blog.fogel.ca

Pintos is a minimal operating system for x86 hardware used primarily for instructional purposes (eg.). QEMU is an open-source hardware emulator typically used for operating system development. Debian is a linux operating system, regular style.

Step #1 – Debian: Drop windows and install debian (or go dual-boot).

Step #2 – QEMU:

sudo apt-get install qemu

To test everything is working as it should at this point, you can download a small linux kernel image here (Sec: disk images). Then:

bzip2 -d linux-0.2.img.bz2
qemu linux-0.2.img

You are now running a minimal linux system on emulated x86 hardware, which is in turn running on a full-featured linux system (debian) on real (probably also x86) hardware. Press ctrl-alt to get out of the minimal linux system if you get stuck with it stealing all your keystrokes.

Step #3 – Pintos:

• 3.A – Download pintos.
• 3.B – Fix pintos to default to QEMU (rather than bochs) by applying the following diff:
  

  Index: threads/Make.vars
  =======================================
  @@ -4,4 +4,5 @@
  -SIMULATOR = –bochs
  +#SIMULATOR = –bochs
  +SIMULATOR = –qemu

  Index: utils/pintos
  =======================================
  @@ -85,7 +85,7 @@
  - $sim = “bochs” if !defined $sim;
  + $sim = “qemu” if !defined $sim;
  @@ -107,8 +107,8 @@
  - –bochs (default) Use Bochs as simulator
  - –qemu Use QEMU as simulator
  + –qemu (default) Use QEMU as simulator
  + –bochs Use Bochs as simulator

• 3.C – Compile pintos:
  

  cd threads/
  make

• 3.D – Run a test app with pintos:
  

  cd threads/build/
  ../../utils/pintos run alarm-multiple

• 3.E – You may wish to throw pintos in your default path (some of the scripts provided require it’s there). There are many ways to do this, this is my favorite:
  

  sudo ln -s `pwd`/utils/pintos /usr/local/bin/

And that’s it! In step 3.D you finished up by running a little test app that created 5 threads that slept for varying predefined periods of time with some messaging to the console, thus testing pintos’ scheduling/threading abilities. You’re now ready to augment and enhance pintos… coffee anyone?

I’m selling a friend’s old laptop. Acer TravelMate 525TXV – 700 MHz, 256 MB RAM, 20 GB HD, 802.11b. If you’re looking for a machine that’s good for surfn’ and sendn’ (email that is), and not much else, then this is the machine for you. Perfect if you’re going traveling (say to honduras, or kenya, or vietnam) and you want to bring a machine that you won’t care too much if it grows legs and runs away. If I know you, and you win the auction, I’ll give you free shipping & handling and we’ll grab lunch together. Burritos?

Both my room//mates just got road bikes in the last two days. That makes three roadies under one roof!

Gawd that’s pretty, isn’t it?

Mate #1 scored a early 00’s Trek (alumimum frame, carbon fork, Bontrager component set). Mate #2 went home with a late 80’s Centurion Accordo RS (steel frame, Shimano SLR and Light Action). So far they’re both getting along well with my early 90’s Giordana (steel frame, Campy and Dura-Ace).

The matching red and white color scheme… unintended! Divine intervention?

At 5:01pm on June 16, 2008, the first legal gay marriage in California took place in the San Francisco city hall between Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, lovers and partners of 56 years. Outside, at exactly 5:01pm:

Shortly thereafter, a man ran outside, yelling ‘They’re married! They’re married!’, to which the several thousand people waiting about erupted in cheers and applause.

Kinda tragic, but apparently all the excitement was too much for one guy, who collapsed right in front of the steps of city hall. They did CPR on him for several minutes before rolling him away, still trying to bring him back.

The crowd was mostly just people down out of work for the day, stopping by to witness history in the making. God I love this city.

So for those of us who tend to believe this world’s too big for one person to make a difference…

Dear Gavin,

I don’t know what pushed you, on that calm and dreary Thursday morning four short years ago, to invite Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin into your office for a small and quiet marriage. Some say you did it for political gain. Some say you did it because you’re still in the closet. And some say you did it because – imagine this – you did it because you care.

Guess what… the ‘why’, well, the ‘why’ just doesn’t matter here. It’s the result that matters. You have, through personal choice, thought and action, first positioned yourself to be able to work significant change in this world, and then had the balls to follow through. Gavin, you stood on the shoulders of decades of work by thousands to get this done. But the indisputable fact is that, because of you, millions of gay Californians wake up tomorrow no longer pushed to the side, no longer denied an undeniably human portion of life. May our children grow up in a world where gay hate is learned in the history books, and gay marriage is learned through the neighborhood, at the playground, in the community.

