it wouldn't be the first time the press took a snippet like that and ran with it as fact.
This should teach a lot of us, myself included, that nothing is certain until it happens. It's also not a sign of weakness to admit when you get something wrong; and only referencing Stephen Elop in the context of "being snubbed" doesn't really cut it.
As for Satya Nadella, I wouldn't begin to pontificate the challenges he faces, though from what I've seen so far he seems like a fascinating person. While the rest of the company floundered in UAC dialogs, coloured tiles and squirting Zunes, its undeniable Azure has been a huge success. About the only thing that concerns me, as an Australian/Singaporean English speaker, is how I'm supposed to pronounce Azure. It's ah-syou-are, right?
Photo of Satya Nadella by LeWeb.
I had a rather remarkable and wonderful day today. Not only is my girlfriend Clara a computer nerd, but she shares in my ever–since–my–childhood rail interest! We spent much of the day at the Thirlmere Train Works rail museum; its vast size and the sheer number of photos we took ensure neither of us have the energy to post about the trip today.
It reminds me of what my mum used to say when we'd go on holidays. The first time we went to Europe as a family, we went to a few many tourist spots, and too many few less travelled paths along Germany, France and Scotland than I can count. Despite being a professional photographer and film developer, she barely took any photos at all; and the ones she did take were mostly of us, not the locations.
She said it was more important to relish the experience, not relish in taking pictures of the experience. If you spent most of your time with your face buried behind a camera, you're always seeing the place through glass, and never once with your own eyes.
Even as a kid, I found that rather profound. I'm also a sentimental, nostalgic fool, and like taking pictures to remember experiences.
It's why when I travel, I try to do both. Taking in the experience is so vital; in the case of today it was witnessing the sheer majesty and awe–inspiring mechanics of some of the most technologically beautiful moving objects humans have ever constructed. It was also a chance to revel in the history with Clara, and to find the best angles and lighting to take great shots. I made sure to do all of these in equal doses.
I suppose it comes down to what you want to get out of your trip. If you want memories in your heart, maybe you can leave the camera at home. If you want to remember an experience, perhaps pulling the camera out can help. If you want to improve your photographic technique, and see the experience as a vast subject for you to focus on, then by all means snap away.
Personally, as a 20–something IT guy, I'm still naïve enough to think I can have my cake and eat it too :).
Highly flattering photo of Vadim (left) and I by the illustrious Clara Tse!
This has been one of those posts that has been written so many times, I could probably recite it from memory if you asked me. Thankfully, you're far too nice of a reader to call me on that. Needless to say, rather than spinning my wheels on this for another day, and with our subject's 21st rapidly fading into the distance, I figured enough was enough and I should just post what Clara and I wrote here. So here we go!
In the extravagant introduction to the otherwise silly Noucome, or My Mental Choices are Completely Interfering with my School Romantic Comedy, history is depicted as being driven by the choices made by influential people. Should I cross the ocean, or the mountains? 1 + 1 = 2, or E = mc2?
I first met Vadim Brodski (or Vadims Brodskis to his Latvian friends!) during our first class at the University of Technology, Sydney. At the time, I had just moved back with my father and sister from living in Singapore and KL, and was still feeling a little nervous. I was to find out Vadim had moved from a far more distant place, though eerily one I was familiar with.
Walking into the tiny lecture room on that cold spring morning, I made the decision to sit towards the front. I scouted out a row of empty seats just to the left of a rather tall individual with dark hair. I apologised briefly as I moved across his field of vision and over to the chairs.
After a brief introduction to the course and university, our new lecturer Dr. Laurel Dyson informed us that UTS graduates were praised for their technical abilities, though employers had concerns about their communication skills, or lack thereof. Deciding to rectify the situation with her next generation of IT students, she instructed us to introduce ourselves to the person next to us.
Uh oh, I thought to myself, my mind racing at the prospect of having to converse with not only another human bean (thank you Clara and Arrietty!), but one I did not even previously know. Or as Clara just corrected me, "a complete stranger"!
I turned to this dark–haired individual I'd walked around before. As Clara puts it, someone of a similar standing to me, given the relative proximity of his height to my own. As Fate (Stay/Night) would have it, I looked down and noticed his iPhone 4 lock screen. Who should it be there smiling with sinister cuteness but Kyuubey!
I hadn't watched all of the series by that stage, and couldn't remember that evil little creature's name, so my first word to Vadim was "Madoka"?! Suffice to say, we took off like a Dai Gurren piercing the heavens (and with spelling corrected by Clara). Best of all, he shared my love of Toradora and TsundeRie!
Over the coming days, my cheeky new Latvian friend informed me that I owed him $5. Without telling me, he'd registered the both of us in the Anime@UTS club, and that we have our first anime screening the following Monday! There was a screening neither of us would forget, trying to figure out the wonders that are the lifts in the UTS tower!
