IMPORTANT NOTE: Due to an email from Andrew October, I had to remove some parts of this posting. Please see this for details. Also read the article that caused all of this. Andrew October, Cape Town journalist, is doing his best to destroy Christmas for the children. Urgh!
DSCAS does 2D registration
The code is just short of being awe-inspiringly horrible, but it works and is quite usable for automatic and semi-automatic rigid registration of 2D sections for 3D reconstruction. See the screenshot below:
Mark Shuttleworth NOT the first African in Space, but likes Python
Contrary to popular belief and idiot marketing droids, Mark Shuttleworth is technically not the first African in space. This of course is dependent on your definition of “African”, but if that definition is “person born in Africa”, the title of First African in Space should go to Colonel Patrick Baudry, a French dude who was born in Douala, Cameroon on March 6, 1946. Colonel Baudry was part of the 1985 space shuttle Discovery crew.
Setup CVS Read-Only Access
I bet you’ve always wondered how to setup a CVS repository with read-only access. This is not quite as straightforward as you think. Ha! Read this. Then again, maybe this is not as exciting as one may think.
Toshiba 2.5″ HDD power management
Urgh… the Toshiba MK3018GAS 2.5″ hard drive in my laptop keeps on spinning down every so often in spite of Windows XP being configured only to spin it down after 30 minutes of idle time. This is extremely frustrating. Under linux, hdparm -S with a suitable time-out did the trick just marvellously. After having investigated this issue with several different diagnostic utilities, it turns out the disc has its own power management as well.
Back from ZA 2003
What a lovely holiday… I got time to party with many of the friends, spend quality time with the family, drink many Windhoek Lagers and eat too much red meat. Unfortunately, I missed Goof’s bachelors’ party. Next time! ;) On a totally unrelated note, it seems my Tungsten E is working with Evolution 1.2.4, gnome-pilot DEBs from <http: debian="" www.madhack.com=""> and some spit. The whole volatile combination seems to be dancing drunkily on the edge of a very sharp Minora blade though…
The Tungsten E and Linux
There are a few things you have to remember when trying to keep your pilot synchronised with your Linux workstation. Most of these caveats are due to general Gnome 2.2 shittiness. My opinion that many open source programmers should rather go back to school has just been enforced by this opinion. :) Testing kernel setup with pilot-xfer Make sure your kernel has full support for usb and that you’ve built usbserial and visor modules as well.
First thoughts on the Tungsten E
At least judging by my experience with the Tungsten E so far, Palm has really done it again. The durn thing Just Works(tm) and will do just wonderfully as PDA, just like my trusty old Palm IIIx. It’s still a real CHORE to get it working with Debian Woody (well, with Debian stable everything always has to be a chore), but Mandrake cooker (soon to be 9.2) handles it just fine.
I love this place
Yesterday at 15:55 I placed my order for a Palm Tungsten E at The PDA Shop. This morning at about 10:00 the friendly TPG postman delivered it at my door. :) Specs in short: 320×320 transreflective colour screen, 32MB memory, SDIO slot (for extra flash and peripherals), TI OMAP (ARM) 126MHz processor, a solid collection of software and oodles of prettiness.
Decisions decisions
This is already in stock it seems. Tungsten E (approx. EUR200) or T3, what would you choose? Addendum: Thanks to Dirk Postma, we can now also keep track of the Tungsten E prices, live: