Thursday October 26, 2006
It takes a village to raise a Solaris newbie
Hee-hee! I now have a full-screen Solaris installation! No more Barbie-sized tiny screen for me. You may recall that I logged two OpenSolaris bugs
about the problem I was having with the too-small display on my
experimental Solaris laptop. I logged the bugs on September 27,
and immediately the emails came pouring in from the OpenSolaris
team. Over the next few days I corresponded with Alan Coopersmith,
Linda Bernal, Edward Shu, Padraig O'Briain, Zi-Xiang Wang, and Henry
Zhao. When they requested log files, I sent them. When they asked me to
run a diagnostic, I ran it. On October 19, Henry Zhao sent me a
detailed explanation of the problem, and attached an updated driver
that solved it. What service! These people are located from Beijing to
Dublin, and they all pitched in to help little old me. Pretty cool.
Thanks, guys.
What the new driver does is allow the Xorg server to default to
1024x768 resolution if it can't probe the monitor directly, instead of
the current default of 640x480. Henry told me that this
improvement will be included in a future release of OpenSolaris, so I
guess I contributed to Solaris in my own small way. (Actually, my
problem was a duplicate of an existing bug. The OpenSolaris team was
already on top of it.)
My extended Solaris village also included Hermelito Go,
who helped me by recompiling another obscure driver that I needed to
connect to the Internet, and Fabio Duarte, who lent me the OpenSolaris
DVD that I used. And of course I will always be grateful to Sophia Li,
one of the principal authors of the AGPgart driver that allowed my
display to function in the first place. It still is only present in
OpenSolaris, not in Solaris 10, in case anyone out there is having
Inspiron 1100 display problems like mine.
So my OpenSolaris machine is up and running with a full-size display!
It just goes to show you that no matter how good the software is, it's
the team behind it that really makes the difference.
Posted by davidleetodd
( Oct 26 2006, 08:49:23 PM PDT )
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Friday October 20, 2006
What to do this weekend
Watch the World Series! What else?
Preferably at a sports bar. Go Tigers!
Posted by davidleetodd
( Oct 20 2006, 03:25:46 PM PDT )
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Friday October 13, 2006
What to do this weekend
Watch a football game at a sports bar! Last weekend, BW went to a
wedding without me, so to ease my sorrow I made a beeline for Clearman's Galley, a terrific sports bar in San Gabriel, California.
The USC - Washington game was in a tense final quarter, and the
place was packed with cheering fans. I got a sausage sandwich and an
Amber Bock, and settled into a kind of excited Nirvana.
The place cleared out a bit after SC's inevitable victory (yes, I do
have a degree from there), but I stuck around to watch part of the sad implosion of my beloved Dodgers in the face of the
evil-but-talented Mets, the classic example of a smarmy expansion
team. Yes, I know it's been 40 years or so, but to me they're still an
expansion team.
As many have pointed out, a sports bar is really the ideal venue to
watch a game. Unlike your home, there is an attentive staff at your
beck and call, you don't have to clean up the family room after the
game, and you are surrounded by convivial fans. Unlike the stadium,
excellent food and drink is within easy reach, without a long hike to
the concession stand, and without having to pay outrageous prices for watery beer.
For this Sunday, I would suggest the Dallas - Houston game, if a bar in
your area carries it. There's nothing like a classic in-state rivalry,
in my opinion, and America's Team is always worth watching, even if
only for the cheerleaders. Go Cowboys!
Posted by davidleetodd
( Oct 13 2006, 08:48:06 AM PDT )
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Friday October 06, 2006
What to do this weekend
See The Departed, Martin
Scorsese's latest film, with Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio,
Jack Nicholson and Mark Wahlberg. The reviews have been stellar. Scorsese returns to top
form. I'll let you know more after BW and I see it!
Posted by davidleetodd
( Oct 06 2006, 05:34:05 PM PDT )
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