ATOM von Fugal

Dual Boot Magic

von@fugal.net (Von Fugal) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 02:48:23 +0000

I dual boot on two out of three computers but I really only spend less than 1% of the time in Windows. Occasionally I do find the occasion to bring the red headed stepchild out of the basement. As if this weren’t annoying enough I would often reboot, lack the patience to babysit the reboot, and come back just in time to see that I missed the grub menu and now I have to reboot again. Well some time ago I found a solution to this mess. Enter grub-set-default <num>—this nifty command sets the grub entry to load by default for the next boot only. So I count my grub entries and put the proper number in a nifty reboot script. Alas, by the next time I use this script various Ubuntu updates have changed my grub menu such that now I get some old kernel instead of Windows like I wanted. This clearly wouldn’t do, so I fixed it. Now you can do the same.

Save the following to a script, such as ~/bin/windows.

#! /bin/bash
TARGET=windows
MENU=/boot/grub/menu.lst
ENTRY=$[`grep ^title $MENU | grep -n -i $TARGET | cut -d: -f1` - 1]
sudo umount /media/surfer
sudo grub-set-default $ENTRY
sudo reboot

The umount /media/surfer line just unmounts my network media, speeding up the reboot process working around an annoying Ubuntu bug where the shutdown hangs waiting for network drives even as the network is already down, hence no response from the share and a long timeout.

The ENTRY= line is the interesting part. First grep ^title grabs all the grub entries from which we will count the indexes. Next, grep -n $TARGET prints the line number of the entry we are interested in (Windows) along with the line. cut -d: -f1 splits the line on ‘:’ and returns the first field, the number we want to boot. Finally, grep counts from 1, but grub counts from 0, so $[<stuff> - 1] does bash math, wich is like normal math mostly, and hence we have the proper argument to give grub-set-default, et voila.

You can even put an icon in your panel or desktop that will run this script, giving you Windows in one easy click.

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Mysterious strftime segfault

von@fugal.net (Von Fugal) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 09:49:23 +0000

Say you're working on a big project. Then at some point you call strftime or maybe ctime and what do you get but a nasty and mysterious SEGFAULT?? What's more you are absolutely sure you have no memory leaks, nothing is wrong with the arguments to the call. Then gdb tells you only that the segfault is happening somewhere deep inside the library call. Furthermore, it works on some platforms but not others, indicating again that memory leak you are sure you don't have. So what do you do but spend three hours tracking down your much doubted memory leak? Well hopefully you find this very post and save those three hours. You see, if time.h is included in another source file, you may have forgotten to include it where you use it. The compiler won't blink an eye. The linker doesn't even complain. Yet somehow it all works dandy until you try it on the TA's computer. So long story short, check your includes.

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Money Velocity

von@fugal.net (Von Fugal) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:26:49 +0000

Money circulates; it goes round and back, like your blood, or a bad penny. Actually, that saying "it keeps turning up like a bad penny" came about because it used to be that bad pennies literally would pop up over and over again. You'd spend it at the Buy More one day, then another day it's back as change from Burgers Supreme. Nowadays the circulation path of any piece of currency is so large geographically and by number of stops that you don't see it anymore. However, the web site Where's George? lets you track a dollar bill to see where that version of the bad penny turns up.

Even though money paths are now more complex and less circular, money still circulates about all the time. Also like your blood money can circulate at a meager rate as when you sleep, or quickly as during a sprint or horror flick. The measure of how quickly money flows from one hand to another is called money velocity or velocity of money and is measured as a frequency. Intuitively, it describes how often, on average, a single piece of money changes hands in the given time. With a high velocity of money, you would expect that bad penny to turn up sooner rather than later.

Like the money multiplier, money velocity has an effect on the virtual money supply in an economy. If the velocity is 5/yr then on average each dollar is spent 5 times in a year. It was only one dollar, but it's as if there were 5. This is of course different from the money multiplier in that the dollar doesn't exist in two places at once, but rather in two places at two separate times, so the effect is felt in a different way.

Money velocity also plays an important role in the dynamics of the money multiplier. Remember how money multiplies with each successive loan in an infinite series which approaches 1/r? Clearly those successive loans each take time, and $2 billion doesn't become $20 billion overnight. Just how long it does take is inversely proportional to money velocity. A high velocity means that extra $18 billion comes rather quickly, and a low velocity means it trickles in gradually.

