Sunday, June 28. 2009We got married at the Franciscan Chapel Center in Roppongi, Tokyo
We got married at the Franciscan Chapel Center in Roppongi, Tokyo
 This happened on Friday 03 - 04 - 09 Wednesday, July 11. 2007We got engaged at the Statue of Liberty in New York
We got engaged at the Statue of Liberty in New York
 This happened on Saturday 07 - 07 - 07 Thursday, June 21. 2007I've passed my FINAL YEAR!!!
We'll, It's been seven years in the making but I've finally finished a college course!
I'm thrilled. A piece of paper will now validate me to the world  I got a 2.1 so I don't know if that's good enough for the IRCSET offer I was given. Only time will tell so I'll be keeping my fingers crossed. Tuesday, April 10. 2007Thursday, March 29. 2007Wednesday, November 29. 2006Thursday, March 9. 2006Ubuntu, Emacs, Jigdo and Debian - What could go wrong?
Well, I got a refresher course in working with new software this past fortnight.
Ubuntu So I ordered Ubuntu CDs from https://shipit.ubuntu.com/ back in November. They came in December and I installed them onto an old P3 750Mhz machine (500MB RAM, 120GB HD) I had from days of yore. I only got to give it a go last week though and the experience just didn't work out for me. Ubuntu's nice but it doesn't come with emacs unless you got a net connection from the looks of things. I'm in third year Computer Science (TCD) now and part of the Syllabus is the ON3 Course which aims to teach Assembly language before the winter break and operating systems after it. I felt that learning Assembly went well and I learned alot but I'm finding Operating Systems hard going but I'm trying as hard as I can. We are learning by looking at the Nachos instructional software for teaching undergraduate, and potentially graduate, level operating systems courses with Dr. John Waldron. We are using Ubuntu lab machines in college to do this. At the begining of the lessons, John recomended XEmacs to be used for our work and advocated the use of the TAGs Tables in XEmacs. - EMacs (X and GNU) I decided to give it a go. Learning which keys did what and so on took time but slowly made sense. I don't know it inside out but I know as much as I need at the moment. Upon giving XEmacs a go and seeing the potential of the TAGs Tables, I soon found that the (what I think was) default installation of it. It was black text on white which just didn't work and it seemed to flicker alot if I maximised it. I changed over to GNU Emacs (after visiting the XEmacs website and realising that XEmacs wasn't just the X Windows version of GNU Emacs) and found that it had all the abilities of XEmacs that I liked and none of the hinderances. So with all this knowledge under my belt, I went about sorting out an environment at home where I could do college work if needed. Like I said I ordered Ubuntu and Installed it on my machine. I got gcc and g++ working then I went about getting Emacs (hell even XEmacs would have done) but I had no luck. It wasn't listed in the synaptic package manager (even after I went through the entire list under the "All" section). Then I posted on the [http://www.minds.nuim.ie]minds[/url] newsgroups and the Ubuntu Forums about it. Though I was given many suggestions, nothing found emacs for me. In a last ditch attempt, I tried using the emacs source code. I got past the configure stage but got stumped by "make" due to occurances of "exit(2)" in the emacs source. I gave up. I went into college and had a look about downloading a more comprehensive package of Ubuntu. I was out to find DVDs to download an bring home. I found no Ubuntu DVDs but having remembered being told that Ubuntu is Debian based, I went in search of Debian DVDs. The search for Debian DVDs was to be no easy task as they don't seem to be generally availables as fully downloadable files. Debian does promote a new system called jigdo though and I found it very useful and fast. Jigdo "Jigsaw Download, or short jigdo, is a tool designed to ease the distribution of very large files over the internet, for example CD or DVD images." The theory I "got" about jigdo and how Debian uses it was fairly interesting. Essentially, jigdo creates the file you want first (kindof like a pot which you are going make stew in). Then it downloads the parts of the file and puts the parts into it (adding your ingredients to the stew). With Debian, this means creating the DVD image and then filling it with the files that are contained in