Of all the friends Clara and I have made through classes and other UTS activities, it was members of the Anime club that became our longest lasting and most meaningful. Through club activities like Running Man, the weekly screenings and games, the adventures of being club execs, to spending an evening or idle lunch eating Daruma or Korean. And I can attribute all this to Vadim.
Which gets me back to the idea of choices. It may be a little reductionist or simplistic to summarise the human experience as one of choices, but they played through so decisively here. Had Vadim and I not chosen to sit where we did that day, or had one of us gone to UNSW instead, or if Vadim hadn't gone to that clubs day, its likely we would have never met, or met all our friends, or even our significant others.
Vadim was more than just a friend, he made my trip back to Australia more meaningful and grounded and with more purpose than I could have imagined. If that sounds overly melodramatic or yaoi, so be it. The girls would all agree, I could do a LOT worse than Vadim ;).
So Clara and I wish Vadim a happy twenty–first. May some of that positive impact he's had on all our lives come back to him ^_^.
I got a real kick out of these photos by David Johnson taken in 1991. The streamlined, green beast is the 3801. Built in 1943, she's probably Australia's most famous and widely travelled steam locomotive. Above her, we have Sydney's Monorail, built fourty–four years later in 1987.
Had you asked people at the time which train would still be running in 2014, I wonder how many would have got it?
To be fair, 3801 is still undergoing her mechanical overhaul, but it's hoped she'll be hauling Heritage Express trains again at some point. Sydney's Monorail, as widely publicised last year, is now no more.
Since bringing my new site design online, I've had dozens of responses from people asking why I publicly post an encryption key on my About page. It's a PGP public key, and you can use it to send me encrypted messages.
In symmetric encryption, we use the same key to encrypt and decrypt data. If you symmetrically encrypted an email to me, you'd also need to send me the key so I could decrypt it. Problem is, anyone else intercepting our traffic could decrypt it too, which would negate the purpose!
To solve this problem, PGP uses asymmetric, public key cryptography. When we create a new PGP identity, the software generates two mathematically-related keys for us:
If you want to send me an encrypted message, PGP will encrypt it using my public key. This message can then only be decrypted with my private key, which PGP uses when I receive your message. If I have your public key, I can then send you an encrypted reply.
Another application of this is email signatures, which can be used to ensure the integrity of a message. Instead of encrypting the entire message, it only encrypts a hash of the message. When you receive my email, PGP will perform a hash of the message and compare it to the decrypted hash I sent you. If they match, the email wasn't tampered with.
Those are the very basics. If you're interested, grab Enigmail for Thunderbird and SeaMonkey, or GPGMail for Apple Mail. I'm nerdy enough to think sending encrypted messages is a lot of fun.
Image is by Silvan Schmid. His page has more detail on how PGP works, including the web of trust concept.
My American friends and I usually differ in how we write our dates. Once a month though, we're able to cast aside our chronometric differences and celebrate a date that's perfectly valid in both our systems. Today we have 02/02/2014.
Not keen to let my terrible 22 tutu pun die, I naturally hit the anime image boards in the hopes of finding some tutu art to share here this evening. Among the surprisingly sparse offerings, I was delighted to see another post from the artist sawasawa.
What sawasawa was able to do with monochramatic pencil blended with just a
few precious colours was really something special. A few of their posts were
a little ecchi (or risqué in the old language), but were never tasteless.
Sadly, their original site has long since been lost in the 404 ether, though I've since been told they have a pixiv account now. It's my hope more of their earlier work makes it there eventually.
The breathtakingly detailed, fluid, chaotically ordered visuals, situations and phycological journeys had me believing I was on drugs. Well, technically I was for my continuing flu–like thing, but I'm talking about those leaves they recently legalised in Colorado.
What else could I be talking about but the second movie in the Madoka Magica universe. This afternoon, the Sydney otaku community graced the Dendy cinemas in Newtown as we did last year for our second dose of dark, magical girl anime.
The twisting plot seemed so inexplicable and fragile; between flashes of light, crumbling buildings and bullets were a series of coincidences and tenuous connections that surely couldn't assemble themselves into anything even remotely appearing to be logical. Yet, at the end, it all made perfect sense, so much so that it seems almost stupid to think of it happening any other way.
This is a spoiler free zone, though I will say the beginning especially was so well crafted as to reach the realisation at around the same time as the protagonist. I'd also say that despite the sudden change in allegiances, I somehow felt it was right; we're all flawed, and it only showed that despite higher callings or other such mythical ideas, we're all still humans who can be pushed to the brink. It made the character(s) more believable, even if its harder to look at her/them quite the same way now. For there to be great light, there must be…
My only regret was my condition hadn't improved as much as I had thought, and the trip turned out to be too much, too soon for my tired body to handle. As such, I wasn't able to go to Vadim's birthday celebrations, or Sashin's earlier in the week. For them I have a couple of posts planned for when my mental faculties have returned enough to give them the attention they deserve, stay tuned ^_^.
