the corner office

I woke up this morning realising that it was the last day of 2004, and I still didn't have a 2005 Tolkein calendar. Ronwen and I made our way to Cresta, and of course, once I was the proud owner of said 2005 calendar (2005 is the 50th anniversary and features Tolkein's own artwork), Ronwen decided it was time for her to trawl the clothes shops. This always means I end up ambling around the music and book stores looking at the same old stuff I looked at the last time I was there. Bored out of my skull at Look & Listen, I took a look under 'R' in the DVD section, and lo! my favourite cult movie: Repo Man!

Ever since I first saw it in high school, I've loved the movie. It's been years since I last saw it on video, but I've had the soundtrack CD for ages. It seems it was finally released on DVD last year, and this is, quite literally, the first time I'd ever seen it in a local store. Needless to say, it is now mine, and after watching it again, it's as brilliant as I remember it - great soundtrack, totally off-the-wall story, bleak urban cityscapes, and a zillion memorable lines.

A nice way to spend the last day of 2004. I have to dash off and get ready for dinner with friends tonight, so I'll just wish all of you reading this a happy New Year and a very prosperous 2005. See you next year!

I was looking around last night for a way to donate something to the tsunami relief efforts. Amazon.com were perhaps the easiest way to do it, and 100% of the proceeds go to the American Red Cross. Really decent. Then, I thought that perhaps I should try donating through a local charity - sensible, no? Except that it seems nigh on impossible to do so. The South African Red Cross? Well, their site is utterly broken with good old ODBC errors, so you can't even see if they have anything to say about donating, let alone actually trying to give them money. No mention of charity drives at news sites like IOL, Mail & Guardian or News24. I'd heard that Discovery, Netcare (or Netcare911) and others had made arrangements to help flood victims, perhaps their sites had something to say? Nope, not even a mention of the disaster. Perhaps local online retailers are doing the same thing that Amazon.com are doing? Exclusive Books? Kalahari.net? Loot? Nope.

So, Amazon.com it was. And kudos to them.

Update: I posted too soon. Today, IOL has a list of charities, and News24 reports that ABSA has set up a relief fund with the Red Cross. Follow the links for details.

I've just read that the death toll from Sunday's earthquake could be as high as 100,000. The disease-related deaths that will follow might double that number. It's hard to wrap one's mind around it. Ronwen and I were discussing earlier, why it is that we're so horrified by this, while many other humanitarian tragedies in the past year or two haven't affected us as deeply. I think it's perhaps because unlike Iraq, Sudan, or elsewhere, this is something that humans were incapable of stopping. That sounds counter-intuitive, but this wasn't human folly, something where we feel safe because the countries we live in are protected from war or unrest or famine. This was just nature, cruel and indifferent, reminding us that the same earth which sustains life can take it away just as easily. We tend to view ourselves as masters of this planet, and it is humbling, and terrifying, to be reminded that we're not, really.

Cynicism aside though, it is an awful catastrophe, and the loss and suffering are real, irrespective of why or how much the rest of the world is moved by it. That we are moved by it, is all that matters.

Another Google and posterity post... setting up a Windows 2000 machine to print through Linux, the Windows box's printer properties kept showing the error "Access denied, unable to connect" next to the newly-set up printer.

Courtesy of this page, I managed to get that fixed by adding the line use client driver = yes to the [printers] section of /etc/samba/smb.conf.

That caused the "Access denied" error message to go away, but still no luck printing. The samba log file was reporting the following error though:

[2004/12/29 12:52:03, 0] printing/print_cups.c:cups_job_submit(765)
Unable to print file to HP610C - client-error-document-format-not-supported

I got that solved thanks to this post. Basically, Windows clients will send data to the printer in "raw" format, which CUPS (the Linux printing system) should just pass on directly to the printer. The problem is, you have to tell CUPS to do that. In the /etc/cups/ directory, you have to tweak two files:

In mime.types, you have to uncomment (or add) the line application/octet-stream.

In mime.convs, you have to uncomment (or add) the line:

application/octet-stream        application/vnd.cups-raw        0       -

... and problem solved.

Father Christmas (actually, Ronwen) sent me a present a day early, delivered by a Berco Delivery van - The Return of the King Collector's DVD set. An awesome statuette of Minas Tirith, and hours upon hours of extended movie, and busloads of commentaries and documentaries and goodies. No marks for guessing how we're spending Christmas Eve :-)

To all of you who celebrate it, I hope you have a merry Christmas!

I was browsing a list of South African online retailers and found Cyber-chix.

