Viewing entries posted in August 2007

Windows... in a window! Posted on 23 August 2007 | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (7)

Over the last two days I've been experimenting with virtualisation - running one operating system inside another. The motivation was twofold - firstly Internet Explorer testing at work is a real pain. I normally have to upload all my changes to a test server, remote desktop into an IE test box and then make any changes via ssh - not particularly productive. The second objective is I have yet to find a way to be able to use the iTunes store in Linux! So off on the virtualisation adventure I went.

My friend Matt had managed to get Windows XP running on his work machine on Ubuntu at decent speeds using VMware. While VMware looks very cool, I didn't particularly feel like forking out any money, so I decided to see what the open source options were like. My first stop was Xen - it's built into the kernel and sits very close the the hardware, so is supposed to be very fast. Unfortunately for me it sits too close to the hardware - I'd need either a modified version of XP (which while exists isn't actually available to anyone due to licensing restrictions), or for my CPU to support virtualisation. A quick check on wikipedia showed that my CPU was just a few models too late.. gutting :(.

Next stop was QEMU. QEMU is a bit different - it sits on a much higher level, the software doing more work. Unfortunately this meant it was very slow. Recently, though, someone had developed a kernel module that allowed the hardware to do much more of the grunt work; the module is called KQEMU. I managed to get this all set up (ArchLinux had it all packaged up nicely), however as soon I tried to install XP with KQEMU enabled, I was greeted with a lovely big BSOD. Oh no..

Not willing to give up hope, I ran the installer without the kernel module - this tooking pretty much forever (like hours and hours forever). I don't advise it. After the installation was complete, it booted into Windows... very, very slowly. At that point I shut down the virtual machine. I reenabled KQEMU and rebooted - voila! Windows XP at fairly decent speeds - not native speeds for certain, but it does run faster than a lot of XP machines I've used. And as I plan to only be running a single application, it is more than adequate for my purposes. I have also since found that the problem with the BSOD on install was due to QEMU's less than perfect implementation of ACPI, and that disabling acpi on the commandline would've fixed the issue - doh, wish I had known earlier, would've saved me a lot of time! Lesson learnt - QEMU by itself = horribly slow, QEMU with kQEMU = victory!

After letting Windows do it's update thing, I made a backup of my machine - this is where virtualisation comes in handy. I then proceeded to install Internet Explorer 7 on one copy - so I now have an easy way to test both IE6 & IE7. I was slightly scared about trying to set up networking with QEMU, but I was pleasantly suprised - not only could I access the Internet without configuring anything, but my real linux machine was avaiable at 10.0.2.2, so my web server was all ready to go! :)

My final task was to install iTunes - this ran without a problem. Unfortunately most of the music available on iTunes store is DRM protected, and as I don't plan to boot up a virtual machine every time I want to listen to music, and I have yet to find a way to remove it, I won't be buying any DRM music. Fortunately all EMI music can be bought DRM free (for a slightly higher price, but thus is the price of freedom). While initially I didn't think I listened to a whole lot of EMI music, I discovered that a number of labels with lots of bands I listen to are actually owned by EMI - most importantly Tooth & Nail :). So after setting up a iTunes account, I took for a test run and bought Mae's The Everglow EP, which, btw, I highly recommend (well I highly recommend anything by Mae in general).

The last piece of the puzzle was figuring out how to transfer my newly purchased music from my virtual machine to my actual machine. First I tried Windows file sharing with [url=http://www.samba.orgSamba</a> - however I had a few problems with authorisation - I don't think I'll ever understand how to configure Samba properly. So I took an easier road - downloaded WinSCP on my virtual machine, and used ssh to transfer the files. Result - Mae on Banshee! Excellent!

