vinay pawar

2010-08-21

- Upgraded to LFS-6.6 and have been running it since a couple months, runs linux-2.6.34 and gcc 4.4.3. No issues so far. Intend to setup test builds for LFS-dev which includes 4.5, as a test to check if all the BLFS I use is gcc-4.5 ready.

- Blender comes closer to the next(second) beta release of the 2.5x series. GSOC contributions are also coming together well.

- Have been testing ATI Radeon support in the new Xorg drivers and Mesa and was pleasantly surprised to find a fairly well working support for my a relatively new chipset(RS780/r600). Kudos to both Xorg and Mesa. It seems I won't be needing the non-free/proprietary ATI Catalyst drivers anymore. No more hangs/lockups and random crashes.

2010-04-17

- Almost 2 months of quite some action in the blender camp. A couple of alpha releases, it's getting more and more usable as weeks pass and tons of bug-fixes are made. The Durian project appears to be ploughing through. Got a chance to contribute some 2 models/props for the project, hope they make it in the final cut, but folks have contributed much better stuff.

- The summer is here, and feels to have gotten worse than last year. Another 2 months of scorching heat, sweat and general misery before the first monsoon showers. Time to cool-off and relax as it's not at all comfortable to be at the computer for a long time on projects, need to find ways to adjust.

2010-02-05

- It's LFS build time. I've been running LFS-6.5 since several months now with any major issues. After picking from the mailing-list that there was to be be the next release soon, I decided to roll a new build, took about 2 days after which I ran into booting problems. It appeared that the root partition wasn't getting a udev device node. Tried rebuilding udev a couple of times and rechecking the bootloader(grub), nothing helped. After digging up the changelog and a few LFS bug reports it appeared there were major changes between udev-145 and udev-151. Then had a little chat with Slackware's Robby Workman over at #udev@freenode. Deal being, either I had to restore back some old udev rules, or remove old IDE/ATAPI implementation from the kernel and let udev do it's thing. After a few linux rebuilds things got on track and were looking good. Problem solved. Thanks Robby.

- Also took this chance to try ALF(Automated LinuxFromScratch). As expected, this was pretty wacky stuff. Using the XML/XSL from the LFS book's source, the command instructions are extracted after some intense parsing and scripts are generated. After some guess-work, a little tweaking and a bit of luck, managed to get this to work, sort of. I believe it did save me time, which was the original intention. I'll be getting back to ALFS later to smooth out the roughs. Should be fun to use. I'll need to figure this XML/XSL magic, which I've always avoided.

2010-01-07

- Another year rolled over. Happy New Year, like they say.

- Nearly done with a 3d modeling project I'd started in early December. I'll try and post an image soon. Preparing for the next project.

- This week went for a little solo motorcycle fun ride with Gaurav. A good motorcycle ride after a long time. Enjoyed it.

- Read through the Gubbins Experiment blog. Must read for people who care.

2009-11-30

- This was one November to remember.

- Experienced my first cyclone - Cyclone Phyan. They say this thing strayed away from the Indian Ocean into our peninsular after more than 60 years. Those terrifying skies. This ofcourse was followed by electricity and telephone problems as expected.

- Plenty family functions that kept me disconnected, enough to feel discomfort.

- Came very close to crashing my motorcycle, thankfully didn't. One of those instances when you thank those automobile designers who built something that holds it's line. Sadly, the near-crash punctured the fuel tank, not at all funny to see fuel dripping down on the engine while it's still alive. Nothing burnt up in flames. Thankfully?

- After close inspection of the punctured fuel tank and the cause, my brother remarked - "major design flaw".

- Finally, after a freaky November weather-wise, winter finally set-in.

- Normality.