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By Matthieu, 2011-07-14 11:22

Today being my last day in Newfoundland, I figured it might be a good time to write a little about the time I’ve spent here. Got an hour and a bit to kill before heading to the airport, but only have a smartphone to type on, so we’ll see how much I manage to write.
Let’s start from the beginning, I guess.

We landed in St. John’s (or more accurately, St. John’s airport in Torbay I believe) on a beautiful sunny morning. The first thing I noticed was the fresh, slightly humid sea air. The weather was pleasant, blue sky, fluffy clouds, bright sunshine, warm with a cool wind. After an incredibly quick baggage claim process (even faster than when landing with Porter at YTZ), we picked up our van from Hertz. While my dad, brother and I were checking out the van, we were approached by an airport worker. He was quite friendly and, among other things, explained to us that here it was possible to say hello to people in the street without attracting disapproving looks, and that small sardine-like fish called “caplin” were abundant this time of year.

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By Matthieu, 2011-06-25 23:15

A friend posted this on Facebook today:

Quite an accurate depiction.

Image credit: The Shoze Blog

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By Matthieu, 2011-06-23 21:40

Update: Just went and exchanged the HD 6450 for an HD 6670. This one works great, runs Starcraft II on High and doesn’t crash the machine!

After some discussion with a coworker, I decided to try putting a Sapphire Radeon HD6450 into my Mac Pro, since the 8800GT was a real power hog and heater.

Just my luck that today the 10.6.8 update was released, containing – you guessed it – HD6xxx drivers!

So I ran the update, then popped in the HD6450, and what do you know, it works! Only two problems: First, no EFI support which means no boot screen (white/grey apple). Second, it seems to crash when launching any game. I tried Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and Starcraft II, and both caused the screen to go blank and kernel panic.

Anyway, nice experiment, and at least it works for regular desktop work….

For anyone interested, here are all the Radeon HD6000 series cards supported by the 10.6.8 kexts, IDs and names.

• 0x67681002  CAICOS 6450M
• 0x67701002  NI CAICOS [AMD Radeon HD 6400 Series]
• 0x67791002  NI Caicos [AMD RADEON HD 6450]
• 0x67601002  NI Seymour [AMD Radeon HD 6470M]
• 0x67611002  NI Seymour [AMD Radeon HD 6430M]
• 0x67501002  Turks [AMD Radeon HD 6500 series]
• 0x67581002  Turks XT [AMD Radeon HD 6600 Series]
• 0x67591002  NI Turks [AMD Radeon HD 6500]
• 0x67401002  Whistler XT [AMD Radeon HD 6700M Series]
• 0x67411002  NI Whistler [AMD Radeon HD 6600M Series]
• 0x67381002  Barts XT [ATI Radeon HD 6800 Series]
• 0x67391002  Barts PRO [ATI Radeon HD 6800 Series]
• 0x67201002  Blackcomb [AMD Radeon HD 6900M Series]
• 0x67221002 ATI Radeon HD 6950
• 0x67181002  Cayman XT [AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series]

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By Matthieu, 2011-06-22 14:29

Being a long-time Ubuntu/Debian user, I’m used to editing the good ol’ /etc/network/interfaces file to configure network interfaces.

Recently, trying Arch Linux, I discovered that networking isn’t always that simple.

Most basic system parameters in Arch are configured in the /etc/rc.conf file. However, that file is limited to configuring one static wired ethernet connection.

In order to configure multiple interfaces, you need to install the netcfg package and create profiles for each NIC in /etc/network.d :

There are some examples provided, however none of them mention how to set a custom netmask or multiple DNS servers. So here are my two network profiles:

interface 1 (/etc/network.d/interface1-static)

CONNECTION='ethernet'
DESCRIPTION='Static IP WAN'
INTERFACE='eth0'
IP='static'
ADDR='172.32.24.108'
GATEWAY='172.32.24.1'
DNS=('172.16.24.1' '172.16.24.3')

interface 2

CONNECTION='ethernet'
DESCRIPTION='Static IP LAN'
INTERFACE='eth1'
IP='static'
ADDR='192.168.2.80'
NETMASK='255.255.254.0'

Once the profiles are created, go back to the /etc/rc.conf and make them activated at boot. The values for the NETWORKS array are the two files previously created in /etc/network.d:

# Enable these netcfg profiles at boot-up. These are useful if you happen to
# need more advanced network features than the simple network service
# supports, such as multiple network configurations (ie, laptop users)
#   - set to 'menu' to present a menu during boot-up (dialog package required)
#   - prefix an entry with a ! to disable it
#
# Network profiles are found in /etc/network.d
#
# This requires the netcfg package
#
NETWORKS=(interface1-static interface2-static)

# -----------------------------------------------------------------------
# DAEMONS
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------
#
# Daemons to start at boot-up (in this order)
#   - prefix a daemon with a ! to disable it
#   - prefix a daemon with a @ to start it up in the background
#
# If something other takes care of your hardware clock (ntpd, dual-boot...)
# you should disable 'hwclock' here.
#
DAEMONS=(hwclock syslog-ng net-profiles sshd netfs crond dbus @cups kdm)

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By Matthieu, 2011-04-10 01:12

Intergalactic Robot Rock

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By Matthieu, 2011-04-09 15:23

Microsoft was quick to boast of Internet Explorer 9′s 2.5 million downloads in its first 24 hours—a number quickly eclipsed by Firefox 4, which garnered 7.1 million in its first day.

via Web browser market share: Modern browser edition.