the DVD. This way, if a newer version of the Debian DVD is released, you can updated your own previously downloaded DVD with only the newer files which were contained in it. In practical terms, I'm guessing that this means you might only have to download a CD size amount of stuff off the internet to get the next Debian DVD image if only a CD size amount of Debian has changed in the Release. This saves time and bandwidth and thus money for all the parties involved. I think jigdo is a wonderful idea and it's even better to see it being put into practice. Debian Whilst the getting of Debian was novel, the installing didn't work out so well. I don't have a DVD player in the old machine I tried Ubuntu with so I took out the it's hard drive and put it into my main machine (P4 2.8, 2GB RAM, 490GB HD, DVD Burner  ) so I could get Debian Dual booting with Windows XP Pro Service Pack 2 which was already installed. First things first, I got the 120GB HD moved in (on the same IDE as another 120GB HD, the machine has 2 SATA HDs aswell, one 250GB and the other a 120GB,) and checked in Windows to see if it was found. It was there and in typical Windows style, I was told it was not formatted, would I like to format it. I said no as I knew it was because Ubuntu was on it and that Debian (if it was anything like my previous experience with Linux which was Redhat 9) would take care of the partitioning.Right, so in went the Debian DVD. All seemed to go well, I went through the install process (in a very similar way to Ubuntu). Set up my networking and locale settings and when it got to the Grub boot loader, it found my Windows install and essentially assured me that it would probably be taken care of. Then it popped out the DVD and said I needed to remove it as it was going to restart the machine and it would need to boot into the newly installed Debian. "Happy Days", I thought. The first restart of the machine brought on "Error 17" in GRUB. First I see an intro line informing me of the version of Grub, 1.5 I believe, and then the second of two lines only "Error 17". This was not good news as my master boot record now used grub and I wouldn't be able to get into my Windows Installation anymore if I didn't get this sorted. After testing unpluging the other HDs, I found that if I unplugged my 120GB SATA drive (I could leave the 250GB SATA drive in) that I would get the grub menu. First things first I tested the windows option which worked (This was good, well apart from no longer having access to the 120GB SATA Drive) so I restarted and decided to continue with Debian. I believe that base-config was called and I went through more of the installation process which included selecting a premade option of "Desktop" which would sort out Debian to act as a windowed system. That seemed to go smoothly and so I was presented with a graphical login screen. I chose KDE in the sessions Dropdown and entered my username and password. I was then asked to choose my country but then the machine seemed to freeze. Nothing seemed to be happening (for example the caps-lock light would not come on when I pressed the caps-lock key). I used the reset button on my computer and tried again. This time I wasn't asked for configuation information for KDE but it frooze before in that sort of splash screen it has at the start where it tells you what it's starting up. Again I reset and this time it frooze in the middle of booting debian and it proceeded to do this again and again. Conclusion So I'm now in the mindset that I'm left with one very f*%ked computer. Windows still works but I have to use GRUB to get to it and that means I'm not getting access to my 120GB SATA HD. I'm going to go look for some solutions. The most ideal would be to be able to re-connect the SATA drive and have Windows and Debian dual booting but I need at least windows to work on other projects for my course so I might end up having to see about removing grub and getting a straight boot to windows. So here's what I plan on looking for: > Check if Debian has issues with SATA Drives > Get a hard disk integrity checker as it might be a disk hardware fault (although it worked fine with Ubuntu) > Check if Debian has issues with many hds, as there are 4 now in the PC > See if it's possible to remove GRUB and go back to booting straight to windows Thursday, February 9. 2006Emacs for Beginners
In my ON3 lecturers, our lecturer John Waldron has started to teach us Nachos.
