Now this is a fantastic idea, Antec are releasing Bakemonogatari decorative panels for their line of PC cases!
I have an Antec A300 case for my FreeBSD file/torrent server, do you think it'd be compatible? I'm sure it'd run faster and more efficiently with a gigantic image of the queen of Tsundere on the side. Not that I'm a sucker for marketing or anything, mind.
Surely Australia has reached a point where we can value relationships by markers such as respect, commitment and love. I have no doubt our laws will one day reflect this.
+1 Penny Wong. Kudos.
One need only replace the label "homosexual" with another such as "White" or "Slave" in arguments against gay marriage to understand just how abhorrent (and I'd argue unconstitutional) the idea of denying these people dignity and rights really are. History doesn't look favourably on those against equality.
(Comments are closed. From past experience these posts attract xenophobic hatred and ad hominum attacks, and I couldn’t be bothered dealing with them).
I'm appalled at the suggestion that the HP Envy is an Apple hardware knockoff. For one thing, the optical drive is on the wrong side, and the power button looks entirely different. It also doesn't run Android, at least not without an emulator.
Peter Fleischer on the Official Google Blog on Monday:
We’re introducing a method that lets you opt out of having your wireless access point included in the Google Location Server. To opt out, visit your access point’s settings and change the wireless network name (or SSID) so that it ends with "_nomap." For example, if your SSID is "Network," you‘d need to change it to "Network_nomap."
This has got to be a hoax.
UPDATE: @Sebasu_tan of A Lonely September has brought to my attention a video statement about the issue.
Been trying the FreeBSD 9.0 release candidate for several days now, and I've been absolutely blown away.
When I first read on the mailing lists that sysinstall was to be replaced with something else, I'll admit I was a little terrified. In a world of overly complex, flaky and resource heavy graphical installation tools, sysinstall was visually unappealing but it got the job done even on modest hardware. I'd seen some screenshots of a FreeBSD graphical installer, and like the curmudgeon I am, I took a disliking.
Fortunately, the bsdinstall system that has replaced it assuaged all my fears. In a word, it's beautiful. Simple, clean, elegant, quintessentially BSD. That was more than one word, forgive me I couldn't resist. As someone who also dabbles in NetBSD from time to time, it's my opinion FreeBSD finally has an installer equally as nice.
Visually, the navigation is clearer and the screens more logically laid out. For someone coming from Linux the lack of a graphical install may seem jarring, but I'd argue the new installer is just as easy to use — perhaps a little moreso — than any I've used on Linux.
The new Guided Partition Editor is a pleasure to use even if you're not a beginner, for one primary reason that rhymes with "kernel" and "blurnal". Wait, that's not a word.
If you've ever done that hack of setting up multiple swap partitions so you can reboot and create gjournals, the installer now lets you define softupdates as well as softupdate journals (UFS SU+J which has made its appearance in FreeBSD 9, more on that in a future post). TRIM support is also built in and selectable from the installer now. As I said on Twitter, I jumped up and started dancing!
I also haven't had time to check this out yet, but this one line in the BSDInstall manpage made my jaw drop.
TARGETS
jail destination
Sets up a new chroot system at destination, suitable for use with jail(8). Behavior is generally similar to auto, except that disk partitioning and network setup are skipped and a kernel is not installed into the new system.
For those who are unaware, jails are one of the most wonderful and elegant features of FreeBSD, and the #1 thing I miss when I use Linux. I run my torrent client, web server and file servers in their own jails on my headless server, they're infinitely simpler to set up and maintain than VMs and provide excellent security. Now they'll be even simpler!
FreeBSD is a beautiful operating system, and with the addition of this new installer, I'm hoping more people will give it a try :).
Stay tuned for more commentary and fun with FreeBSD 9. As I said on Twitter, I haven't been this excited by a FreeBSD release in a long while. I might even give it a try on my ThinkPad again, given the latest release of Fedora broke my graphics.
I woke up this morning to the news that Italy has a new President of the Council of Ministers (generally referred to as the Prime Minister in the Western press). I'd been wondering on The Twitters who they might get, and whether they'd have the same bad luck as the Greeks.
A split second search in the Book of Knowledge turned up this.
Monti is an international adviser to Goldman Sachs
They're not even trying any more.
Some ideas sound great in theory, but when they’re executed they’re somewhat less than spectacular. Some services don’t even sound great in theory.
Yes, in a decision they rarely has to take (that throat clearing noise was entirely unintentional), Google have announced the termination of their Sidewiki service. From the web developers and owners of sites to the general internet using public, I don’t think anybody will be sad to see it go.
Much like their Knol effort, Sidewiki seemed more like a play by Google to take control of something. Unlike Microsoft of the 1990s however, their plans are usually far more subtle. By steering conversations away from a site and into a Google silo, they could own them and define their structure, rather than trying to parse bits returned by their spiders. I assume this would have helped inform their search algorithms, or let them stuff ads between comments.
The whole thing didn’t make sense for a company that bills itself as “open”. Surely the open web approach—where people include comment streams on their own pages—is vastly superior than one service run by one company?
