Planet Offtopic2

There's a long list of books I want to read (or re-read), and it's one of my resolutions this year to read more. The stack of books in the above picture is what I'd like to go through eventually. At topmost priority are my tech books, and the Terry Pratchett books that Megan was nice enough to send to me (thanks again!).

Matt Smith is the new Doctor in Doctor Who. We don't get a lot of UK television here, so I haven't seen him before. However he is the first doctor that's actually younger than me. This is so wrong. It is warping my brain. I tell myself that even though he resembles a guy born in 1982, he is over 900 years old. That makes me feel less old.

Here is where I got myself one of those tumblelogs, which are less organised blogs you throw random junk on. The idea was pioneered by Anarchaia, and every other tumblelog is a rip-off of that site. So now I have one too. You'll also find an RSS feed to it among the little blog boxes on the right. Sometimes fun links get posted to irc (ag has consistently done this over the years, well done) and I wouldn't want my readers to miss out on that. All twelve of you. Okay my tracker says 11616 but I'm sure that's a rounding error. Also because the internet needs more random junk.

Kinda a mandatory post… Happy New Year everyone!

I’ll try to post more frequently.

Whenever I do a Google search for "Vim for OS X" or "Vim for Mac" , it links to macvim.org, which has old binaries and hasn't been updated in a while. I thought I saw someone using a shiny, tabbed-interface Vim during Foss.my last month. I could have sworn it was Toru Maesaka, but after emailling him it turns out it wasn't him.

Anyway, tonight I finally found it! The newer Vim for Mac can be found at this page. It has goodies such as OS X keyboard bindings, tabbed multiple windows and transparency.

Happy year rollover day!

Remember, there will be a leap second added at the end of 2008 (at midnight UTC), so reset your atomic clocks accordingly.

I've been using a webtracker since 15 April 2007, and I thought it'd be interesting to see the reader demographics of this blog. Some of my friends read it (thanks folks!), and some random people inadvertently stumble upon it. So far, I've gotten 11616 unique visitors, give or take some margin of error as webtrackers aren't terribly reliable.


Here, we can see that most of my visitors are from the United States. Malaysia ranks second place, the UK scores third, Canada gets fourth, Australia is fifth and we have a whole bunch of other countries following behind. I've grouped the countries with a visitor ratio of less than 1% into a clump called "Other", which accounts for 16.75% of all visitors. For a map view, you can check out this site, which also tracks my visitors.


Gecko is the core of the Mozilla-based browsers such as Firefox, Iceweasel, Seamonkey and Epiphany. Gecko is the winner here, and IE is second place. As far as my blog is concerned, Microsoft just lost the browser war. Neener.


There's quite a number of Linux/Unix and Mac users out there visiting my blog. Maybe it's because of some of the *nix-oriented posts I have. Still, I'd say most of my blog is now general interest rather than tech-specific.

I used Google's chart API to dynamically render the pie charts you see above. If you think this entire post is just an excuse to play with it, you're probably right.

I saw Australia today (the movie, not the country). Despite lukewarm reviews by critics, I decided to go see it anyway because my friend Beachgirl liked it a lot (I trust friends more than I trust movie critics), and the trailer captured my interest with majestic landscapes and the clever allusion to The Wizard Of Oz. The movie is set during World War II, just as the Japanese are about to attack the town of Darwin. There is a love story, cattle, a charming half-aborigine boy, evil ranchers, Japanese bombers, and Hugh Jackman generally being badass throughout. Baz Luhrmann has attempted to create a grand epic, and for the most part, he does deliver. Spoilers follow, so be warned.

Lady Sarah Ashley (played by Nicole Kidman) is an Englishwoman who travels to Australia to find her husband, who owns a cattle station down under called Faraway Downs. When she arrives she finds her husband murdered, and she is stuck with the station which she tries to sell. However, she meets an adorable half-aborigine, half-white boy named Nullah who befriends her. Nullah's mother is an aborigine woman and his father is Fletcher (played by David Wenham), a jerk who works on Sarah's farm as a manager. After she finds he has been helping a rival cattle farmer steal cows from her (and his mistreatment of Nullah and his mother), an outraged Sarah fires Fletcher and decides to run the station herself.

Sarah enlists an independent cattle drover (played by Hugh Jackman), who simply calls himself "Drover", to help her drive the cattle to Darwin to be sold to the military for food. Sarah, Drover, Nullah, and a few other hands drive the cattle across a very scenic country, despite being hampered by a vengeful Fletcher throughout the journey. Sarah and Drover fall for each other after the cattle drive, and she lives at Faraway Downs with Drover and Nullah.

