So I'm sitting here trying to get it to move to "shipped" by sheer force of will.

Doesn't seem to be working.

Update: Just needed to concentrate a bit harder. Eet hes sheeped!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:13 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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And the light came on, and then the Apple logo, and then the infamous DO NOT DISCONNECT message. The battery is completely flat, in spite of being plugged in for several hours the other day.

Windows can see it as a disk. iTunes doesn't seem to want to know, though. I'll see if I can sort that out.

In other news, I got a delayed write error on my external disk drive... But that's on the same Firewire card that I was plugging and unplugging the iPod on, so might just be a glitch. Yeah, I'm sure it's just a glitch.

Update: Swapped the iPod to my other Firewire card, and dinged iTunes over the head, and now that's working. And I got a whole bunch more delayed write errors on the external drive, so I swapped that to USB, and now that's working too.

Hmm.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:17 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Hmm. Problem. If you are using Firefox, the comment editor doesn't work until Sitemeter has loaded. Sitemeter is playing up right now, so you have to wait for it to either load or time out before the comment box works.

Doesn't happen in IE7.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:31 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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This is what a 2000lb laser guided bomb does. Hopefully you can agree that an ambulance with one of those through the roof would look distinctly second-hand.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:41 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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This is - for the most part - a very silly show. There is - for the most part - no overall plot to the series. It is episodic to the point of regularly having to reset reality merely to keep the cast intact. It is at least chronological, in that things that occur in one episode that are not obviously reset do affect later episodes - except when they don't - and things that clearly could not have taken place do not get retrofitted into later episodes - except when they do.

It's not for everyone, but at least watch episodes two and three, in which they introduce Mint, Vanilla, and Normad. It's also in episode three that they really start shredding science fictional tropes. You'll see what I mean.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:11 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:17 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Yep, it's a Tim Powers novel all right.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:05 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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(Via just about everybody, but originating from our lovable Jawas.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:23 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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I have Dzur by Steven Brust and Three Days to Never by Tim Powers, two writers I greatly enjoy, and The Family Trade and The Hidden Family by Charlie Stross, who I usually like (though I found Accelerando unreadable).

I also have a cold.

I'm probably going to take tomorrow off. I'll email in sick, and spend the day curled up in bed with my books and my notebook and a bowl of peanuts. I have some reviews I want to write, so maybe if the pills kick in and the fog lifts a bit I'll do that too.

By the way, I've plugged in the Minx search thingy. It needs some work, because it doesn't quite interact with the templating system properly; in particular, the pager widget doesn't work. I really need to add some search results tags and generalise the form handling routines a bit more. I had planned to do all this last month, but, well, that didn't happen.

But the search function itself is working, so feel free to pound on it.

Also by the way, I turn thirty* next month. For my birthday I would like a large hammer with which to threaten my remaining appliances.

* Not actually thirty.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:51 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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The reason I was updating iTunes was so that I could load podcasts onto my iPod and listen to them that way rather than having to lug my notebook about.

On Tuesday I managed to get everything loaded up and my iPod updated and use it to listen to some podcasts.

Actually, it turns out that it kind of sucks for listening to podcasts.

So I guess I shouldn't be that upset that my iPod has now died.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:56 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Since the series was licensed before the fansub was completed (before it even finished airing in Japan, I think), the situation he finds himself in now is where I was this time last year.

(Also, four of the episodes were released straight to DVD and never aired. I assume they will be included in the R1 release.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:04 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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The one that worked is a 975-based board; none of the 965 boards worked.

Very strange.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:15 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Justice Geoffrey Nettle said: "Surely that can't justify restraining them from saying something that said by anyone else would be legal? In the case of the newsletter, for example, Pastor Nalliah says many churches have closed down. What's wrong with saying that?"

Ms Mortimer replied: "The tribunal has found there is something wrong with saying it. Truth is not a defence, it's irrelevant to contravention of the act."

Fortunately, it appears that in this case what is fucked up is the legislation, and that the Court of Appeal has retained at least a modicum of sense. Even if plaintiff's counsel has not.

