nuxx.net
Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.

Pagefile on OS X

September 12, 2005

[Cross posting this from because of smarter people here. Please delete if inappropriate.]

Does anyone here have any pointers to good info on OS X’s pagefile? It appears that it is all handled by dynamic pager (8), but I’m having a hard time finding info beyond simply moving the pagefile to another disk.

The reason I’m asking is because, in my experience, one can greatly improve paging performance by allocating pagefile space on multiple spindles. As I’ve got a pair of disks in my G5, that’s exactly what I’d like to do.

As it is, it looks like dynamic_pager can only take one argument for the base filename for the pagefile. Hopefully this isn’t the case…

computersmoved from livejournal

Inwood Hiking Trails

September 12, 2005


Click for more…

In one of my usual fits of wanderlust, I decided to head out to the Inwood Hiking Trails and do some wandering. So I swung by the Jimmy John’s at 23 Mile and Schoenherr and grabbed a veggie sub (no mayo, of course), swung by a party store and grabbed a bottle of water, then I headed up to the park. While I haven’t calculated the whole route yet, I’m estimating that I walked somewhere around five miles of slightly hilly trails ranging from gravel to through-the-woods.

There are a bunch more pictures here (photo gallery retired) if anyone is interested in seeing them. Here’s what are, in my opinion, some of the more notable photos:

· A typical trail through the more wooded areas of the park.
· Quite a bit of the path runs along these power lines.
· I’ve had this backpack since high school. It’s traveled most places I’ve gone. And it still makes a good day pack.
· The mosquito-filled Inwood Lake.
· A sign that has been quite shot up by… someone.
· The source of a low, distant noise throughout the park. It appears to be a generator running a pump of some sort.
· Towards the end of the day I noticed a hot air balloon floating above.
· The moon was alos out and looking quite nice.
· Along the way I found some piles of bones: 1 – 2
· The shadows were getting long, so it was time to leave. My camera battery also ran out right after I took this shot.

—

Oh, also, my manager doesn’t seem too happy with my taking 2.5 weeks off of work in one go. We’ll see, though… She still hasn’t said no yet. I’m also looking up heading to the UK at this time, as the airfare would be $450 for non-stop DTW->LGW then LGW->DTW via Northwest.

moved from livejournaloutdoorswork

iSight Tripod Adapters

September 9, 2005


Click for huuuuge…

Yeah, production work sucks, but once things are done it’s pretty damn gratifying.

Well, I’m not completely done, but I have finished assembly of all fourty iSight Tripod Adapters. Yep, that’s what’s in the picture above… All fourty, plus the original one I made for the writeup / Make article / prototype / my use / whatever.

Tomorrow (or whenever) I have to figure out the best method for packaging them. I picked up forty zip-top plastic bags today, and I think that bundled up they will fit nicely in the US Postal Service’s smallest Priority Mail box of which I ordered 50 (they are delivered free!) pieces, along with 50 labels and 50 delivery confirmation tags.

Also, before packaging them, I need to photograph one of them and write some text which will hopefully entice people to buy them. They all also need a quick wipe-down with isopropyl alcohol in order to remove fingerprints, any dirt that may have gotten on them, and any wee threads of glue.

Oh, and they also all need to be tested. :\ That’ll be a bit of a chore.

Anyway, they are done. And I am sleepy. There is another photo of the stack of finished adapters here if you’d like to see that one as well. < shrug >

Blah. Yeah, I’m sleepy. And a bit lonely feeling. And the dishes in the kitchen are kinda stinky, but I’m too lazy to do them tonight. Goodnight for now.

acquired thingsmaking thingsmoved from livejournal

Food and such…

September 8, 2005

So, yeah. Me again. Guess what? A post full of photos… Imaagine that…

First, the thai food pictured above. After being inspired by the people over in #llamasoft I decided to get some thai food for dinner and take pictures of it. It is a quite tasty and very spicy Gang Dang from Bangkok Cuisine Express over on Garfield in Clinton Township, MI. If you’d like to see the photos, either click here for the whole album, or on the following highlight photos:

· See how much food one gets?
· A tasty Bell’s Third Coast Old Ale accompanied the meal.
· There it is, all the food I ate tonight.
· There is always a lot of food left over. Enough for two meals, in fact.

After eating dinner I started working on the iSight Tripod Adapter project some more. I sat at my workbench for a bit, filled some more of the adapter bodies with hot melt, and set aside the finished ones. There are still quite a few more to finish, though.

Oh, one last interesting shot. It seems that I somehow left the cap to my PVC cement opened slightly and it dried out. Well, I decided to pull the applicator out, and what came out with it? All the dried cement from the bottom of the can, with a wonderful POP as the air rushed past the glue and allowed the bottom of the can to return to shape. There’s a shot of the nifty dried glue here.

So, yeah. That’s it for now.

foodmaking thingsmoved from livejournal

Hot Melt Glue Sticks

September 6, 2005

It appears that, at least at Michael’s, hot melt glue sticks are no cheaper whether you buy the large or small ones, short or long. The only way to save is to buy a larger quantity. And as the larger guns work in a 40w gun (as opposed to a 10w), it’s likely that the larger sticks will melt faster.

Yes, I did stand in Michael’s with a calculator (in my phone) and calculate the volume of each type of glue stick, then the total volume per bag, in order to come to this conclusion.

making thingsmoved from livejournal

512MB? Bah!

September 5, 2005

[Cross posted to and …]

I know this rant will probably get me flamed for being somewhat off topic, but hopefully some folks will find it useful:

512MB of RAM is not enough for OS X!

I suppose I should have know this and planned accordingly, but I didn’t and now I’m suffering the consequences.

See, I normally have 1.5GB in this machine, but when running the Apple Hardware Test the other day in order to determine if my Airport Extreme card was bad, one of my 512MB DIMMs tested bad. No problem, it’s a Crucial part, so it’s got a lifetime warranty. Well, I pulled the RAM to ship it back to Crucial, and now this machine is borderline unusable. I cannot wait for the RAM too get back here… Hell, maybe I’ll order another GB in the mean time, just so I can have something usable!

(Note: I could not do a cross ship as I purchased the RAM through a vendor. Crucial still handles the warranty. The machine is a dual 2.0Ghz PowerMac G5, and I installed the extra RAM after unboxing before it was ever powered on, so I hadn’t ever realized low memory would be this painful.)

acquired thingscomputersmoved from livejournal

Corn!~

August 27, 2005

So a friend’s neighbor somehow ended up with a pickup bed full of corn. I think it’s from his field…

Well, my friend kindly brought me a large bag of this corn.

This is good, because I *love* roasted corn on the cob.

Well, after roasting up about three ears, peeling them open, seeing the dimples on the kernels and tasting them I realize what is different about this corn…

This is feeder corn.

It’s really, really different. And no, I do not recommend that people eat animal feed corn. It’s very starchy and thick and untasty.

Hmm, maybe this is what corn syrup is made from…

foodmoved from livejournal

PC Needed

August 27, 2005

Can someone help me find a particular PC? I’m looking for an older machine, so long as the CPU is passively cooled. Yeah, I mean one of those giant heatsink things just hanging out there…

I also want to stick a dead quiet hard disk in there and finally have a silent firewall. Mine’s getting old and noisy.

acquired thingscomputersmoved from livejournal