Nullah is kidnapped one day by the authorities during his coming-of-age "walkabout", and is forced to go live on a church mission on an island. This happened a lot to half-aborigine children back in the day, where they were forcibly removed from their families and made to live in missions. They are referred to as the "stolen generation". Anyway. an upset Sarah tries to get Nullah back, without any success. And then, the Japanese attack. The mission is hit first, and then Darwin. Amidst the chaos of the bombing, Drover goes out to sea to rescue Nullah. He succeeds, and brings Nullah home to a tearful reunion with Sarah.

The film gives us some very stunning shots of the Australian continent. It's a beautiful place and Baz Luhrmann's visuals do it justice. His story structure however, feels a bit odd. The first part of the movie is about the cattle drive, and the second part is about Nullah's capture, rescue and the attack on Darwin. This makes the film feel like two movies tacked together in the middle, and it doesn't flow quite smoothly for me. There is quite a bit of melodrama, and the villain is rather cliched in his one-dimensional portrayal. Despite all this, it doesn't fail to entertain, and even though it's very long it never gets boring. It's one of the better movies of the year, and it's a shame it didn't get more favourable reviews. Go see it if you get the chance.

My column in today's Mercury addresses the strange circumstances we now find ourselves in with regards to spending about $360 per Ontarian on one of the most heavily subsidised industries in the world. To put it mildly, I am not impressed.

In one of the newscasts covering the US' debate on the auto industry bailout, a US congressman in debate asked if we should have bailed out the horse and carriage industry when the car was invented. It is mildly alliterative, but it makes the point.

There are plenty of successful auto manufacturers left in the world, many of them manufacturing their vehicles in North America while making cars that consumers actually want, instead of asking consumers to want the cars they are making*. Moreover, if we are going to bail out American auto manufacturers, what bang are we going to get for our buck? If we invest the roughly $17 billion in the US and $4 billion in Canada to keep them afloat, what will we accomplish? Will we remain world leaders in the construction of SUVs, or could we perhaps exercise just a little imagination and use these billions of taxpayer dollars that, in Canada alone, add up to around $10,000 per affected auto industry employee to become world leaders in something that needs a little leadership? (2236 words)

Well, I've been extremely busy on the weather plasmoid and finally, '1.0' is ready for use. It's now moved to kdereview so that any final bugs can be shaken out. This should arrive in extragear as soon as the review is completed.

*** If your Qt is old, it WILL crash when moving mouse to focus mouse on the icons. Please get your distro to get latest Qt 4.4.x release!

You'll notice some differences:

* New! Five day view. Special thanks to Marco Martin and Lee Olson also the wind icon.
* Thanks to the Pinheiro for the new Oxygen Icons
* Dock applet to plasma panel thanks to Marco Martin for this.
* Tooltip support that displays the icon, place, condition and current temperature.
* Rearranged configuration dialog thanks to Davide Bettio for this.
* All the conversion combo boxes now work it you can mix and match any combinations.
* Clickable credits where present (depends on data source) this will take you to the original data from the source's website.
* Popup tooltips when you hover over the 5 day icons to show you what the condition will be.
* Clickable watches/warning links where present (depends on data source).
* If in Canada, if a watch or warning for your area is issued the applet will add the 'Notices' tab on its next update of data.

If you're using KDE trunk, please test and report any bugs you find to me on #plasma or email.

And now, for screen shots!

In this screenshot, two shots using the Environment Canada data source:

You can click on the watch and warning text and it will open up in a browser to show the official warning text from your weather agency (where supported, only Environment Canada at the moment)

In this screenshot, using the BBCUKMET data source, I configured temperature for Fahrenheit, wind speed in Meters Per Second (m/s) and pressure in Inches of mercury.

Here is the applet docked to Plasma panel

* NOTE: The NOAA data source only provides current conditions not long term forecasts.

Thank you for your patience =)
Shawn.

Continuing the Hollywood trend of producing an endless stream of remakes, here comes a 21st century version of the 50's classic sci-fi movie. Reactions to the new movie have been mixed, with reviewers generally having a low opinion of it. I saw both versions (the 1951 movie and the 2008 remake) recently, and the 2008 version had a very different message. While I don't mind the new movie, the story in the remake doesn't appear to be as coherent as the original. It is an average sci-fi flick, when considered on it's own. It's watchable if you want to kill some time in the afternoon. Massive spoilers follow in this post, so stop reading now if you haven't seen either version.

I have no particular attachment to the 1951 version, as I've only seen it the same week I saw the remake. It feels dated and quaint now, and Klaatu's suggestion that we submit ourselves to the authority of giant killer space robots was quite disturbing. The older movie was made in a climate of fear around nuclear weapons, and the message reflected that. Today's version is the threat of ecological damage to the Earth, and Klaatu is here to remind us that we haven't been very nice to our planet.

