Seems like a great way to redistribute your old books and having some fun doing it.
The basic idea - label your old books with a unique identifier, then drop them off wherever you like. Log the 'drop' on the Bookcrossing website for someone to pick up. If they log the collection you can track who and where the book goes. Obviously there are the usual anonymity options and if a non-Bookcrossing person picks up the book they may choose not to join-up (its free, they make money selling accessories like custom labels and bookplates).
» Mailorder Beer
A plug and a bit of a bookmark for myself - Beerstore in NZ does a great job of distributing beer of all kinds delivered to your door.
I've used them a few times now and they're quick and efficient - I even had one delivery with broken bottles which the couriers obviously screwed up and within a couple of days Beerstore had another order on my doorstep no questions asked. Now thats service !
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» What is a karonkka?
A friend of mine recently returned from Finland where he was examining a PhD defence - the process is called a Karonkka.
As well as getting decked out in a full-on tux & tails they actually had ceremonial swords to boot. How cool is that ?
Be sure to read Shauns other posts on the nature of research, patents, science and technology in New Zealand.
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» TED Talks
A friend of mine (cheers Eddie!) pointed me at the excellent TED Talk series.
Subscribe to their RSS feed now.
Theres always something you can set aside 15 minutes of your time to learn about or dump to your mp3 player to listen/watch while you commute.
As per the link comments in the preamble, its a bit pop-psych but theres some useful stuff to help get your head around how you can get your point of view across to other people.
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» Good Books - The Shock Doctrine
Another excellent read from Naomi Klein - The Shock Doctrine. I have to admit I'm only halfway through this book - mans inhumanity to man makes for tough going - however its pretty much compulsory reading for anyone that wonders how the worlds free market economy's were lead down the track they're currently on.
Essentially what Klein does is posit the idea that free market economies and reforms can only be forced through on the back of an external crisis (sometimes real and sometimes engineered). As a result those people best placed to take advantage of the reforms do extraordinarily well and the vast majority of us end up worse off - with globalisation these disparities keep getting worse as multi-nationals cease to be bound by georgraphy.
As the recent recession and American bank / finance / auto bail-outs have shown - the free market has failed to a certain extent - their own calls for deregulation have bit them on the ass and now they're going cap in hand to the very regulatory bodies they once reviled for assistance.
So even when things go wrong for the wheelers and dealers of the world - they still come out on top.
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» Good Books - Killing Rommel by Stephen Pressfield
Another quick summer read - Killing Rommel is a return to form for Stephen Pressfield - his 'Gates of Fire' was a masterpiece but after that I found 'Tides of War' and 'Last of the Amazons' to be a little dry.
His latest novel tells the tale of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) and their various exploits in the North African campaign, culminating in a mission to track down and kill Rommel.
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Thursday 07 September 2006 at 08:58 am
I guess SGI were going down the drain anyway but its still a shame to see them turn into YALV (Yet Another Linux Vendor) - SGI To Drop MIPS, Irix, Moves to Itanium, Linux.
I guess there problems came as a result of over-pricing their gear, not forseeing the graphics-card revolution on the PC and their doomed foray into NT workstations.
Sigh.
I quite liked IRIX.
And then there were three - Solaris, AIX and HP-UX . . .
Friday 12 November 2004 at 08:02 am
Irix 6.5 is the current base OS. It is possible to update 6.5 'live' while the system is running and then reboot for changes to take affect. Irix OS installs prior to this will require an offline OS upgrade by booting off an external CD or trying a network boot. Pre-Irix 6 (many old Indigo and Indy machines have 5.3/5.4 installed) the disk will need to be reformated so any data will be lost unless its backed up.
Overlays (like Windows Service Packs and SUS Updates) keep the Irix OS up to date with new features and patches.
At the time of writing Irix 6.5 Overlay 26 is current (often referred to as just 6.5.26).
The most recent updates can be obtained from the SGI support site.
Odd things happen to some of our products when you update beyond 6.5.18 so be very wary of updating beyond this level unless specifically requested. The problems tend to relate to changes in particular Fortran calls in newer overlays - these seemed to have happened between 6.5.18 and 6.5.20 onwards.
Another big change of note specifically to IT is that autofs became a peer service - no need to mess around with amd. Autofs stabilised around 6.5.14 so where possible we should convert machines to using this in place of amd.
What I tend to do is download each CD and uncompress the contents to our IT SGI in vema:/export/sgi_install seperate from the core 6.5 CD's. Where possible I try to keep an older Overlay set around for compatibility reasons (6.5.16 is the old Overlay on vema:/export/sgi_install). If we had enough SGI machines we might automate updates with Roboinst.
There is an installation 'gotcha' - if you get these errors when opening an overlay for installation
WARNING: Invalid filetype "X" at line 172 of x_eoe_6524m.idb
WARNING: Invalid filetype "X" at line 520 of x_eoe_6524m.idb
WARNING: Invalid filetype "X" at line 636 of x_eoe_6524m.idb
WARNING: Invalid filetype "X" at line 1878 of x_eoe_6524m.idb
WARNING: Invalid filetype "X" at line 1879 of x_eoe_6524m.idb
WARNING: Invalid filetype "X" at line 1880 of x_eoe_6524m.idb
You need to install Patch 5086 if you make the jump from a pre 6.5.20 install to a current Irix Overlay (eg installing from 6.5.16 to 6.5.24 -> install the patch first). The patch is in /export/sgi_install/patches on vema.
