handyfloss

I am bored, working a little bit too much overtime, and I just realized that my work computer’s uptime exceeded 50 days today. Yes, this means that I last rebooted my computer 50 days ago.

I realize that this number is far from impressive, but I can’t help but compare it with the case of our only fellow workmate who uses Windows (XP). He once left his computer on and unattended for a couple of weeks (he went on a trip abroad), and to be fair Windows behaved: it didn’t crash. However, when he is working he religiously turns the computer off every evening, because (he says), “otherwise it eventually slows down to a crawl”. My beloved Debian runs as smoothly as the first day, after being on (and under heavy use) for almost two months.

Enorme. Enorme el tío. Empalagoso, sí. Romanticón, sí. ¿Cursi?, bueeeno. Pero enorme.

Imágen enlazada (sin permiso) de la página oficial de Alex Ubago: alexubago.com

Ayer estuve con mi hermana y dos amigos en el concierto que Alex Ubago dió en el Auditorio Kursaal. Ya había estado en el anterior concierto que dió en el Kursaal (no recuerdo ahora la fecha), y este me ha gustado más. En el anterior la voz quizá le falló un poco, pero en este ha estado realmente muy bien vocalmente.

La selección de temas y la puesta en escena fueron correctos, sin grandes sorpresas. En la obligatoria ronda de bises, cantó “Esos ojos negros” con Mikel Erentxun y “Sin miedo a nada” con Amaia Montero, metiéndose al público al bolsillo con ambas canciones.

Si tuviera que resaltar una sola cosa, mencionaría un fragmento de “Viajar contigo” (si no me falla la memoria) que el tío nos cantó sin micro y sin el grupo, solo él con la guitarra clásica y su voz. Nos pidió silencio, se acercó al borde del escenario, y se puso a tocar. Los de la fila 200 no se enterarían de nada, pero desde la fila 6 fue genial. El tocar sin más artificios daba una sensación de cercanía muy grande, como si estás en un bar, y de repente entra Alex Ubago y se pone a cantar.

Pues eso, que un concierto realmente agradable.

Well, it is about time to wish a Happy Year 2007 to my readers.

May this year bring you all the best, etc. etc. :^)

OK, OK, having 5,000 songs is not that much. I’ve heard people with collection in the 15,000s and over. The eMule freaks, downloading 24/7 without ever actually listening to anything can easily have collections in the 50,000s.

However, I never downloaded a copyrighted song from eMule, even though my collection does not entirely consist on original CDs. Actually I downloaded a lot of albums from the Internet… namely Creative Commons music from Jamendo.

Some info about my collection (some statistics taken from the Amarok player, since around June 2006):

Total songs:        5015
  - Commercial:     3944
  - Jamendo:        1055
  - Other CC:       31
Total playing time: 1 week and 6 days
Total file size:    22GB
Song playcount:     10910
Different artists:  627
Different albums:   413
In MP3:             1562
In OGG:             3468

There is some mismatch (5030 songs, as counted from actual files (all OGG and MP3 files I have in a given directory) vs. 5015 songs as counted from the Amarok collection), but I see no easy way of filtering the 15 rogue files (update: I did, some time after writing the post).

Yesterday I attended a gospel concert with my friends, at the Kursaal Palace.

The singing choir was the London Community Gospel Choir, and a really find ensemble it was. The basque society is well known for our coldness, and how shy and quiet we are. However, the LCGC, under the commands of its vital director, managed to make us not only clap hands, but also sing to the tunes, and even stand up and dance! My hands hurt of so much clapping, and time passed like a flash.

I never expected to be carried out by such a music (little religious feeling I have, and little connection to black culture and music), but they made it.

If they sing near you… go see them.

Let the world know it: I made my Ph.D. Thesis defense last tuesday, and I passed! From now on, people may refer to me as “Dr. Silanes” :^)

The title of the thesis was:

Ethylene Polymerization by Group IV Transition Metal Metallocenes

The presentation can be freely downloaded as a 3.2MB PDF. It was done using the PowerDot class for LaTeX. The PowerDot style used was designed by me (from the default style by H. Adriaens and C. Ellison), and is available as a .sty file.

The Thesis book itself can be downloaded under a Creative Commons license as a 6.1MB PDF (the PDF I link here is a very slightly modified version, with errata corrected).

Some pics to illustrate the defense day:

Giving explanations.

Good vibrations during the Tribunal’s question turn.

Serious, waiting for the calification.

