Hardware 1 - hacker 0.

Note to self: grab datasheets and compatibility reports before buying. Development kits aren't as forgiving as consumer hardware. In my defense, the note ruling my target computer out was buried ten pages into a compatibility report pdf. (And the machine did boot ... it just malfunctioned in interesting ways.)

No relation to the hardware in the previous post, by the way. That one works flawlessly.

New toy

Yay! The intended-for-easter toy has arrived, finally, after a dose of New Adventures With Fedex.

Game of the day: Dwarf Fortress

Dwarf Fortress ... freeware game for the os that must not be named. Works admirably in Wine.

An obscure cross between Dungeon Crawl and The Settlers. Dig your own Moria. Then try to reclaim it after it inevitably falls - to war, famine, accidental magma flood, wandering dragon - or just adventure in the ruins.

Alpha version, probably permanently. Quite addictive.

The very large and peculiar cats from Saturn

This is an actual radio capture. From Saturn. By Cassini.

What's Titan hiding below that orange smog?

*dreamy* I want to go out there...

On that note, fellow Osloians: Buzz Aldrin is here this coming Sunday, at Astrofestival 2007.

Driver, test pilot, vague guiding lights?

The Linux Driver Project is taking off a bit, with several hundred people signed up to help. And we have a few companies dipping their toes in. Getting involved in Linux kernel development has accreted some barriers to entry these last few years. It's difficult to find a worthwhile place to start contributing, and the review-and-resubmit process is drawn-out when no-one knows and trusts your judgement and good taste in coding yet. (Your good taste in most other aspects of life is naturally a given, despite occasional innuendos in heated discussions.)

OutOfTreeDrivers and DriversNeeded now collects things to do (and places to go?). Most places I've worked, I eventually end up adding out-of-tree, or even binary-only, drivers to support something someone needs done - which is a big maintenance pain. Collecting them here might inspire a brave soul to start the mainlining, lobby-for-opening, or reverse-engineering (where legal, like here) process.

Do help out. I'm doing my part.

Ink, read while it's fresh

Just out: Halting State by Charles Stross. Extrapolates from today to 2018, and will certainly be outdated before then. Technothriller. Quirky sarcastic eloquence.

Recommended reader qualifications: MMO gamer w/computer science degree.

Enjoy. I did.

The Beast Remade: Niceties, wrapping up

Text::Reform took care of the rest of the pretty-printing I needed. The Perl builtin "format" command was more familiar, but the listings would not come out right. I have a sneaking suspicion that it does not like UTF-8 STDOUT much. Text::Reform was easier to get right:

$menu_form = "<< "
 ."<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< "
 ."<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< "
 ."<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<";

 print form $menu_form, $index, $from, $to, $subject;

Some manual command-line parsing were needed, in order to do labor-saving speedups like "rm 1-7,17". I expect everyone reinvents that sort of thing at need.

Wrapping up

All this was wrapped up in a two-day hack that saves some time and much aggravation.

I would like to see someone do a similar command-line stunt for interacting with an AJAX web application. Consider this a dare, fellow hacker. I'll owe you a beverage of your choice next time we meet.