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Money Multiplier

von@fugal.net (Von Fugal) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:32:14 +0000

First of all, what is money? It is anything that is widely accepted as a medium of exchange. Here in the USA it's paper fiat, aka the dollar bill and its many derivatives. If I buy bread from you, and you buy eggs from Jon, and finally Jon buys apples from me, then it's a three way trade. We all accept money, so any two corners of the triangle don't have to concern themselves about the last and such trades and infinitely more complex trades can be accomplished smoothly without involving all suppliers and consumers in complex negotiations. Hence we have money.

How does money multiply? Well, it's kind of like shared libraries. When you use shared libraries it's like you have more memory. You don't really, but more of your programs fit into memory as if you did. Same thing with money, there's not really more of it, but it's as if there was. I have an ounce of gold in a bank. I want a laptop. I trade my gold for a laptop, but instead of physically handing over the gold, it is simply deducted from my account and applied to the laptop guys account. Meanwhile the bank doesn't actually have my gold, it just promises to provide it for me should I ask for it, same now holds for the laptop guy. The gold is out making interest for the bank. It's as if the bank has it's own gold and I have my own, too, but it's the same gold.

At any time there is a certain amount of total actual money in circulation, and a percentage of that money is double dipping, far more than double in fact. Remember how the bank didn't actually have that gold? It's in the hands of some investor making interest. Well the investor doesn't have it either, at least not all of it. Some of it is invested in Green Sparks Bubble Gum, making interest. Well Green Sparks doesn't have it either, not all of it. Some of it bought the cutters for the wrapping machine. And so on, et cetera, ad nauseum.

There's a simple mathematical formula for figuring out just how much total multiplication ensues. First we have x deposited somewhere. On average y is the percentage loaned out. First round, x + x*y. Second round, x + x*y + (x*y)*y, and so on. This works out to x * (1 + y + y²+ y³+ y⁴... + y^inf). The part in parentheses is a geometric series, and works out to 1 / (1 - y). In economics, that (1-y) is referred to as the reserve ratio, and measures the money kept in the bank rather than what is loaned out, we'll call it r. If you didn't follow all that math, no worries. Suffice to say that for x real dollars, there are x * 1/r virtual dollars. An r you can expect to see in the wild might be 75% or so. The Federal Reserve with its monopoly on money makes possible a 10% reserve ratio, which we actually have. That makes the money multiplier a whoppin' 10! So when the Fed loans out $2 trillion, it ends up expanding to $20 trillion. This system of holding very small actual reserves is called fractional reserve banking. Without help it falls apart very quickly. With the help of the Fed and things like the FDIC it thrives and bustles.

So, why can't your money multiply? It does. You just don't get to keep it.

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More to Come

von@fugal.net (Von Fugal) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:46:20 +0000

Last fall I wrote about what I see coming down the pipe. I gave a glossed over explanation of why I fear we may see hyperinflation, and how I came to that conclusion.

Well, since then I have taken a university course on economics. I have a deeper and more solid understanding of those notions I had then. I also have the vocabulary to articulate it better. So, if you've taken economics and understand such terms as CPS, velocity of money, fractional reserves and money multipliers, then jump right in. If not, then I'll try to give a little guidance and some links to further reading.

The purpose of this particular post is two fold: to kick off the coming series and let my readers (really? I must mean myself) know that I haven't given up writing, and to act as an impetus, a commitment, to actually write the rest of it in a timely fashion.

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Chicken Little?

von@fugal.net (Von Fugal) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 10:38:50 +0000

Edit: I got confused on the dates of my sources, which then used relative dates to refer to the event. It was in fact on Wednesday, 18 Mar 2009, that the Fed's actions took place.

Last ~~Thursday~~Wednesday, as Glenn Beck calls it, was history. Not good history, no this is bad. Remember Zimbabwe? Ever heard the phrase "Not worth a continental")? Well welcome to the future, hyperinflation.

What happened ~~Thursday~~Wednesday? $1 trillion dollars, new dollars, were printed, IN ONE DAY! The Federal Reserve "bought" a bunch of IOU notes from the US Treasury, and for it paid $1 trillion, in money it just printed out of thin air. "What?? " you say? Yes, the Fed bought debt the US Government didn't have, using money the Fed didn't have, all so that we can be poorer for it.

