$ history|awk '{a[$2]++} END{for(i in a){printf "%5d\t%s\n",a[i],i}}'|sort -rn|head
  127	cd
   96	svn
   86	ls
   41	ln
   36	ssh
   20	ping
   15	sudo
   13	rm
   13	export
    6	cp

Bild von mezzoblue

I’m posting this hopes of helping people who google this, because I just spent two fucking hours finding it out. Here goes:

If you have a Via Epia M (EpiaM, Epia-M) motherboard in your barebone computer, and you want to boot from a USB Stick or USB Hard Drive, you have to know three things:

1. In the Bios, set the boot device to USB-ZIP
2. Also in the Bios, activate the USB-Keyboard option
3. Finally, before you plug in either a USB keyboard or your USB drive, remove the power chord of your barebone computer! Don’t just turn it off; in order for the Epia M to recognize a USB drive or keyboard, you have to completely cut its power before you plug either of these in.

Those were infuriating two hours yesterday evening! HTH

In the next days, I’m going to post my experiences and maybe even a HOWTO on creating a software RAID on Linux.

So the band Radiohead is going to release a new album. Normally, I wouldn’t care too much about that, because while I don’t mind listening to their songs, they’re not exactly my kind of music.

This time, however, it’s different. Because they are pulling a Reznor! That is, they are doing what Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails announced he would do[1] in the near future — selling the new album over their website, and you can set the price yourself.

I’m quite impressed.

And so, while I don’t usually love Radiohead, today I am a big fan — because they are doing exactly the right thing. Me, I’m going to pay 6 Pounds I think. According to xe.com, that’s about € 8.60, so the album will be a little cheaper for me than an album from iTunes for € 9.99. And that’s allright, isn’t it?

[1] Reznor announcing he’ll sell albums over his website after the contract with his label will run out news.com.au

Q: What’s really a pirate’s favorite letter?

A: P! Because it’s an R, but it’s missing a leg!

(click)

(image from http://www.lunchboxing.com/images/links/ninja.jpg)

I submitted my article, “Bridge-Building Can Ruin Your Life” to programming.reddit.com to, well, just to check out the response, because I wondered if anyone would read it.

Turns out they did indeed. After a few minutes the link was on the front page of the programming subreddit, and it rose and rose, topping out at unbe-fucking-lievable number two. My head almost split from all the grinning.

Of course I figured that after about an hour the show would be pretty much over, owing to reddit’s “hotness”-algorithm that requires more and more upvotes to keep a link on the top, the more time has passed. But again, I was pleasantly surprised.

Yes, you’re seeing correctly. After five hours I was still at number three! And not only that, but the link stayed on the front page for nearly a day, finally slipping beneath number 25 after 20-or-so hours.

So, what observations can be made?

First of all, that title is (almost) everything. On a whim, I named the reddit submission not after the article’s title, but “Reading stupid blog posts on reddit Can Ruin Your Life.” I suspect that this title is responsible for at least half the upvotes this submission got. Many people must have felt like redditor adremeaux:

I upmodded this as soon as I read the title because I thought it would be insightful and addressing the over-arching problem of crap on reddit, but instead it merely does a point-by-point analysis of a single article. Very, very uninteresting. I’m leaving my upmod though purely because of the title.

So everyone thought it was bullshit?

Well, not everyone. There was at least some interesting discussion going on in both reddit’s and this blog’s comments, which is what I was hoping for. (Well, actually I was hoping for loads of cash and hymns of praise, but diverse comments are a close third after those two.)

Some people thought the original article was crap and agreed with me, others disagreed and called the post knee-jerk reaction to a thoughtful blog entry. Interestingly enough, the author of the original post (a person still only know to me as devizen) showed up on reddit as well as here; in both places he or she seemed to dislike the attention he was getting, saying “You’re taking this all a bit too seriously, my friend.” here and agreeing with a “stop overreacting”-post on reddit.

And what is the conclusion?

You Can’t Make Everyone Happy(tm). But you can make a blog post about your experience afterwards.

Someone (I couldn’t find out who, if you know, contact me please) wrote an article that says Programming Can Ruin Your Life. Of course, with that title, it must go on reddit, right?

So how can programming ruin your life?

