Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Slashdot | Microsoft Open Document Standard Not So Open

Slashdot | Microsoft Open Document Standard Not So Open: "Microsoft Open Document Standard Not So Open"

Please, can someone explain to me why I am not shocked? I guess that as long as water flows, sun raises and sets, Microsoft will never be really open. It's just against their nature, they can't be something they aren't.

Live free and prosper!

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Linux on a G5 - Followup

You might wonder how it went with the Linux install on my G5. Please read the previous post on this if you are one of my new readers!


It turned out that the Debian installer still couldn't figure out where to install itself, even when the free space ready for Linux was first on the disk. There is certainly something strange with the partition scheme from Apple. As a last resort I went to gentoo. What you can't do with gentoo, I guess you can't do at all. To make the story short, gentoo works as a charm. During my tests with the other distributions, I figured out how to create partitions and mount them using mac-fdisk, mkfs and mount directly. The problem was that even when I mounted partitions, the installer couldn't find them. And if I got beyond that point, I still wasn't abel to install the bootloader properly. With gentoo, everything is manual and up to me, so it was much more easy to perform the install.

The only problem I really had was with yaboot configuration. The yabootconfig script that should have created a yaboot.conf file was nonfunctional with my setup, so I had to write the config manually, based on some examples I found online. That wasn't that hard, but it took me some time to figure out the ofpath id's I needed to put in there, as well as which partition number the Tiger actually should boot from. It turned out that I should not specify the partition where the Tiger lives, but the one just infront of it.

So - end of the story is that I now have a working Tiger and a working gentoo, though it will still take some time to get all the software I need on gentoo. That's why I don't like gentoo that much. The power of the gentoo install, coupled with the power of apt-get/dpkg, that's really what I want. But I guess I stick with gentoo for now - it will certainly give me a lean, mean machine!

A short note on the Shuttle SN25P case is also appropriate here. I can tweak the ubuntu really to what I want. I got NIS and automount working, I have sound and DVD burning working, and most of the packages I want. Actually, I just think about it as Debian, and it works quite fine. Guess I can live with that!

Take care!

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Linux on a G5 PowerMac

I finally wanted to put linux on my G5 PowerMac, as I see my main linux computer today, a laptop, soon will be gone, replaced with a smaller and sweater laptop (the Fujitsu Siemens P1510). As I now have the Shuttle SN25P at the office, I'll also need a stationary computer at home running Linux. Don't get me wrong, the Mac OS X system is a decent system. Unfortunately, it's not up to my standards for doing real work.

This should be an easy task, right. I already have a free external firewire disk, and my intention was to load Linux on that one. Inserted the ubuntu cd (read the story on the Shuttle to get why I just started out with ubuntu), and keep going. Right. Tap, tap, tap, enter, enter, enter, ooopss. I accidentally erased the MacOSX partition instead of repartitioning the external drive. So, thats an extreme makeover for my MacOSX installation. Anyway, most important stuff I have elsewhere, so no big deal. So, took two steps back, installed Tiger on the internal drive, and went back to my original quest. Installation on the external drive went just fine, up to the point where the bootloader, yaboot, is to be installed. It can't be installed on the external firewire drive, at least not from the ubuntu installer. Another couple of steps back.

Next try, go for a split of the internal system. So, I install Tiger again on a smaller partition, leaving a spaceious 80GB towards the end of the drive for Linux. Bahh.. The ubuntu installers is unable to find the free partition and install there. So, I figured out I should start with partitioning from the linux side. So I did - removed the Tiger again, created partitions for Linux at the end of the disk, installed ubuntu. Only to discover that the mac disk utility is unable to create HFS+ partition in the free space for Tiger. I lost counting, but had to destroy everything once more.

This time I did some googling, especially on the Debian installer documentation for PPC. There I got the following recipe: Start with installation of MacOSX, leave free space for Debian at the beginning of the disk. Then, install MacOSX, and finally install Debian.

