Roadblogging

I'm at my parents' house for Thanksgiving, enjoying the food and family times. However, being the geek I am, I've been trying to get connected all day. My Sprint PCS Vision service has been returning network errors all day—I don't know what the deal is. Only just now have I been able to establish a connection, either on the phone directly or from my laptop.

Whatever was causing the problem, I'm wired now, so this is the first real test of my roadblogging setup. Happy Thanksgiving from the road.

Random Linkage: Origins of Thanksgiving

• http://www.appleseeds.org/thankgiv.htm
• http://www.linguatics.com/thanksgiving.htm
• http://www.twilightbridge.com/hobbies/festivals/thanksgiving/history.htm
• http://www.genealogyforum.rootsweb.com/gfaol/Thanksgiving/Origins.htm

"ATTENTION WHITE PEOPLE"

White people, please read our latest newsletter for new instructions (via suburban blight). Thank you and enjoy your holidays.

Every now and then

Every now and then, one of those things happens that makes you smile. A KKK initiation goes bad when one bigot shoots another in the head (via suburban blight).

GNU/Linux on Thinkpad G40 Compatibility Report

I just put up compatibility report for GNU/Linux on the IBM Thinkpad G40.

The Horror, The Horror

My god, Doc Searls is right, Michael Jackson does look like a homeless woman in his mug shot. Peep this:

(Photo via The Globe and Mail). Naaaaaasty. Look at his left eye bugging out—I swear it is about to fall out of that skull of his.

Sanyo SCP 8100 Usable in Linux for Wireless Internet Access?

I'm still looking for a camera phone that I can use under Linux for wireless internet access without any extra funky hardware or software. I've been eyeing the Sanyo SCP-8100 for an option, as my SCP-4900 works extremely well for this. However, I've held back because I can't find much report of anyone successfully using an 8100 with Linux.

Until today. I found two examples of people supposedly getting an 8100 working as a usb acm modem with Linux. Checkout Lukewarm's SCP-8100 page and Frank E. Harrell's Linux Setup Notes for two examples.

Update:

I'm glad to say that the Sanyo-SCP 8100 is 100% supported under Linux. I spoke with Frank Harrell directly (link above) and he confirmed its operation with Knoppix. Now I just have to get one.

Do you want to know...what...it...is?

(Via Living On Earth.) For an entertaining, somewhat basic overview of the problems caused by large agribusiness on commercial meat production, head over to themeatrix.com (requires Flash).

If you find yourself interested in this topic, I highly suggest the book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, written by journalist Eric Schlosser. Be forewarned, however, you may never feel the same way about that McFatty Burger you eat when you find out under what disgusting conditions the meat is produced and how that delicious flavor is engineered and added to the food.

I'm not vegan and I'm all for killing animals. Meat is just disgusting.

Ask yourself if this is appropriate

(Via Beats & Rants 2.1.) State District Judge Timothy Ellender, a white judge from the Terrebonne Parish, attended a Halloween party in black-face makeup, an Afro, an orange jail jumpsuit, and shackles. A fucking judge!

This case may go to the Louisiana Supreme Court if it is recommended by the state Judiciary Commission; I really hope it does. This kind of shit from a judge—a man whose job it is to put people in jail, mostly for non-violent crime I would bet—is unacceptable.

How can anyone in Ellender's court expect to get a fair trial? And for that matter, assuming they did, one would expect more mistrials declared and more appeals granted, on the mere suspicion of racial bias. That is a disservice to every citizen of Louisiana.

New IAC valve cost me nothing

The Ford place I took my car to today found the code in my computer was set indicating the Idle Air Control valve was stuck at a high idle. Just like I thought. I have to give it up to Ford, though—having it replaced again cost me absolutely nothing. Not a cent. We'll see how this valve works out.

Examine this

Why do people blog and is it interesting?

You can head over to NPR and check out Scott Simon's bit on blogging, why people blog, and whether it makes for interesting reading. His conclusion was that most blogs are garbage and examining your uninteresting problems is "bad for literature".

I was on my way to the local Ford dealership this morning, taking my car in again for IAC valve problems, when I heard Scott's piece. It hit home after the amount of self-serving bitching I've been doing on my blog.

However, I have to side with Rayne at Radio Free Blogistan, when he respectfully disagrees with Scott. If you go hunting around the blogosphere looking for crap, you will find no shortage of it, but if you spend just a moment looking for the bloggers who drop the gems on us, you should have no problem finding worthwhile material.

I couldn't possibly give linkage here to all of the bloggers out there who entertain me, inform me, and inspire me, but all of you have my thanks. Thank you for writing about what interests you or just bitching about your life, even if it is "bad for literature".

Of course, you couldn't expect someone with a blog to say something much different.

Through the lens of a soldier

Check out "Through the lens of a soldier" over at pbase.com for the view of life from an American soldier in Iraq. (Via Metafilter.)

Fuck it, I won't lie, my ride is a joke

God damn it. Really.

Yet again, the engine light in my 1999 Ford Escort has graced me with its dreadful luminance. It's back like a bad habit I can't get rid of and I'm FUCKING SICK of it. Ahem. Sorry.

My best guess is that the source of the sickly light is, once again, the idle solenoid, also known as the IAC valve. I don't know if Ford designs them to fail every few months, if the stars have aligned to produce another random failure in mine, or if somehow an unknown fault in my car causes them to fail, but that fucker had better be covered under warranty. Otherwise I'm going to be very mad.

I've got an appointment with Ford "service" this weekend.

On a positive note

My girlfriend is coming into town this weekend! At least I should have a good time waiting on some idiot mechanic to tell me he doesn't have the part available to replace in my car. Wait, I was trying to be positive. Should be a good weekend.

I did get all of my Xmas shopping done, except for my Girlfriend's Mother (all in one day). What do you get your significant other's mother?