 We're on our third week in it and I'm not getting on very well. For our labs, we get assignments I can't get by the first Nachos one on threads. It's about following some Nachos code on threads and understanding what it does. I just don't get what he's looking for and I'm trying to use emacs (as he recommended) which is progressing slowly as a seperate task on its own.Anyway, here's some wisdom on the program which I note have to share: Special Keys C - The Control Key - Ctrl M - The Meta Key - Usually left "Alt" Commands "C-x C-f" - This opens a file (as a buffer or creates it if it doesn't exist) C-x k - This closes a file (by "killing" it's buffer) C-x C-s Save the file (in the buffer) C-X C-c Close emacs Automatic Colour Highlighting of Code Open your .emacs file in your home directory and add the following line to have your code have automatic colour highlighting: (global-font-lock-mode 1) Compiling a program Use the following command: M-x This bring up a prompt when you can then type "compile" Once more you will be prompted to input the command to compile (a default value will be given) Hit return. Unsplitting the screen I'm not very sure as to the help a split screen provides but when you compile it happens. To get rid of the split screen use the following comand: C-x 1 Splitting the screen Again, I don't know the use of it or much about controlling it but if you want to split the screen, use this command: C-x 2 That's all for now, more to come as my understanding broadens. Monday, February 6. 2006Annoying Planet Minds
There's one thing that has annoyed me about planet minds. That's the fact that the rss feed of it doesn't seem to get all the blogs that go up on the site.
This wasn't really annoying to me because I though it was only David Barrets blog I missing out on. That wasn't a big loss as I'm only really interested in his views on technology and in specific web design which always seem to be ahead of the game. I used to just go check his site for the last few blogs and have a gander whenever I remembered too. The problem seems to cover Baruch Evens blog aswell though, he posted today and yet the feed I'm drawing off doesn't show it. This leads me to a new annoying feature of the planet. The main page of the planet doesn't have any links to where their feeds are located and thus people can't add it to their feed browsers etc. I think this would be something to sort out since firefox has provided an excellent facility for feeds and Des Traynor tells us microsoft have copped on and will have something nifty to support such feeds in IE7. Now, to go hey somebody on minds a link to this entry so I don't have to write a really not hey. 
Thursday, February 2. 2006Firefox Updated to 1.5.0.1 all by itself.
Mozilla have upgraded Firefox to 1.5.0.1. You can get the latest release here:
http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ I found out through Firefox prompting me in the middle of my browser saying it had updated itself and asking me what I wanted to do. Now I was in the middle of reading a website so instead of selecting "Restart Now" I chose the later option. I proceed to finish reading my article, shut off firefox and went about other business. Later, when I started firefox, It did the update and here I am with a updated browser without having had to goto the trouble of getting it! Excellent work Mozilla (the guys who make firefox), excellent work! More of this type of thing I say
Tuesday, January 17. 2006Avoid poor web design
For the second half of 2005, I was learning web design, xhtml and css as part of my college course. You can see the product of my work in my previous blog entry:
http://www.minds.nuim.ie/~provost/GENU/comments/index.php?news_id=56 I think I've done well with my site design. The content could be brushed up and I hope to work on it if I get time and take a notion to updating it. Anyway, Co-incidently, I saw the following article on google news and thought it was very valid and should be passed on to anyone who might read my blog. I'm not sure about the nitty gritty of it but it gets a good point across. technewsworld.com Study: Poor Web Design Alienates Customers
By Jennifer LeClaire www.EcommerceTimes.com Part of the ECT News Network 01/16/06 9:22 AM PT "Unless the first impression is favorable, visitors will be out of your site before they even know that you might be offering more than your competitors," said Dr. Gitte Lindgaard of Carleton University. You know security threats are growing. What you don’t know is when one will strike. So call CDW today and get the security solutions that are right for you. One twentieth of a second. That's about how long it takes for a Web site Get Linux or Windows Managed Hosting Services with Industry Leading Fanatical Support. to make a first impression on an Internet user, according to researchers at a Canadian university, whose findings could have competitive impacts for businesses on the Web. Dr. Gitte Lindgaard and colleagues from Carleton University's Human-Oriented Technology Lab in Ottawa approach "art with science," they said. The researchers flashed Web sites for 50 milliseconds and asked study participants to rate them for visual appeal. The