The Fall of Google

Date: 2011.03.07 | Category: Tech Stuff, Web | Response: 0

Lately – and by that I mean in the last year or so – searches on Google have yielded less and less useful results. The most prominent problems have been,

• Google Trends farmers that produce bogus and useless content based on search popularity statistics harvested directly from Google Search itself. These results will clutter most of any searches for new trends, new products, news, well -anything new, really, and you’ll often find that Twitter is a better search engine for getting genuine results instead of wading through hordes of useless spam on Google.
• Google apparently chosing to revert to mid-90s behavior with OR’ing every word in a search query to produce more results rather than AND’ing them to allow the user to refine and narrow down the search to achieve more accurate results.

I experienced a rather “amusing” effect of the latter example yesterday, where removing two words from my search phrase reduced the search results from about 1,000 results to two results. That’s a smoking gun right there. I forget the search, as I was busy working, but just now I was trying to find out how well the podcast aggregator app Juice would work when installed under WINE (Linux middle-layer for running Windows apps).

Searching for “juice wine”, well obviously that would not yield very useful results, and Google is no target for blame on that account. Lots and lots of tips on making wines and juices.

Second try, “juice wine podcast”, well ok, there are lots of podcasts provided out there, even for people making wines and juices, so I take that one on me as well.

Third time’s the charm, right? “juice wine install“ had to be pretty much unambiguous. I mean, you would never install wines or juices, would you? But, of course, as it turns out, I now fall prey to the newfound mid-90s style of searching that Google is currently practicing. Let’s ignore that “install” keyword, shall we?:

Now, we should always expect search results that aren’t exactly what we wanted. Words mean a lot of things, you know. But note that just one of those pages actually contain the word “install” in their body text. Just. One. And this is the first page of Google’s search results.

I don’t know about you, but I’m desperately looking for an alternative to Google Search these days. Bing is even shittier. What to do?

UPDATE 2011-04-25:

Missed the screening of “Littlerock“, and wanted to see if there’s a torrent out there to fetch instead. Of course, Google insists on “correcting” Littlerock to “Little rock”, and usually when this happens, I try to explicitly tell google not to give me any of these results by prefixing this with a minus (means “exclude hits that contain this text”). Don’t know about you, but this result provokes me:

RVM Gets Head…

Date: 2011.02.25 | Category: Funny/Weird Things on the Net, Off the record | Response: 0

Heh. This seriously speaks to the kid in me. Just set up a new RVM installation on a desktop box, and got a laugh from Wayne’s greeting,

Be sure to get head often as rvm development happens fast,
you can do this by running 'rvm get head' followed by 'rvm reload'
or opening a new shell
 
  w⦿‿⦿t
 
    ~ Wayne

‘rvm get head’ followed by ‘rvm reload’? Really? Hmmm… So is there an implicit ‘rvm release’ going on in-between there? w00t indeed!

Yeah, sorry, I know – very corny. But it is Friday!

Swap Partitions and SSDs: A Beautiful Match

Date: 2011.02.15 | Category: Linux, Tech Stuff | Response: 0

Anyone who’s purchased an SSD will know that what ensues is a string of questions and configuration sessions to ensure that your system on the one hand will benefit the most from this glorious technology, and on the other hand that your system won’t actively degrade the SSD hardware or bring itself into a performance depression.

Even with the newer, self-organizing types of drives that ensure at least some basic kind of wear-levelling and block allocation optimization for OSes that do not natively support TRIMming (such as Windows XP or Mac OS), actively issuing TRIM commands to the device is clearly the most efficient way to behave.

This can be difficult in some cases, like for a host system virtualizing disks to guest OSes (neither VMware nor Virtualbox at the moment will translate de-allocation of blocks in virtual disk files to TRIM commands for the hardware). Or, one would think, for swap partitions on Linux.

But not so, it seems! I was kind of assuming there would be no TRIMming of the space on a swap partition, so my first “logical” solution was to ditch the partition altogether, and automatically set up and take down a sparse swap file on the root fs on boot/shutdown. As it turns out, this isn’t supported at all.

I then decided to take a look at the kernel source code for the swap routines in swapfile.c (actually, I grepped it all for ‘discard’, but that sounds less cool ), and lo and behold,

/*
 * swapon tell device that all the old swap contents can be discarded,
 * to allow the swap device to optimize its wear-levelling.
 */
static int discard_swap(struct swap_info_struct *si)
{
        struct swap_extent *se;
        sector_t start_block;
        sector_t nr_blocks;
        int err = 0;
 
        /* Do not discard the swap header page! */
        se = &si->first_swap_extent;
        start_block = (se->start_block + 1) << (PAGE_SHIFT - 9);         nr_blocks = ((sector_t)se->nr_pages - 1) << (PAGE_SHIFT - 9);         if (nr_blocks) {                 err = blkdev_issue_discard(si->bdev, start_block,
                                nr_blocks, GFP_KERNEL, 0);
                if (err)
                        return err;
                cond_resched();
        }
 
        list_for_each_entry(se, &si->first_swap_extent.list, list) {
                start_block = se->start_block << (PAGE_SHIFT - 9);                 nr_blocks = (sector_t)se->nr_pages << (PAGE_SHIFT - 9);                 err = blkdev_issue_discard(si->bdev, start_block,
                                nr_blocks, GFP_KERNEL, 0);
                if (err)
                        break;
 
                cond_resched();
        }
        return err;             /* That will often be -EOPNOTSUPP */
}

Discard calls are already being issued when swap space is de-allocated!

