2007-08-27

poor silly hedgehog

A couple of nights ago, Wolf was barking strangely in the garden. I went out, and noticed a rare growling and jumping...not her regular-it-is-dark-so-i-bark bark.

So i put her inside, and went back, only to discover a big rolled up hedgehog. I kept her inside till morning (as always). The hedgehog was gone.

Until a couple of minutes ago...the "i have a trespassing hedgehog in my mouth so i growl" growl was there. (I didn't see her actually biting it a couple of days ago, but now she was holding it in her mouth). I immediately tried to get her away from it, hoping she didn't hurt the animal. When she-Wolf "why can't i play with trespassers?!" was inside the house, i went back to investigate. The hedgehog is wounded, hopefully not too bad.

If it is still alive (and in my garden) tomorrow, then i will take it to a vet. Picture taken minutes ago...

Poor hedgehog, because it is hurt. Silly hedgehog, because it came back to the big-bad-Wolf.

Click the picture for a bigger view.

update 28/8/2007 : Hedgehog was not there this morning.

2007-08-20

dog pictures

Let's start with two pictures of my little Wolf chewing on a bone (click the picture for a larger version).




And finish with Bull Terrier Puppies. (got these pictures from a friend).


2007-08-17

dogsitting

I like dogsitting for Max, besides the nice pictures, Max is also good company for Wolf.Wolf is becoming very good at listening to sit and stay, whereas Max still needs to figure out what stay means. But we're making progress!

2007-08-02

open standards

Open standards are a very nice thing to have. Open standards enable easy communication between different computers.

In 1969 some intelligent people decided to write down these open standards. They decided that all information necessary to support (read program) an open standard would be written down in a clear way (in plain text).

In 1981 they wrote an open standard for internet communication named IP (or Internet Protocol). This open standard enables all computers to connect to the internet.

In 1982 they wrote an open standard for using names on the internet (DNS or Domain Name System). Everybody uses the same open standard for names.

In 1982 they also wrote an open standard for sending e-mail. All computers can send and receive each others e-mail, because they all use the same open standard.

In 1984 they wrote an open standard to share and copy files between all computers on a local network. It enables all computers to share and copy files.

During the eighties, a lot of companies (Novell, IBM, Microsoft, DEC, ...) tried to impose their own undocumented systems for communication. They all failed, except one... Microsoft.

In 1987 Microsoft wrote an open standard describing their way of sharing and copying files.

Standards are a nice thing, since they enable everyone to communicate. Except for the 1987 Microsoft standard. People noticed, that the standard was incomplete, and they asked Microsoft about that. Microsoft never completed the standard.

So today, we have thousands of open standards that everyone can use, and we have near-monopoly-Microsoft refusing to co-operate with an open system that worked well for over thirty years.

All computers can communicate with each other in every way possible (names, internet, e-mail, www, sharing files, opening documents...). Only Microsoft keeps their standards secret.

Microsoft fooled the world more than once already...and they are at it again!
Help maintain real open standards (avoid the fake ones).

2007-08-01

vmware server on Ubuntu 7.04

Yesterday i started teaching linux. There were thirteen identical computers in the classroom, so i brought Ubuntu CD's for everyone. I installed Ubuntu on my computer without problems, then copied the vmware server files that i downloaded last week.

I run vmware-install.pl and it fails...true, i need the vmware-any-any-update. I run the runme.pl and vmware server installs without a glitch.

I have all students copy the files to their machines, and run the runme.pl and it fails. It fails on all of them. "can't exec /etc/.vmware/installer.sh" and "unable to open installer database" with "/etc/vmware/locations".

root@dtpaul:~/vmware# ll
total 8.0K
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4.0K 2007-07-31 14:35 vmware-any-any-update105
drwxr-xr-x 10 root root 4.0K 2007-07-31 14:36 vmware-server-distrib
root@dtpaul:~/vmware# vmware-server-distrib/vmware-install.pl
root@dtpaul:~/vmware# vmware-any-any-update105/runme.pl
root@dtpaul:~/vmware#


Solution:
Turns out that first running the vmware-insatll.pl, knowing that it will fail, solves the problem. After that, the runme.pl works fine.