Shoddy Macs
How can any self-respecting engineer buy a computer where they *glue* the
cable to the disk? These aren't machines made for people that take things
apart - they're made for *consumers* that never expect to get their hands
dirty.
Mac owning engineers: you're selling your souls for a shiny trinket. These
aren't machines made, and made well, to be cared for. They are intended as
disposable trophies. Polished turds.
You should be ashamed of yourselves. Really.
(Pauli's Macbook Pro is dead and I have it in pieces).
Andrew
Reinstalling OSX via Linux
Pauli's Mac seems to be dead, but we've got hold of another, much more recent
MBP that "probably just needs OSX to be reinstalled". It powers up, but
doesn't boot. And there are no disks.
So I downloaded a torrent from PB, but had problems mounting the dmg file on
Linux (or an image created from it - see below). As far as I understand it, a
dmg file is a compressed HFS+ file system, and an OSX install includes an ISO
image in a directory of that FS. So you need to mount the FS, find the ISO,
and burn that - which is tricky if the FS won't mount on Linux (it's not clear
if the problem is Linux, or me).
But the second attempt using, I think,
http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/6823078/Mac.OSX.Lion.10.7.2-ADDiCT
was more successful. That is a xar archive, rather than a dmg file, and you
can unpack it with xar from http://code.google.com/p/xar/
Unpacking showed a directory called InstallMacOSX.pkg, which included
InstallESD.dmg, which is a dmg compressed ISO image.
I then uncompressed InstallESD.dmg using dmg2img from
http://vu1tur.eu.org/tools/ which generated a "real" ISO. Finally, I burnt
that to a DVD using cdrecord. The MBP then boots from that and installs fine
- although it's just very slow compared with a Linux install (I don't know if
that's a real difference, or just because there's little feedback and long
periods of nothing but a spinning icon, or because I'm spoilt by recent
installs to SSD).
And I don't think the above is particularly illegal (the MBP would originally
have come with install disks), except that perhaps I have a more recent
version of the software than the original (I did try with Pauli's old disks,
but it wouldn't boot from those at all - I guess they were much too old).
Of course, it would all be much easier if we had a working Mac or the original
disks.
Andrew
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Profiling Go Programs
This is a really nice article that shows the practical details of profiling
(CPU and memory) Go programs. In addition, the way that the profiler output
is displayed (via graphvix, with node sizes scaled to reflect the measured
values) is very neat.
http://blog.golang.org/2011/06/profiling-go-programs.html
Andrew
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I Can Vote!
I just registered to vote here in Santiago, Chile. That's pretty awesome - I
don't think a Chilean in my position could do the same in the UK. If anyone
else is interested in doing the same, it's pretty easy - you need to follow
the instructions here
http://www.extranjeria.gov.cl/filesapp/solicitud_certificado_avecindamiento.pdf
which basically means:
- Go to the international police (who have moved recently - they are now in
Morande) and request a certificate saying that you have been resident in
Chile for the last 5 years (excluding holidays - I think you can leave for
up to 6 months, but don't quote me on that). This costs some small amount
(all the rest below is free).
- Send that certificate, and copies of your residency card and carnet, and
the form at the link, to the ministry of the interior.
- Wait 2-3 months (yes, it says 10 days on the form....) and you'll receive
another certificate.
- Take that certificate and your carnet to the local vote registration
office (for Providencia it's in Manuel Montt).
It may also be worth explaining why I registered. I live in a nice district
of Santiago - it's fairly central and contains many of the older embassies.
The mayor belongs to the ultra-right UDI party (this follows logically from
the social class of the area - that's how Santiago is); during the
dictatorship he was a member of the secret police.
Last November Labbe, the mayor, helped organise, in the Providencia sports
club, a "homage" to the life of Miguel Krassnoff - a brigadier in the secret
police, who was tried and jailed for abuses of human rights.
Krassnoff tortured the parents of a friend of ours.
Fuck that.
Andrew
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Reducing Energy Use
Over the last 3-4 years we've reduced our electricity use from about 270KWh to
170KWh a month. That's a reduction of 37%. As far as I can tell it comes
from:
- A more efficient fridge
- Getting rid of the TV
- Changing to a more efficient main computer
- Turning off the laser printer
170KWh a month still means that we're burning electricity at an average rate
of 236W. I don't know what's the main culprit now - I should try find a power
meter (or turn everything off and use the supply meter one at a time, I
guess).
Andrew
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Scavenging 2.5" Disks
There are no 1TB 2.5" disks in Chile. Well, almost none, at a reasonable
price. The availability of imported goods is always variable here (isolated
geographically, with a small market, so you get the "shot noise" of single
boatloads), and I guess the problem has been exacerbated with the floods in
Thailand.
But there are a lot of external drives available. In particular, PC factory
has the Verbatim Titan and the LG XD7 available for the reasonable price of
70.000CLP.
I needed two (both a disk in my RAID and a backup disk failed) so I bought one
of each (the theory being that I would open whichever seemed easier for the
RAID and use the other over USB for backups).
The Verbatim looks and feels really nice, in a rubber case, so I forced open
the LG. With a sharp knife, care, and perhaps a little luck, you can prise
open the LG case without damaging it, and inside was a Toshiba disk - not a
great disk (DMA-5, ~5000 rpm), but a usable one.
Happy, I rebuilt my RAID and then started doing backups. But the Verbatim USB
connection is unreliable. It may be a compatability issue with Linux; it
doesn't seem to be the disk itself (SMART looks fine). So I decided to open
that up too. And it opens up really easily - there's a flap that's simply
held down with double sided sticky-tape.
Unfortunately, what is inside is a USB disk! For real. It's not SATA - the
disk board has a USB connection. So it's only usable as an external disk.
Moral of the story: buy the LG.
Andrew
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