Sajjad Zaidi's Blog

Daily Musings

Click here for my tech blog. RSS Feed

Friday 28th February 2003

Presentation Software for Linux

Since I will be speaking at the next TLUG meeting, I decided to search for something quick and simple. OperaShow, using HTML, is what I finally settled on.

It allows you to divide a normal web page into 2 documents so you see the normal document in the browser, but if you press F11, it switches to presentation mode.

15:24pm ¶

Thursday 20th February 2003

Not a good day for planes

First the plane crash in Iran that killed 302 people and now another one in Pakistan. This time it took the Air Force Chief.

16:39pm ¶

Beowulf Clustering

This is something I have wanted to try for a long time, but never got a chance to do. Yesterday, I managed to get Mosix running on a couple of machines. One of the machines is about twice as fast as the other so I don't think it is an ideal environment, but worth the knowledge I gained. When a cpu intensive process is run on one node you can see the load shifting to the 2nd one, though 'top' doesn't see any difference.

Scyld seems to be a better solution for clustering, but it isn't free. I think they have a stripped down free version, but I couldn't find it.

13:02pm ¶

Monday 17th February 2003

Photos from Saturday

24 of the photos I took at the demonstration:
http://sajjadzaidi.com/2003/feb/peace_parade/

19:40pm ¶

Sunday 16th February 2003

Shibuya Demonstration

Met Joi, Adam and about 10 other people to go to the march. As far as I can tell, a total of about 5,000 people turned up. Mostly Japanese, but a large number of foreigners from many different countries.

We started at Yamashita park and went around most of Shibuya, crossing Hachiko and returning to the park. There were also a lot of people standing on the side-walks and overhead bridges. Some of the signs people were holding and their dresses were really interesting. I got about 50 photos of the event, but it was quite dark so not all are very clear. Will post the good ones later.

7:01am ¶

Saturday 15th February 2003

Weekend of Anti-War Protests

There will be demonstrations around the world against US's plans to attack Iraq. I plan to attend the one in Shibuya this evening.

From Joi's Blog:
http://joi.ito.com/archives/2003/02/13/peace_protest_in_tokyo_on_saturday_lets_go.html

Friday 14th February 2003

Temperature Converter

Convert between Fahrenheit and Celsius:
http://www.wbuf.noaa.gov/tempfc.htm

Thursday 13th February 2003

Ski Trip Dinner

Had dinner at the 'Elephant Cafe' with some of the people who are going to Nozawa next week. There were 7 of us in total. The place really is worth a look. It looks huge from the inside, mainly because of the dim lighting and numerous mirrors. Reminded me of Tomb Raider. The food was also pretty good and I managed to find lots of things I could eat from the South East Asian menu.

Rainer's Baby

Rainer had a daughter, Rebecca, yesterday morning. Congratulations Rainer and Sachi. Maybe now he can go snowboarding with us.

Eid Celebration

Yesterday was the Muslim festival of 'Eid-ul-Azha' or 'Hari Raya Haji' as they say in Malay, which marks the anniversary of the sacrifice offered by the prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) of his son Ismail.

Usually a sacrifice of sheep or other animals is made on this day, though that isn't possible in Japan right now.

Friday 7th February 2003

Filesystems

Another discussion about Linux filesystems on the TLUG mailing list which reminds me that I really should put something useful on filesystem.org.

Sunday 2nd February 2003

Shuttle Crash

I couldn't read the news because of network problems, but heard about this from a friend. Tragic loss, but as far as I can remember it is just the 2nd in the history of space travel, the first being the Challenger take-off accident. I hope they continue research that will lead to some useful results. Tragedy aside, I couldn't help wondering if those astronauts broke the record for death at the highest speed.

Bull Riding

It was rodeo night at Zest restaurant in Ebisu so I met Tim and some other friends to ride the mechanical bull. About 10 people volunteered for the first run, but I don't remember anybody staying on for long. I lasted just over 10 seconds and Tim came down in about 3. It is much more difficult and brutal than it looks. I still have bruises on my legs and the base of my thumbs is swollen.

The bull

Tim's friend Mike (video)

Me and a bit of Tim (video)

Despite the pain, Tim and I decided to go for the 2nd round which is twice as wild. The Japanese guy that went before us lasted an amazing 40 seconds, but I fell off in about 3 while Tim went down within 2. Will I do it again? Yes.

Saturday 1st February 2003

Trip Reservation

Went to the JR View office in Shinjuku to book the next snowboard trip to Nozawa Onsen, but had a lot of trouble. Firstly, all the ryokans (Japanese inn) were full and the only place that had just 2 rooms available was a 'minshiku' (Japanese lodge, without most of the benefits of a ryokan). It looked quite unfriendly, but we didn't have much choice and it was 30% cheaper than the ryokan.

Thursday 30th January 2003

Ninjava Meeting

Tonight's main presenter was our own Dan and he talked about beanshell scripting. Java is not really my topic, but the presentation was really interesting. I forgot to ask him if it would be useful in system administration, but I doubt thats true.

I took a couple of photos, but they caused so much distraction, that I decided not to try that again.

After that, Sam Joseph talked a bit about code testing, which is even less interesting to me, but again the presenter made it worth paying attention to.

Tuesday 28th January 2003

Persian Food

Finally managed to eat at the Aladdin restaurant. Had various kinds of kebabs, Iranian rice, nan and pomegranite juice. Delicious. The others liked it a lot too.