Raimi war hier

PS: Has everyone of you decided what to do with the leap second today?

I like mystery hardware. Stefan brought me a Sun VTU 100 C set of which we dont have a clue of. This term cannot be googled and Sun doesn't have it on the website. It seems to be a pair of transmitter/receiver for video (and perhaps keyboard) signals over a distance of 100m. Both boxes basically contain some connectors and transistors for (de)amplifying (2N3866).
One notable thing might be this switch-like blue thing shown here. Little metal clips that can fitted or removed. Seems to be an ancestor of DIP switches. Anyway, I'll probably throw it away but if anyone knows what this (around) 1991 technology was used for, I would be glad to hear about it. Also, hardware manufacturers should be forced to leave old product sheets online forever.

As noted earlier, I am still waiting for 2.6.15 to be released. In the meantime my machine crashed several times and the root filesystem got b0rked. Not fatally, just enough to force a fsck at every reboot which did not finish because the fs contains errors. This makes me wonder how I actually managed to repair a broken root fs up to now. As I learned the hard way, you must not fsck a mounted fs (even read-only mounts make it be destroyed in a snap). But since the fsck program is on the root fs and since you cannot umount / in single-user mode - how am I supposed to repair the root fs? This time i bootet a Debian netinst boot cd in expert mode (what else). The tricky part is to bring up software raid since the autorun (mdrun) doesnt find existing raids (for reasons beyond my comprehension). The trick is to mdadm -Ac partitions -m 0 /dev/md/0 which scans automatically the partitions from /proc/partitions and assembles everything belonging to minor number 0 into /dev/md/0 (1 for /dev/md/1). Then I could fsck.ext3 /dev/md/0, holding my breath everytime I had to type 'y'. But it worked out and my root fs is now okay. ...or should I go for 2.6.14.5 for instant relieve?

Berlin is a dangerous place for bicyclists like myself. For improved security I upgraded my helmet. Shown here is Mark II, which adds a blinking Smiley on top of the battery casing (which used to be a backlight). The 4 big red LEDs belong to a helmet set which broke due to a design mistake. I originally dismantled the backlight and removed the LEDs. The 4 helmet LEDs (which are glued to it using silicone) are connected to the 3 outlets of the backlight.
The Smiley was added parallel to one of the LEDs. The Smiley itself is a cheap christman-fair accessory featuring 5 blinking LEDs (two red, two green, one blue). It used to be powered using two 3V button cells). Since i usually use the blinking mode of the backlight, I added a 2200 uF capacitor which provides a more stable voltage source for the blinking Smiley. It usually blinks the left and the red eye in red now.
This whole thing would be more fun when I added some blue or white LEDs pointing forward. I also need a bigger power supply. Those not-really-3V of the two R3 rechargeble batteries are not enough. Stay tuned.

Gestern hatten die Berliner Shito Ruy Vereine ihr erstes Enbukai. D.h. jeder Verein zeigte mit seinen Farb- und Schwarzgurten, was er konnte. Die Bewertungen waren dann auch nicht so wichtig. Danach gab es dann auch noch eine Weihnachtsfeier mit leckeren Sachen und vielen netten Leuten. Sehr schoen das alles. Vielen Dank auch an Timo, dass er ein paar taugliche Photos gemacht hat. Ich brauche unbedingt einen Blitz fuer meine Kamera.

What a surprise. As of yesterday evening I am a 4th Kyu in Shito-Ryu Karate. I earned the first five belts in Shotokan Karate (years ago). We had an "exam training" at the Do Kai Dojo yesterday. That is, all the students came together for a training while two of them were going to be examined for their next belt. I participated as usual but to my surprise I also received a certificate at the end. Since both the 5th and the 4th Kyu wear a blue belt, I just continue to wear mine. Yes, I know, you don't care. But to me, this means something :)

While 2.6.15 is not released yet, I can use the time and note why I wait so eagerly. Ever since I got livsfare up and running with a GeForce and a bttv board there was something wrong. Switching TV channels quickly makes the machine crash, so do uptimes of about a day and watching TV. I suspected nvidia but that theory doesnt hold. The kernel oopses I get indicate something fundamentally wrong with the VFS so I hope, that this patch makes a difference. On the other hand I sure hope that the nvidia driver still works with the new kernel. It seems that many kernel developers dont care for proprietary drivers and nvidia doesnt care for supporting all the kernels quickly. They release not enough drivers for my taste, and with every new kernel there is the fear that it breaks for good. But with Linus applying a patch (i cannot find a link of) specifically for compatibility with the nvidia driver plus the many patches against hardware drivers I use I'm confident that the new kernel will be good for me. If only it was out, yet... ps: git looks very interesting.

Ihr werdet ruhig und hoert nur auf meine Stimme. Ihr werdet 1) Nicht mehr ueberraschend rechts ueber die Busspur abbiegen und mich dabei beinahe umfahren. 2) Nicht mehr auf der Rechtsabbiegerspur mit nach vorne Fahren, dann aber geradeaus ueber die Kreuzung und dann ohne zu blinken euch wieder in der normalen Spur einordnen. Vor allem werdet Ihr das nicht einhaendig tun, weil Ihr gerade telefonieren muesst. 3) Nicht mehr 1km vor der Ampel mit auf die Busspur fahren, nur weil Ihr rechts abbiegen wollt. Und vor allem werdet Ihr das alles nicht innerhalb von 4 Minuten auf meinem Weg zur arbeit machen. PS: Und wenn ich schonmal dabei bin: Blinken ist _nicht_ optional, auch wenn das Lenkrad trotzdem funktioniert. PPS: Bei drei seid Ihr wieder hellwach und haltet euch an obiges. 1 2 3.

... heute: Frankreich.

Please note that it was all Katrin's idea to start case-modding. It was also her idea to create an electric picture frame. This statement is entirely voluntary.

My good old Dell Inspiron 7500 has served me well for about 5 years but now it went the way of all the Dells: The right hinge broke. The machine itself and above all the display are still good, though. It's a Pentium III with 600Mhz, 256MB RAM showing photos at 1400x1050. So it seemed only logical to mount this thing to the wall so it can show pictures or videos when guests are around. Also it would be nice to have a terminal near the couch (for emergency internet access).
I dismantled the display cover so that only the panel was left. This wasn't easy because it is both screwed and glued into the cover (which i now have left, btw). The pieces of cork are used for the hot-melt adhesive to attach the back of the panel to the bottom side of the body.
This picture shows the plexiglass plate that holds everything together. The keyboard is screwed to it as well as the body itself. The mouse buttons had to go because they came out too much. The power switch is still on this side of the machine because i would've had to dismantle the body itself to move it somewhere else (it's a microswitch on a little board). Also the keyboard is a little leaning because it is not rectangular and also the cable is too short for a more comfortable position. I consider case-modding of laptops to be a more advanced topic (especially for the handicraft-challenged like me). However, the next laptop should be completely dismantled and rebuilt in a very different way.
I had to place new network and power sockets for the picture frame, but that's worth it. What's left to do: Automatically make it start a logged-in X session with free access from my local network. Use cases have to be defined (play a CD/DVD/mp3, show/download pictures from a flash medium) and scripts should automatically launch the required applications. Also the X server should get red of the screen saver.