Sadly, no one ever tells you about the ways in which it will adversely affect your life. The physical effects are obvious. You’ll spend most of your time sitting, probably in an uncomfortable chair that doesn’t promote good posture. You’ll fuel yourself with food that is readily available, meaning it’s more than likely processed and full of sugar and you’ll likely choose either coffee or soda to stave off the drowsiness. A coworker once remarked, “If it doesn’t come out of a vending machine, programmers don’t eat it.”

How stupid is that? So, because programming is so brain-consuming or addictive or whatever, your hypothetical programmer won’t know how eat properly or exercise? Sorry to disappoint you here, anonymous writer, but not all coders are anti-social fat suckers who spend all night in front of the computer.

Also, even if you learned in English class that you can close an argument in an essay with anecdotal evidence, I would recommend inventing a coworker who has not undergone lobotomy next time.

The text goes on saying that “[p]rogramming changes more than your body. Programming changes the way you think.” Well, yup.

The application of programming specific processes and habits to the everyday is where peril lies. The same traits that make you a great programmer can make you an awkward, misunderstood and miserable human being.

What the fuck?

Programming presents you with a problem and allows you to eventually solve it provided you don’t quit. A solution is out there somewhere. Make enough attempts and chances are you’ll eventually prevail. Aren’t computers great? They afford a large degree of freedom in problem solving. If nothing else, you are able to make as may attempts as you please and it will happily execute each one. This instills in you a sense that failure is not final. Any obstacle can be hurdled. This is not true in the real world. While you may find second chances now and again, the wheels that turn in the big blue room are largely unforgiving. Time marches on in one direction.

Okay, I’ll have to address this from a few different directions, because it is mind-fuckingly stupid in so many dimensions.

First we have the claim that failure is not possible in programming. Hello? Does a nontrivial problem somehow go away just because I try again? No, of course it does not.

Then, what is it with the philosophical attitude? “[T]he wheels that turn in the big blue room are largely unforgiving. Time marches on in one direction.” Somehow the author seems to think he has it all figured out: life, the universe and everything. Maybe this delusion is the reason for this rambling piece of shit text.

And finally, we have the idea (again) of the coder as a trained monkey who can only deal with his surroundings in the context of a computer. That everybody who decides to create software for fun or profit suddenly loses their connection to reality. I could maybe write a thousand words just about the stupidity of that claim alone, if I wasn’t sure that no one would read it.

The text goes on, but this is the gist: Because programmers are so terribly obsessed with what they do, and because they are also idiot savants, they are compelled to apply their silly ways of solving problems in the computer to every fucking situation in their lives. They just don’t know better.

Me, I disagree. What about you?

heise.de sez

Notebook sales are continuing to increase.

No Shit! In other news, the world is still round, and gravity still continues to pull at my fat arse.

Oh, and here’s an apology: I’m sorry; I really wanted my first blog post ever to be some kind of essay about some serious, vaguely cool topic, but I just couldn’t think about anything code related in the last few weeks that was interesting enough to share.

Luckily, Captain Obvious came to the rescue. I hope he wont have to rescue me too often.

It is an interesting phenomenon though, don’t you think? No, not the Captain Obvious thing. Well, that’s interesting too, but it’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the increase in laptop sales.

I mean, remember the old days when you had to haul your heavy-as-hell computer and CRT to a LAN party just to enjoy some old games with sub-par graphics? Also, you’d bring this big cardboard box full of power cables, ethernet cables, a mouse pad, keyboard, and so on.

Nowadays I just bring my insanely powerful laptop and a mouse. Rocks, doesn’t it?

Hello and welcome to breakthesystem.org. I’m your host, Daniel Jilg aka Winsmith. Today, yet another seemingly random, ranting, raving blog appears in the ’sphere: Mine.

Here, you can expect to be treated with a very high dose of code, especially in Python and Ruby, a generous amount of profanity, especially directed at any form of stupidity, and a fair number of posts concerning tech-related politics. The latter two might very well occur together a lot.

So don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Topics I plan to cover in the near future include interesting yet useless Python and Django code snippets, the new German Bundestrojaner state-controlled trojan horse and maybe I’ll rant about Apple Inc. a little. Maybe.

Enjoy your time,

Daniel