Friday, December 28, 2012

emacs, CEDET, eieio – version conflicts

GNU emacs 24.1 comes with eieio-1.3.
If I have my own CEDET-1.1, which comes with eieio-1.4, and I try to load it "as early as possible", emacs's loading process still says: "Outdated eieio 1.3 just installed".
I think I started with CEDET because of Gnus. But does Gnus need the modern eieio-1.4 at all?

my Eee Box running openSUSE-12.2 again on a rather low graphics card resolution [SOLVED]

That's rather a pity, but I have far too many other things to sort, and I can't fix this.

Update:
I removed /etc/X11/xorg.conf (of course I backed it up before that) and did an "rcxdm restart"; that's presumably using /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/, and that resulted in the old rather fair resolution values, that I had gotten used to – taking it for granted, that the simple old VGA connection would make a better resolution impossible.

when did I mention last, how much I love editing an XML file using emacs and its nxml-mode?

It is so much techie fun!!!

three computers running openSUSE with broken GRUB configurations

I.e. they don't start beyond the GRUB boot loader.

So far I had only known of 2 computers, my non-portable ones at home, and because of that, I actually had no computer for weeks to reach through my DynDNS host name. That was already rather bad. So far I actually thought, I had described this problem already properly under the grub label on this blog.

I actually had not known until this morning, that my ASUS portable PC also suffers from a GRUB configuration problem. This is terrible. I had planned to boot it, so I could work on some 1st block of book keeping. I am a little desperate. Instead of book keeping I have to work on fixing operating system problems.

My only running openSUSE Linux is the respective VM on my MacBook Pro. I must be brave now, and try to fix one GRUB problem after the other. Maybe one or two recipes will work for all three. My ASUS portable PC GRUB problem reads like this:
kernel …
Error 15: File not found
Press any key to continue…
Well, there are not that many items, GRUB may regard as file. It's either the file holding the bootable kernel, or it's the root partition.  Well, yes, the root partition isn't really a file, but then the term may just be used a little unprecise.

I first tried to fix the GRUB configuration. I found, that the GRUB menu now shows GRUB (let's call them "GRUB1") and GRUB2 entries. I didn't manage to fix either of them.

Then I tried to "update-install" the operating system. At worst I would uninstall the GRUB1 and also the GRUB2 packages, maybe even remove the /boot directory, and start with an "old-fashioned" GRUB1 configuration.

 I booted from the resp. DVD, and updated the OS over the Internet. As usual you are getting far more packages updated, than you need in such a situation, and the announcement said, it would take like 75 minutes. Terrible. Looks though, as it's going to be faster. Yes, it went faster.

When I rebooted (through the DVD) from the hard disk, the GRUB2 entry had gotten removed, but still "Error 15: File not found". Both the kernel file and the initrd file names had not gotten updated to the right names of the most-up-to-date and installed files (the openSUSE GRUB updater scripts were quite able to deal with that in the past). Fixing that manually only took a finger snapping. I was in shock: yes, the OS would boot.

For the time being I will seriously avoid using GRUB2. I assume that saves me trouble.

Looks like running grub-install as root is quite helpful.

Would there be yet another obstacle? Looks like there is none (for the time being). So "in the background" I will try fixing the other 2 stuck computers like this as well.

1of2 had a /boot/grub/menu.lst, that was broken, but I could easily fix it "on the fly" within GRUB, after GRUB stopped because of one of these errrors. Then I started "yast2 bootloader", and did the lasting fix.

2of2 had no useful /boot/grub/menu.lst at all. I booted from the DVD into the rescue system. I copied a somehow reasonable menu.lst from another computer via a USB memory stick to this system, rebooted, and fixed it "on the fly" as well, so that I could properly boot into a running system. There again I started "yast2 bootloader", and did the lasting fix.

Everything is fixed now.

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

watching "Downton Abbey" "on the Internet"


"Downton Abbey" (2010)
season 3
  • episode 1 – 2012-12-26
  • episode 2 – 2012-12-27 
  • episode 3 – 2012-12-27
  • episode 4 – 2012-12-28
  • episode 5 – 2012-12-28
  • episode 6 – 2013-01-01
  • episode 7 – 2013-01-01
  • episode 8 – 2013-01-01
  • episode 9 – 2013-01-...
season 1
  • all episodes – 2013-02-02..03
season 2
  • episode 1 – 2013-02-03
  • episode 2 – 2013-02-03
  • episode 3 – 2013-02-03
  • episode 4 – 2013-02-__
  • episode 5 – 2013-02-03
  • episode 6 – 2013-02-12
  • episode 7 – 2013-02-__ (not yet)
  • episode 8 – 2013-02-__ (not yet)
  • Christmas Special – 2013-03-__ (not yet)

son#1 left, his cat stayed

Son#2 is rather sad, that his elder brother left. He said he would return for New Year's Eve. But we learned, we cannot rely on such statements.