On ~~Thursday~~Wednesday gold shot up over 6% in one hour. Likewise silver shot up over 8% in one hour. This is not because the value of gold and silver went up. The value of the dollar went down, dramatically. If you thought your 401K evaporated with the banking crisis, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Get out of the dollar, and then like me you can welcome the inevitable collapse, and finally a return to sanity!

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CSApprox

von@fugal.net (Von Fugal) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 09:22:10 +0000

Probably the coolest VIm plugin since netrw, welcome CSApprox! Just put this in your .vim/plugin and away you go with completely transparent and automatic 256 color themes for your terminal vim that look amazingly not unlike the GUI versions of those themes. Just make sure your terminal properly reports 256 colors, and that your vim binary is compiled with gui support (debian flavors do this, but apparently not red hat flavors). If either of these are missing it will give you a little message and delay opening vim, if this is a problem you might want to suppress that output.

I also highly recommend enabling 256 colors via Xresources rather than setting TERM=xterm-256color, this will save headache when sshing in from a less fine terminal or when logging in at the console. A quick google turns up plenty of info on how o set your Xresources with one caveat; if you use uxterm like any sane person would, you need s/Xterm/UXterm/. I’ve also found cases where I need xterm as well, so I simply put all three in there to be safe.


Xterm*termName: xterm-256color
UXterm*termName: xterm-256color
xterm*termName: xterm-256color

2 comments

Mutt Color Theme

von@fugal.net (Von Fugal) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 11:45:55 +0000

Some time ago, being the no good visual designer I am, I decided to put together a mutt color theme. This was no ordinary theme, I’m talking 256 colors! No, don’t worry, the theme doesn’t use all 256 colors.

Aaron’s post prompted me to put up my theme for consumption, enjoyment, and comment. If you want details on how to make the colors work, follow the link above, he did a good job of that already.

Now, the theme and screenshots.

4 comments

White Spaces: Coming to a Technology Near You

von@fugal.net (Von Fugal) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:01:42 +0000

In a refreshing break from political posts, I’m going to rejoice in the bounty that is white-space airwaves made free and open. With all TV broadcast going digital, there will be many chunks of EM spectrum between digital TV channels. This is known as white-space, or unused digital TV spectrum. The FCC voted 5-0 to make these unused frequencies available in the same sense CB, 802.11 and walkie talkie frequencies are. What does this mean? Why the big fuss? Well, not only does it mean more frequencies available for wireless internet and other uses, it also means longer range for wireless internet and other things. These are the same frequencies that TV signals are broadcast long distances on, remember. It is very exciting. Some call it wifi on steroids. Along those lines, think Digis (or insert wireless provider here) on steroids. Room for more wireless ISPs and at greater range, therefore less base stations, more customers, more competition, and lower costs all around! But it’s not just about wireless providers, or even just internet, my brother wants to build a GPS receiver that transmits the raw data home for actual position calculation, offloading the hard work, making the mobile unit simpler and cheaper. The newly available spectrum means for him more range and less interference. Exciting times!

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Tossed About

von@fugal.net (Von Fugal) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:58:20 +0000

James 1:6
bq. 6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.

There’s been some talk about something happening in October that will shape the imminent election. For any interested on what these events might be, this is an interesting article. That article is probably pretty strongly conspiratorial to a lot of my readers, but my point isn’t to point out any conspiracies or to lend credence to particular theories.

My objective today is to say “stand firm” and go into this election with much prayer and faith. Regardless of what happens, how accurately it was predicted, or how complicit any parties may be… the point remains that if it does affect the election then it doesn’t matter who was behind it, if anyone. So I beg of you, all of you, have faith and do not waver! I’m not going to presume to tell you who to vote for. However, don’t be tossed about, prayerfully make a decision and then stick too it, whatever happens.

I’m not saying a nuke will detonate, or that I believe we’ll endure some kind of attack. I don’t know even that anything will happen. We might not even realize as subtle winds toss us, so let us be watchful and prayerful, and seek the Lord’s guidance.

As a side note, when you’re studying out your decision, keep in mind that there are more choices than two.

1 comment