wnd's weblog

200 days to go. TJ 256 passed without much notice but my fellow servicemen couldn’t help but remind me about TJ 200. TJ comes from tänään jäljellä or “days remaining”, which is widely used in context of (non-)military service to indicate number of days until some significant date such as relief from duty. Talking of dates, UNIX dates 1234567890 and 1234554321 also passed not long ago.

My work at department of computer science, University of Helsinki, hasn’t changed much. I finished instructing a course on database applications in January and now I’m spending all my time in making Cubbli, or Common Ubuntu-based Linux, ready. I can’t say I agree with everything they’ve done in Ubuntu, but luckily under the hood it’s only slightly different from Debian.

Bringing back old memories… Game of Life for Commodore 64 written in 6502/6510 assembler. Uses border-wrapped 38*23 board and currently renders 16.7 frames per second. One step closer to the sources.

How does Sparta rank in search results?

UUIDs are unique (and stable). With Linux, /dev entries may not be. I learned this the (not-so) hard way.

Another Nethack ascension with neutral female gnome healer.

Sun has finally delivered 64-bit version of browser Java plugin for Linux. If you can’t wait for proper release (update12), you can try [Java SE 6 Updates Early Access Program][jdk6]. If you’re running Debian or Ubuntu, you can package everything neatly in a .deb-package. While java-package 0.4.1 don’t know how to deal with the early access version, this patch should help.

Link to “patches” page.

Now that NVIDIA has released updated beta (180.16) of its proprietary graphics card drivers for Linux, I’ve finally managed to install VDPAU-capable drivers without breaking everything else. Basically version 180.06 also worked, but for whatever reason it also caused X to consume nearly all available CPU time whenever Firefox was running. lf VDPAU is an API that allows applications to utilise GPU for video decoding and post-processing. In other words, you’ll get smoother video playback of H.264. To quote phoronix, “HD Video Playback With A $20 CPU & $30 GPU On Linux”.

I was lucky to get to work at department of computer science at University of Helsinki for the duration of my non-military service. I’ve spent most of my time doing two things: instructing – that is, not teaching – course on database applications and working on Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that will replace CSL2, RedHat-based Linux distribution used here at the department. Working on CSL3 (to be renamed) has been mostly rather smooth – until my personal experiences with Ubuntu 8.10.

Another NetHack ascension! My seventh NetHack ascension took place as chaotic male orc barbarian on a public server at nethack.alt.org. In 93401 turns and eight days of wall time my character ascended to demigodhood. Cheers!