With this I’m doing my bit to spread this news in my part of the blogosphere (*cough* I’m not supposed to use that word, EVAR). It turns out that Bush knew all along that Saddam had absolutely no WMDs, but that the decision had already been made to invade Iraq, and that the intelligence was simply twisted to fit this policy. Read all the nasty details in this Salon article. Here’s a choice excerpt:
A first whiff of Gutsy Gibbon power-management
(For The Impatient and Those With Important Things to Do: this is a long story about Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon and how Linux Powertop can help you to make you laptop battery last longer. It has pictures. At the end.) One of the main problems I had with Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) as you will recall, was the extremely poor power management. You don’t spend thousands of euros on a laptop to install an operating system on that drains its batteries in half the time it takes Windows to do the same.
Python-enabled VTK 5.1 and ITK 3.2 Windows binaries
You can always check my Latest VTK Windows binaries page to make sure you have the latest blog posting and hence the latest VTK binaries. Get your Python 2.4-enabled VTK 5.1 (Paraview-3-0 branch as of 20070801) and ITK 3.2 Windows binaries by clicking on the following link: http://visualisation.tudelft.nl/~cpbotha/files/vtk_itk/ IMPORTANT: you HAVE TO to install the MS VS2005 vcredist_x86 package (free!) if you want to use these DLLs (thanks Jelle for pointing this out).
midlife crisis symptom #2351
I’m going to keep this post short and sweet by making use of a visual aid: The line-up includes Tool, Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails (I’m going there for Trent), Sonic Youth, Lacuna Coil, Iggy Pop and some pimply new kids on the block, such as Kaiser Chiefs and Fall Out Boy. Now I just have to decide whether I’m going to grow that festival moustache or not…
freeware of the month, psychedelic theatre, crackbook
For work (which I’m not supposed to talk about here, but what the heck) I often read and comment on other people’s work. Often this is done with a good old-fashioned red pen and a paper version of the manuscript in question. However, it can be very convenient being able to annotate the electronic version directly and, it can be argued, this does its small part in Saving Trees(tm), which in turn impresses certain types.
Another source of miso soup
It seems that the Redjeki Toko in Delft (click here for my Google Map that’ll lead you right there) also sells miso soup! I acquired a supply of my old favourite, but also decided to try a different type of miso, just for kicks: It’s a so-called family pack, I prefer to call it The Addict’s Friend. There are eight (8) servings in there, man! Notice the big ‘8’ on the package promoting this fact.
Google Calendar to Palm Desktop conversion
(The short story is: if you want to convert Google Calendar iCal v2 files to vCal v1 files for import into your Palm Desktop, use this web application I made last night. Please leave a comment on this posting if you use it! If you’re interested in recent changes to the application, see the dynamic changelog on Google Code.) It’s amazing how just when you really do need to put all your time into some deadline, you find the perfect WAB, better known as Work Avoidance Behaviour.
Drinking in Delft
Err, I don’t usually link to the same weblog again in such a short time, but I just had to make an exception. Dave has written up an excellent account of his dalliance with the social side of picturesque Delft. Go read it by clicking here.
I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that
Good friend (and fellow traveller) Dave finally gets his weblog online. I like to think that my incessant whining played a small role in this event. Go here to read his stuff.
pam_pwdfile
Timo Weingärtner has graciously offered to take over the maintenance of pam_pwdfile. Its development will henceforth be hosted at https://github.com/tiwe-de/libpam-pwdfile. Old page contents follows PAM, or pluggable authentication modules, is a very effective method by which applications can abstract the way that they authenticate and authorize users. Using PAM for example, a whole system can be switched from normal /etc/passwd to shadow passwords without recompiling a single binary, as was the case with older *ix systems.