The new movie opens with a random hiker (played by Keanu Reeves) getting his DNA sampled by an alien snow globe in 1928. Cut to the present day, where Helen Benson is an astrobiologist working for Princeton (in the original, Helen Benson was a secretary). She lives with her son, Jacob, who is an annoying bratty little kid. Government agents show up at her door and whisk her away to a lab where scientists have discovered that an object is on a collision course for Earth. This part is reminiscent of the opening scenes to Michael Bay's Armageddon, albeit not as badly directed. We later find that the object is a spaceship which doesn't collide with Earth, but lands softly in Central Park in New York. The ship looks like the alien snow globe we saw in the introduction, and a team of people consisting of armed military personnel and a bunch of scientists (Helen included) prepare to make contact. A figure appears from the ship, and as Helen approaches him, the alien gets shot by a jumpy officer. This causes a giant robot (the modernised Gort) to appear out of the ship to neutralise the weapons of the military. The injured alien is then taken to a guarded government hospital, where he is found to be a human-looking being (Keanu Reeves) in a spacesuit. This part pretty much follows the original, except that we now know why the alien's form is human-looking; he looks exactly like the hiker that got his DNA sampled in 1928.

The alien introduces himself as Klaatu, and he has an important message for the leaders of Earth. The US Secretary of Defense Regina Jackson (played by Kathy Bates) will not have that, and detains him in the hospital. Klaatu escapes with the help of Helen Benson, and now he must find a way to accomplish his mission. Helen. Jacob and Klaatu end up on a road trip where Klaatu meets another human-disguised alien, and a professor by the name of Barnhardt. Helen learns the true purpose of Klaatu's visit; to eliminate humanity to ensure the continued survival of Earth. To this end, he unleashes his giant robot which is actually a swarm of nanobot insects clustered together in humanoid form. Several Earth species are saved in little glowy bubbles before the killer robot termites are activated. When the nanite swarm is unleashed, it devours everything in its path, and it is implied that more nanites are created out of the things the swarm eats.

Now Klaatu has second thoughts about destroying all humans. His alien friend has grown to love humans, and Helen and the professor both try to make him change his mind. Klaatu listens to Bach and thinks it's pretty cool, and finally Jacob's adorable antics make him decide to stop his genocidal alien robot storm. He tells Helen that saving humanity comes at a price, and when he zaps the bugs with his alien sphere, all of Earth's electrical systems grind to a halt. Disappointingly, I could not hear the classic line "Klaatu barada nikto" uttered at all during the film, although Wikipedia says it's in there somewhere.

After contemplating the motives, of Klaatu, I find that the main plot does not make much sense to me. Wiping the Earth clean of human beings is as potentially damaging to the ecosystem as it is a very sudden and disruptive change. Perhaps that is why they needed to save some Earth creatures. However, doesn't this defeat the whole purpose of trying to save the Earth? Klaatu chastises humanity for being damaging and destructive, and there he is doing exactly that. Perhaps the aliens think it's better for the long term with humans out of the picture.

If you're a fan of the old movie, you may not like the new one. They've changed the plot and the kid is annoying, but otherwise it does do a decent job at being a passably entertaining sci-fi movie.

Sometimes, I like to look at the very tops of the trees to see if anything interesting is perched there. When I have my camera with me, I zoom up and take a picture if I see any birds.

On a bright Monday morning, I took this picture of a black-naped oriole while waiting to pick up visitors (the three French guys) from the guest house in USM.

I don't usually see Brahminy kites perched, so this picture is a rare treat. This is at maximum zoom, as the bird was quite a distance away (hence the picture quality isn't too great).

The same kite as seen from the side. It has pretty chestnut-coloured wings with black tips.

A chestnut-headed bee eater sits in the usual bee eater hangout tree.

I saw a whole bunch of coppersmith barbets! Now I know they like to gather at VC Rock

When taking this batch of photos, I took videos too. I will be making a documentary-type thing about the birds I've seen soon. Hopefully by January or February I can post it on the blog.

My friend from the PhDComics forums, Laura, came to visit Penang on her Southeast Asia tour. I showed her our giant lizards, turtles, birdies and walking fish. I believe she was impressed by our wildlife. In the above picture you can see her relaxing against a palm tree, on our island with blue skies and clear water. So the rest of you guys who read my blog, do come and visit us here, like Laura did.

Today, I had a reunion with my colleagues from UTMK, and I also met the trio of academics from France that is Christian Boitet, Mathieu Lafourcade and Didier Schwab.

We had lunch at the Red House.

Here they are discussing stuff with Lian Tze.

Mathieu Lafourcade hard at work.

At last I got to meet the famous Professor Boitet, whom I have heard so much about from Lian Tze.

