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Archive for April, 2008
GARMAP Africa Series 2008
Users of Garmin GPS devices will be pleased to hear that the new mapset is available for purchase. The GARMAP Africa Series 2008 DVD retails for ZAR 99 and looks more like the top 100 hits of Madonna than a boring map set package 
The silver DVD box is quite eye-catching and cannot be reproduced online.
Of course, the purchase price of the DVD is simply to provide access to the map sets. If you intend upgrading or purchasing one or more of them, additional cash will have to be exchanged. The entire installation procedure takes place whilst the GPS unit is connected and an Internet connection is required. There is little chance of installing the map sets to multiple GPS receivers…
The following map sets are provided:
- Southern Africa Streetmaps, March Edition
- Southern Africa Streetmaps, DEM, March Edition
- Southern Africa Streetmaps, Topo & Rec, March Edition
- South Africa Waterways, March Edition
- Nigeria Streetmaps, Topo & Rec Version 2
- East Africa Street Maps Version 1
- Indian Ocean Islands Streetmaps Version 1: Mauritius
It seems that owners of Southern Africa Streetmaps Version 1.5 are able to upgrade without charge. At least that was my experience. Good thing too, since all we really want is access to the updated street names!
Tux vs. Iron Man
Like most fan-boys, I’m looking forward to the upcoming Iron Man movie due out in cinemas on 2 May. I hope this one will be better than some of Marvel‘s recent attempts at bringing their characters to the silver screen…
But, the big news for open source lovers is that the follow-on to the movie will be quite an exciting one. According to Comic Book Resources, Iron Man will appear in an ongoing series titled Invincible Iron Man. The series continues where the movie ends and involves the son of a villain who has been a nail in Iron Man‘s side for quite some time. Obadiah Stane commits suicide at some point or another and his son,Ezekiel becomes the new threat. He is described as a post-national business man and kind of an open source ideological terrorist. Basically that makes him a Linux poster boy with an attitude! Though I’m no big fan of old iron lung the fact that comic book writers have cottoned on to the idea of open source does intrigue me.
Would have been far better if the hero used open source for good than the villain using open source for evil. But any exposure is good, I guess. On the other hand, it does show how flexible and customizable open source software really is
Derren Brown – Tricks of the mind
You may be familiar with Derren Brown‘s antics as a thrill-seeking participant in a rather dangerous game of Russian Roulette. That trick caused a fair bit of publicity and was followed by a number of other special TV shows. Tricks of the Mind is Brown‘s explanation of various phenomena humans are want to describe as magic or spiritual. By my estimation, this is an excellent read and I cannot explain why I started reading the 370-odd pages with gusto, then left the book to gather dust for at least a month or more at about page 240. Brown is humorous and is happy not to take himself too seriously. His analysis and explanation of why the things we observe to be magical are simply tricks of our own mind is first-rate. Ample examples and experiences are related to the reader to justify his arguments.
Of course, this book is not for those with the capacity to understand that a lot of the baloney being passed off as magic or psychic ability is just a sham. Those readers will find additional ammunition for those heated dinner-table discussions. Instead, it’s for those too caught up in the magic of the moment to be able to accept that the magic doesn’t really exist and that they themselves are unable to see beyond their beliefs. Unfortunately, such individuals are unlikely to read Brown‘s book. The primary reason is likely to be that he is a nay-sayer or unbeliever. That’s a real shame.
For a really entertaining, yet enlightening read, I highly recommend Tricks of the mind.
Pedal to the metal
Logitech make some awesome peripherals. From mice to keyboards and speakers to remote control units. It’s not often you get to see something as cool as this, though! If you’re a petrol head and enjoy racing games on the PC or the Playstation, you should consider the Logitech G25 Racing Wheel.
You’ll forget the cash you spent the moment you lift the heavy box. It’s heavy, and for good reason: all components are steel, with heavy plastic bases fitted to both the pedals and the steering wheel. The box contains the steering wheel, the pedal assembly and shifter unit. Of less importance to those using this on a PS3 is the driver disk for Windows XP and Windows Vista. Another power adapter to add to your collection and an instruction booklet rounds out the package.
A beautiful touch is the leather-wrapped steering wheel, sure to make you reach for those racing gloves. Quickshift paddles and two action buttons provide easy access to oft-used functions. The wheel features two-and-a-half turns from lock to lock. Helpful to drift out of corners or careen wildly into the track barrier…
You’ll feel bumps and crashes quite nicely. The wheel has two motors for accurate force feedback. The Logitech website indicates which game titles are compatible with which level of racing wheel feature. The good news is that most games are supported, and all support at least a subset of the force feedback effects.
The steering wheel unit features a USB cable that is plugged into the platform of choice: either PC or Playstation. The ability to use this peripheral on different platforms adds to its appeal and ensures longevity. Both the pedal and shifter units connect to the steering wheel unit to provide interconnectivity.
(more…)
Death Star – brick-style
This must be one of those ultimate models, whether Star Wars rocks your boat or not. The Lego Death Star is a kit containing 3400 pieces and measures 65cm in height and 50cm in girth.
