Involution

Malfeasance in 64-bit PowerPC MySQL Gem Compilation

Administrator — Tue, 13 May 2008 01:25:12 +0000

For the three people in the world building the Rails mysql gem on a PowerPC G5-based OS X Server with the 64-bit MySQL installed getting this crazy error:

lazy symbol binding failed: Symbol not found: _mysql_init

The magic ninja gem install command that will cure all your ills goes a little something like this:

sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch ppc64" gem install -V mysql -- --with-mysql-include=/usr/local/mysql/include/ --with-mysql-lib=/usr/local/mysql/lib --with-mysql-config=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config --with-mysql-dir=/usr/local/mysql

Pretty obvious when you think about it. Not sure why it took me a little over an hour to discover the crucial lynchpin for correcting this system-wide thought-tastrophy.

Words of Wisdom From The Professor of Magic

Administrator — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 03:02:20 +0000

The Professor of Magic is the preeminent technological luminary of the new millenium. As an astute observer of the human condition, connoisseur of fine wine and spirits, raconteur, and master of the mythical yellow ball, his knowledge of the universe is beyond all comprehension. After an hour in the gym today, the endorphin rush inspired him to bestow the following wisdom unto me.

Hoyhoy:	I used to think reading blogs was like giving the middle finger to traditional media, but now I’m not so sure.
Professor of Magic:	Consider cereal. There’s 5,000 brands, and they’re essentially composed of food coloring and 90% sugar. Blogs are like cereal because most of them exist in a homogeneous intellectual wasteland.
Hoyhoy:	Sure, you have the odd box of Grape Nuts (The New York Times), but I suppose the majority of blogs are nutritionally bankrupt like Cookie Crisp (Involution.com).
Professor of Magic:	Right.
Hoyhoy:	Facebook is worse than the blogs though. It’s turning the Internet into television. Except, instead of preying on people’s boredom and loneliness like the teevee, Facebook exploits their vanity. Basically, the Jerry Springer Show was the read-only version of Facebook.
Professor of Magic:	And, Facebook apps are the equivalent of ringing somebody’s doorbell and running away.
Hoyhoy:	Good point.
Professor of Magic:	Blogs and social networks are just a waypoint before we reach the eventual conclusion of hooking wires directly into the heads of the superfluous population.
Hoyhoy:	Not for me. I took the blue and red pills simultaneously.

Eugene Mirman’s Application for “Cupid”

Administrator — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 07:14:35 +0000

Height: 6000-inches (aproximately two earth years)
Nicknames: Ace and Dr. Bathroom
Name of Employer: United League of Underwater Nations
Position Held: Surgeon General of a Place I Made-up
Do you drink alcohol?: YES!
If so, how often: Once a day, for 8 hours
Where do you usually meet women: In hotels or the street
Do you enjoy dating: NO!
What is the most romantic thing you’ve done for a girlfriend?
Shot a dog that was attacking her.
What’s the most adventurous date you’ve ever arranged for a woman?
An expedition to the center of the earth.
What do you want out of your next relationship with a woman?: POWER!
List the qualities you find most attractive in a woman: TELEVISION!
Describe your ideal woman.
From the mountains, is new to technology, and thinks I am MAGIC!
Why would a woman have fun on a date with you?: I would let her punch me.
How important is sex to you in a relationship?
Not at all in the first few minutes.  Then, CRUCIAL over the next 20.
What do women find most attractive about you?: I AM FAST AT SEX!
Do you have a strategy for standing out in a crowd?: KARATE!
Describe situations where you have treated a girlfriend in a way you regret.
I once killed my girlfriend’s dog.

All Hail Salyzar!

Administrator — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:37:58 +0000

Voting and YOU!
Uploaded by declareyourself

Garmin Software Troubles

Administrator — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 08:26:36 +0000

I decided to rescue a bunch of old data off my old Garmin Forerunner 201 tonight. The only problem is that this is now impossible. Even though 1.5 years worth of GPS data is on the watch, it’s quite inaccessible now. Google Earth can only read the last 11 routes from the watch. I tried deleting those routes from the 201 and then syncing the watch with Google Earth on my Macbook Pro via a USB to DB9 converter. Unfortunately, on both operating systems the software errors out with “Loaded %1 Waypoints”.

Next, I gave the newest Garmin Training Center a try. Garmin’s software managed to load all the data off the watch using a serial connection on my Windows XP desktop (the 201 doesn’t work with the Mac OS X-version of Training Center) Unfortunately, the map overlays didn’t load for the 201 routes like they do with the Garmin Forerunner 305 ones. Now, all of my historic Forerunner 201 data is half-usable and silo’d up in the training center software with no hope of exporting it out.

Adding insult to injury, Garmin has deprecated the “Export to XML” feature that existed in their old Training Center software. This effectively locks-out third-party developers because the export data is now only available in proprietary TCX format. It’s unbelievable that Garmin wouldn’t continue to support XML or, at the very least, Google Earth’s KML format. This is even more troubling because Garmin used to enable hackers to do cool stuff with their hardware. By allowing access to the unencrypted GPS data, Garmin enabled quite a bit of tinkering. Programs like USAPhotomaps and several community GPS running sites sprouted up as a result. Back in 2005, I even wrote my own GPS overlay program to map data onto a USGS orthoimage of Austin using the exported XML data from the 201.

Strangely enough, I met three of the developers from Garmin’s Motion Based community web site at SFBeta last week. We talked for a while, and I went all GPS-nerd on them. So, the next day, I tried out Motion Based and uploaded the data off my Forerunner 305. The result is that I was completely nonplussed with their site. The only thing extraordinary about the site is how extraordinary it is. What’s particularly troubling is that since you can only access the GPS route data from Garmin’s watches using proprietary software, this is the only community web site that is gong to work with their devices.

Pandora’s Box

Administrator — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 19:58:54 +0000

Some feverish miscreant has managed to upload all six episodes of Adam Curtis’ Pandora’s Box documentary to the youtube. It has a similar theme to his later Century of the Self, but it’s still worth watching.

Episode 1 - The Engineer’s Plot
Episode 2 - To The Brink of Eternity
Episode 3 - The League of Gentlemen
Episode 4 - Goodbye Mrs Ant
Episode 5 - Black Power
Episode 6 - A Is For Atom

Space Talk From Dimension Eugene

Administrator — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 01:13:49 +0000

Adam Curtis Documentaries on Google Video

Administrator — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 03:20:18 +0000

Adam Curtis’ interpretation of current events viewed through a historical and political lens is a tour de force in explaining the absurdity and cognitive dissonance of our current reality. I recommend watching all of them, twice. Curtis is picking up where the greats like Kenneth Clark and Jacob Bronowski have left off. He is their worthy successor.

The Trap

Google Video: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3a, Part 3b, Part 3c

The Trap consists of three, one-hour programs which explore the concept and definition of freedom, specifically “how a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today’s idea of freedom.”

(via wikipedia)

The Mayfair Set

Google Video: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

The Mayfair Set looked at how buccaneer capitalists of hot money were allowed to shape the climate of the Thatcher years, focusing on the rise of Colonel David Stirling, Jim Slater, James Goldsmith, and Tiny Rowland, all members of The Clermont club in the 1960s. It received the BAFTA Award for Best Factual Series or Strand in 2000.

(via wikipedia)

The Power of Nightmares

Google Video: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

The Power of Nightmares, subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear, is a BBC documentary film series, written and produced by Adam Curtis. The series consists of three one-hour films, consisting mostly of a montage of archive footage with Curtis’s narration, which were first broadcast in the United Kingdom in late 2004 and have been subsequently aired in multiple countries and shown in several film festivals, including the 2005 Cannes Film Festival

(via wikipedia)

Century of the Self

Google Video: Part 1, Part 2,Part 3, Part 4

This series is about how those in power have used Freud’s theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy.

(Adam Curtis via wikipedia)

The Best Press Conference Ever

Administrator — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 20:09:41 +0000

Who knew that press conferences could be so entertaining? Maybe I should give Fox News another chance.

How do you feel right now?
I feel like, right now, my haircut is pretty perfect, but altogether I want to redirect back towards haircuts of the ’70s.

Airport Extreme Disks Not Working Under Leopard

Administrator — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 08:05:39 +0000

So, my bad consumer urges took over my brain and forced me to buy a 1TB Hitachi external hard drive. The drive works great connected directly to my Macbook Pro running Leopard, however, it barely works at all when plugged into my Airport Extreme base station. The first time I plugged it in, the Airport Extreme’s name showed up under the “SHARED” drop down in Finder, but clicking on it revealed an empty folder. Investigating the base station using the Airport Utility revealed that the drive was indeed recognized. With that in mind, I decided to reformat the 1TB partition using journaled HFS+ thinking that would trim all the FAT off. Unfortunately, it took about six hours to recopy the 500GB of data from my old external Maxtor drive to the Hitachi after the format. After all of that, I hooked-up the drive to the Airport again, and … nothing.

Clearly, there should be a drive listed here.

The only logical course of action that I could think of at this point was to pickup the drive and throw at the wall as hard as I could. My theory was that the impact would probably “reseat” the faulty memory chips inside the disk. Dinner was ready at this point. So, I surreptitiously recorded this idea into my Moleskine for later consideration.

After dinner, I decided to delay the swift-and-blinding-violence tactic, and wade through Apple’s discussion site for a while. I learned that you could mount the drive by selecting “Go”, then “Connect to Server…” and then typing in the Airport Extreme’s IP address. This allowed Finder to access the drive, and it worked well for about an hour, but after that it became slow, then unreachable. Then, I rebooted the Airport Extreme base station, and then rebooted Leopard. Again, the drive worked for a while, but after a period of idle, the drive was inaccessible again. The Apple discussions mentioned that downgrading the firmware from 7.2.1 to 7.1 seemed to fix the issue for a few users. Unfortunately, my base station would only allow me to downgrade as low as 7.2.

This kind of snafu is very un-Applelike. Thankfully, this is the first major problem that I’ve had with using Leopard so far. It’s hard to believe that something as basic as using an external hard disk with the Airport Extreme would work this poorly with Leopard. I mean, 10.5 has been out for over two months now. If any of you kids out there know how to do the magic dance to make my disk work with the Airport, please drop me some comment gold.

Madonna Medley

Administrator — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 07:35:25 +0000

199 Fremont Christmas Jam

Administrator — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 08:16:58 +0000

Okaysamurai, Foobarfighter, and I had a big jam session at 199 Fremont Street tonight. Here’s the obligatory Youtube embed.