Adventures in disk formatting

Nothing is as cool as formatting your hard drives and installing operating systems. I decided that there was no better way to start my Easter break.

I decide to do so because after installing and uninstalling Linuxes, my partitions got pretty messy, with 24 GB of unusable disk space (not that I nedded them bad, but recovering them meant formatting disks anyway and who wouldn't want 24 GB). My Windows got messy after a year and a half of using it, my Ubuntu was unconfigured and I needed it, so it was a great time to clean everything up.

So, I copied all my files, of course, and tried a Windows recovery CD. Failed with "free space not found". How stupid is that?

Reloaded Windows, removed all partitions but "recovery" and C, and that was as stupid of me as the M-corporation is for not giving normal install CDs but some kinda working recoveries.

Retried the recovery, failed again.

Retried loading Windows, but removing the drives damaged Grub, so it failed.

Tried Super Fdisk. Didn't boot.

Tried Partition Logic. Wanted me to click on "OK" without any mouse. I failed.

Looked for Ubuntu 7.10 CD. It turned out a brother lent it to a friend a few months ago.

Added "downloading Ubuntu 7.10" to my to-do list. At least this one didn't fail.

Tried Suse 10.1 Install CD. Failed, or I didn't wait long enough. I'm usually patient, but not when it comes to watching black computer screens in hope for a change.

Tried Ubuntu 5.10 Install CD. Failed. Don't even remember how.

[EDIT] Linux has some problems with my graphic card. To run Ubuntu on an Asus A6RP-A069 or some similar stuff, add "hpet=disable" to the boot options.

Read the instructions again.

"Take your notebook PC to an authorized ASUS service center if you have problems with the recovery process."

Asked myself where the nearest authorized ASUS service center could be. There had to be one in Warsaw, so it was not that bad, but what if I didn't make it before closing time? A notebook-less Easter? Nightmare.

"Daddy, do you have a Win XP CD?
-Let me check... no.
-Do you have anything that installs something?"
He had a Windows 2000 Professional Install CD. Boyfriend told me to give it a try, remove all the partitions except for "recovery". Listened to Boyfriend and retried the recovery CD. Worked. I got those 24 GB I wanted back. Now just gotta install and configure my applications.

By the way, here's an article on how to fix your Windows MBR with an Ubuntu liveCD, looks interesting. Thumbs up for Ubuntu for having such functions.

My Dad pictured the birth of a black hole!

Guys, this is big! My Dad's project took pictures of the gamma ray burst GRB 080319B, the biggest one ever observed, visible with the naked eye! This thing most probably was the birth of a black hole!

The pictures are on Pi of the Sky's official website.

Polish speaking readers, see also the press release, an article in Dziennik, a radio podcast.

Non-Polish speaking readers, see also here or here and I promise to update as soon as more articles appear.

Kernel Hacking again

The second part of working on my kernel module is way harder than I thought it would be. It's the fifth day I've spent doing only this and there are still many things to fix. As for tonight, I have discovered:

• that rw_locks are spinlocks too
• a dozen of wrong pointers in my code
• an undeterministic cipher based on DES

None of the above is a good thing.

Still, no matter how tough things are, I found a few spare minutes this morning to buy a new pair of earrings - does it matter that I bought four pairs last Thursday?

Happy Pi day everyone!

Today, March 14h, is Pi day!

It is of course a great occasion to:

1. Show off how geek you are, for instance by wearing this:



2. Eat pie. Or pi-zza.
By the way, did you know that the volume of a pizza of radius z and thickness a is "pi z z a"?



3. Learn stuff. Never in the world would I have suspected that Wisława Szymborska, Polish poet and Noble Prize winner, wrote a poem about pi! (Original version here.) I don't get that poem, just as I don't get anything else she wrote, but it's nice to see she took some interest in science.

Another geek holiday to look forward to is Square Root day, which is more exceptional as it doesn't happen every year, the next one being 3/3/9. As of today, happy Pi day everyone!

Sources: Pi t-shirt, pi pie, pi pizza, pizza volume quote.

Back to kernel hacking

I'm back to kernel hacking. The module I was writing in December has finally been graded and got a well-deserved zero. Well, it wasn't finished, so it wasn't working, so no wonder it didn't get a positive amount of points. Luckily, I have no "big" mistakes, except for an ooops that need to be investigated, but nothing is to be redesigned. It should go smoothly.

If it doesn't, I just found an evil solution: File Destructor 2.0.You just upload a file and it gives it to you back, but corrupted (so unable to be opened). Too bad I have to send my stuff as tar.gz and this format is not supported... No, seriously, I wouldn't do that. But besides the evil potential of that script, I like the idea.