Justice Ashley said so many of the statements were entirely innocuous and asked how the pastors could legitimately be restrained from making them. Ms Mortimer replied: "Because the tribunal found that when they made them they made them in a way that contravened the act." She said the comments had to be seen in the overall context.

Solicitor-General Pamela Tate said the case did not come under the implied constitutional right to free speech because that right applied only to political and governmental matters.

* I'm allowed to say this because it is a political and governmental matter, because I don't live in the state of Victoria, and because I don't give a shit anyway.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:36 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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If we ever give up the desire to help people to live in freedom we will have lost our soul as a nation.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:34 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Darn.

* EYO; I've been buying stuff from them for years.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:50 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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So far, I've loaded 18GB of software.

I thought I was going to have to install all my games as well, but it turns out that after the last disaster I loaded them all onto the (newly rebuilt) D drive - and they're still there.

So yay for that, at least.

* Except for Neverwinter Nights, which is very emphatic about where it wants to live. C:/NWN or bust. But that's a single DVD, and I haven't even lost the activation keys yet.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:40 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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(There's a good name for this sort of activity: deficit programming. I hate deficit programming.)

Why do I bring this up?

I've just been denormalising our database. We are running, right now, on a hacked-up copy of an ancient version of Movable Type. In preparation for moving off Movable Type, I am trying to get it into a form at least somewhat similar to the Minx structures.

Part of the problem is that MT is highly normalised. There is, for example, no record of how many comments are attached to a particular post. MT executes an SQL query to count them as needed. Minx embeds it within its queries. But being forced to embed a carefully grouped count function within a query that is assembled ad-hoc depending on parameters set by the blog owner and the individual template tags is something of a pain.

So I de-normalised the database. Now we have a comment count field.

There are only two pieces of code that add comments to the system, and I've patched those to update the new field. A database trigger would be a much better solution, but this is MySQL 4.1, and it doesn't have triggers.

Unfortunately there are also several things that delete comments, so I need to hunt those down as well. Or just set up a routine to recalculate the comment counts every so often. Until we move to Minx. Whenever that might be...

Update: And, uh, just breaking the entire blogging system in the process. Stupid MySQL.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:56 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:20 AM | Comments (17) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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My forum.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:28 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Now blackseo.com turns conventional wisdom on its head.

Wonder if the FBI would be interested in these shitheads?

(I haven't visited that site and wouldn't advise it, but their spam conveniently lists all of their "services".)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:21 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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I still have to see if I can recover anything more from the old drive, but I'm back in business.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:21 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:51 PM | Comments (22) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Finally.

For the last 18 months I've been running on an old PC I bought in 2001... because it was better than what I had before. Even after half the memory died.

Specs:

Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4GHz)
4GB memory
320GB disk
Radeon 1600XT

This will replace not only my Windows PC*, but three Linux development boxes** as well. Hence the 4GB of memory. VMWare server is neat, and it's free, but it goes through memory like a starving honeybadger through a bag of Maltesers.

Now all it needs is a name. And for the CPU to arrive...

SpecIntRate Figures

Current Thingy: 6.05
Sun E450: 10.9
RS/6000 M80: 25.1 (8-way RS64-III)
AlphaServer GS80 Model 6/731: 36.0 (8-way Alpha)
Unisys ES7000: 44.3 (16-way Xeon)
Sun E4800: 51.3 (12-way UltraSparc III)
New Toy: 53.9
SGI Altix 4700 Density System: 4236

* Tara
** Fred, Willow, and Xander

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:47 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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"When Hizbullah violates the cease-fire, the world will see who the aggressor is and will understand us," a source close to Olmert said.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:25 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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They were supposed to go in my new media center PC, but that kind of didn't work - the motherboard seems to be faulty and I haven't had a chance to get it replaced. So they get reporpoised.

Actually, I am afraid to use them. If I pull the wrong plug, I'll trash my 600GB spanned volume. Which has Magipoka and Haruhi on it. And some other stuff. But I'm going to do it anyway.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:28 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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