jcm's blog

I haven’t posted a blog entry in a while. So here’s a random one because it’s 04:30 in the morning and I feel like a break from sitting in front of the computer, so I’ll sit in front of the computer and write this Seriously though, I’ve just been a little busy with “stuff” lately and planning various things that I’m going to do. Some random points:

• The book is now available for pre-order. This serves as an excellent impetus for finishing it, and also as a replacement for coffee on those evenings and weekends ahead of me.
• I’ve been going to the gym 3-4 times for the last couple of weeks and plan to keep it up. I’m obviously in need of losing a few pounds and it’s a great way to watch TV/iPod and get fit!
• I’ve been asked to get involved with the running of a course at my local University, a course featuring Embedded Linux, FPGAs and the like. I like the idea of lecturing to people for the sake of my vanity. It feels good when people find you and randomly mail you about it.
• Various forms and stuff got handed in to Uncle Sam, I’m hoping to move in October. Actually, I’m not hoping any more, I’m very keen to leave the country
• Lots of other private stuff that I might blog about at some point.

I’m planning on being in Zurich again this weekend to hook up with Sven for a concert. I plan to do a short trip to the US in the next couple of months and will probably aim for another crazy weekend in Ontario/Quebec sometime soon too. I’m confirmed at OLS and debating about giving a BOF at LUG Radio Live 2006 – logistics are fun there because I need to be in two places at once. Fortunately (is it really fortunate? I mean, we could run the thing all year long and it’d probably still be interesting…), OLS finishes the day before LRL and I can physically get back to the UK for a Sunday afternoon session. Then there’s the minor issue of getting back to Ottawa for the next day in time to join some friends for a hiking trip.

For those I mailed about Burning Man, I’m now very interested in planning that – it’s not certain that I’m going (yet), but if I can hook up with a cool group then I’m there. On the subject of cool things to do, I’m also planning this year’s second annual crazy pre-OLS adventure. Since I’ve been to the 6 larger provinces, I’m interested in heading out to the maritimes by train and then doing some cycling/random stuff. Also interested in cycling from Toronto to Montreal (or even from one of those locations to OLS) if Eric and others are keen on giving that a whirl. It is going to rule being 4 hours from NYC and only 7 hours from Ottawa by car – weekend craziness can be taken to the next level. Did I mention I’m insane already?

Jon.

Ok. I know my usage of firefox doesn’t confirm with the norm. I usually have 5-10 open firefox windows and each of those might have 5-10 (or more) open tabs, and I usually keep the damn thing running for several weeks at a time. This might not be normal, but it used to work just fine. These days, I’m having to override the caching behavior on every damned install.

In fact, even that isn’t good enough. Firefox suddenly likes to use more memory than it has in the past and it’s pissing me off. So this laptop doesn’t have a gig of memory – it’s “only” got 512MB, but firefox shouldn’t be causing me to contemplate physically upgrading the memory in my machine. Come on guys, fix that memory footprint problem in post-1.5. It just sucks.

Thrasy thrasy goes the box…

Jon.

According to BBC Breakfast news this morning, the Queen will never abdicate from her role as pointless monarch. Why should she? I mean, the King or Queen has historically been given carte blanche by God the almighty (in some kind of mumbo jumbo fashion) to do whatever they feel is right. And everyone in this country drank the koolaid so thinks this is perfectly fine (hint: the US had a point when they created their alternative system).

I particularly love the interviews they’re running with many misguided people who marvel at the Queen’s life and reflect upon how special she is. Yes she is special, special because she was born into the job. i.e. required no qualifications and was completely unelected by any of us. And she’s free to continue until she feels like giving up or dies. Then one of her equally pointless offspring will take up the valiant banner and continue the quest.

It’s not that I don’t think the Queen has a sense of humor (she did stand on the balcony of the Old State House and read the declaration of independence in 1976) it’s just that I think her job is redundant, deprecated and should have been removed long ago. The only viable option in any sane society is to have fully elected officials. Elected. As in, I voted for them (or not) but there should be no option for magical births into special jobs. Yes, the wealthy are often born into likely positions of future power but they still (at least in theory) need to get elected by some regular person. Yes, I’m bitter, no I don’t want to be the King.

Jon.

So, I pushed out a trivial one line patch that introduces MODULE_FIRMWARE as a kernel API. If it (or something like it) is accepted, then we’ll be able to have drivers announce which firmware files they require rather than just hope they’re around at runtime. Most people seem to think this is a good idea, though one or two complain that this only helps modules. We’ll see.

I joined Fitness First today, forking out £65 ($115 US) of “we don’t charge a joining fee, but we have a startup fee” and roping myself into a regular monthly contribution. But hey, at least now I can (in thoery) go down to the gym on a morning/afternoon and burn some chocolate/whatever. Seriously, working from home means I really should do something like this to keep myself fit and active – I don’t have enough energy right now and it’s not all down to the virus that’s knocked me off kilter.