Write on your own time and get suspended

These days, if you are a highschool student who writes on your own time, there is a good your school may suspend you or identify you as a problem student. Tough shit too, as there isn't much you can do about it. We've all learned recently the dangers of your employer reading your blog but this is going too far. The material on the student's journal was simply rude—not threatening. We need to stop cowering our heads in fear every time a highschool student coughs sideways.

I have to admit, though, I've cut out a few of my blog entries on sensitive topics, just in case. What kind of world is this? Maybe it is time to start a 100% anonymous blog for myself.

Debian GNU/Linux and Harris Semiconductor Prism 2.5 Wavelan Support

I was wrong when I mentioned before that the integrated wireless on my Thinkpad G40 wasn't supported under Linux. Turns out it is. I'm still struggling to get it working but I do believe it is supported.

Trying to get it working, I first tried the wlan-ng driver which claims to support this built-in, PCI wireless device. Debian comes with the wlan-ng driver and utilities prepackaged. You must get the linux-wlan-ng package, along with the appropriate linux-wlan-ng-modules-* package for your kernel. If you use a custom kernel, you must apt-get source linux-wlan-ng in your /usr/src/modules directory and make sure to build it when you build your kernel. See my page on building a custom kernel under debian with make-kpkg for instructions on how to build modules (like pcmcia-cs-modules and linux-wlan-ng-modules).

This almost worked except that the prism2_pci driver segfaulted on me when I tried to use it. Disabling PCI Bus Control under Power Management in the BIOS of this G40 helped a bit, but it never got it working.

Still not knowing what to do, I tried good old Knoppix. Knoppix autodetected my wireless automagically, using the orinoco_pci driver for support. Worked great, or as best as I can tell anyway without a WAP. The little wireless light on my laptop started blinking and iwconfig gave comforting output indicating the device was working.

So now I'm trying recompile my kernel in Debian to use the orinoco_pci driver, as it did not before. I believe the appropriate option is HERMES_PCI or something similar. It has been a headache but at least the onboard wireless is supported. More when I get this working.

Update: Working Kernel Config

What should have been an easy task ended up a night-long series of recompiles, but in the end, I think I have it working. For some reason, compiling pcmcia_cs modules with make-kpkg started failing on me, with a compile error. I think it was caused by some kernel header file. Instead of using it, I changed my config to include pcmcia modules directly from the main kernel tree. Doing this, I had to change the PCIC line in /etc/default/pcmcia to be yenta_socket instead of i82365, but other than that, it worked nicely. Now I can modprobe orinoco_pci and iwconfig outputs the following.

Now I just need a WAP and I should be good to go I think. Have a look at my kernel config file if you have a need.

Buuuuuuusted

Ouch. Mr. Rumsfeld caught in a red-handed lie. (Via Eclecticism.) You can't match the power of the all-knowing GOOGLE.

Holy Shit, 10 Years

By some strange coincidence, it's the album I put on first thing this morning, for some beats with my coffee and cereal. Turns out this album, Midnight Marauders, has reached its 10th anniversary (via Diesel Nation). Wow. Read on at Diesel Nation for a bit of info on where the old Tribers are now.

Aiptek Pencam Trio Incompatibility

I picked up an Aiptek Pencam Trio at my local Walmart.com (Every Day Low Wages!). Stay away from these—while gphoto supports some versions of them with the stv680 driver, the ones in stock at Walmart these days don't seem to be supported. I believe the chipset in these cameras has changed, along with the USB id's for vendor and product.

You can tell if you have an incompatible by looking at the id's reported by the kernel when you plug in the camera. If the output of dmesg looks like

Even if you force these id's to be recognized as a Pencam Trio, you'll end up with an unspecified error in libgphoto2's I/O routines. Here is the relevant entry in /proc/bus/usb/devices.

If anyone finds out how to get this working under Linux, I'd like to hear about it.

Busy week setting up new laptop

It's been a busy damn week here—work is still running me ragged and I've been spending my evenings setting up my new laptop. All of the core components except the integrated wireless and modem are supported with open source drivers; I will be putting up a compatibility report soon. In the mean time, if you have an IBM Thinkpad G40 and you are looking to make it work under Debian GNU/Linux, have a look at these hints.

The real reason they think Bush is of good moral character.

Mark, the real problem, IMHO, is lack of healthy skepticism.

The polls continue to show that the voters think that Bush is of good moral character personally, despite their discontent with his performance in office. Perhaps they understand that he runs an administration where mendacity is treated as a family value, and just don't associate deception by politicians with bad moral character, or perhaps they misunderestimate the extent to which Bush and his aides make up for their profligacy with public funds by observing a strict economy with respect to the truth. Probably, both are the case.

Source

I don't believe your average voter is as jaded as you suggest, but I agree, they may "misunderestimate" Bush. However, I think the real sickness of the American voter is gullibility. I'm weary of excuses from people along the lines of "Bush must know something we don't—he can't give out all of the intelligence now, it would aid the Enemy." People simply don't know how to be skeptical of their leaders.

And I thought I had a bad week.

Good glub, I thought I've been having a rough week/month/whatever. This guy has been having a much worse week. First fired from Microsoft for running around with a camera, it looks like he unintentionally jumped down the throat of some university network admin for ganking his website design.

Hang in there, Michael. Admitting your mistakes makes you bigger, not to mention gets you new regular readers of your blog.

Why is this not surprising

Why is it that some American POW's are treated differently after their return to America? Read on (via Blunted On Reality).

Trackbacks at LAB-Y

I finally got around to implementing Trackbacks here at LAB-Y. For more information about Trackbacks, read the specification. I also added support for the RSS Trackback module in my RSS feed.

This shit is 100% experimental, so drop me a comment if it isn't working.