Videos:

• Giving explanations (1m07s): (4.9MB lavc AVI|2.9MB Theora OGG)
• Thanking the tribunal (10s): (923kB lavc AVI|860kB Theora OGG)

I have put my thesis under deposit! It means that it will stay that way for a month, then I will have to follow some other bureaucratic requirements and… for mid-December I’ll defend it! I’ll be a Doctor! I can not believe it only took me… well, too long :^)

OK, this entry is just a reminder for myself.

Install ATI drivers

I followed the instructions at this wiki. For the record, I used method 1, and it worked.

Update: The link above seems dead. Read a a more recent post about Compiz Fusion under Debian Lenny for info on ATI drivers instalation.

Install a SMP kernel

My CPU is an Intel Core 2 Duo T7200… I want a SMP kernel, otherwise I am wasting one of the two cores!

Problem is, the friggin Ubuntu has no 2.6 kernels labeled “SMP”. Why, oh why!? OK, I found out: all 2.6.*-686 kernels are actually SMP, even if they don’t say anything. If you have 1 CPU, fine. If you have more, they’ll be detected at boot time. No more “-smp” in the kernel names.

Wireless with 686 kernel

The default 2.6.15-686 supports the wireless just fine, but installing a 686 kernel (required for SMP, see above) seems to break the wireless. However, the solution is easy. As stated in this Ubuntu forum thread, one just needs to install the “restricted” kernel modules corresponding to her kernel (in my case 2.6.15-27-686):

% aptitude install linux-restricted-modules-2.6.15-27-686

After that, reboot. I guess that the new module is loadable (try modprobe ipw3945), without having to reboot… dunno. Also, if you want to have the restricted modules package upgrade automatically, install linux-restricted-modules-686.

WPA encription for WiFi

Update: Read a more recent article: WPA under Ubuntu/Debian.

Install a 64-bit kernel

OK, installing the mainstream 32-bit Ubuntu was a success. Now I have given Ubuntu amd64 a try (amd64 is for both EM64T (Intel) and AMD64 (AMD)).

Everything went smooth, except installing the ATI drivers (as explained above): the screen froze black when loading GDM. To solve this, I read the troubleshooting section in the link above, and found out that I could either add:

Load "extmod"

or:

SubSection "extmod"
  Option "omit XVideo"
  Option "omit XVideo-MotionCompensation"
  Option "omit XFree86-VidModeExtension"
EndSubSection

to the Section "Modules" of /etc/X11/xorg.conf (beware, it’s one OR the other, not both). For me the Load "extmod" did not work, but the SubSection "extmod" did.

Now, for the Xgl thing in 64-bits…

Xgl for 64-bits

I followed the instructions in a previous post, but I found out that some packages were missing, so I manually downloaded them from the Xgl.compiz site. Namely, I downloaded them from the “Edgy” section. However, it didn’t work for me :^(

Update: Compiz Fusion under Debian Lenny in a more recent post.

After failing misserably to run Xgl in Debian Etch, I decided to install Ubuntu Dapper Drake (which allegedly supports it) in a spare partition of my hard disk. Below is the timeline of such an instalation:

13:27

Turn on computer, insert Ubuntu CD. Choose “run the CD as a LiveCD“. See it loading.

13:31

The LiveCD has booted, and I already have a fully functioning GNOME desktop. I spend 2 minutes playing around.

13:33

Select a link for “install Ubuntu on the hard disk”, and answer a couple of questions (username, password, language, time zone, keyboard layout), and off it goes…

13:36

It starts copying files to the hard disk.

13:44

Everything done. Asked whether I wanted to go on using the LiveCD by now, or directly restart to use the Ubuntu installed on disk. I choose the latter.

13:46

I am presented with GDM, which asks me to log in.

13:47

I am already inside GNOME, running my freshly installed Ubuntu OS!!

Summary

4 minutes for LiveCD working 100%, 20 minutes for full installation.

OK, I made a fresh install of Debian Etch on my home computer, and a sound problem appeared. My computer has a soundcard integrated in the ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe motherboard (best piece of hardware I ever bought, this mobo), but I use a spare Sound Blaster Live! I took from my previous computer, so I want the sound to come out of the latter, not the former.

However, the kernel modules to control the on-board soundcard seem to get loaded first, and sound output defaults to it. There could be more elegant solutions, but mine was to copy the following in the /etc/rc.local file (this file gets executed after the /etc/init.d/ services started at boot time):

modprobe -r snd_intel8x0
modprobe -r snd_emu10k1
modprobe snd_emu10k1
modprobe snd_intel8x0

What these lines do is remove the module for the on-board sound (intel8x0), then the SBLive! one (emu10k1), then reload them, but the SBLive! one first.