Schweet. The first online day-old chicken broker in South Africa. There always has to be a first. But surely if one has to call a cell phone number, it's not really online, per se?

(and some of the meta tag keywords in the HTML source are just, well, a little odd.)

These days I'm able to live almost exclusively in Linux, and it's made a lot easier by the fact that Notes 6.5.1 works well with Wine (try saying that last bit a few times over). I haven't done much Notes development recently (you know, it's just hard, man), but I've been working on a small app for Ronwen. Designed, written and sloppily tested, all in Linux. I'm well impressed.

As Julian pointed out months ago, there are still some issues with Java. One of these is that you can't open up the Java debugger - you get an obscure "Unable to create a suitable default GraphicsConfiguration" error as soon as the client tries to do any Java graphics-related stuff, and subsequent attempts to open the debugger throw a NullPointerException back at you. There is a workaround though - and if you get to see the error message I mentioned, you've already got it. Basically, don't launch Notes from a shortcut button or menu, use the command line. If you do this, (typically something along the lines of wine "c:\lotus\notes\nlnotes.exe"), all Java output will go to stdout - in this case, your terminal. It ain't ideal, but it does the job. That might be obvious to most, but I must admit to having a Doh! moment, staring at the error message and muttering about not being able to see Java output, before realising that I was looking at exactly that!

First, a big thanks to all of you for your congratulations on my degree and for your comments regarding that Other Thing - I sincerely appreciate it. I've spent the weekend should-I-shouldn't-I-ing about whether to say more about my side of the "two sides to every story" bit - but every time I come to the same conclusion I drew before: it's just not worth it. The saga won't make a difference to the lives of most people reading this anyway, and while I'm not happy that it's been damaging to me, I'm quite comfortable about being able to set the record straight with people to whom it might matter in future.

With that said, myself and the missus (who's been more supportive and understanding than I could ever have asked for) are itching to get on with our lives, and in real "hey, let's get on our with our lives" fashion, we went through to UNISA today and got ourselves registered for our 2005 courses. It's the first time we've been to register in December (we've always gone through in January), and jeez, what a difference. Usually the Pretoria campus is a madhouse at registration time, but a week before Christmas, it was a breeze.

I'm not sure how it works in other countries, but here, a full-time degree takes 3 years, you normally take another year to convert that to an Honours degree, (and thence to Masters and PhD's, like the rest of the world). A part-time Honours course is expected to take 2 years or more, but I don't want to drag it out any longer than necessary. I had a chat with one of the Com Sci professors this morning, and he suggested that trying to balance work (which is a looming reality) and Honours in one year might be "psychologically trying." I thought that was an interesting way of putting it. Well, if I'm a crackhead or a tramp on the Durban beachfront in a year's time, you'll know why.

Anyway, one year it is for me. I've signed up for a full 10 modules in 2005. If I don't cope, I can always cancel a few subjects and stretch it out over two years. I've got an interesting spread of subjects - apart from a compulsory Research in Computing credit (I'll skip the inevitable Google joke), I'm carrying on with Formal Logic, and AI (because I'm a sucker for punishment), I'm doing a few obscurities like Theory of Program Languages and Formal Program Verification, and then cool stuff like Operating Systems, Advanced Database Theory, Networking, Information Security, and Data Structures and Algorithms.

I'm pretty stoked. It looks like a lot of interesting work. "A lot" being the operative words. Because it's postgrad, exams will only be in January 2006, so I've got a full year to put into it. Thankfully!

Well, I guess I should acknowledge that Nathan's had some things to say about me in response to my post about the legal wrangles I've just been through. I knew some people wouldn't like what I said, but I chose my words carefully when I wrote about the dispute, and I certainly didn't have him in mind when I wrote it.

My reputation and credibility have been called into question, but I'll just echo what I said in my reply to his post - there are two sides to every story.

I've avoided going into detail about the goings-on over the past few months - and for that matter, the events over the past 5 years that led up to it. Dragging up a lot of messy details, to defend myself personally or professionally, or to fight back, would degenerate into an acrimonious and public slinging match. I don't know if I'd achieve much by doing that, and I'm tired of fighting. If people think the worst of me because of this, then so be it. It seems far more constructive for me to get on with my life and let my future work speak for itself.

Good news is that I got my UNISA results this weekend. I passed all 8 subjects, and got 5 distinctions! So as soon as the University has done their admin stuff and confirmed my results, I'll be the proud owner of a BSc in Computer Science. Yay!

(Most frightening of all, after whingeing for 2 years about how I just couldn't zen with Formal Logic, I got 90% for the damned subject. Go figure...)

Now for Honours :-)