Don’t we all just love Linux? Yes, Daniel. Yes, we do.

Anmeldelse: Bosch KGN39A77 køle-/fryseskab

Date: 2011.02.07 | Category: Other Stuff, Reviews | Response: 0

Jajajaja, så er det håbløst utjekket at anmelde et køleskab, men jeg er simpelthen bare så glad for mit nye køleskab, så nu kommer det alligevel!

Jeg prøvede netop at finde et godt sted at anmelde det. Pricerunner var en fucking joke, og så var der Pribot.dk, som bare venter på et SQL injection-angreb. Tænkte til sidst, at jeg ligeså godt kunne copy/paste mit “review” (dén var til Google ) her (kopieret fra en tekstkasse hos pribot):

Man får helt åndssvagt meget for pengene her. Jeg har haft skabet i godt en måned nu, og er helt vildt glad for det. Der er luftcirkulering, så kulden bliver fordelt rigtig fint og jævnt. Køleskabsdelen kan indstilles fra 2-8 grader, frysedelen fra -24 til -16 grader.

“ChillerSafe”-skuffen i bunden skal man lige være opmærksom på godt kan ryge ned under frysepunktet, i modsætning til de noget dyrere modeller, hvor temperaturen er garanteret. Der er ikke en decideret køling specifikt til dette område, og det er min fornemmelse, at der er to faktorer, der bestemmer temperaturen: hvad man har sat køleskabstemperaturen til, og hvor meget “nyt” mad, man har smidt i skabet. F.eks. har jeg sat temperaturen til 4 gr., og det termometer, jeg har liggende dernede siger stort set altid liiiige lidt over 0 grader, men hvis jeg kaster en masse nye varer ind og køleskabet går i gang med at køle igennem, har jeg set temperaturen ryge ned på -4 grader! Det var dog ekstremen, og min erfaring er at med 4 gr. i skabet er det meget sjældent, at temperaturen når under 0 grader dernede. Jeg tror 5 gr. i skabet vil sikre en temperatur dernede omkring 1 gr.

Ift. hvor godt det køler, sådan generelt, er jeg ligeledes megabegejstret. Mælk åbnet for fire dage siden er stadig helt frisk. Chili con carne lavet for to uger siden, smidt på glas og puttet i chill-dimsen er stadig frisk, og hvis man kaster en flaske vand fra hanen i fryseren, som stort set er fuld, er der isklumper i efter 15-20 minutter. Man kan virkelig godt mærke, at der er en stor kompressor i skabet! (Og høre det; det laver sådan en wooo-lyd, når det køler ned efter man har haft det åbent

AntiFrost-tingen fungerer også fantastisk. Jeg har aldrig haft det før, så jeg var lidt skeptisk ift. effekten. Men uden grund, lader det til, for mine frosne varer er bare altid helt i orden, og uden rim og frostsnask!

Flaskehylden er meget cool, men kan ikke tage en 2-liters-cola. 1½-liter går lige, men to”eren skal i døren. Det er nemt at rykke hylderne rundt og køledelen er godt oplyst med to lamper.

Der er ikke helt så mange muligheder for at rykke hylderne rundt i døren, hvor der øverst mest er plads til mindre ting såsom småtuber, marmeladeglas osv.

Der følger en tjekket lille æggeholder med, som man kan hive i i enderne, så der er plads til enten 6, 8, 10, eller 12 æg. Så er der en dingenot til at putte på kanten af flaskeholderen i døren, så tingen ikke klirrer, når man åbner og lukker. Der er en bakke til at lægge oven på en af fryseskufferne + tre isterningbakker med låg på (da antifrost-tingen ellers ville “spise” isterningerne over tid). Der er ikke “katastrofe”-frost-elementer i døren som i de dyrere modeller, men til gengæld er holderen glimrende brugt til isterningbakkerne, når de er frosset

Frontens børstede stål er helt vildt flot. Meget enkelt med en svag kurve, diskret “BOSCH”-logo. Siderne er stål malet med noget halv-mat metallic-maling. Jeg var lidt nervøs for om det ville være grimt, men det er det overhovedet ikke. Det er ikke børstet stål, men det er heller ikke “wanna-be” børstet stål. Det ligner ikke et hjælpeløst forsøg på at imitere børstet stål. Det ligner bare stål malet med let koksgrå metallic-maling. Meget pænt. Og meget rengøringsvenligt, i øvrigt.