So, now I will try that and see how it goes. Btw, the one time I actually got ubuntu installed on the internal drive (alone, no MacOSX present) I was unable to boot it, because the SATA drivers was not loaded in the kernel at boottime. I guess I need to use initrd or something, but have to figure that out later on.

On to the next install, I'll see you all later :-)

Monday, October 24, 2005

Linux on Shuttle SN25P

Hi there,

I got my new Shuttle SN25P at work today, and want to load it with linux. The computer comes equipped with a AMD 3500+ 2.2GHz processor, 2GB of memory and a 250GB maxtor SATA disk from the pc-pusher. They have also put an Geforce 6600 something graphics adapter into it.

As a long-time Debian fan, I of course wanted to load it with that. Of course, I know of the, should we say, not so appealing situation with Debian and AMD64, but thought I'll be fine with the glitches that might appear, and eventually some manual work. Now, I found a unofficial sarge netinst image for AMD64, as well as a testing or sid netinst image. To start out easy, I head for sarge. Everything seems fine during the install process, but after a reboot I discovered that the included kernel was not able to properly detect the ethernet card included on the mainboard as part of the nForce4 chipset. Not very usefull with a netinstall image then. So, the sid-image next (it was labeled as sid, but from what I could see during install it's more like a etch image). This time the ethernet card was detected properly, but the installer was heavily broken. For instance, busybox was missing in the target system during installation of package, such that unpacking and installation of packages was impossible. After spending a good hour, trying to put in the necessary stuff from the host (boot) system, I just figured out that this was not the "right way".

To make the long story short - I grabbed the latest ubuntu for AMD64, slipped it in, booted, waited, and had a working system.

While I kind of want Debian where I know all the tricks of the trade, I guess I'll stick with ubuntu for a while, at least until Debian can get something supported out there for AMD64. Hopefully, the unstable also will be useable at that time - as I use unstable on all my x86-32 computers. I'm happy to do the upgrade from stable to unstable on anything, but it is important that I can get a working install at least with network and a compiler, possibly some X11, but that's not significant to get started.

Tomorrow I have to see if I can get the ubuntu install to be something like how I want it, I guess I can. But there are some stuff to sort out still, like sound support. So there will probably be a followup on this.

take care,

Friday, September 23, 2005

NRK.no - Valg 2005

NRK.no - Valg 2005: "De rødgrønne kjøper millionvilla

Partilederne for de nye regjeringspartiene har inngått en avtale om å kjøpe Svein Erik Bakkes 30-millioner kronersvilla på Bygdøy."
(Sitat nrk.no).

Det var jo en lekker måte å begynne på. Gir dette mer skole for pengene, som SV-kristin har mast om. Eller gir dette mer eldreomsorg forpengene, som AP-jens har mast om. Eller hva SP-haga har mast om vet jeg ikke helt... vi kommer sikkert ikke mer inn i eu av dette, så hun har nok sitt på det tørre.

Men en villa på Bygdøy er jo fint å ha. Og det var sikkert de billigste 100m med strandlinje som var å få kjøpt i Oslo-området. Helt sikkert.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Forbruker.no: Kaotisk og lite nytt på Apple-show

Aftenposten/frobruker.no

Dette var bare litt for dumt, så jeg må nevne det. Her drar itjournalistene ut i verden for å se seg om. De burde vel ha litt greie på it de da? Så presteres denne frasen, under Teknisk kaos:

Rent teknisk, var Expoet i sine f�rste timer, et kaos. Ingenting fungerte. For alle journalister med PC, ikke Mac alts�, var det umulig �logge seg p�nettet.

Arrang�rene hadde nemlig gjort det geniale trekket �skjule det tr�dl�se nettverket, noe som gjorde det helt umulig for PC-brukere �finne det.