There will be a half-day workshop at the Technion's EE department on Thursday afternoon on "Technology Transfer - from Academy to Industry" which looks mildly interesting. I am on nominally on vacation this week and flying to Italy that night, but perhaps I'll go anyway. Anyone else planning to go?

Among the Senate appointments today, a former PQ MNA who served under Jacques Parizeau during the 1995 referendum. Clearly Harper's use for Quebec is at an end. (61 words)

Yes, it's a pointless end of year list! In no particular order.
Much of this stuff is by no means new in 2008, but it's all new to me in 2008.

Sailor Jerry's

Old news to most by now but the popularity of combining this vanilla-flavoured rum with coke and ice has yet to wane.

FFV

Imported via a visit to Helsinki earlier in the year, Fisherman's Friend Vodka (both its name, and its recipe) took the world* by storm, and continues to delight.

Helsinki Travel Theodolites

Jim Beam's, Disaronno, Coke, Ice and a slice of lime.

David Thomas Broughton versus 7 Hertz

"Can't afford a pasty from Gregg's bakery". Still loving this album. His singing voice is an acquired taste, but I acquired it. I also admire anyone who doesn't let their equipment blowing up stop them putting the song onto the CD.

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - Dig Lazarus Dig

Reminded me that I do actually really like Nick Cave.

Cut Copy - In Colours

Uncomplicated but enjoyable electro. A New Order I like.

Primal Scream - Swastika Eyes (live)

Entire audience hated it, but it was the only good bit in the whole gig. Still think they're crap.

Trentemoller @ The Big Chill

I knew he'd be astonishing, because all his productions, and all his remixes, are astonishing. He was.

Leonard Cohen @ The Big Chill

The world is thanking his bent accountant for this tour.

There Will Be Blood

It's not exactly a stretch for me to like a Paul Anderson film, but still...

Atonement

To my shame, I saw the film before the book, but I thought both were brilliant. Yes, even Keira Knightley.

No Country For Old Men

I was expecting to be bored crapless by this but was mesmerised instead.

The Shield Season 7

This final season knocked this back up to seriously rival The Wire for best thing ever. The entire season exulted in reminding you that Vic Mackey was a truly horrible person.

Sons Of Anarchy

A drama about gun-running Californian bikers sounds dumb, but this was brilliantly done. For some reason I kept being reminded of Cher though - that is never good.

Abode

Very, very, good restaurant 2 minutes from my flat == yay.

Try Thai

Very good value, with excellent battered scallops, in Chinatown (if you can call a single square a town (which you can't, Manchester - sorry)).

The Deaf Institute

Well done for opening, Trof 3!

Sam Smith's Organic Ale

I drank way too much of this.

Allgates Shining Light

And nowhere near enough of this.

This is essentially a follow up to a previous post.

As it turns out, the big gray-ish blob commonly referred to as Luna, or even more commonly referred to as the Moon, is still there. As always, it seems to hide about once every 4 weeks.

The other day, I read somewhere that the moon was going to appear bigger than usual. When I got home, I ran outside, saw that it wasn’t cloudy, and took a bunch of photos of the moon. I spend a grand total of about 4 minutes outside before the -8C air got too much for my fingers to control the camera well.

Here are the spoils of war. Just as in the earlier post, these are taken at the 300mm end of my 70-300 zoom, which on my D70 is equivalent to 450mm on 35mm film.

They were all taken at f/5.6, with either 1/640 or 1/800 second exposure.

I should try to use a tripod one day, take a burst of 1/800 exposures, and then try to stack them in software. (I know people use webcams though telescopes and hundreds of exposures to get decent images, so it should work just as well with an SLR.)

GO has released its 2020 plan, and according to the 65MB document, Guelph is to get rush hour train service, but Kitchener, Cambridge, Brantford, Niagara region, and Peterborough are only being considered for possible future expansion. Such a move makes the need for a site like Lafarge for parking and route origination much more urgent for Guelph's service, as it would be the nearest GO train access for the entire Waterloo region market. At the junction of 6, 7, and 24, Cambridge, Kitchener, and Waterloo commuters would need a place to park in Guelph to park and ride. Refer to page 20 of the linked PDF for the GO 2020 rail service map. (232 words)

My previous blog post described how to install OpenSolaris 2008.11 on a Solaris dom0 under Xen. This also works on with a Linux dom0. However, since upstream is missing some of our dom0 fixes, it's unfortunately more complicated. In particular, we can't use virt-install, as it doesn't know about Solaris ISOs, and later on, we can't use pygrub to boot from ZFS, since it doesn't know how to read such a filesystem. Bear with me, this gets a little awkward.