study authors later repeated the exercise for a longer viewing period and concluded with consistent results. "Visual appeal can be assessed within 50 milliseconds, suggesting that Web designers have about 50 milliseconds to make a good impression," said the report, published in the journal Behaviour & Information Technology. Lasting Impressions What's more, the researchers reckon the study results produce a halo effect: the first impression creates an initial bias that drives long-term opinions. If the user thinks the Web site looks good, the impression translates to other areas of the site, like its content. Since people like to be right, Lindgaard reasoned, they will continue to use a Web site that made a good first impression. "Unless the first impression is favorable, visitors will be out of your site before they even know that you might be offering more than your competitors," Lindgaard said. Quick and Clean Lindgaard and his colleagues had originally believed it would be impossible to actually see anything in less than 500 milliseconds. It typically takes 50 milliseconds to read one word, according to some estimates. Internet marketing and design expert Pedro Sostre told the E-Commerce Times he is surprised to hear that consumers are able to make such a decision so quickly. But he does not doubt that the subconscious has triggers. He believes the consumer subconscious is well-conditioned to design. "Consumers are becoming more and more design-savvy every day -- and they may not even know it," said Sostre, principal and creative director of Sostre & Associates, a Web consulting, design and developer. "Just by interacting with various catalogs and Web sites, they are becoming design critics." Anatomy of Web Aesthetics Sostre said various elements could almost immediately register with the Internet user's subconscious. It could be something simple as fonts. If the user is searching for a professional services firm and finds content displayed in a cartoonish font, they perceive that something is wrong. It could also be inappropriate color psychology, or a confusing layout. Sostre said misuse of any of these elements could make a bad first impression. Sprint's Bright Idea Sostre points to the redesign of Sprint's (NYSE: S) Latest News about Sprint Nextel Web site in the wake of the Nextel merger as an example. Sprint changed its Web site to a bright yellow. Power tool maker Dewalt also uses this color. As a result, Sostre said, "Many customers thought they were at a power tools site when they saw the new Sprint site. They went to the site looking for an electronics device, and yellow doesn't make any sense to them. Those are the types of things that customers subconsciously 'know,' but may not be able to identify, that may cause them to go with Cingular Latest News about Cingular or AT&T." Tuesday, January 17. 2006Thursday, September 15. 2005Monday, August 8. 2005Tuesday, July 26. 2005Steak Curry, Frankie Style
That's right It's curry, My way
 I'm offering up my recipe for beef steak curry as per my cooking last night. What you will need: 1 Packet of Medium Curry Sauce Powder (like the soup packets) to make 1 pint of curry sauce. 1 Packet of Hot Curry Sauce Powder to make 1 pint of curry sauce. Random Red Meat (which you think is steak) from the freezer. 1 Onion. 2 Carrots. 1 Green Chillie. The remains of Mixed frozen veg (less than three quarters of a portion of frozen carrots, peas and sweetcorn). Enough rice for two people. How to make it: => Defrost the meat. If you discover that the meat is covered in barbeque sauce halfway throughout the defrosting (as I did), then wash it off with cold water under a tap. => Put all the curry powders into an appropriatly large pot and add 2 pints of water and the frozen veg. => Place the pot on a low heat. This will help to lower the temperature of the frozen veg so it will not harm the regular veg later. => Cut the fat from the meat and then slice the meat into small 2 inch by 1/2 inche strips. => Put some oil on a frying pan and bring to a moderate temperature. Then add the meat. => Cook the meat on both sides to your usual liking for steak (no blood really because it might discolour the final curry mix) => Wash Peel and slice the carrots into nice palatable chunks (to your liking), removing the top and bottom chunks. => Wash Peel Wash again and slice the onions into nice palatable chunks (to your liking). => Wash the chillie, remove the top and bottom chunks, and slice what remains into very fine strips (yes keep the seeds et al that is inside the chillie). => Add the carrots to the pot and bring up the heat. => Once you see the pot starting to boil, add the meat, onions and chillie. => Allow the mix to boil for 3 minutes and then reduce the heat and allow the pot to simmer. After the pot has simmered for about 15 minutes => add the rice to a saucepan with plenty of water. => bring the rice to the boil and keep it boiling at a reasonable heat for around 10-12 minutes Once the rice is done and the pot of curry has been simmering for about 30 minutes, get two plates. Put a ring of rice on each and add curry to the center. Enjoy. |
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