Groomed Keys

Previously

Userfriendlyness

The current Ubuntu versions are (in my oppinion) a big step backwards in terms of reliability. For example last week, I wasted quite a lot of time working around various breackage in the networking area.

Especially high brain-damage can be experienced by using the ifup/ifdown network configuration, because it only does half of the work, when you are lucky. Right now, for example, my machine here lacks it's ipv6-address, even though it's clearly configured in /etc/network/interfaces as it should. Now if I try to ifup manually, it fails because of the already configured ipv4-half... and ifdown fails because of the non configured ipv6 half. If I manually flush the addresess, ifup does the right thing though... but ifup just blindly running the network configuration commands and failing on the first one signalling an error is just BAD, BAD, BAD!

Things like secondary ip-addresses added with the up directive seem to work even less often....

The second-to-most-painful thing is the udev scripts that now merrily rename your network interfaces according to /etc/iftab, a very bright move that --combined with the abomination that is NetworkManager-- can make the unsuspecting administrator hunt for non-existing configurations for hours!

To add insult to injury, the NetworkManager manual-page says (emphasis mine):

The NetworkManager daemon attempts to keep an active network connection available at all times. The point of NetworkManager is to make networking configuration and setup as painless and automatic as possible. If using DHCP, NetworkManager is intended to replace default routes, obtain IP addresses from a DHCP server, and change nameservers whenever it sees fit, with the aim of making networking Just Work.

The obvious solution to all that idiocy of course is to just ignore the non working amatuer work and fall back to the method that already worked in Slackware, 1995. That's what I call progress.

/etc/rcS.d/S41rc-networking
#!/bin/sh
ip link set lo up
ip -f inet addr flush dev lo
ip addr add 127.0.0.1/32 dev lo
ip link set eth0 up
ip -f inet addr flush dev eth0
ip addr add 1.2.3.4/24 broadcast 1.2.3.255 dev eth0
ip route add default via 1.2.3.1
# ... add ipv6 stuff here...

Kloß und Spinne

Absolutely hillarious if you understand German: Kloß und Spinne!

• Episode 1: Computer Kaputt
• Episode 2: Klimakatastrophe

Simple - Advanced

There is a nice driver for Windows, called asio4all that makes normal sound-cards accessible to professional audio software expecting a ASIO driver. Its configuration dialog uses the buttons shown on the left to switch from the advanced to the simple view.

More toys... :-)

Not so Recently.

Hardware

Repairing a headset...

then the baby starts crying...

Shift, what mince?

Yesterday a colleague had her PhD examination. Afterwards a small party was held, the buffet of which had this nice mince-hedgehog. I have been told by gajo-simpatico that this kind of food presentation was hugely pouplar in the 50s.

Mielke 2.0

I added that nice looking Portrait of our minister of the interior to this blog. German readers might want to inform themselves on my motives to do so at the following websites:

• vorratsdatenspeicherung.de, primarily against the storage of communication relevant data without any suspicion of a crime. They have T-Shirts...
• http://bundestrojaner.blogspot.com/, discussing the plans of said minister to let the police break into your computer to plant false evidence create security leaks fight terrorism, of course. (this has been done since 2005, apparently with little to no success, but of course, this does not stop him from demanding more of it, even though the highest german court has ruled the methods unconstitutional)

Now back to the usual programme of posting silli pictures.

Bag of wonders

Free bags with advertising freebies were given out at the university canteen today. Besides other stuff, blue beer and really icky pink antiperspirant...

Nerd Tip of the Day

Mensa TV

A TV team interviewing students in the university's canteen.

two ways to generate polarised light

Name at least two ways of generating polarized light: Laser, Solarium

Deep Shit

I live on a small hill, and aparently on the wrong side of it. So we have a sewage pump in a septic tank below the street to move the soiled water upwards. The pump is connected to a control cabinet with a flashlight on top that is supposed to light up if there are any problems. And it flashes a lot. Figure 1 depicts three gentlemen contemplating the problem of the pump seen near the hole in the ground. That's the septic tank, by the way. Also visible: The door of the control cabinet.

9.63 km/h

3.84km in 23:55. Those are 9.63 km/h! Eat this, Martin! W00t!

Printing Graphics

I wasted some time getting graphics output work reliably on the HP 82240 I wrote about last november. So far the printouts are just beautiful.

Should one? *lol*

Computer Junk

Cleaning out a old server room where people have accumulated various kinds of (mostly broken, but always completely outdated) computer junk.

Nice things in Hamburg

There have been nice moments in Hamburg, too.

End of Run

It's only few minutes to go, then my last shift for the collaboration will be over. I have done these chores for few years now and sitting here never was pleasant. It's a mind numbingly boring work and often I was quite angry about how stupid things were done. But on the other hand, the environment at a big facility like ours here is actually quite fascinating. I always admired the mixture between a industrial plant and a hobbyists lab, combining professionally built high-power machinery with duct-tape and a web of uninsulated cables dangling from racks with measurement electronics. If you walk around, late in the evening, you can see huge halls with impressive construction with single scientists working on their own duct-tape-held experiment, immersed in their research. And sometimes I contemplate that this deeply focused work is what I could have done, and might even have enjoyed had I decided to move here some time ago, and not only do shifts few times a year. But now I realized that I might have built what I critizied when on shift: A faulty device, built under time-pressure by a layman, that no one but him could ever operate. It's probably for the best that it will be shut down in few months, so that everyone can built a new gadget, at a new facility somewhere else.