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Abandon-blog?

Pripyat Gym

Pripyat Gym

After a couple of years of neglect, time has finally come to refresh this blog a little bit.

A new front page, new responsive theme and a lot of changes in the way information is organised.

Why all this trouble if no one is reading? No idea… 🙂

They shot me down, bang bang…

cloud

First they integrate Google Buzz.
Then they decide to cripple all its social features (this is when I mostly stopped using it…) and “integrate” it with G+.
Now they say that it’s usage is in decline (wonder why…), and they decide to kill it.

What Google maybe didn’t think about is the consequences of this act.
The reason why people are confident in google services (like gmail, calendar, dns …) is because Google is always there.
Sure all of those services are free to use, but people trust them because they think that they’ll always be available, and as such are a safe bet.

But with the latest spring cleanings at Google this was proven wrong – solid services like Google Notebook and lots of APIs that where deeply integrated into several sites where shutoff with a few months notice.

This leaves me with an important question – why should I trust web services I can’t self host?

(so many github projects an not one self hosted google reader clone…damn!)

Update: 
Apparently it exists 😉 – http://tt-rss.org/

PHP 5.3 alongside PHP 5.2 on a CentOS CPanel System

Long story short… I needed a way for a specific folder to use PHP 5.3 and to keep using PHP 5.2 for the rest of the system, and I needed to do this without breaking the existing CPanel (blergh) configuration (Luckily the system was already using suphp – if yours isn’t just change it using easyapache) .

In the end it was easier than I thought…

  1. Compile and install PHP 5.3 to a folder under /opt
  2. Add Application Handler to Apache Configuration
  3. Add Handler to htaccess on the folders I needed the PHP5.3 (this could also be done within the VHost config)

Read the rest of the post for the full details
Continue reading

Android 4.2 Nexus 7

And today Android 4.2 is finally available. As millions of other geeks I rushed to install it my Nexus 7, mainly because I was eager to try out the multiuser functionality.

I have to admit I’m impressed with the amount of changes 4.2 brought : Multiuser, new drop-down menu, screensavers, lock-screen widgets, Photo Sphere – a lot of things for a minor update.

Only thing that really disappointed me, was that it’s not possible to share applications between users in the same device. I had to add my a second google account to the second user so I could install some paid apps – and unfortunately there’s a small bug in this function – even though there’s an account selector, it keeps the last added account as the selected account…

If you have a Nexus 7 and don’t want to wait for the OTA, there’s a very easy procedure you can follow:

  • Download this file
  • Connect the nexus to the computer
  • in a shell type : adb reboot recovery
  • when the android with the exclamation point is on the display press power and the center of the volume key at the same time
  • select “apply update from ADB”
  • in the shell type : adb sideload 094f6629314a.signed-nakasi-JOP40C-from-JZO54K.094f6629.zip

(in case you don’t have the Android SDK installed you can use this ZIP from Android Central which contains all files you might need)

Supermicromess

Recently I had to install two Supermicro Storage Servers (Model 6047R-E1R36L) – unfortunately not everything went well with their installation.

First unit I received was DOA, it’s always unfortunate when such things happen – nothing a little bit of QA wouldn’t avoid. Called up Supermicro assistance and they did some diagnostics with me…but allas ..the same conclusion – the unit was dead. Supermicro’s american twitter account still exchanged some tweets and emails with me…but in the end, I had to wait almost a week for a motherboard replacement, and with that out of the way… (almost*) everything worked fined.

This week I received the second unit, and after turning it on (yay – worked!) I went to the RAID manager to set up the disks … I looked around and couldn’t find the option to create an array (which I found very strange because on the first unit everything was very straightforward…). A little bit of googling around and I found out that there are two kinds of firmware for this SAS controller : -it (iSCSI) and -ir (RAID) and for some unfortunate reason mine had the it. Googled a lit bit but nothing really interesting came up, and on Supermicro’s site there weren’t any downloads for this server. Called up Supermicro assistance (again…) and they were very helpful – the files I needed were on their FTP server. Next step ? Flashing them! I admit I had never used a UEFI shell before – but it wasn’t that scary. Unfortunately following the instructions returned the error “cannot flash ir firmware over it firmware”. a little bit of googling around and I ended doing this:

  • Download files from FTP and copy them to a USB drive
  • Enter UEFI shell pressing F11 and selecting UEFI shell
  • map (so you can see what device name the USB drive has – mine was fs0
  • fs0:  (this changes to the fs0 drive – like DOS)
  • sas2flash.exe -o -e 7  (erase complete flash)
  • sas2flash -f 2308IR14.ROM -b mptsas2.rom
  • reboot
Everything looks like its working fine (and I can finally create RAID volumes) except I have a warning on boot “SAS address not performed on controller on slot X” – couldn’t find a way to correct this, but it seems not have any adverse effect.
* Almost because about two days later I received another motherboard and unfortunatly I couldn’t find a way to correctly install the system disks (2.5″) in the server trays and had to use a not very orthodox process – Epoxy glue – because all the 2.5″>3.5″ Adapters I tried failed to put the disk in the correct position.

 

Desafio HTC

A HTC está a desafiar os consumidores a descobrirem, de um conjunto de fotos, quais as tiradas com um smartphone e quais as tiradas com uma “câmara digital profissional”.
Entre as fotos está uma da Residencial Varandas (mesmo ao lado da Casa dos Bicos e do Adufe Bar em Alfama).

Embora seja interessante ver a evolução da qualidade fotográfica dos smartphones, a verdade é que nunca poderão chegar à profundidade de campo obtida por uma boa lente de máquina fotográfica “a sério”.

Cada vez mais real

A injustiça avança a passo firme
Os tiranos fazem planos… para dez mil anos
O poder apregoa: as coisas continuarão a ser como são
Nenhuma voz além dos que mandam
E em todos os mercados proclama a exploração;
isto é apenas o começo.
Mas entre os oprimidos muitos há que dizem
Aquilo que nós queremos nunca mais o alcançaremos
Quem ainda está vivo não diga: nunca
O que é seguro não é seguro
As coisas não continuarão como são
Depois de falarem os dominantes
Falarão os dominados
Quem pois ousa dizer: nunca
De quem depende que a opressão prossiga? De nós
De quem depende que ela acabe? Também de nós
O que é esmagado que se levante!
O que está perdido, lute!
O que sabe ao que se chegou, que há aí que o retenha
E nunca será: ainda hoje
Porque os vencidos de hoje são os vencedores de amanhã.

Bertold Brecht (Elogio da dialéctica)

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