Category: Uncategorized

“I don’t like computers“

Ich habe bei einer Preisvergleichsmaschine die ich ab und an bemühe zwei Kommentare zu Produkten abgegeben die ich seit einiger Zeit selbst im Einsatz habe. Bei Interesse:

Sennheiser HD598 (ich habe die “SE” oder “Special Edition”) und
Nubert NuBox 383 (ich/wir haben den Vorgänger 381)

Danke für’s Lesen.

It’s the middle of the third week after returning from Malaysia. Which means that I’m at work again since two and a half weeks, and it’s also the last week of school holidays in our area. Then everything will be back to normal, and our daily routines will have us back.

Tuna the cat was fed very well by a professional cat sitter, but still she enjoys that we’re back, and that she’s allowed to go out again. Here she is on the veranda:

At work, our department has moved shortly before my holidays. We stayed within the same building, but went from 2nd level street side to 3rd level backyard, so we’re now directly under our flat roof garden, the uppermost row of windows in the following photo:

Today I received the final approval for a new notebook, so soon I’ll get a Lenovo P50, hopefully with (IBM’s “Open Client”) Linux pre-installed. And if not, then I’ll install it. The machine has enough RAM to run the occasional Windows 7 and/or 10 within a virtualized environment, either VirtualBox like the one I use here, or KVM-based, like I also use it on my old laptop at work. We’ll see.

Zuleikha will go to 7th class beginning next week, and she chose her first courses and classes, like “Brass & Co”. I’ve heard that school band before our holidays, and they rock (and swing) – almost as good as the big band. It’s a good school, especially if you’re into music.

She also selected her 3rd language (after German and English which are obligatory) – and that is Latin. Should be fun; you also learn a lot of history, and even better German if you do that.

My dad had his 83rd birthday on the 13th, our sister-in-law had her birthday on Monday, and tomorrow it’s my sister’s turn – so congrats to everyone.

Things to do: make some prints and photo books from Malaysia, and send them to relatives as well. And finally, last but not least: get in contact with some friends again, and listen to their stories.

We have a bit of a heat wave at the moment, so I enjoy these probably last really warm days of late summer.

Anyway, thanks for your interest, and as always, thanks for reading and viewing.

Lego Mindstorms robots might have a problem if you have their EV3 control computer connected to a network. Original message is from Heise (in German, Google-translated version is here). Seems like Bashlite is attacking these, building some botnet with them.

So should you have Lego robots with that EV3 computer, it might be a good idea to scan your own network, and/or to block port 23 (telnet). Should your school have these, inform the teachers as well.

Hmmm. These headlines in Twenty Sixteen are really bold. Plus it wastes lots of space. So for the moment I’m back to Twenty Fifteen.

Update from Thursday morning, December 10th, 2015:

– using a theme called Origin for the moment. Love its simplicity; let’s see how it goes, and if I still like it after a while.

A search input is missing here, so if I want to recall what I wrote about something or someone (like for instance Youn Sun Nah), that content will be hard to find. Found the search, which you can add as a widget like usual. But And this one sure looks good, even on different devices. Check here (also for your own webpage/blog).

I wrote about installing Linux on machines/mainboards with UEFI firmware in http://wolfgang.lonien.de/2015/08/done-with-rebuilding-the-computer/). This is how I did it on my upgraded computer at home, where I dual boot Debian “Jessie” and Windows 10. And since a colleague at work had some trouble with a new Lenovo machine, here are some tips which might help:

1. Check your boot medium (more help in happyassassin and in reddit)

[de153403@oc0654677850 ~]$ sudo tail -f /var/log/messages

Nov 27 08:06:31 oc0654677850 kernel: usb 3-1: new high speed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
Nov 27 08:06:31 oc0654677850 kernel: usb 3-1: New USB device found, idVendor=058f, idProduct=6366
Nov 27 08:06:31 oc0654677850 kernel: usb 3-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
Nov 27 08:06:31 oc0654677850 kernel: usb 3-1: Product: Flash Card Reader/Writer
Nov 27 08:06:31 oc0654677850 kernel: usb 3-1: Manufacturer: Generic
Nov 27 08:06:31 oc0654677850 kernel: usb 3-1: SerialNumber: 058F63666438
Nov 27 08:06:31 oc0654677850 kernel: usb 3-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Nov 27 08:06:32 oc0654677850 kernel: Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
Nov 27 08:06:32 oc0654677850 kernel: scsi6 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Nov 27 08:06:32 oc0654677850 kernel: usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
Nov 27 08:06:32 oc0654677850 kernel: USB Mass Storage support registered.
Nov 27 08:06:33 oc0654677850 kernel: scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access Multiple Card Reader 1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
Nov 27 08:06:33 oc0654677850 kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
Nov 27 08:06:33 oc0654677850 kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 61071360 512-byte logical blocks: (31.2 GB/29.1 GiB)
Nov 27 08:06:33 oc0654677850 kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Nov 27 08:06:33 oc0654677850 kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
Nov 27 08:06:33 oc0654677850 kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
Nov 27 08:06:33 oc0654677850 kernel: sdb: sdb1
Nov 27 08:06:33 oc0654677850 kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
Nov 27 08:06:33 oc0654677850 kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
Nov 27 08:06:33 oc0654677850 kernel: ISOFS: Unable to identify CD-ROM format.

[de153403@oc0654677850 ~]$ sudo parted /dev/sdb
GNU Parted 2.1
Using /dev/sdb
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) p
Model: Multiple Card Reader (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 31.3GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

(parted)

From the article on happyassassin:

“See that Partition table: msdos? This is an MBR/MS-DOS formatted disk. If it was GPT-formatted, that would say gpt. You can reformat the disk with the other type of partition table by doing mklabel gpt or mklabel msdos from within parted. This will destroy the contents of the disk.”

2. So make sure it’s a GPT drive, and copy over your Linux OS image, then boot/install.

I just read an article on ZDNet which reminded me of it. There are possibly many ways to do it, but the two links above helped me to successfully get both Windows (first), and Linux (second) onto that new SSD, and even if I should ever upgrade any of these again, they won’t overwrite each others MBR – because there isn’t one anymore.

Hope that helps anyone who wants/needs this information.

As always, thanks for reading.

P.S. – Update from Sunday, November 29th, 2015:

Debian developer Andreas Metzler just did the same, with one of the newest self-assembly projects of c’t magazine (Skylake generation CPU). He describes it on his blog. And the keyword for an UEFI boot medium is Rufus.

Just tryin’ it. Disabled Javascript in about:config. See http://www.wired.com/2015/11/i-turned-off-javascript-for-a-whole-week-and-it-was-glorious/