Vacation, whose vacation?

Work

Yep, supposedly I'm on vacation, but these are not going to be as fun as other years. First Silvia couldn't choose vacation period on September, as we would have wanted and had to split vacation between August and October. I don't like to be on vacation on August for several reasons, but as this year we don't have money to go those nice places we used to go most of these reasons vanish. So far we're practicing some short-range tourism, like having lunch in Cudillero and going back home by evening, and some house-keeping ungrateful tasks, like cleaning windows (no pun intended!). I expect the October period to be less static, because not going somewhere feels a bit like having no vacation.

Debian

My Debian stuff is mostly frozen now, as we're in the way of getting Lenny released soon. The newmail crasher is finally fixed also in Debian, so, unless something really nasty appears in the meantime, current versions will be the ones shipped in Lenny CDs/DVDs. The only thing I miss is not having a more updated themes package, because current release dates from beginning of 2007 and doesn't contain any of the new <acronym title="Portable Network Graphics">PNG</acronym> themes.

Hardware

As some may already know my MacBook hard disk (Hitachi 160 Gb) died two or three weeks ago. I've been able to recover most of data from it, thanks to SystemRescueCd and some help to mount encrypted partitions by hand. Unfortunately one of the lost pieces was the trial-error-made deb package with a mostly working driver for the Atheros wifi card of the MacBook (but only with kernel 2.6.21). As I was stupid enough not to document the process or backup it I guess I will have to start from scratch with that again or fall-back to MacOS X for wifi connectivity.

The MacBook was 1 year and few months old, but there's a known conflict between which warranty Apple provides (1 year) and the one supposedly granted by the Spanish law for consumer goods (2 years), and Apple is actively rejecting to follow it (no links, but Google is full of stories). Therefore I've decided not to fight on lost battles and just buy a replacement (another Hitachi but 320 Gb, still don't have it though). Of course I will think thrice before buying anything more from Apple. And for those wandering, no, I don't like to pay another heap of euros for the "AppleCare Protection Plans" when the law already gives me almost the same for free.

I only hope the disks of my main box not to start failing soon (they're two, they're older and they're spinning most of the time: 14:41:56 up 24 days, 22:07, 13 users, load average: 0.11, 0.08, 0.09).

Syndicated 2008-08-21 12:53:49 from Ricardo Mones

Sardine festival

Last Friday was holiday for me, and like previous year I went to the Candás Sardine Festival. This time it was a bit different because seems now I have my five seconds of fame on the globalised TV. Only a hint: I'm the one on green, and Lucho is the one pouring (escanciando) the cider.

Syndicated 2008-08-07 11:44:28 from Ricardo Mones

Diablo enters room

Despite reading some problems with it, some related with the new mail client -- but I don't use it, of course ;-) -- I decided to do it for first, and, if it works as promised, for last time too:
<small>

# ./flasher-3.0.amd64 -F RX-44_DIABLO_4.2008.23-14_PR_COMBINED_MR0_ARM.bin -f -R  
flasher v0.8.1 (Jan  5 2007)

SW version in image: RX-44_DIABLO_4.2008.23-14_PR_MR0
Image 'kernel', size 1536512 bytes
        Version 2.6.21-200823maemo3
Image 'initfs', size 2286848 bytes
        Version 0.95.16-200823maemo2
Image 'rootfs', size 125042688 bytes
        Version RX-34+RX-44+RX-48_DIABLO_4.2008.23-14_PR_MR0
Image '2nd', size 8192 bytes
        Valid for RX-44: 0808
        Version 1.1.16-200823maemo1
Image 'xloader', size 9216 bytes  
        Valid for RX-44: 0808
        Version 1.1.16-200823maemo1
Image 'secondary', size 100736 bytes
        Valid for RX-44: 0808
        Version 1.1.16-200823maemo1
Image '2nd', size 8192 bytes
        Valid for RX-44: 0801, 0802, 0803, 0804, 0805, 0806, 0901, 0902
Image 'xloader', size 9216 bytes  
        Valid for RX-44: 0801, 0802, 0803, 0804, 0805, 0806, 0901, 0902
        Version 1.1.16-200823maemo1
Image 'secondary', size 100736 bytes
        Valid for RX-44: 0801, 0802, 0803, 0804, 0805, 0806, 0901, 0902
        Version 1.1.16-200823maemo1
Suitable USB device not found, waiting
USB device found found at bus 001, device address 009
Found device RX-44, hardware revision 0805
NOLO version 1.1.6
Version of 'sw-release': RX-44_2008SE_1.2007.42-19_PR_MR0
Sending xloader image (9 kB)...   
100% (9 of 9 kB, avg. 2250 kB/s)  
Sending secondary image (98 kB)...
100% (98 of 98 kB, avg. 8943 kB/s)
Flashing bootloader... done.
Sending kernel image (1500 kB)... 
100% (1500 of 1500 kB, avg. 8774 kB/s)
Flashing kernel... done.
Sending initfs image (2233 kB)... 
100% (2233 of 2233 kB, avg. 11110 kB/s)
Flashing initfs... done.
Sending and flashing rootfs image (122112 kB)...
100% (122112 of 122112 kB, avg. 6928 kB/s)
Finishing flashing... done

</small>
I didn't do any backup, so I've started from scratch again with it. Just for reference the detailed instructions for flashing are described in maemo.org wiki.

Syndicated 2008-08-02 12:06:07 from Ricardo Mones

Theme change

Tired of the classic livejournal theme, I've switched to something else. Not specially better, not specially worse.

Syndicated 2008-07-17 16:49:42 from Ricardo Mones

Command of the day

for d in `ldd /usr/local/bin/claws-mail | cut -d\( -f1 | cut -d\> -f2 | sed 's,\s,,'`; do dpkg -S $d 2> /dev/null; done | cut -f1 -d: | sort -u | xargs | for p in `cat`; do dpkg-query -W $p; done


Nice, isn't it? ;-)

For the curious: it gives all package names and versions of the libraries a binary depends upon (recursively, per ldd, and errors discarded, so beware!).

Syndicated 2008-06-11 09:27:35 from Ricardo Mones