Gavin, I didn’t vote for you in 2004. Nor in 2008. And I probably won’t vote for you in 2010. But I have to say – thank you Gavin. Where others would only give words, you gave action. And today, today your actions have forever changed the lives of millions.

Yours,

Michael J.

I just pushed to production the first ‘real’ version of my personal site (yeah, this isn’t it! who knew?) It’s going to be mostly just a glorified container for my resume, and a place to publicly share some of the smaller random projects I’ve done/got planned. The backend is powered by drupal, which btw, I would highly recommend thus far. I’ve had no trouble busting out the first few little hacks that have came along. Most of all, it’s just clean and minimalistic… and that’s how I like it – KISS!

Hey, so it may have been the slowest election ever, in the history of California. Apparently less than 1 in 4 people were able to spare 30 minutes to vote. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t have a spare 15 hours to spend at the polls!

Heh, going back to school was such an awesome idea. It’s an interesting combo of who works the polls: retired people (the average age was probably about a billion) and students. Except not grad students – high school students. Am I just on the slow track or something? I think I may have been the only 20-something in San Mateo County to be working the polls. There were definitely a few 30-somethings though… along with a similar number of 80-somethings.

Breakfast: (and lunch)

I didn’t get a picture of it, but my roommates brought me awesome homemade quiche and fresh strawberries for dinner! You rock roomies!

So over the course of the day, I signed my name off several dozen times. Initials a few more dozen times. Everything arrives sealed with serial numbers. Every seal’s serial number must be matched against a master list. Every action you take that could potentially give you access to the (virtual or physical) ballot box, you must do with a partner. You both sign off on everything. At the end of the day, we counted everything up, made sure every one of our 560 ballots were accounted for, and sealed all of them back up with more tamper-evident serial-numbered seals. Pretty comprehensive security. But it was kinda overload. 15 hours of trying to make sure you, your fellow election ‘judges’, and every voter crosses every ‘t’ and dots every ‘i’… I think we got nearly all of them.

I got assigned to my neighborhood polling place, which is at the church just over my backyard fence. Here’s our set up:

¡Yo voté! Y Ud… ¿Ud. votó? ¿Votará próxima vez?

Last weekend NgocStar, Dr. Dave, J-Fire and I headed up to Yosemite for a little rock-on-rock action. Ngoc posted a good recap and Dave some rock’n (pun intended) photos. Dave’s photos may be good… but what can compete with the 500ms response time of an iPhone? oh right, disposable crap.

What make bouldering in Yosemite so awesome and distinguishes it from bouldering, well, anywhere else, is the periods of time in between when you’re on the rock. Because you’re chilling in Yosemite. And that’s enough for celebration in itself.

J-Fire sent the Octagon (V6/7), and Dave sent, among others, Circuit Breaker, a beautiful and very clean high-ball finger crack (from which he fell just short of topping out on first attempt!). I was very happy to be back climbing at all. The shoulder performed at over 70%, and the ribs didn’t hurt except when landing on them. Ngoc was also in good form, consistently hitting moves I just don’t have the strength to do… yet!

El Cap, the grand daddy of them all: (5 year plan? 10 year plan?)

(Photo taken on June 1st, 2008 between Groveland and Yosemite along Hwy 120.)

In the mindset of your average, middle class American consumer in 2008 goods are broken down into the following approximate categories based on price:

• $0.01 – $0.09: completely useless. A historical artifact, and a waste of time.
• $0.10 – $0.99: I don’t think twice about spending this. Gum.
• $1 – $5: a small/simple meal.
• $5 – $20: a full individual activity, a solid dinner out.
• $20 – $100: a durable good, a group activity.
• $100+: something special.

Gasoline is in the process of changing categories. The upcoming growth in gasoline prices from $4.50 a gallon to $5.50 a gallon will have a greater effect on transportation mode share, local environment/air quality, global warming, health, life expectancy, land use, socio-economic segregation and social justice issues and blah and blah and blah…. then any other of our gazillon fancy (and expensive) programs we have out there to fix these problems. The rising cost of gasoline is doing what we as a society haven’t had the balls to do – address the root cause of these problems: 60+ years of heavily subsidized and thus artificially deflated costs of private vehicle use.