Fortunately, for the site owners who didn’t want intrusive, unmoderated comments attached to their pages, there’s little evidence Sidewiki was really used. A quick polling of my relatively IT savvy family here showed none of them even knew what it was.
I’m sure this won’t be the last time Google tries something like this.
Jerry Novak, Rubenerd.com's most generous patron and all around awesome guy, has asked me to write about how to start blogging. I wanted to dedicate an evening to properly address his question :)
So-called "blogging experts" may differ on the details, but they tend to issue broadly similar recommendations. I chose this post as a contemporary example: 7 Tips for Successful Blogging. Let's take a gander.
I'm usually not so blunt here, and I mean no disrespect to the author of that post, or so many other posts which largely echo this writer's sentiments, but all of these points are bunk. Utterly meaningless. Devoid of any point whatsoever.
You know what a blog is? Forgive the tired cliché, but a blog is something you want it to be. Blog however much you want, on whatever topics you want. Blog about baking and mecha anime in the same place, or just about the best places to drive to avoid tolls, anything! People don't care whether you've followed the rules of blogging, they care about whether you're passionate about what you're writing about.
I think guidelines like these do the blogging community a tremendous disservice. I'm sure plenty of talented, fascinating people no doubt see lists like these, decide blogging is too formal or difficult, and give up. You know who those talented, fascinating people are? YOU. Everyone is, regardless of how you see yourself, and if you don't think you are you're deluded. Enough said :).
Once you've decided what you're going to blog about (or even if you haven't, sometimes they evolve!) the next step is to decide your platform. Compared to when I started out there are tons of choices out there now, each with their own pros and cons.
To start off with, a hosted solution is probably your best bet. WordPress.com gives you a free account and can be upgraded with unique domains and custom themes for very low prices once you decide to take that next step. I've tried Squarespace (from a Cranky Geeks promotion!), Posterous and TypePad which each offer their own unique set of features, but WordPress is the most widely supported and powers some pretty large blog networks. It's relatively simple, has a great iOS app, and Mullenwag is infinitely cooler than Zuckerburg.
If you're comfortable with messing around with databases, file permissions and the like, you can also choose to self host. I prefer having more granular control and host my own version of WordPress, though I've decided to move to something else when time permits. I'm giving some serious consideration to TextPattern, primarily because its simpler and faster, and the people on their support forums are incredibly nice and helpful. Habari also looks like a fascinating choice if you're willing to try something completely new. With the right framework (or bare to the metal!) you could also write your own.
The important thing to keep in mind though is to not get too hung up about what blogging software you choose to use. Thesedays all the major engines allow you to import and export your material, so you can always change your mind. The glaring exception to this rule is Tumblr, though few use that site as a real blogging tool anymore.
For me, I write posts as a form of downtime that has nothing to do with code, university or work. While others play games, I like to curl up on a couch or hang out at a cafe with a cup of coffee or tea or hot chocolate and just write. When I'm busy, my daily train commute also provides ample opportunities for typing away.
The point is, write wherever and whenever you feel comfortable. When I used to work for Discovery Channel, we learned that you can tell from hearing a person's voice whether they're smiling or not, and that emotion comes through in text more easily than you'd expect. If you force yourself to write when you're not in the mood, it won't turn out well. Just do it naturally, and if you don't have time for a while, that's perfectly okay!
Between social networks and news aggregation sites, it seems fewer people can justify blogging thesedays. It's a shame, because while posting to these other types of sites may perhaps be easier, a blog is yours and always will be. Well, provided you do backups :).
Try it out. Don't be discouraged if you don't take to it right away, or if you don't post to it as often as you think you should, or if it takes you a while to find your voice. Because eventually that blog will blossom into something truly unique and special and personal and wonderful, and years from now you'll be really, really glad you did it. ^_^
I had so much fun rendering that 2 bit photo for my Binary 11:11 11/11/11 post, I thought I'd do the same thing for 23:11 11/11/11. For those 12 hour folks, that's 11:11pm you see ;).
Obviously a mixed success! I suppose it was too dark to get a good shot of the UTS building, having just finished my last exam there for the semester. Irony is, my first major test was on the 01/11/11.
Then it was off to Starbucks for a celebratory Toffee Nut Latte. As I mentioned on Twitter this evening, TNLs were one of my favourite Christmas treats growing up in Singapore, and now I can get them here :')
Because I'm a loser, the first thing I did having done my exam was to jump onto my laptop with the coffee in my hand. Given my abject clumsiness, I'm surprised how few times I've destroyed equipment with this beverage!
Then it was time to take the train home from Central (with a brief stop at Circular Quay to take that first photo!)
From the bright lights of the city to dark suburbia. Then across the street home :).
Larger images look far better in 2 bit than these small ones, but it was still a lot of fun!
I reckon you could be really creative with 2 bit colour depth if you knew how to capture the right conditions for an ideal conversion. Even compared to monochromatic photography, you'd be looking for completely different things, such as ruthlessly heavy contrast and normalisation.
