I deleted my Friendster and MySpace accounts. I wish Generation Z the best.
Monthly Archive for July, 2006
When upgrading from MySQL 4 to MySQL 5 on the machine on which the Lyceum blog, Lyceum demo installation, Lyceum wiki, and teachfor.us are hosted, I came across some serious problems. The MySQL daemon would quit unexpectedly, seemingly whenever a query from the demo installation was made, but not any other queries. We checked everything and hunted around the logs and couldn’t come up with anything, so I filed a bug with MySQL. The geekier of my readers may be interested in skimming through it.
The day after I filed the ticket, Heikki Tuuri, the creator and maintainer of InnoDB, was on the case. He and Valeriy Kravchuk let me know how I could provide them with as much information as possible for them to use to debug the problem. Eventually I ran a table optimize, and that fixed the problem. Also, over at ibiblio, we discovered that /var had been at 100% when I was doing an application upgrade (not the DB upgrade), so I figured that might be part of the problem as well; the index got currupted when being rebuilt.
In spite of my findings, at the end of the the thread, I was informed by Valeriy that because of the datatypes in my table, the only way to do a proper upgrade was to dump the table and then reload it after the upgrade, and she directed me to this document. I don’t know if other folks at ibiblio who were working on the upgrade had read this, but I know I hadn’t.
So I’m pleased with the responsiveness and community of the developers of MySQL, and I hang my head in shame for not having RTFM.
Jeff tells us about how he reassigned a command key in iChat. I always forget that OS X can do this natively, system-wide.
For a few weeks one summer in undergrad I worked for Connexions, a project that develops a system for collaborative open-license online publishing. Now, Rice University, my alma mater and the home of Connexions, is collaborating with Connexions to re-launch the Rice University press as an online-only effort.
It’s hard to attend scholarly meetings these days without someone talking about the “crisis of scholarly publishing,” which goes something like this: Libraries can’t afford to buy new scholarly books; in turn, university presses can’t afford to publish books no one can buy and so cut back on their sales of monographs; in turn, junior professors can’t get their first books published and have a tough time getting tenure.
Rice University on Thursday announced a plan to shake up those interconnected problems. Rice University Press, which was killed in 1996, will be revived. But unlike every other university press, it will publish all of its books online only. People will be able to read the books for no charge and to download them for a modest fee. Editors will solicit manuscripts and peer review panels will vet submissions — all in ways that are similar to the systems in traditional publishing.
For the past 5 years in North Carolina and texas, my main dwelling (office + bedroom) has been one big room, within which my music system, made up of various canabalized components from retired family equipment, has served me quite well.
I just moved to a new place, and I have an office, bedroom, living room and kitchen. I’m looking for a solution where I can get decent quality music in all the rooms. I’m willing to plunk down some cash for a solid solution that will last me a long time (my current system, which sounds great and has more features than I need, has 10 year old speakers and a 25 year old amp).
I think I will still have my current system set up at my desk in my office as it has always been. When I’m in my kitchen and want to rock out while cooking, I think I can handle playing music from one of the other rooms. So the only requirement is having speakers in my bedroom and in my living room.
A first posibility that comes to mind is just buying 2 extra sets of speakers (how much are decent speakers for small rooms? $250? $800? I have no idea) and some sort of switching mechanism, and running everything off of my current amp. This appeals to me because the only redundant components are the speakers, but it’s perhaps a little absurd to be running speaker wire accross my apartment, and of course I wouldn’t be able to control the music anywhere but my office.
Something I’m tempted to do is just get an iPod Hi-Fi and call it a day. I can carry it from room to room. However I’m a little turned off by the almost nonexistant stereo separation, and very turned off by the lack of RCA inputs, which dramatically reduces its usefullness as a flexible audio component in the long term.
What I would really like is some sort of wireless solution, so that I can run everything from the music stored on my computer in my office, but still be able to control track selection, volume, etc from each room.
Does anyone have any ideas or recommendations for me? I’m willing to plunk down the cash for gear that will last a long time. Let’s say my max is… $2500, but I’d rather spend $500 :-).
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