jcm's blog

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.

Apparently, in order to stop the stupidly broken in-memory cacheing, you can add the following to your user.js file in your firefox profile:

// Specify the amount of memory cache
user_pref(“browser.cache.memory.enable”, false);
user_pref(“browser.cache.memory.capacity”, 8196);

I turn it off, then force it to 8MB just in case. Whoever wrote that code either riddled it with memory leaks or just has a broken notion of knowing when memory is running low (read: my machine and those of other people swap themselves to death with firefox, just like good old bloatzilla always did – which is why it got its very own oom killer policy module).

I wrote a quick hack for kswapd to send events on low memory that I’ll clean up and push out but that’s a heavyweight way to fix this bug. Anyway, I love the way they describe this hack on their FAQ pages. You need to refer to 2 other pages just to know where the user.js file should be.

Jon.

So I just got back from LinuxWorld Boston 2006. Had an enjoyable week overall, got to hook up with Sven, Bill, Debra and many other friends, developers and publishing contacts. Had dinner in lots of different (cool) places, had meetings and generally geeked out at a few MIT related events. Got back to the UK on Monday morning and skipped out on sleep until pretty much just now, when I seem to have grabbed a few more hours than I planned – oh well.

I’m so looking forward to living in Cambridge, MA that it’s just not true. It’s a happening place with some very cool people. Anyway, meanwhile I’m back in the UK. Spent some time on work stuff and got distracted fixing an ALSA bug last night that I think I’ll look at again in a minute. I need some coffee. And I’ll write an entry that doesn’t suck later.

Jon.

Here’s an updated list of countries that I have visited. Asia and Australasia is notably lacking at the moment since I cancelled out on plans to go to LCA this year (maybe I’ll go next year instead). I’m sure I’ve missed something, 14 seems a little low, but maybe that’s about right. There’s more to be done.

Image: Countries that I have visited (generated by http://douweosinga.com/projects/visitedcountries

NOTE: This image was not converted from GIF into PNG as in the past. I’ve got to get used to the notion that the Unisys patent has expired.

Jon.

Here’s a list of counties in the UK that I have been to. These are places I’m pretty certain I’ve been to at least once, though Wales is lacking a few places (because I don’t know which counties I’ve been to and it was a while ago too). So, if it’s not highlighted it doesn’t mean I’ve not been there, just that I can’t recall it at the moment.

I’ve visited the counties in yellow. Which counties have you visited? made by marnanel map reproduced from Ordnance Survey map data by permission of the Ordnance Survey. © Crown copyright 2001.

The conclusion is that I could go see a bit more of Scotland and the Isle Of Man (not sure if I’ve been there or not!).

Jon.