Oh, Microsoft, just give up on IE already. Focus on Windows, Office and Sharepoint instead.

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By Matthieu, 2011-04-06 21:04

Just threw together a quick rsync client-server setup for syncing my music library between to computers.

on one computer:

/etc/rsyncd.conf:

max connections = 2
log file = /var/log/rsync.log
timeout = 300

[music]
comment = Music Share
path = /path/to/music
read only = no
list = yes
uid = somebody
gid = somegroup
auth users = somebody
secrets file = /etc/rsyncd.secrets

On the client:

rsync --delete -azvv /path/to/local/music [email protected]::music

Also remember to check firewall settings, and run the rsync daemon as a user “somebody” that has access to write in the rsync’d folder.

And don’t forget to enable the rsync daemon in /etc/default/rsync

RSYNC_ENABLE=true

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By Matthieu, 2011-03-29 21:37

If you’re like me, you REALLY miss the ability to select all your unread (or read) conversations with one click. With the new Gmail interface, you have to first click the drop-down menu, the click the desired selection option. That’s one click too many IMO, and extra mouse mileage that’s wearing down the poor little thing.

But naturally, when the Internet has a problem, the Internet also has a solution.

Using some CSS, and the Stylish extension for Firefox, it’s possible to get the old links back, and they actually look even better than before.

@namespace url(<a href="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml</a>);
/*
 Gmail: Select "links" restored
*/
@-moz-document domain("mail.google.com") {
 
/* move search results text down below Select links */
.VP5otc-pzeoBf.D.E .yS { padding-top: 25px !important; }
 
/* same height as before (more or less) */
.VP5otc-pzeoBf.D.E .nH { height: 22px !important; }
 
.VP5otc-pzeoBf.D.E &gt; .nH &gt; .nH.Cq &gt; div &gt; div &gt; .J-M.AW:nth-child(7) {
 position: relative !important;
 top: -4px !important;
 left: 15px !important; /* line up with 'Search ...' */
 display: inline !important;
 height: 16px !important;
}
.VP5otc-pzeoBf.D.E &gt; .nH &gt; .nH.Cq &gt; div &gt; div &gt; .J-M.AW:nth-child(7) &gt; .SK:before {
 content: "Select: " ; font-family: Arial ; color: black ;
}
.VP5otc-pzeoBf.D.E &gt; .nH &gt; .nH.Cq &gt; div &gt; div &gt; .J-M.AW:nth-child(7) &gt; .SK {
 -moz-box-shadow: none !important;
 -webkit-box-shadow: none !important;
 padding-top: 4px !important;
 padding-bottom: 2px !important;
 background-color: transparent !important;
 font-family: Verdana !important;
}
.VP5otc-pzeoBf.D.E &gt; .nH &gt; .nH.Cq &gt; div &gt; div &gt; .J-M.AW:nth-child(7) &gt; .SK.AX &gt; .J-N {
 display: inline-block !important;
 padding-left: 8px !important;
 padding-right: 8px !important;
 -moz-border-radius: 3px !important;
 -webkit-border-radius: 3px !important; /* WebKit */
 cursor: pointer !important;
}
.VP5otc-pzeoBf.D.E &gt; .nH &gt; .nH.Cq &gt; div &gt; div &gt; .J-M.AW:nth-child(7) &gt; .SK.AX &gt; .J-N:hover {
 background-color:#406480 !important;
 color:white !important;
}
/* optional bg: sort of a button look (dark/light bg with light/dark text) * /
.A1.D.E &gt; .nH &gt; .nH.Cq &gt; div &gt; div &gt; .J-M.AW:nth-child(7) &gt; .SK.AX &gt; .J-N:not(:hover) {
 background-color: #406480 !important;
} /* dark blue [Planets bg] */
 
}

Thanks to Matt Kruse. Original script source: http://userscripts.org/topics/67827

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By Matthieu, 2011-03-11 10:43

Bought a cheap USB multi card reader the other day. Tried it on my Ubuntu netbook and it worked great. However, today I tried to use it on my Windows 7 PC and it wasn’t detected. Opening the device manager revealed that no card reader had been detected, however a new “eHome Infrared Receiver (USBCIR)” was detected with an error.

The solution is to right-click the device, choose Update Driver, and force the “USB Composite device” driver.