The story continues at FebruaryBlog

Bernie's brain backup for January 2008

Sun 27th

Down Under

Yesterday I had to clear my room, pack my stuff at OneCambridgeCenter, and say goodbye to many, many good friends and colleges. I don't even know when I'll be able to see them again. Not exactly a happy day, you may have guessed.

Today, after 22 hours of flight, I started to have visions. At the baggage reclaim, I thought I was talking with the kernel god LinusTorvalds. He said that userspace is easy and that he cannot exactly agree iwith some of the choices made in Python. We'd really get along if it wasn't just a dream :-)

Later on, I reached the hotel and got into the elevator with a ginger guy that looked vaguely familiar. I asked if he was going at LCA.

Blink!

Today was a really exciting day! I needed something like this to compensate, at least partially, for leaving Boston.


Hi Bernie! Just stepped here looking for the photos of XOs hanging from the ceiling (i wanted to show them to my father) and found you leaving!

So, have a nice journey, enjoy conf.au and see you soon!

PiroPiro

Sat, 19th

Another trip to NY

I'm planning to go to NewYorkCity tomorrow with a bunch of friends. But this time I guess we'll catch a different transportation: we were booking the FungWah (aka ShittyBus), when ChrisBall came and looked at us funny. "Are you sure? Those buses have a habit of catching fire on the highway".

Apparently, it is really true:

Sun, 13th

Bernie the rockstar

If you were considering hiring me, or entrusting me to do anything serious, you'd better watch this first:

Q: why doesn't my browser play the link right away rather than asking me to download it?
A: because my wiki doesn't support mime-magic yet

Q: why don't you just let apache serve media files?
A: because a CGI has no way to "handoff" a file to the web server once they've been invoked

Food and Power

Here's a stupid movie by SamuelKlein, ArjunSarwal and myself:

If your computer cannot play the above links, you should really consider installing a free media player, or just switching to Linux which comes with all the free media players and codecs out of the box. Meanwhile, here's a workaround:

These also prove the quality of the OggTheora codec. After seeing this, I think I'd recommend using it for its technical advantages in addition to its legal advantages.

In producing these movies, I found out that:

Sat, 12th

Cow power!

My good friend ArjunSarwal recently made the Slashdot front page with his story about Cow Power!

Fri, 11th

Crank, Crank!

Today we got this pleasant surprise.

See the movie: StephenReillyCranking. The guy cranking is DanielDrake, Gentoo kernel maintainer and wireless guru.

ArjunSarwal cranking
ArjunSarwal cranking
ArjunSarwal cranking
ArjunSarwal cranking
StephenReilly cranking
StephenReilly cranking
StephenReilly cranking
StephenReilly cranking

Larger versions of these pics are available at OlpcCrank.

Sat 5th

The little computer that just won't die!

OneLaptopPerChild is not enough. There should definitely be

My good old friend MicheleConsoleBattilana, CEO of CloantoCompany, recently sent me the latest edition of AmigaForever 2006 Premium Edition.

While the OpenFirmware can't boot off a plain CD-ROM designed for the legacy 16bit BIOS, it didn't take too much hacking before I could get the actual UAE binary to start from the Terminal activity:

You may want to configure the system for the very high resolution of the XO display:

The emulation is fast and smooth. I didn't have much success with the demos, mostly because I was unable to reach an adequate emulation speed on the Geode while running UAE with legacy 680x0 processors, which disables the JIT CPU emulator.

The future and
The future and "The Future Ahead of its Time" next to each other
A nice Workbench environment for your XO
A nice Workbench environment for your XO

AmigaCheckmark Only Amiga Makes It Possible!

OneAmigaPerChild
!

OneAmigaPerChildSmaller

Look here for additional details. A big thankyou to MicheleConsoleBattilana for providing a free copy of AmigaForever, a fine tribute to the coolest platform ever!

Thu 3rd

The XaoS strikes back!

I enjoyed bundling this OldSkool activity for the XO:

XaoS-screenshot4

See: XaoS

It certainly needs some more sugarization work for which I have no time.

Wed 2st

Haiku Laptop

Today we shipped our machine affected by dlo#5575 (touchpad mostly unfunctional) to Japan for further inspection by ALPS. Just before closing up the plastic case, I've left inside a little fortune cookie for them:

HaikuXoSmall

If you're wondering what it means, it's a piece of japanese poetry called a HaikuPoem. Google for it.

Tue 1st

Trip to Walden Pond

This really happened on Monday 31st Dec, but who'd go read last year's blog entry now?

So, Adam, Arjun and myself went to this Walden Pond place, where the famous American poet Thoreau lived in complete isolation for 2 years in a cabin made of wood.

Arjun (left) and Me (guess who?)
Arjun (left) and Me (guess who?)

On this very nice lake, I stupdily tried to run on the ice and fell badly, hitting my jaw and cheek on the hard ice. Little cut, big bump... no permanent consequences. Maybe I should consider a health insurance?

Me (the really crazy one) and Adam (the really worried one)
Me (the really crazy one) and Adam (the really worried one)
The three of us in the site of Thoreau's cabin
The three of us in the site of Thoreau's cabin