Og da tenker jeg, hmmm... For det f�rste, hvorfor skulle det gj�re noen forskjell om man bruker Mac n�r det gjelder dette. Dersom nettet er skjult, er det vel skjult for mac ogs�- i motsatt fall er det ikke skjult. Med PC regner jeg med det siktes til windows, som om ikke mac er pc, men anyway, det finnes da verkt�y for �finne nett som skulle ha v�rt �pne.

N�er kanksje ikke it-journalister alltid nerder, men �bl�se seg opp s�pass kraftig p�Apples bekostning, for en s�liten sak, det synes jeg var �ta litt for hardt i.

Men det er kanskje bare meg...

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Unfortunately, Norway turns red again...

The red side of politics won the election with 87 against 82 seats in the parliament. It's a sad day for our country. Hopefully they will not spoil to much of what makes Norway a nice place to live, and maybe next time the good guys can get back.

We'll see.

Monday, September 12, 2005

Election in Norway

Today, there is an election for the Norwegian parliament. And this time it is really exciting to follow the counting of votes. Right now it is 85 to 84 between the two main blocks, which mean that the government we have to day, continue. But it is a close race, and I will follow it closely.

For what it's worth, I'm for the current government, and want them to stay.

Sunday, September 11, 2005

Visit from uncle Ruben


Visit from uncle Ruben, originally uploaded by mandus.

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

pyFDM version 0.2

The anticipated version 0.2 of pyFDM was put up at pyfdm at sourceforge, as mentioned in the last post.

Please enjoy as much as I do!

Friday, September 02, 2005

Busy, busy. No time for blogging

I am rather too busy these days - no I really try to finalize my ph.d thesis. So, no time for blogging, no time for photoblogging (almost).

And, hey, watch out at the pyfdm page, there will soon be a new release, as I have done a lot of development on pyFDM lately.

Take care!

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Digging


Digging, originally uploaded by mandus.

This makes at lot of noise outside my window today.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Play


Play, originally uploaded by mandus.

Rainy day - playing indoor

Sunday, August 21, 2005

First post


First post, originally uploaded by mandus.

Sending from mobile...

Sunday, August 14, 2005

Funny glasses


Funny glasses, originally uploaded by mandus.

Today we had the "Familyday" at Brunstad. Great fun for all the kids, and I guess most of the parents as well.

A 3D movie (a Shrek episode) was viewed in the big conference hall. We had to wear funny glasses, but the kids tought it was great fun.

Take care!

Sunday, August 07, 2005

The monolitt


The monolitt, originally uploaded by mandus.

Shot some pictures in the "Vigeland" park today (Oslo, Norway). There will probably be some pictures in my other photoblogs as well.

As I have created a new photoblog (http://mandusimagery.blogspot.com/), as well as the slower one (http://pblog.odegard.no.eu.org), I will probably reduce the number of pictures here.

Friday, August 05, 2005

More boats in Åsgårdstrand





Another shot from the small-boat harbor at Åsgårdstrand.

Take care.

A little boat in Åsgårdstrand


A little boat in Åsgårdstrand, originally uploaded by mandus.

A little detour on my way home from Brunstad today - stopped in Åsgårdstrand for a few shots.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

del.icio.us/mandus

Better late than never... I signed up with del.icio.us today, my bookmarks will be at:
del.icio.us/mandus.

Seems like a cool thing, and since my personal online bookmarks database is kind of offline these days, I give it a whirl. So far I think it is a good thing.

I also signed up at O'Reilly Connection. Not sure if that is useful, or some thing I will use. At least, I don't have any connections there yet, and I am not sure how I am supposed to get them. Maybe I have to put some effort into it by adding information.

For those who are reading this, why don't you connect too, and add me as a connection if you like!

Still working on the thesis thingy.

Take care.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Having dinner!


Having dinner!, originally uploaded by mandus.

That's my eldest daughter there, having a nice meal for dinner. This one is from the middle of July, at the Brunstad Fish restaurant. Very nice food. And a nice view as well.