Mmm pie... Posted on 20 August 2007 | Tagged , , | Comments (3)

Today I discovered a new addition to the dairy down the road - classic indian dishes in tasty pie form! I had a butter chicken pie - pure genius! :)

Maybe if you used more than just two fingers... Posted on 17 August 2007 | Tagged , , | Comments (3)

I just went to update my computer and I guess I typed the wrong password, which isn't very suprising considering my severe lack of touch-typing</a> skills. What is suprising is that instead of the general 'incorrect password' message (or something to that effect), my computer decided to insult me. Slightly confused, I deliberately got the password wrong a second to see what would happen:

It seems that the maintainer of the sudo package on Arch Linux recently decided to enable insults. I personally don't mind - I like my computer having a bit of personality! I'm not sure everyone else would think the same though.

Energy Lager? Posted on 16 August 2007 | Tagged , | Comments (3)

I recently noticed a six pack of these in the fridge:

You'll have to excuse the poor photography, but the label asserts that the drink is an 'energy lager'. I'm assuming they belong to my flatmate, but my question is this: what the heck is an energy lager? Beer makes me feel relaxed, if not sleepy.. I don't understand how one could possibly make you feel energetic regardless of the chemicals in it, and even if you could, I don't see the appeal...

Oh noes it's Ohloh Posted on 16 August 2007 | Tagged , , , | Comments (2)

I came across an interesting site the other day - Ohloh. It's basically some sort of odd combination of open source software metrics and social networking. While I am generally find most social networking sites fairly annoying, this one intrigues me by introducing something else into the mix. Last.fm is another good example of this - I use it for plenty of music finding goodness.

When I stumbled across the site, I found that I was, in a way, already a part of it. Ohloh had been tracking my commits to SilverStripe (although only the commits made since the subversion repository was opened), and when I signed up I could claim that svn user as me. It also gives some interesting statistics about SilverStripe - for one it is very well commented; one of my tasks a while back was going through and adding phpDocumentor comments to the code, although the enormity of SilverStripe meant that I didn't particularly get that far, so I can't credit for many of those comments. Maybe later on I'll get a chance to do some more.

I also added Fields of Gold and Project Frozen Flame to Ohloh, and after waiting a day or so for the projects code to be crawled we now have statistics on both the projects.

A few other SilverStripers also signed up and we gave each other kudos - Ohloh's way of letting you show gratitude to another open source developer. Ohloh also calculates a 'kudo rank' based on the commits you have done and the kudos you have received. I logged on the next day to see not one, but all five of the 'highest kudo gainers' on the front page were SilverStripers (although Elijah is put down as CMSMadeSimple, he is one of our Google Summer of Codestudents, and is working in a private branch that Ohloh can't see). Woohoo!

Ohloh is a site I plan to keep an eye on, it's still in it's early days, but it shows promise.

Yay Will! Posted on 11 August 2007 | Tagged | Comments (22)

As I'm sure you can see, the site has had a bit of a refresher! I like it a lot more now, the old theme was fine, but it was so web 2.0, this one is far more me. :) It was all done by Will for me, so big ups to him, yay! I also added a people section. Neat!

Best battle strategy ever Posted on 10 August 2007 | Tagged , | Comments (4)

Convince your enemies to circumsize themselves before you fight.

The great Cookie Time crisis Posted on 8 August 2007 | Tagged | Comments (20)

I swear Cookie Times are getting smaller, but noone believes me!

Silverbeet down Lambton Quay Posted on 8 August 2007 | Tagged | Comments (11)

I noticed about a week ago that what appeared to be some form of vegetable planted in the planters down Lambton Quay.. My first thought was that it was rhubarb, but a quick email to the council by my friend Mat revealed that it was rainbow beet, a variation of silverbeet with coloured stalks. We used to grow both in the vegetable garden when I was a kid, which explains my confusion, but the point here is not to point out my severe lack of plant classification skills, but to ask - why would you plant silverbeet in the middle of the city? It's not a particularly attractive plant, the car fumes ruin any chance of it being edible (silverbeet is not the tastiest plant in the world anyway). So, to put my question simply, why??

Added a photo section Posted on 4 August 2007 | Tagged , | Comments (0)

I just added a photo section to the site, and uploaded some photos from one of Rose Cottage's spectacular parties. It uses the recently released SilverStripe gallery module, and while I admit it's a bit bare, it's only on it's first release, so I am expecting it to improve a ton over the next few months. :) Enjoy.

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