muesli

Photosynth is a software aiming at detecting and combining several similar photos to create a big 3D world. Pictures (or rather a vido in that case) speak more than a thousand words: Watch Microsoft Photosynth in action.



The software seems also to be able to find similar pictures to a given photo and even promises to automatically identify known objects on images of various different sources.

I just had my MacBook for a few weeks and now the battery already died. It won't power up without its power-adapter at all, and once it is running OS X just tells me "No batteries available". Seems I am not the only one.



Guess I got to go to the Apple Store tomorrow and ask for a quick replacement. I just hope I don't have to wait weeks for a silly new battery. First revision Apple products... what did ya expect.



sigh,

muesli

Today I discovered Ketchup, a little command-line tool to manage your Linux kernel sources. If you're one of the weirdos, who is still compiling his kernel manually for whatever reason (like I do), I can only recommend it. Ketchup nicely eases up the entire process of checking for updates and applying them to your system.



Let's not hesitate and look at few usage examples... Want to know what's the latest version of a particular kernel-tree?



$ ketchup -s 2.6

2.6.17.7

$ ketchup -s 2.6-mm

2.6.18-rc1-mm2



Let's play with your kernel sources a bit. First of all, you surely want to check what version you currently got lying around...



$ cd /usr/src/linux

$ ketchup -m

2.6.17.6



Let's assume there is a newer kernel version available and you want to download it, bunzip it, revert the old patch and apply the new one. Nothing easier than that:



# cd /usr/src/linux

# ketchup 2.6-tip

2.6.17.6 -> 2.6.17.7

Applying patch-2.6.17.6.bz2 -R

Applying patch-2.6.17.7.bz2



That's really it. It will download the patches, revert and apply them, so all you will have to do is watch and wait

Switching to an entirely different kernel versions is just as easy:



# cd /usr/src/linux

# ketchup 2.6.16.2



Final note: If Ketchup should abort with a gpg error, then it couldn't verify the patch's or kernel's signature. Either add the 2.6 public key to your keyring (this is the proper solution) or call Ketchup with an additional -G parameter (this will override signature checking). I'd suggest the former, which is really easy to do by downloading it from a public pgp server:



# gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys 0x517D0F0E



Have fun compiling,

muesli

Usenet just doesn't cut it for me. Too much spam, too little quality, too much hassle. Not just once I've been thinking about the good old FidoNet and started wondering what actually happened to it.



So I googled a bit and read up on the topic. Basically the net still exists and it's not that hard to setup your own point/node and start receiving Fido message packages via the Internet. The Nodelist flags were adapted to the new situation, of course (itn,ibn). I'm currently really pondering setting up a system myself (again).



The only thing stopping me so far is one simple question: How much is really going on there nowadays? Anyone got some stats on Echomail? The Nodelist itself doesn't seem too impressive: "just" a few thousand nodes are left. I remember the file being at least four-times as big



Hopefully there's still some active FidoNet user out there, willing to answer my questions...

How sad is that?

I don't understand what was going on in Zidane's head at that moment.

What a career-ender I just hope people will remember him for other things than this foul.



Must say, I quite enjoyed the world-cup over the last month. Sometimes I really wish it would take place more often than just every four years. Then again, maybe it's only so exciting, because it's a once-in-four-years happening you just don't want to miss.



Congratulations to Italy, something the tifosi can surely embrace during the disturbing time of mach-fixing allegations.



See you in another four years, I reckon.

Just reinstalling OS X on my MacBook. Customized my installation and deselected some software packages. That's when I noticed that iDVD (the DVD player and burner for OS X) eats up 1.8GB of my harddisc size. What's wrong with you, iDVD? Get in shape, man.



Someone got an explanation for that?



cheers,

muesli

Did I mention, my Xbox 360 has become alive. Somewhat at least. It blogs every now and then and tells you what I did to it (him / her?!)...



So in case you want to know how my gamerscore developed over the time, check out my Xbox 360's own blog.



cheers,

muesli

Quick check: Someone working on an a href=http://chris.de/exit.php?url_id=734amp;entry_id=253 onmouseover=window.status='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_Booth_(software)';return true; onmouseout=window.status='';return true; title=Apple PhotoBooth on WikipediaApple PhotoBooth/a-like KDE application? Does something similar even exist already?br /
br /
In case I missed something, drop me a note please!br /
br /
Cheers,br /
muesli

"I am a 72-year-old war pensioner and I have two problems. I wonder if you can help with either of them. Although my grandchildren have told me that getting an email account is “a must” in this day and age, I am put off by a fear of all this “spam” I hear about. I am sketchy on the details, but apparently it is quite like “junk mail” but sent via an Internet computer.

My second problem is quite unrelated to the Internet, but has been preying on my mind for some time now. Put simply, I am desperate to gain access to penis-enlargement pills, unsecured loans and retired government officials from Nigeria who wish me to go to their homeland to recover large sums of cash from unspecified vaults. Please help."


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...the first piece of opensource, I've ever written. Back at the age of 15, pretty much exactly 10 years ago. Funnily back then nobody really seemed to care or know what opensource is. Neither did anyone really realize the power behind. Except a few developers, of course. Nice to see how things have changed in retrospect. Let's just imagine what could be done in another decade. I'm looking forward to it.br /
br /
Thanks to google for caching it. I wouldn't have a backup otherwise, I reckon.br /
a href=http://chris.de/exit.php?url_id=736amp;entry_id=251 title=http://groups.google.com/group/fido.ger.pascal/browse_thread/thread/bad935ba4f037729/cf161836ef74c2e1?lnk=stamp;q=comunit+christian+muehlhaeuseramp;rnum=1#cf161836ef74c2e1 onmouseover=window.status='http://groups.google.com/group/fido.ger.pascal/browse_thread/thread/bad935ba4f037729/cf161836ef74c2e1?lnk=stamp;q=comunit+christian+muehlhaeuseramp;rnum=1#cf161836ef74c2e1';return true; onmouseout=window.status='';return true;COMUnit at Google Groups./a

Not many people in the world will understand this blog-entry. So if you're not one of them, I'm really sorry. Keep walking. Nothing to see here, really.



For the others: enjoy.






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Na dann haben wir ja endlich ein arrogantes Arschloch-Team zusammen, bei dem man sich kollektiv ueber das Ausscheiden in der Vorrunde freuen kann und darf.



Lasset die Spiele beginnen und die Peinlichkeiten auf Deutschland herabprasseln. Ich freue mich schon



...muesli


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That's how I feel every day.


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You know, I don't use Windows very often. But even then it manages to annoy the hell out of me.



Using Linux I recently switched my mouse to a Logitech MX1000. I just plugged it in and it instantly worked. Now I just booted up Windows and my cursor refused to work. In sheer desperation I ended up deleting the Logitech software (even though it is a Logitech mouse)... and guess what: the very moment the software was removed, my mouse cursor moved again. What the ****?!



Another thing I noticed during my ten minutes without a mouse: you can't close the Windows Help & Support window with Alt+F4. It would just ask you if you wan't to assign a new shortcut. Actually, the only way to close it is using the mouse. Ridiculous.



'nuf ranting

...muesli


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If you got an up-to-date ArchLinux, then chances are that k3b/growisofs complains about being unable to anonymously mmap before burning. It seems K3B passes one parameter with a slightly too high value to growisofs.



Here's my work-around: Go to K3B's config, Programs tab, User Parameters. Add the following parameter for growisofs:

-use-the-force-luke=bufsize:16m



cheers,

muesli


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