The model may be displayed on the included stand, but I’d hazard a guess that this could look really cool strung from the ceiling in a geek’s cave. The speck to the right in the picture is an Imperial Star Destroyer to scale.
What a huge place the universe must be…
Priced at USD 199 this could take a while to construct, and you’ll need a fair bit of space! Both to build and fly
Firefly – lights out
There are those series and movies we seek desperately to see and have trouble finding. Once we’ve got what we were looking for, there’s often a feeling of utter disappointment. For me, Firefly is one such example. Having heard a lot about the series and spin-off movie Serenity I was intrigued. Reading about the cowboys in space and hearing many podcasts recommend Firefly made me seek the series out.
It goes to show that one woman’s Out of Africa is another man’s Psycho Firefly is the story of a bunch of cowboys flying around on a spaceship in the far future. They are cowboys, literally. As a band of smugglers, the enemy of the Alliance evades capture, makes trades and is involved in more bar brawls than the inhabitants of Ponderosa. Their ship is the Serenity, class Firefly.
The characters are wonderfully one-dimensional, each episode wonderfully predictable and its outcome wonderfully sweet and happy. The concept of cowboys in space is not a bad one, but I have to agree with the decision of the FOX executive when the series was cancelled after 11 episodes. Having all 14 around for viewing is little consolation…
Linux Mint video issues on the Eee
4 years ago
by manfred
in Linux/Unix
A vexxing problem with graphics on the Eee had me scratching my head. I’m busy working through all the devices, making sure they work. As I suspected, the E220 HSDPA modem installation is not as easy as the original installation of the Eee‘s Xandros has one believe. I’m ignoring the modem for now, hoping a recent update may make it work without too much effort on my part…
The webcam on the Eee wouldn’t work, either in Skype or in Cheese. A no device present message prompted me to check the BIOS settings. Indeed, the built-in camera had been disabled. Enable and try Skype again. At least now, I had the opportunity to see a black rectangle with the camera device actually listed. Seems the graphics drivers provided by the Linux Mint Ubuntu core don’t like full desktop effects to be enabled and any additional work having to be done by the graphics subsystem. Once full desktop effects were disabled
Skype and Cheese worked quite nicely:
Something else I was fiddling around with also worked once full desktop effects were disabled. Watching a movie in VLC:
Lesson learnt: at least on Ubuntu-based distros on the Eee stay away from Compiz full effects…
I want to believe
That’s the title of the new X-Files movie that will once again bring us the team of Mulder and Scully hunting aliens and following up on unexplained phenomena. Long-time X-Files aficionados will recognize the phrase from the poster hanging in Mulder‘s office.
The title is seemingly confirmed though IMDB still lists it as untitled. The US release date is set for 25 July 2008, so this is still a long way off.
I want to believe…that the truth is out there.
rsync for backup
4 years ago
by manfred
in Linux/Unix
Backing up data and valuable content is an activity oft forgotten. There are two immutable laws that apply:
- your primary storage medium will crash when you least expect it to
- your primary storage medium will crash just after your latest backup completes, but just after you have saved something important to it
There are probably more, and many corollaries but you get my drift. I’m quite consistent with backups, but I could still improve my schedule. Most everything I have that’s important is stored to a removable drive and kept away from the computers in a place that is reasonably secure. Every now and then, all documents and photos are written to a number of DVD’s. Once again, I place these in a place that I hope will survive if nothing else does. I should ensure a copy of those makes it to a different geographical location. And I should also ensure a failure to my primary hard drives is easy to recover from.
So, I’ve added two 400GB drives to katana for the purpose of backup. Next, I set up an initial rsync of my entire home directory to one of those. Since that directory structure contains everything, it’s quite large and the initial rsync operation ran for a while. I ran it as root to ensure all files would be copied and all permissions retained:
su -
rsync -uva /home/manfredh/ /media/disk/backup/
The trailing / is important, so don’t leave it out: rsync is picky about the inclusion or exclusion of the trailing slash, but only for the source parameter – include it for both and you won’t forget.
To ensure the backup is performed regularly, I added a new cron job as the root user. It runs every morning at 03:33, just because that seems to be a good time
su -
crontab -e
I added the entry
33 3 * * * rsync -uva –delete /home/manfredh/ /media/disk/backup/
The inclusion of the –delete parameter ensures that anything deleted from the source is deleted from the destination. Leave this out if you want a full history.
In an extreme case, I could copy specific data sets to the second disk but for now that’s overkill. Every week, I transfer the source to the external drive and still make regular copies onto optical media.
I’ll let you know how this backup strategy pans out if I ever suffer a catastrophic failure. That’s if I can find this post…
Cape Town road rules
4 years ago
by manfred
in Life in South Africa
A note to drivers on the Cape Town highway. This sign
above the bus lane indicates that ordinary traffic is not supposed to be present in that lane between the hours of 05:30 and 09:00. After 09:00, or on weekends, you are welcome to drive at a reckless, breakneck speed to attempt to pass traffic traveling at or under the prescribed speed limit. I know most of you don’t wear a timepiece, so install a sundial on your bonnet, m’kay?
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