You need to be root to run 'inst' the Irix software installer - here you can see a) becoming root, b) mounting the sgi_install directory and c) checking its contents d) running inst
bash-2.00$ su
Password:
octagon# bash
# cd /
# ls
CDROM/ debug/ etc/ hw/ lib64/ ns/ proc/ sbin/ tmp/ unix* var/
Desktop/ dev/ export/ lib/ mnt/ oSYSLOG root/ stand/ tmp_mnt/ usr/ web/
bin/ dumpster/ hosts/ lib32/ mnt_tmp/ opt/ s/ t@ u/ v/
# cd /export
# ls
octagon/ temp/
# ls temp
# mount vema:/export/sgi_install temp
# ls temp
6.5.16_Inst_Overlay1/ 6.5_Aug2002_Apps/ 6.5_Found1/ 6520_Inst_Overlay1/ 6524/ FW_Nov2002_Pt4/
6.5.16_Inst_Overlay2/ 6.5_Dev_Found/ 6.5_Found2/ 6520_Inst_Overlay2/ FW_Nov2002_Pt1/ MIPSpro_7.3/
6.5.16_Inst_Overlay3/ 6.5_Dev_Found_1.2/ 6.5_NFS/ 6520_Inst_Overlay3/ FW_Nov2002_Pt2/ oracle/
6.5.16_Inst_Overlay4/ 6.5_Dev_Lib/ 6519_Apps/ 6520_Inst_Overlay4/ FW_Nov2002_Pt3/
# cd temp
# cd 6524
# ls
6524_Apps/ 6524_Comp_Apps/ 6524_Overlay1/ 6524_Overlay2/ 6524_Overlay3/
# inst
The inst installation routine begins
Default distribution to install from: /export/temp/6.5_Found2/dist
For help on inst commands, type "help overview".
Inst 4.1 Main Menu
1. from [source ...] Specify location of software to be installed
2. open [source ...] Specify additional software locations
3. close [source ...] Close a software distribution location
4. list [keywords] [names] Display information about software subsystems
5. go Perform software installation and removal now
6. install [keywords] [names] Select subsystems to be installed
7. remove [keywords] [names] Select subsystems to be removed
8. keep [keywords] [names] Do not install or remove these subsystems
9. step [keywords] [names] Interactive mode for install/remove/keep
10. conflicts [choice ...] List or resolve installation conflicts
11. help [topic] Get help in general or on a specific word
12. view ... Go to the View Commands Menu
13. admin ... Go to the Administrative Commands Menu
14. quit Terminate software installation
Inst>
Select 1 to select the install source - we've copied all the cd's to vema so you'll see this particular machine already has some of the paths listed from previous upgrades.
Be sure to select the Overlay 1 CD first - that way inst knows to expect other CD's
Previous installation sites:
1 /export/temp/6.5_Found2/dist
2 /export/temp/6.5_Found1/dist
3 /export/temp/6.5_NFS/dist/dist6.5
4 /export/temp/6.5_NFS/dist
5 /export/temp/6.5_Dev_Lib/dist
6 /export/temp/6.5_Dev_Found/dist/dist6.5
7 /export/temp/6.5_Dev_Found/dist
8 /export/temp/6.5_Aug2002_Apps/dist
9 /export/temp/6.5.16_Inst_Overlay4/dist
10 /export/temp/6.5.16_Inst_Overlay3/dist
11 none (no distribution, view installed products)
12 quit (no additional distributions, return to inst prompt)
Install software from: [/export/temp/6.5_Found2/dist] /export/temp/6524/6524_Overlay1/cd1
Feed inst the path for all of the other CD's which you'll need - inst will open each one and read its contents and then allow you to give it the path to another CD
Install software from: [/export/temp/6.5_NFS/dist/dist6.5] /export/temp/6.5_Dev_Lib/dist
Reading product descriptions .. 0%
Setting distribution to /export/temp/6.5_Dev_Lib/dist
Reading product descriptions .. 100% Done.
If you plan to install from another distribution, either choose from the
list below or enter the name of a different distribution.
This will allow you to make selections from two or more distributions
before starting the install.
Enter "done" if you are ready to proceed with the installation now.
1 /export/temp/6.5_Dev_Lib/dist
2 /export/temp/6.5_NFS/dist/dist6.5
3 /export/temp/6.5_Found2/dist
4 /export/temp/6.5_Found1/dist
5 /export/temp/6524/6524_Apps/apps
6 /export/temp/6524/6524_Overlay3/cd3
7 /export/temp/6524/6524_Overlay2/cd2
8 /export/temp/6524/6524_Overlay1/cd1
9 /export/temp/6.5_NFS/dist
10 /export/temp/6.5_Dev_Found/dist/dist6.5
11 done (distribution information read, return to inst prompt)
Install software from: [/export/temp/6.5_Dev_Lib/dist] /export/temp/6.5_Dev_Found/dist/dist6.5
Reading product descriptions .. 0%
Setting distribution to /export/temp/6.5_Dev_Found/dist/dist6.5
Reading product descriptions .. 100% Done.
If you plan to install from another distribution, either choose from the
list below or enter the name of a different distribution.
This will allow you to make selections from two or more distributions
before starting the install.
Enter "done" if you are ready to proceed with the installation now.
1 /export/temp/6.5_Dev_Found/dist/dist6.5
2 /export/temp/6.5_Dev_Lib/dist
3 /export/temp/6.5_NFS/dist/dist6.5
4 /export/temp/6.5_Found2/dist
5 /export/temp/6.5_Found1/dist
6 /export/temp/6524/6524_Apps/apps
7 /export/temp/6524/6524_Overlay3/cd3
8 /export/temp/6524/6524_Overlay2/cd2
9 /export/temp/6524/6524_Overlay1/cd1
10 /export/temp/6.5_NFS/dist
11 done (distribution information read, return to inst prompt)
Install software from: [/export/temp/6.5_Dev_Found/dist/dist6.5] done
When you're done (either '11' or 'done' as above) - check for conflicts via 'c' - this will list all conflict - you can use 'c'