This example is using a 32-bit Fedora 8 installation. Your milage is likely to vary if you're using a different version, or another Linux distribution. First some of the configuration parameters you might want to change:

export name="domu-224"
export iso="/isos/osol-2008.11.iso"
export dompath="/export/guests/2008.11"
export rootdisk="$dompath/root.img"
export unixfile="/platform/i86xpv/kernel/unix"

If you're on 64-bit Linux, set unixfile="/platform/i86xpv/kernel/amd64/unix" instead. We need to create ourselves a 10Gb root disk:

mkdir -p $dompath
dd if=/dev/zero count=1 bs=$((1024 * 1024)) seek=10230 of=$rootdisk

Now let's use the configuration we need to install OpenSolaris:

cat >/tmp/domain-$name.xml <<EOF
<domain type='xen'>
 <name>$name</name>
 <bootloader>/usr/bin/pygrub</bootloader>
 <bootloader_args>--kernel=/platform/i86xpv/kernel/unix --ramdisk=/boot/x86.microroot</bootloader_args>
 <memory>1048576</memory>
 <on_reboot>destroy</on_reboot>
 <devices>
  <interface type='bridge'>
   <source bridge='eth0' />
   <--
       If you have a static DHCP setup, add the domain's MAC address here
       <mac address='00:16:3e:1b:e8:18' />
   -->
  </interface>
  <disk type='file' device='cdrom'>
   <driver name='file' />
   <source file='$iso' />
   <target dev='xvdc:cdrom' />
  </disk>
  <disk type='file' device='disk'>
   <driver name='file' />
   <source file='$rootdisk' />
   <target dev='xvda' />
  </disk>
 </devices>
</domain>
EOF

And start up the domain:

virsh create /tmp/domain-$name.xml
virsh console $name

Now you're dropped into the domain's console, and you can use the VNC trick I described to do the install. Answer the questions, wait for the domain to DHCP, then:

domid=`virsh domid $name`
ip=`/usr/bin/xenstore-read /local/domain/$domid/ipaddr/0`
port=`/usr/bin/xenstore-read /local/domain/$domid/guest/vnc/port`
/usr/bin/xenstore-read /local/domain/$domid/guest/vnc/passwd
vncviewer $ip:$port

At this point, you can proceed with the installation as normal. Before you reboot though, we need to do some tricks, due to the lack of ZFS support mentioned above. Whilst still in the live CD environment, bring up a terminal. We need to copy the new kernel and ramdisk to the Linux dom0. We can automate this via a handy script:

#/bin/bash

dom0=$1
dompath=$2
unixfile=/platform/i86xpv/kernel/$3/unix

root=`pfexec beadm list -H |  grep ';N*R;' | cut -d \; -f 1`
mkdir /tmp/root
pfexec beadm mount $root /tmp/root 2>/dev/null
mount=`pfexec beadm list -H $root | cut -d \; -f 4`
pfexec bootadm update-archive -R $mount
scp $mount/$unixfile root@$dom0:$dompath/kernel.$root
scp $mount/platform/i86pc/boot_archive root@$dom0:$dompath/ramdisk.$root
pfexec beadm umount $root 2>/dev/null
echo "Kernel and ramdisk for $root copied to $dom0:$dompath"
echo "Kernel cmdline should be:"
echo "$unixfile -B zfs-bootfs=rpool/ROOT/$root,bootpath=/xpvd/xdf@51712:a"

For example, we might do:

/tmp/update_dom0 linux-dom0 /export/guests/2008.11
or on 64-bit:
/tmp/update_dom0 linux-dom0 /export/guests/2008.11 amd64

Now, you can finish the installation by clicking the reboot button. This will shut down the domain, ready to run. But first we need the configuration file for running the domain:

cat >/$dompath/$name.xml <<EOF
<domain type='xen'>
 <name>$name</name>
 <os>
  <kernel>$dompath/kernel.opensolaris</kernel>
  <initrd>$dompath/ramdisk.opensolaris</initrd>
  <cmdline>$unixfile -B zfs-bootfs=rpool/ROOT/opensolaris,bootpath=/xpvd/xdf@51712:a</cmdline>
 </os>
 <memory>1048576</memory>
 <devices>
  <interface type='bridge'>
   <source bridge='eth0'/>
  </interface>
  <disk type='file' device='disk'>
   <driver name='file' />
   <source file='$rootdisk' />
   <target dev='xvda' />
  </disk>
 </devices>
</domain>

virsh define $dompath/$name.xml
virsh start $name
virsh console $name

It should be booting, and you're (finally) done!