The Babbel experiment

I mentioned a few days ago that I started learning Spanish on Babbel.com. Here's more about me, languages and Babbel.

First, I never ever learned Spanish. However, I speak fluently French and that helps a lot. I also speak Polish and German and the more languages you know, the easier the next one is.

Second, I don't like Spanish. It's about my taste and how Spanish sounds. It's something absolutely subjective. Speaking of subjective, my favourite language of all is Arabic.

Third, I know learning a language requires time and commitment. (Except for French for me, which I learned "just like that" when I moved to France at the age of six, lucky bastard that I am.) And grammar exercises and writing and stuff. I did all of that for Arabic in July, when I took an intense class (20 hours a week).

Second and third imply that I'm not really willing to do all of that for Spanish. So here's the experiment: how far can one go with Babbel?

I will not claim that Babbel is the best language learning site ever. It makes you learn words and sentences and lets you meet people to study some language with. No grammar - I rely on my analytical mind here, but the sentences are not very complicated, so my grammar won't go far. No writing - I will only be able to use the structure of the sentences I will have learned, or I will risk being gravely misunderstood.

Babbel is also not the only site of the kind. If you wish to learn a new language, you should consider the following: LingQ, Livemocha and Mango Languages. For example, LingQ does have writing and grammar exercises, even corrected by a teacher if you pay for it. But me not paying.

So why did I pick Babbel? "Picked" is not the word, I started using it before I found out about the others. But I did stick with it, and here's why.

Learning a language should be a pleasure. Like any other thing, if you don't like it, you won't do it very efficiently and will most probably give up. Babbel is cute and shiny and has colorful pictures, so I enjoy it a lot. Let's also not forget that I'm still very busy (and will be until June), I'm tired in the evenings and I enjoy the fact that I don't have to do a lot on Babbel.

So here's what I do. Every other day (I try that to be everyday), I go to Babbel and select a module. I do the exercises on-line, but also write down the words and the sentences in a copybook, so I can revise it in spare moments, like when on a train. I'm curious to see how far I can go with that.

If you're interested in learning a new language, here's a good article to start with.

Geek ends the week (happily)

I haven't posted much since Monday, day 1 of a tough week. Here's what I've been up to meanwhile.

Day 2. OS study-party. Few were allowed to participate in this exclusive, invite-only event. (I couldn't just say I had a study buddy over, could I? Nor could as just say "friend" now, there is no rhyme in "friend".)

Day 3. OS study after-party. I love after-parties. Never been to one actually, except for this one. Still, I love them.

Day 4. Morning: studying for the OS exam. Afternoon: Taking the exam. I didn't do bad, but I'm not sure I'm gonna pass either.

Day 5. Playing the Sims 2. My boyfriend bought me the newest expansion pack, "Free time". Now, you know you're a geek when your Sims can play "the Sims 3" and you wonder how deep this recursion goes. Or you make a list of the bugs and the usability issues. Or you pick a different language while installing the add-on just to see what happens. (That's a great idea, by the way, as soon as I have revised my French a bit, I'm switching to German.)

Day 6. Staying at my boyfriend's. We went for a walk as the weather was great and later to the swimming pool. Yep, I've really been lacking sport recently.

Day 7. Staying at home and doing lots of stuff that had been pushed away for quite a long time, like making back-ups. By the way, do you know how great ImgBurn is? I used to have Nero and it kept screwing my blank CDs. ImgBurn is the man! (I mean the app.)

Okay, life is getting almost normal. How awesome is normal?

Bill Hicks on Marketing

That's exactly what I think about marketing.

For those of you with a weaker understanding of low-quality spoken american english, you can find the text here, along with some other Bill Hicks stuff.

Geek starts new week

Another tough week is starting. This one has two exams on the menu that I have to take again: semantics and operating systems. I'm still waiting for my operating systems lab scores and hope they will be high enough.

So, day 1 of 7, I went to today's classes and took the semantics exam. I was way better prepared this time and solved all the problems. That's a good start.

Right now, it's the evening, I'm too tired to study (the operating systems are on Thursday). So I went to Babbel.com and started studying Spanish. As I'm going to Spain in the summer, the lesson "vacaciones al mar" was an obvious choice.

Now, top priority, those operating systems. I don't wanna have to re-take the test in September and have my vacaciones al mar ruined.

Geek kitchen stuff

Remember the (unfortunately non-existent) chocolate keyboard? Well, while you still have to figure how to make one, why not opt for keyboard-shaped waffles?
Chris Domino has tansformed a typwriter this way - how cool!

Also cool, those tetris ice cube makers by Martin Žampach:

And of course, Think Geek's mugs:

But I'm sure you knew about them already.