Hjulene under skabet er rimeligt store og ruller fint på mit malede bræddegulv, uden at lave mærker. De justérbare fødder foran fungerer også fint, selv på mit 1886”er-gulv, som skråner ret meget. Bagtil er der en sortlakeret grill, som kun stikker meget lidt ud.
Når man åbner dørene, kan man se, at hængslerne sidder sådan, at der på intet tidspunkt “stikker noget ud” mod væggen… Altså hvis der er meget trang plads, er det ikke ved hængslerne mens man åbner dørene, der kan opstå problemer, det er kun hvis der ikke skulle være plads til håndtagene eller den lille bue, der er i dørene.

Der står “AirFreshFilter” på bagvæggen i køleskabet, men enten læser jeg instruktionsbogen forkert, eller også er der ikke noget sted at sætte filteret i, og ergo ikke noget filter… Jeg er lidt usikker på det, men jeg havde noget knap så god grønkål liggende i sidste uge, som i hvert fald gjorde, at der ikke lugtede så godt, sååå…

Den nederste skuffe i fryseren er ikke så dyb som resten af skabet, da der skal være plads til kompressortingene, men det er nok forventet. Synes bare lige jeg ville sige det

Okay, så. Dårlige ting? Ingen, ud over at man lige skal være opmærksom på de mulige minusgrader i chill-delen, men så har man jo heller ikke betalt for at have garanteret temperatur dernede. Og selv hvis den skulle ryge under 0, så er det et fantastisk sted at lægge øl, hvidvin, parmesanost og andre “tørre” varer, der skal være på køl.

Jeg er heeeelt vildt glad for at have købt det her køleskab, og jeg kan kun anbefale det. Om det nu holder i længden vil vise sig, men indtil videre er det i hvert fald top spitze!!!

XBMC PVR with HTS Tvheadend on Linux with Completely Outdated MSI DigiVox A/D

Date: 2011.02.03 | Category: Linux, Tech Stuff | Response: 0

This XBMC application. It continues to amaze me.

I’ve just been fortunate enough to get my very very aging MSI DigiVox A/D (no, not II, not III, not Mini, the old one) USB DVB-T adapter to provide beautiful MPEG streams to my very very cutting edge XBMC installation on Kubuntu Maverick.

Damn, it was a hassle trying to get that MSI bugger behaving. I’d read tons of howtos for different adapters trying to overcome the fact that the “sure way” just didn’t pan out – at all. The sure way being just installing the proper packages – dvb apps and the nonfree firmwares. However, even though /var/log/messages would assure me that the USB stick was recognized (as an em28xx device) and loaded with the proper firmwares, and all the proper adapters appeared under /dev/dvb/adapter0, the sure-to-work kaffeine app would fail to find any channels when scanning. VLC would find none, either.

In fact, I’d get tons of sys messages about firmwares being loaded and warnings about “tuning failed!”. Seemingly nothing was “wrong” – it’s just that no channels were found. Ever. By any app. Not tvtime. Not me-tv. Not kaffeine. Not VLC. I tried updating to the newest 2.6.38 kernel from Natty, to no avail.

Then, failing to find any real info on this particular revision of the DigiVox, I started looking more specifically for info on the chip, and the module, em28xx. Which led me to this French post about a Pinnacle adapter with the same chip. This page leads to this wonderful person’s prepackaged debs of drivers, and lo-and-behold, downgrading to kernel 2.6.35-24 and installing the matching driver deb found there, bam! one Kaffeine stuffed with DVB services! Sadly, there was no audio on the MPEG-4 services. Same thing with Me TV. VLC still couldn’t find any channels. Me TV only found MPEG-2 channels.

I wasn’t too fazed, though, as my experience with XBMC is that everything always Just Works™, so I was counting on it to save the day.

I’d already installed the PVR-extended XBMC release from Lars op den Kamp’s PPA, so now I had to figure out how to get that shizzle to play by my dizzle. Turns out that’s pretty much a walk in the park – sudo apt-get install hts-tvheadend, and you’re pretty much there. That is, after reading this XBMC forum thread on what needs to be set up.

And of course, figuring out how that http://localhost:9981/ interface works. It’s an amazing piece of software that HTS Tvheadend. Just friggin’ amazing. The key point here is to name your services (or use the auto-naming feature) so that they turn up as channels, and whoosh, they’re there in XBMC With full audio on all services, of course.

To think that I was almost about to run Winblows on this HTPC to get that aging USB adapter to work. I must’ve been hemmorhaging from the brain.

Getting Cleartype to Work with WINE and Winetricks

Date: 2011.02.01 | Category: Linux, Tech Stuff, Windows | Response: 0

If you’re anything like me, you’re probably frustrated that the usual hints and tricks to enable sub-pixel hinting, i.e. “cleartype” in Redmond terms, under WINE is usually futile.

The problem often is that the default Windows XP font is Tahoma, and this font isn’t included with WINE. So even if you have enabled cleartype, Tahoma will render using some fallback system font without subpixel hinting.

Solution? Just install tahoma. Example, installing uTorrent with winetricks:

env WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-utorrent winetricks utorrent fontfix fontsmooth-rgb tahoma

There ya go