Updating the guest

Unfortunately we're not quite out of the woods yet. What we have works fine, but if we update the guest via pkg image-update, we'll need to make changes in dom0 to boot the new boot environment. The update_dom0 script above will do a fine job of copying out the new kernel and ramdisk for the BE that's active on reboot, but you also need to edit the config file. For example, if I wanted to boot into the new BE called opensolaris-1, I'd replace these lines:

<kernel>$dompath/kernel.opensolaris</kernel>
<initrd>$dompath/ramdisk.opensolaris</initrd>
<cmdline>$unixfile -B zfs-bootfs=rpool/ROOT/opensolaris,bootpath=/xpvd/xdf@51712:a</cmdline>

with these:

<kernel>$dompath/kernel.opensolaris-1</kernel>
<initrd>$dompath/ramdisk.opensolaris-1</initrd>
<cmdline>$unixfile -B zfs-bootfs=rpool/ROOT/opensolaris-1,bootpath=/xpvd/xdf@51712:a</cmdline>

then re-configure the domain (whist it's shut down) via virsh undefine $name ; virsh define $dompath/$name.xml.

Yes, we're aware this is rather over-complicated. We're trying to find the time to send our changes to virt-install upstream, as well as ZFS support. Eventually this will make it much easier to use a Linux dom0.

Tags: OpenSolaris Xen Linux

Our new paper is online: "Scalable I/O---A Well-Architected Way to Do Scalable, Secure and Virtualized I/O", by Julian Satran, Leah Shalev, Muli Ben-Yehuda, and Zorik Machulsky. This is an overview paper showcasing the main ideas underlying a system we've been working on on and off since 2004. It's not as detailed as I would've liked due to the space constraints, but hopefully it will be followed by more detailed papers. The slides I'll be presenting later today at WIOV '08 are also available and go into a bit more details in areas.

Today in both virtualized and non-virtualized systems the entire I/O functionality is based on device drivers. They are central to any system structure; both anecdotal and informed evidence indicates device drivers as a major source of trouble in the classical OS and a source of scaling and performance issues in virtual I/O, due to "trusted intermediary" required for the shared I/O. We propose an architecture which virtualizes the entire I/O subsystem rather than each I/O device, and provides device-independent I/O at higher level of abstraction than the traditional I/O interfaces. In our suggested architecture the system robustness is increased by isolating drivers; efficient and scalable virtualization becomes possible by a complete separation of the I/O and compute function and introducing a protection model that does not require a trusted intermediary for I/O.

As well obviously working with VirtualBox, OpenSolaris can also run as a guest domain under Xen. The installation CD ships with the paravirtual extensions so you can run it as a fully para-virtualized guest. This provides a significant advantage over fully-virtualized guests, or even guests with para-virtual drivers like Solaris 10 Update 6. Of course, if you choose to, you can still run OpenSolaris fully-virtualized (a.k.a. HVM mode), but there's little advantage to doing so.

One slight wrinkle is that Solaris guests don't yet implement the virtual framebuffer that the Xen infrastructure supports. Since OpenSolaris doesn't yet have a text-mode install, this means that to install such a PV guest, we need a way to bring up a graphical console.

With 2008.11, this is considerably easier. Presuming we're running a Solaris dom0 (either Nevada or OpenSolaris, of course), let's start an install of 2008.11:

# zfs create rpool/zvol
# zfs create -V 10G rpool/zvol/domu-220-root
# virt-install --nographics --paravirt --ram 1024 --name domu-220 -f /dev/zvol/dsk/rpool/zvol/domu-220-root -l /isos/osol-2008.11.iso

This will drop you into the console for the guest to ask you the two initial questions. Since they're not really important in this circumstance, you can just choose the defaults. This example presumes that you have a DHCP server set up to give out dynamic addresses. If you only hand out addresses statically based on MAC address, you can also specify the --mac option. As OpenSolaris more-or-less assumes DHCP, it's recommended to set one up.

Now we need a graphical console in order to interact with the OpenSolaris installer. If the guest domain successfully finished booting the live CD, a VNC server should be running. It has recorded the details of this server in XenStore. This is essentially a name/value config database used for communicating between guest domains and the control domain (dom0). We can start a VNC session as follows:

# domid=`virsh domid domu-220`
# ip=`/usr/lib/xen/bin/xenstore-read /local/domain/$domid/ipaddr/0`
# port=`/usr/lib/xen/bin/xenstore-read /local/domain/$domid/guest/vnc/port`
# /usr/lib/xen/bin/xenstore-read /local/domain/$domid/guest/vnc/passwd
DJP9tYDZ
# vncviewer $ip:$port

At the VNC password prompt, enter the given password, and this should bring up a VNC session, and you can merrily install away.

Implementation

The live CD runs a transient SMF service system/xvm/vnc-config. If it finds itself running on a live CD, it will generate a random VNC password, configure application/x11/x11-server to start Xvnc, and write the values above to XenStore. When application/graphical-login/gdm starts, it will read these service properties and start up the VNC server. The service system/xvm/ipagent tracks the IPv4 address given to the first running interface and writes it to XenStore.