Finally, I started using gale after contemplating it for a while. Right now, I’m jcm@printf.net while I wait for the keys for printk.net to get signed and returned – we’ll then have a gale server on dmesg too for printk people. It’s an interesting community and the technology is somewhat different from other IM.

Jon.

P.S. Apparently I have a virus, so there’s nothing they can do except tell me to come back in a week if I don’t feel better.

I seem to have managed to get infected with something on my travels. And it’s not clearing up so easily either – so I’m going to a doctor in a few hours (once they open basically) to get some drugs in an effort to find a more heavyweight solution to this ongoing problem. I have swollen glands and what I would assume is a chest/sinus infection of some kind. Lovely.

Anyway. Aside from all the religious mumbo jumbo crap that was the official excuse for the long weekend I lost out on due to feeling crappy, I did get some things done. On Friday night, I finally got pissed off enough to fix whatever stupid ALSA bug was causing hangs (it’s in -mm now) every time I loaded up wine/cxoffice e.g. to play a video or (my favourite) indirectly by clicking on a hypertext link and having the corresponding plugin crash out my box. Not very useful for development – neither is the fact that VMWare doesn’t support 2.6.16.blah so I need to run 2.6.15.6 for the moment (yes, I know about any-any, no it doesn’t work for me, no I don’t have time to figure out why at the moment – it’s not annoyed me to that level yet).

Obligatory rant about Easter

I’m not religious. In fact, those of you who know me to any degree know that I don’t buy any of it one bit – that doesn’t mean that I’m not sensitive to other people’s beliefs, just that I have no time for any of this stuff myself. I’m happy if people want to spend Easter contemplating the live and death of Jesus Christ – just don’t expect me to even feign interest in any of this stuff (other than purely from an analytical standpoint). So, I feel it’s rediculous the level to which this country is skewed in favour of traditional Christian festivals like Easter even in today’s multicultural society (which, by the way, is a very good thing). Yes, people who celebrate Easter probably includes a lot of the populous, but I don’t seem to be seeing prime time BBC TV shows covering Muslim festivals to the same degree, for example.

The pope should STFU and stop trying to tell Iran to play nice. I’ll listen to him when he agrees to sending contraception into AIDS ridden Africa, but until then, I have no interest in anything he has to say about how other countries should run their affairs. And he should know better about trying to tell the US how to behave – or has he forgotten all about the Crusades and the many other similar events through history?

It’s about time the UK fixed its national holidays around a non-religious base. In a similar vain, I agree with the NUT calling for an end to the creation of Faith Schools in the UK. I feel that those that are already in place should be compelled to offer a completely non-religious basis to their curricula. Like politics, education should be completely unbiased and not motivated by private enterprise or the apparent will of higher powers. By all means teach the stuff, but let the next generation have a chance to form their own opinions. Believe me, I went to a Catholic school – I know about this stuff first hand.

I used to enjoy Religious Studies lessons a lot because they were heavily skewed towards the Catholic viewpoint on almost all issues, and I wasn’t buying most of it. None of the other kids seemed interested in putting up a resistance or in doing anything much beyond inflating plastic hand gloves and letting them loose, or other similar time wasting activities. I loved debating original sin – the concept that even newborn babies have sin – and the second coming of Jesus Christ. I once kept the class pacified after someone asked me to get the group out of a test – so I got the brother teaching us into an 80 minute discussion on cryopreservation and its implications upon the second coming. If someone dies now, is frozen and is later brought back from the dead at some future time, have they risen from the dead?

Football, innit, wot syndrome spreading alarmingly

Apparently, up to 25% of voters in certain districts may vote for the BNP, the white supremicist party that has infected the UK over the last few years. The reason most often cited seems to be something to do with immigration and asylum seekers and how they’re stealing jobs or something. Yet I bet most of these people who claim to be “affected” are in fact merely annoyed that people coming to the UK will take jobs they won’t do (because why work when you can live off benefits the rest of us pay for, then complain when asked about the changing population) or in fact aren’t actually asylum seekers at all. Many people from Eastern Europe have come to live and work in the UK over the last few years – this is a good thing, it’s Europe working at its best. We’re free to do the same ourselves.

Anyway. I’m pissed off with this country’s voters at even contemplating voting for the BNP. By all means hate Labour, but don’t reduce yourselves to the level that you think you’re doing anyone a favour in voting those fuckwits into office. Just in case you don’t already know, I support the Liberal Democrats in the UK and the Democratic Party in the US. I’m pragmatic – I don’t think these guys have all of the answers, but they have some good ideas about how to improve upon the status quo.

Jon.