Yesterday I download the DVD iso of Fedora 8. Wanting to make sure that the file downloaded correctly, I started poking around trying to figure out how to compute the sha1 checksum of the file. Turns out that OS X doesn't come with the sha1sum package installed that comes standard with linux. I discovered that there are various sha1sum packages that you can download, compile, and then install, but that all seemed too complicated for something that I feel should come standard with the OS.

Eventually I discovered that you can use OpenSSL to compute the sha1 (and md5) checksum for you. In the terminal, type
openssl dgst -(sha1|md5) filename

With the release of Parallels 3.0, the folks over at SWSoft attempted to make it a lot easier to install newer linux distros, such as Ubuntu 7.04 and Fedora 7. I was pretty excited, since I've been using Fedora since version 2 and have been aching to play around in linux again (I've only had my Macbook Pro for the past 3 months...which I love). Even though it was easier to install Fedora 7 with Parallels 3.0 than previous versions of Parallels, I still ran into a little bit of trouble. I figured I'd post my experience here for the benefit of anyone else that is also trying to install Fedora on Parallels 3.0.

The first problem I ran into was that the DVD I created from the ISO image wouldn't work. I kept getting a message that the DVD wasn't a boot disk...odd. I figured out that if I used the ISO image, rather than the DVD, that it worked out just fine. You can tell Parallels to use the ISO image in the advanced options of the install process.

The rest of the install process went smoothly. I even customized what packages were to be installed. No problems at all. However, after the installation and the first reboot, I saw this lovely error message - "Kernel panic -- not syncing! Attempting to kill init." Turns out that the problem was that I had allocated too much memory to the virtual machine (apparently 1024 MB is too much to handle...why would this cause an error?). All I had to do was turn down the amount of memory from 1024 MB to 512 MB (see this post on the Parallels support forum).

With the death of the "kernel panic" error, my VM continued to boot and I thought that all was well. Alas, it wasn't. Something was wrong with the display and all I saw was a blank screen. After about a minute, I got a message that "something bad was probably happening." Ah, just what I had in mind...another problem to solve. A quick search on the Parallels support forum led me to some solutions. I ended up hitting Alt-F2 to get to a login prompt, logged in as root, and did a yum -y update. A couple hours later and everything was up and running just fine (in fact, I'm writing this post from Fedora). Turns out I could've also just installed Parallel Tools and saved some time...but oh well.

So far Fedora is running just fine and I'm enjoying the occasional spin in linux again.

Amidst all the excitement of Steve Jobs announcing the new iPods at today's event, you may have missed this quickie about a titillating new product from Apple. The following exchange took place as Starbucks' founder and chairman, Howard Schultz, took the stage.



NOTE: The original picture is from Engadet's live blog of today's proceedings.

Tetris clones are a dime a dozen...so why not one more? Introducing Dumblox (formerly codenamed Tetrix), a joint-venture with my good friend, Ryan. What is Dumblox, you ask? Quite simply, the most original and entertaining Tetris clone ever programmed.

Well, not really, but we have been having quite a lot of fun developing Dumblox. If you find yourself bored out of your mind, or are simply dying to play some Tetris, go ahead and download Dumblox. All you need is the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) version 5 or greater (download the most current JRE here). Check out the main page for more info.

Also, keep in mind that not only is this the first game that we've ever made, but Dumblox is still currently in a fairly early development stage, so don't be too surprised to find some bugs and/or missing elements. The game is definitely playable at this point, so check it out!

I just finished reading the first book of The Faded Sun trilogy by C. J. Cherryh, called Kesrith. I had never heard of the author before getting this book. It just so happened that as I was browsing through the selection of Orson Scott Card books at my local Borders, I saw a sign that read, "If you like Orson Scott Card, then try reading C. J. Cherryh." While Orson Scott Card is my favorite author, there wasn't anything on the shelf that I wanted to get at the moment, so I heeded the sign and made my way to the books by C. J. Cherryh.

Not having read anything by C.J. Cherryh before, I didn't have much to judge the books by except for the cover art and whatever was printed on the back covers. It turned out that that was pretty much all I needed. You see, on the cover of this edition of The Faded Trilogy is a spherical spaceship in the background and three, arabic-looking ninjas in the foreground. Ninjas in a science fiction setting? Sign me up!



It turns out that the story in Kesrith was just as intriguing as the cover art. The ninjas turned out to be more like samurai, valuing honor above all else, even death. They are a race called the mri. I won't go into to much detailbecause: 1) I don't want to spoil the story for anyone that ends up reading the book and 2) I'm not a book critic. I'll just say that I've really enjoyed the story so far. Simply put, Kesirth contains a great story coupled with fantastic storytelling.

One thing that I did find slightly peculiar was the manner of C. J. Cherryh storytelling. A few times, I found that certain avenues of the story were left unexplored, when I fully expected them to be explored. For example, when the mri edun (their house) was destroyed, I really thought that Niun (the main character) was going to spend more time looking through the rumble for survivors. Not that I expected him to find survivors, but the mri society is one based upon strict observance of rituals and rites. One of these rituals is the passing, or burial, ritual. So I was really expecting Niun to search more dilligently through the wreckage of the edun in order to perform the passing ritual. But he didn't, which really is a big deal...it was just what I expected.

So in conclusion, I really enjoyed Kesrith and look forward to continue the trilogy. Unfortunately, there are a lot of things happening at the moment, so I have no idea when I'll be able to finish the second book. If you enjoy science fiction and are looking for a classic read, check out The Faded Sun trilogy

In all of my experience (both academic and professional), this truthfully sums up how programmers work. The only difference with this and my current job is that swordplay is replaced by foosball.

Although this is documented elsewhere (I found it here), I just thought it was so elegant, that I wanted to write something up about it.

Anyone who has used Python previous to version 2.5 knows that there is no ternary operator built-in (the ternary operator is the ?: operator that you'll see in C/C++, Java, and other languages). Python 2.5 adds this operator in, but what if you're working with an older version of Python and are unable to upgrade to 2.5? This is the situation I recently found myself in at work.

I've seen many work-arounds posted on various pages. But it wasn't until today that I saw one that was as elegant and intuitive as this.

Say, for example, you have this:

fec_string = ("None", "Reed-Solomon")[fec_switch == 1]

Pretty nice, eh? All it's doing is evaluating the condition (fec_switch == 1) and using that as the index into the tuple. So when fec_switch is 1, fec_string will be "Reed-Solomon"; otherwise it'll be "None". In C++ or Java, this would be equivalent to:

fec_string = fec_switch == 1 ? "Reed-Solomon" : "None";

The Python approach is pretty smooth, if you ask me.

I was just poking around the stats for Elmpowered today when I came across this horrifying discovery:



And no, it's not that there have only been 22 hits on the site. What is disturbing is that the majority (albeit it's a pretty slight majority) of those 22 people who visited Elmpowered were using Internet Explorer!

Come on people! How do you expect to be able to tap into the infinite power of the elms if you're using IE? Don't you know the IE is the number one tree killer in North America?

If you're going to do me the honor of visiting my site (which I hope you will, by the way), then at least have the courtesy to use the environmentally-sound, and simply awesome, browser called Firefox. If you won't do it for me, then do it for the elms.

Now extracting tongue from cheek....