By default, the VNC server is configured not to run post-installation due to security concerns. This can be changed though, as follows:

# svccfg -s x11-server
setprop options/xvm_vnc = "true"

Please remember that VNC is not secure. Since you need elevated privileges to read the VNC password from XenStore, that's sufficiently protected, as long as you always run the VNC viewer locally on the dom0, or via SSH tunnelling or some other secure method.

Note that this works even with a Linux dom0, although you can't yet use virt-install, as the upstream version doesn't yet "know about" OpenSolaris (more on this later).

Tags: OpenSolaris Xen xVM

I may or may not have photographed the chestnut-headed bee eater (Merops leschenaulti) before. I have a few bee-eater pictures, but this is the first time I've managed to positively identify the species. These photos were taken on Sunday. There is a flock of chestnut-headed bee eaters sitting on the branches of the trees near VC Rock in USM. They swoop around and chase bugs.

The chestnut crown gives the bird its name, and the rest of it is mostly green with a blue rump, a yellow throat and a mask-like black stripe near the eye.

The top two birds are chestnut-headed bee eaters, and the one below them is an immature black-naped oriole.

Schröder wasn't feeling too well last week. He slept all day, didn't eat much and wasn't playing with his friends. However, he's fully recovered now, and up to mischief again. Luckily he got better all on his own without needing a trip to the vet. I'd hate to have to medicate two cats. Sally is still on his antibiotics, although he appears to have fully recovered too. Still, the doctor says he has to finish his medicine.

Ok, I like to think a lot, and I think I know a lot. Sometimes, this leads me to conclusions. Conclusions are only interesting if they are unexpected, but “afterwards”, nothing is ever unexpected. So, to turn a conclusion into an interesting conclusion, it has to become.. a prediction.

I read an interesting book some time ago, What we believe, but cannot prove, read my predictions below in the spirit of that book.

I’m not 100% convinced about the four beliefs outed below - and not all of them might be very novel - but I’ve been pondering this enough that I felt that I needed to write it down now in lieu of having to say that “I’ve been saying that all along!” later.

DNA: I believe 3 gigabases will turn out not to be enough

I no longer believe 3 gigabases of DNA are enough to generate a human being. This boils down to 750 megabytes (to read more about DNA through the eyes of a computer person, head here).

Furthermore, and there is debate about what it means, 97% of our DNA or so is considered to be ‘non-coding’. If this means the contents are not relevant for producing a homo sapiens, that means we would be down to around 22 megabytes of code.

This is less than is involved in a simple program like the PowerDNS Nameserver - less by a long margin if we include the libraries included in this program.

So either there is more to it than DNA (other code hiding elsewhere, for example), or DNA is astoundingly concise as a language to encode biological organisms.

The latter looks exceedingly unlikely since DNA, like the programming language Python, uses “whitespace” or repetition to encode structure - and this is not very efficient.

So much so that even if all 97% of the non-coding DNA would be relevant, I still don’t believe 750 megabytes will cut it.

I believe (almost know) that cancer will turn out to be related to the “halting problem”

I wrote about this before way back in 2002. One of the central theories of computer science (if we can call it a science!) is the so called ‘Halting problem’.

Tracing it roots to the Entscheidungsproblem defined in 1928, the Halting Problem can be stated as follows: given a description of a program and a finite input, decide whether the program finishes running or will run forever, given that input.

Alan Turing, whom we owe so much, like possibly, our freedom, proved that it is not possible to inspect an algorithm and state confidently that it will ever finish to run.

This has very important implications for programmers, who would often like to know this very thing: will this program hang? Will it hog my resources? Valiant attempts have been made, but thanks to Turing, we know that we don’t even need to try: it can’t be done, except by running the program, and finding out the hard way.

Organisms face very similar problems. As outlined in the DNA for computer programmers page mentioned above, each cell can (without stretching the truth) be regarded as a computer running a host of computer programs, all simultaneously.

One of the functions a cell can perform is to clone itself. This is a vital procedure, since this is the only way to get from one fertilized egg to a whole organism. Interestingly, most human cells have divided only a few dozen times in their entire life. Since each division doubles the number of cells, this quickly leads to enough material to form a viable organism.

But this is where the problem lies. If a cell keeps on dividing, it exhausts all resources, and forms a tumor - which endangers the rest of the organism. To prevent this, the body polices its cells aggressively. A host of mechanisms are at work which inspect cells for damage to its DNA, and conversely, a damaged cell broadcasts this fact, effectively calling for its own cleanup. There is even a crude ‘division counter’ at work, which attempts to make cells burn out when they divide too much.

I believe, but cannot prove, that organisms are in the same boat as computer programmers. A cell that keeps dividing is like a runaway computer program, one that will never cease running. And no matter how hard the body tries, it is not possible to write a cast-iron solution that will allow us to detect which cells will do this and which won’t. And thus cancer is effectively the biological equivalent of the halting problem.

