Disqus - Latest Comments for Matt

Re: Portable Ubuntu - Part 2

Matt — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 14:30:27 -0000

Pro Tip : Drop to one of the background consoles to see extra errors not reported by the UI.

J/k about the "pro tip" part, that just seemed funny at the time.

AFAIK, if you can boot off of another USB installed OS, then this should work. However, the fact that partitioning is failing is far more suspicious.

Other note, it could be a drive ordering thing, but I think Ubuntu has moved to using the drive UID instead of the old clumsy path names.

If you think it's just grub, you can install it manually via another linux install. There are directions on how to do this under something like "grub recovery". Grub, at the very least, would show you a nice prompt, since it's good like that.

BTW, I thought your site used le OpenID? Discuss doesn't seem to like me.

Re: Portable Ubuntu: working!

Matt — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:05:43 -0000

Multiverse contained both 1.5 and 1.6 for me. If you're getting 1.5, you can probably also get 1.6. (Or at least, I was able to simply install them).

mreynolds@onosendai:~$ dpkg -S /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun
sun-java6-bin: /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun

mreynolds@onosendai:~$ apt-cache showpkg sun-java6-bin
Package: sun-java6-bin
Versions:
6-03-0ubuntu2 (/var/lib/apt/lists/us.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_gutsy_multiverse_binary-i386_Packages) (/var/lib/dpkg/status)
Description Language:
File: /var/lib/apt/lists/us.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_gutsy_multiverse_binary-i386_Packages
MD5: 026bcd0fe69901775823d7dfb9da4a5a

Reverse Depends:
turkey,sun-java6-bin
sun-java6-plugin,sun-java6-bin 6-03-0ubuntu2
sun-java6-jre,sun-java6-bin
sun-java6-jre,sun-java6-bin 6-03-0ubuntu2
Dependencies:
6-03-0ubuntu2 - sun-java6-jre (5 6-03-0ubuntu2) unixodbc (0 (null)) libc6 (0 (null)) debconf (18 0.5) debconf-2.0 (0 (null)) libstdc++5 (0 (null)) binfmt-support (0 (null)) libasound2 (0 (null)) libgcc1 (0 (null)) libx11-6 (0 (null)) libxext6 (0 (null)) libxi6 (0 (null)) libxp6 (0 (null)) libxtst6 (0 (null)) libnss-mdns (0 (null)) binfmt-support (3 1.1.2)
Provides:
6-03-0ubuntu2 -
Reverse Provides:

Re: Ubuntu Live and Java

Matt — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:01:27 -0000

Say... what? I have no such dir, and got no such errors...

In fact, to find this, I did :
apt-get source sun-java6-jre
fgrep "cow" sun-java6-6-03/debian/* -R

And I find no references to cows. You sure it's not a previously misconfigured package?

Re: Virtual Machines and the search for freedom

Matt — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:56:50 -0000

VirtualBox is pretty great compared to VMWare. Did you install the guest additions?

I've only used it with Linux (Ubuntu) on Vista so I have no idea how shit-tastic it'll be with Vista *in* VirtualBox, but it's worked well for me so far.

Re: Tweet Digests Suspended

Matt — Sat, 10 May 2008 14:12:31 -0000

Thank god :) I was seriously thinking about just removing you from my standard filter. Your posts made up a good chunk of the size of each update and I can't make heads or tails from most of the entries anyway.

Re: capturing

Matt — Fri, 16 May 2008 01:04:58 -0000

Soul Coughing - Ruby Vroom - Screenwriter's Blues

Re: capturing

Matt — Fri, 16 May 2008 10:40:29 -0000

I posted and hit send too quick, should have added : Both your post and that song reminded me of SoCal.

Re: Embracing Encapsulation

Matt — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:16:19 -0000

I really like this article, and not simply because I agree with it. As a non-classically trained programmer, I find that most of the work I've ever encountered easily relies on the encapsulation of previous work. You can accomplish great things on the backs of the giants that have moved the art forward.

However, I think where Graham is correct is in the hyper-niche that is the startup world. It encompasses a vastly smaller segment of the worlds jobs and mind-share, but is dominated by doing "neat things" with "old tech". As evidenced by Steve Yegge's ranting about fundamentals, it is relevant if you're trying to do something special, especially performance related.

I was lamenting with a friend the other day that, really, very few of my peers know what their computer is doing, even the ones that know how to code, at a basic level. It's not important for them to build a business/website/widget. They're not inventing the New New Thing, but they're successful and happy. Really, this is only a lament because *I* learned all that "basic" stuff that doesn't really matter on a day-to-day basis. Or didn't until I got a new job that focuses on performance.

I think the balance of knowledge (or lack of knowledge) is a great and wonderful thing. Computers are slowly replacing many of the old tools that are no longer required to make us successful. And the brain-damaged fringe that really like the details can work at the startups, or become hobbyists :) But, really, there's better things to do with brain cycles than remember old, worthless stuff like Lisp (j/k).