Friday, June 26, 2009

Fixing a Yahoo Widget

I managed to fix a bug in a certain Yahoo Widget.
I am a fan of Yahoo Widgets for their clean look and generally good performance.

One particular widget has been a favorite of mine for sometime, because it does one task extremely well. However, it had one flaw. To display the text color correctly, it seem to rely on a set of deprecated Unix system calls. The bug/error was manifested when you tried to change the text color. The only text color it supported was Black _IF_ you did NOT have the Yahoo Unix Utilities installed.

Today, I downloaded the widget and then spent some time reading around the Yahoo Widget developers' section. The reference manual allowed me to find the valid replacement code. It was a two line fix. Remove one line of an old system call then add two lines of code to implement the new API call.

Since Yahoo widgets are just a repackaged compressed/zip file, extracting the code, changing the command repackaging it was simple. :) I was done in <20 minutes. I now have a working widget, that does NOT depend on the Yahoo Unix Utilities. Yay!

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Cosmos decommissioning announcement

COSMOS, the ALTIX 3700 128-cpu symmetric multiprocessor and at one time
our computational flagship, will be retired in mid-June this year. We
urge current users to port their codes to HYDRA as soon as practicable
and to back up all valuable files not residing in their home
directories. Because COSMOS has not been under hardware or software
maintenance for the last three years, a repair from a hardware failure
may just be too costly to afford. Supercomputing Facility analysts are
always available to help with with the transition to HYDRA.

By its retirement, COSMOS will have capped five and a half years of
extremely reliable (99.9% uptime) operation. It remains the favorite of
many users and the only system on campus with large enough RAM (128GB)
to accommodate serial jobs that require large amounts of it . Chemistry
has expressed interest in assuming control and administration of COSMOS
and plans to welcome users from other areas. We will keep our users
posted on any relevant developments.

---
Dear COSMOS users:

The system will be powered off at 9 AM of June 29, 2009. Thereafter, the
Chemistry department will take over its operation. This will be the
LAST notice about the decommissioning of COSMOS.

The Facility will delete all user data from the system right before
power off. Since COSMOS is not under maintenance, the resumption of its
operation, much less a prompt one, is not a certainty. Although we have
every expectation that the transfer will be smooth and uneventful, we
cannot exclude misadventures. The latter may even include junking it
because of high repair costs.
----

Yahoo and Pidgin

Sometime in June 2009, Yahoo modified their IM authentication protocols.
If you are running Pidgin 2.5.6 (www.pidgin.im/) or older, and having
issues connecting, updating to 2.5.7 will fix the issue.

[This is for WinXP-SP3]

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

SCSI is not magic

"SCSI is *not* magic. There are *fundamental* *technical* reasons why you
have to sacrifice a young goat to your SCSI chain every now and then."
-- John F. Woods

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Learn with BOOK

LEARN WITH BOOK



- R. J. Heathorn

A new aid to rapid - almost magical - learning has made its appearance.Indications are that if it catches on all the electronic gadgets will be so much junk.

The new device is known as Built-in Orderly Organized Knowledge. Themakers generally call it by its initials, BOOK.


Many advantages are claimed over the old-style learning and teaching aids on which most people are brought up nowadays. It has no wires, no electric circuit to break down, No connection is needed to an electricity power point. It is made entirely without mechanical parts to go wrong or need replacement.

Anyone can use BOOK, even children, and it fits comfortably into the hands. It can be conveniently used sitting in an armchair by the fire.

How does this revolutionary, unbelievably easy invention work? Basically BOOK consists only of a large number of paper sheets. These may run to hundreds where BOOK covers a lengthy programme of information. Each
sheet bears a number in sequence so that the sheets cannot be used in the wrong order.

To make it even easier for the user to keep the sheets in the proper
order they are held firmly in place by a special locking device called a 'binding'.

Each sheet of paper presents the user with an information sequence in the form of symbols, which he absorbs optically for automatic registration on the brain. When one sheet has been assimilated a flick of the finger turns it over and further information is found on the other side.

By using both sides of each sheet in this way a great economy is effected, thus reducing both the size and cost of BOOK. No buttons needto be pressed to move from one sheet to another, to open or close BOOK, or to start it working.

BOOK may be taken up at any time and used by merely opening it. Instantly it it ready for use. Nothing has to be connected or switched on. The user may turn at will to any sheet, going backwards or forwards as he pleases. A sheet is provided near the beginning as a location finder for any required information sequence.

A small accessory, available at trifling extra cost, is the BOOKmark. This enables the user to pick up his programme where he left off on the previous learning session. BOOKmark is versatile and may be used in any BOOK.

The initial cost varies with the size and subject matter. Already a vast range of BOOKs is available, covering every conceivable subject and adjusted to different levels of aptitude. One BOOK, small enough to be held in the hands, may contain an entire learning schedule.

Once purchased, BOOK requires no further upkeep cost; no batteries or wires are needed, since the motive power, thanks to an ingenious device patented by the makers, is supplied by the brain of the user.

BOOKs may be stored on handy shelves and for ease of reference the
programme schedule is normally indicated on the back of the binding.

Altogether the Built-in Orderly Organized Knowledge seems to have great advantages with no drawbacks. We predict a big future for it.



-------------
Found on slashdot :http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1276127&cid=28404637

Monday, June 15, 2009

Twitter

So I signed up for the Twitter bandwagon this morning. In classic
fashion, I went for the one username that has been mine for so long, my
full name :P Nothing else I tried was available! (honest!)

If you want to follow me on twitter, here's the relevant link ->
http://m.twitter.com/suneilmohan

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Punching bag violence

"Did you know a punching bag is hit somewhere in the world every 10
seconds? End violence towards punching bags now."
-- STKinTHEmud @ the PHD Forums