Obesity: I believe being hungry every once in a while is relevant

One of the big questions of our time. How come lots of people are so fat these days? Some of the obvious answers don’t appear to hold up, even though they sound plausible (that we would be eating more or moving less). Some quite new things are being investigated right now, like early exposure to certain PCB’s, or Bisphenol-A.

When something big changes, and you don’t know why, it is often good to look at other things that might have happened to cause that change.

I believe one big change has been that affluent people in the “West” never experience hunger anymore. Lots of other things changed too of course, like the kind of food we eat, and how much we do by car etc.

But I think the interesting thing is that whenever we are hungry, we do something about it. In the past, breakfast, lunch and dinner were served at set times, and there was no such thing as a ‘snack’.

So I believe, but cannot prove, that it might just be that the body needs a reminder that the supply is finite (by experiencing hunger before a meal), and that the fact that this rarely happens anymore this is a major reason why obesity is on the rise.

I believe that daylight will turn out to be more important than vitamin D, and that in a few years we’ll see health advisories about ‘being outdoors’.

Over the past few years, not a month has passed without some major study describing how higher serum levels of vitamin D are associated with good health. I have to choose my wording precisely, since the typical headline reads ‘Vitamin D prevents cancer’ - which is not what most researchers have been saying.

In 2008, I’ve noticed that more studies have cropped up that report that ingesting additional vitamin D does not have such stellar health benefits.

I believe, but cannot prove, that it will ultimately turn out that ‘being outdoors’ has the tremendous health benefits. One side effect of being outdoors is raised serum levels of vitamin D - hence the results of earlier studies.

If this belief is correct, please start making windows that are more transparent, and take some of these health benefits indoors. Regular glass blocks large parts of the solar spectrum. For additional points, develop a solution that blocks most UV light in summer, but passes it through in winter.

And please don’t patent this. And since this idea is now online, you can’t. Ha.

Summarising

Thanks for bearing with me during this long post. If the above seems controversial, or obvious, consider what has been called ”Bernal’s Ladder”, describing the four stages of any theory in the scientific community.

1. It can’t be right
2. It might be right, but it is not important
3. It might be important, but it is not original
4. It’s what I always thought myself

I would love for any of the beliefs outlined above to be at any point on this ladder.

So,I've moved. This is the first week that I'm in my new place. If you were wondering why I haven't done much coding, that's why

Getting used to living away from the nest.

Here's some pictures:

Makeshift workstation area, notice no LCD monitor yet

A view from above with more snow coming tonight

Today's decision by the Governor General sets the most dangerous precedent in recent history. To allow a Prime Minister to shut down Parliament to cancel a confidence vote sets us among the banana republics of this world, where the "will of the people" is nothing more than the catch-phrase of a totalitarian regime. Welcome to the New Canada. (65 words)

It’s a sad day in this country. The Governer General has set a new dangerous precedent. A sitting minority government can now prorogue the House and subvert the will of the House via the Governer General.

Not only has this fiasco set a bad precedent, it will now reopen the unity of this country. Perhaps it’s time for the East to split from the West. We really don’t want republican views pushed onto us or having a PM and a party that are destroying our very foundation this country was built on.

And to those who voted conservative in Ontario, think about it real hard. Is this the Canada you want? I want the progressive conservatives back I want my country back.

For those who don’t know. We had rebellions in Ontario and Quebec for “Reponsible Government”, and today, Harper via the Governer General have undone what was fought for.

I am truly shamed of this country today.

Weather Forecast: Cold with flurries
Mood: Weeping for this country

Japan has all the awesome robots. ASIMO is a walking, bipedal, humanoid robot designed by Honda as a way of showing the world just how cool they are. ASIMO is going on an international tour, and he stopped by in Penang at Queensbay Mall. I managed to catch the show on the last day (the 30th of November), and here is a video clip I mashed together of footage I took of the robot.



ASIMO himself "talks" with the human host, but it is most probably a scripted pre-recorded presentation as we can't actually talk to machines in natural language reliably yet. The kids in the audience (that includes me I suppose) were enthralled by the robot as it demonstrated walking, ball-kicking, drink-serving, painting and dancing.

A rock pigeon walks around with some of those myna birds, looking for food.

Crows tend to flock around urban centres and places with lots of garbage and litter. Crows are kind of boring since they are so commonplace, but there are so many species of crow (and I know there are at least two different types in Malaysia).

This is a black-naped oriole sitting on a wire. It was dark and cloudy day, thus this isn't a very cheerful picture.

A creepy crawly is a victim to this white-breasted waterhen's breakfast hunt.

Some kind of pipit hops about in the sun.