Suw Charman-Anderson: Amazon Is Ripe For Disruption - Forbes

Amazon Is Ripe For Disruption - Forbes

I came across this article through a tweet by Kathrin Passig.

TV series: "Downton Abbey" (2010...)

"Downton Abbey" (2010)

Rather interesting and entertaining.

film: Shutter Island (2010)

Shutter Island (2010)

I find it bad, that "we" did not have any chance knowing what really was going on until rather close to the end.

Brazilian music: Criolo - "Não Existe Amor em SP"

I came across this song listening to dradio.de/dkultur : "Meine Musik 2012:
Criolo & Mokoomba". It's from the album "Nó Na Orelha".
Criolo's home page: www.criolo.net.
Listen to more songs here!
Watch a few videos here!

During saturn.de's next discount period, I will get his album there!

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

emphases in the English language

  • adjectives get pronounced on their first syllable; e.g. …; counterexample: …
  • verbs get pronounced on their second syllable; e.g. to refer, to access; counterexample: …
  • nouns get pronounced on their first syllable; e.g. the access, …; counterexample: …

film: Astérix et Obélix: Au service de Sa Majesté (2012)

Astérix et Obélix: Au service de Sa Majesté (2012) (French title)

film: Wreck-It Ralph (2012) aka "Ralph reicht's"

Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

film: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

flm: Rise of the Guardians (2012) aka "Die Hüter des Lichts"

Rise of the Guardians (2012)

Characters:

  • (an evil spirit known as) Pitch – I am not able to find a description of this character
  • Jack Frost
  • North, Santa Claus
  • Tooth Fairy
  • Easter Bunny
  • Sandman
We quite liked the film. We didn't really know beforehand, that Jack Frost and Pitch are characters, that U.S. children are familiar with.

"Google Web Albums" AKA Picasa through "Google Drive"

Occasionally I am using the Google Drive application on OS X. Of course I like the way it integrates into the OS X Finder.
Why is this application not able to also deal with my picture files on "Google Web Albums" AKA Picasa? (I mean, it's all Google, so …)

IT jargon: ping (quoting "The Jargon File")

catb.org/jargon/html/P/ping.html

Through the label(s) you can find my main entry for "The Jargon File" resp. "The New Hacker's Dictionary" [link].

Baruch's cat Rysza – my only company for this afternoon



Rysza (sp?) is a word in Polish, and it means "red-grey" IIRC.

Baruch is my son#1; he is now off for the afternoon with João Gabriel (his brother resp. my son#1) and Cristina (J.G.'s mother) to meet "Brother Simion" and family in Berlin-Steglitz – friends of my Brazilian "sub-family". (I would rather point you to www.brothersimion.com.br, but apparently he abandoned that domain name.)

So I am having a few hours alone (apart from Rysza) at home on this 1st Christmas holiday (Dec. 25th), and I am rather enjoying it.

E-mailing, Facebooking, phone, listening to music on JazzRadio.net (and maybe other stations later this afternoon), …

I am sorry for being lazy doing something we that reflection in Rysza's eyes, the cats' version of red eyes.

I just removed the Google Picasa application from my Mac's hard drive.
Can you imagine, how easy it is to accidentally upload your whole private life in pictures to your Google Photo / Picasa page?!?? That rather frightens me.

The Prohibtion in the U.S.: the government poisoned alcohol then

The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition. - Slate Magazine

Of course I never heard of that before, and of course I am rather surprised.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Perl Best Practices: Code Layout: Vertical Alignment

Perl Best Practices - O'Reilly Media

I came across this chapter a while ago, and I enjoyed the argumentation quite a lot. I think the Vertical Alignment idea applies to all sorts of code, not just Perl code.

I am personally a follower of the Vertical Alignment sect, although I think, that should be the main stream.

"The other day" I came across code not following the Vertical Aligment idea, and I was rather sad ("in a professional sense"). But I am rather aware of the different streams resp. sects, and of course, this is not meant as an insult but rather just a note.