tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34643116140980954302012-02-16T00:00:10.720-08:00We all discover useful things. This is my way of sharing my small discoveries with you. This often takes the form of documenting solutions to technical challenges I've overcome, or just sharing cool stuff I've done.Berkeleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12782837694341814329noreply@blogger.comBlogger151100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3464311614098095430.post-71543382859372684262011-12-12T13:00:00.001-08:002011-12-12T13:00:32.505-08:00

My professional webpage, http://www.berkeleychurchill.com, just got a facelift.  Let me know if you like it.  Or more importantly, let me know if you hate it, find a typo, or something does not work right.

Berkeleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12782837694341814329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3464311614098095430.post-89850439333127313802011-12-12T12:59:00.000-08:002011-12-12T12:59:21.585-08:00

I should finish up my short-lived series of posts on the little operating system I was working on.  Eventually I discovered that I actually knew everything I needed to know to really build an operating system.  For the longest time it seemed like such an abstract task that I did not know how to do. But after spending a few weeks working with x86 documentation and actually building a kernel, I

Berkeleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12782837694341814329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3464311614098095430.post-17173047026572960462011-06-14T11:40:00.000-07:002011-06-14T11:40:12.308-07:00

Yesterday I had an annoying problem where I was emailed a file and then had to open it using a closed-source program on Mac OS X.  The issue was that the program only wanted to open a file of a certain "kind"; even though all the data was in the file and the file was in-tact the program would refuse to open it.  Searching on google, there are several utilities that one can install to fix this

Berkeleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12782837694341814329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3464311614098095430.post-25248106546167237472011-05-17T14:06:00.000-07:002011-05-17T14:06:24.610-07:00

I've done a lot of work this week! Who needs classes when you can write operating systems?!?! This week I have, Written code to run flat binaries from a filesystem Got a few basic syscalls working (write() and exit() so far).  write() only outputs to stdout, which is currently always directly to the screen. Made my first live-cds and booted real computers! Written a scheduler!! The scheduler

Berkeleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12782837694341814329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3464311614098095430.post-61052463051089163152011-05-09T15:26:00.000-07:002011-05-09T15:29:52.479-07:00

Last Wednesday I decided that I wanted to learn more about operating systems. Sure, I've taken UCSB's operating systems class (and done well in it), but operating systems are so huge and daunting that I felt more was necessary. So I decided to write one. The goal is to build an operating system that works at some basic level; right now I don't have any further objectives. Ideas have crossed

Berkeleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12782837694341814329noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3464311614098095430.post-66726353569205588392011-05-03T01:45:00.000-07:002011-05-03T01:45:54.048-07:00

My roommate had a server running in our living room for a few months now.  I became skeptical about how much it was actually being used, so I decided to check out the /var/log/auth.log file and count logins.  After filtering out all the cron jobs, I immediately noticed a few suspicious lines:     May  2 18:56:29 Mc-server sshd[27075]: Invalid user angela from 58.30.236.115     May  2 18:56:29

Berkeleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12782837694341814329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3464311614098095430.post-36019672760517748552011-02-04T14:29:00.000-08:002011-02-04T14:29:55.801-08:00

1.  My menu generating script can be found at https://sourceforge.net/projects/xfce-menu-maker/.  While there's only one svn commit, it's pretty stable (I've worked on it for a while).  Let me know if you find any bugs. 2.  Did you realize you can drag windows from one workspace to another INSIDE the workspace switcher?  That's right, just click on that little firefox icon and drag it to your

Berkeleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12782837694341814329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3464311614098095430.post-48205994200098532572011-02-04T14:22:00.000-08:002011-02-04T14:22:21.053-08:00

I really wanted my dictionary searches to output in columns, but without loosing grep's color.  The problem is that if you use the --color=always option in grep it distorts the length of the strings in the pipeline because of the escape sequences used for coloring in the terminal.  Then when you pipe the results into column the columns do not look right. Never fear.  awk is here.  I wrote this

Berkeleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12782837694341814329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3464311614098095430.post-82977201541905941202011-01-08T14:50:00.000-08:002011-01-08T15:09:10.985-08:00

I love xfce.  In all fairness, I haven't used gnome for over a year, so I cannot really make a fair comparison to the newer versions.  But I would like to say some reasons I do love xfce... I would just like to highlight some recent tricks and tips in xfce that I think are really cool, and worth knowing about: You can use the middle mouse button to bring any window into focus, regardless of

Berkeleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12782837694341814329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3464311614098095430.post-31213219381301811022011-01-01T04:52:00.000-08:002011-01-01T04:52:39.948-08:00

I've had this problem for a long time.  I want a simple todo-list solution that satisfies the following requirements: Shows up on my computers and my android phone The Android app must be convenient Either there needs to be a really convenient desktop application, or it has to integrate into a web site I already use, such as the iGoogle homepage I shouldn't have to develop it myself Streamlined

Berkeleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12782837694341814329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3464311614098095430.post-46864594166831697692010-07-28T10:18:00.000-07:002010-07-28T10:18:19.306-07:00

For the longest time I've created .tex files in vim and typeset them with pdflatex.  The problem is that every time I need to type :set makeprg=pdflatex\ % This was frustrating because I use tex all the time.  Alas, the solution is to place the following in your ~/.vimrc: autocmd FileType tex setlocal makeprg=pdflatex\ %

Berkeleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12782837694341814329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3464311614098095430.post-78409836633726449492010-06-07T14:36:00.000-07:002010-06-07T14:38:00.256-07:00

Ever been working on a homework set or a paper in LaTeX where you constantly resort to a calculator to do boring computations?  LaTeXCalc is your solution.  It is a "LaTeX Calculator" that allows you to in-line computations with TeX.  See the homepage at http://latexcalc.sourceforge.net. Currently available on UNIX-like platforms (aka almost everything except Windows).  A Windows port will be

Berkeleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12782837694341814329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3464311614098095430.post-36195086296061285922010-05-26T22:45:00.000-07:002010-05-26T22:45:08.271-07:00

My close friend Jason recently got back from studying abroad in Ghana*.  Yesterday he was telling me how the classes in Ghana weren't well put together and often just involved professors reading from scripts.  Upon asking where the scripts were from he promptly replied "Wikipedia". At first this is a little disappointing.  We all hope that education around the would could be better.  On the

Berkeleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12782837694341814329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3464311614098095430.post-79722837654864188682010-05-11T15:19:00.000-07:002011-04-09T17:41:24.476-07:00

Once upon a time, I returned to my computer to see the message "11 Failed Login Attempts" when logging in.  Needless to say, this was unnerving.  To catch the culprit I successfully recompiled XScreensaver to take pictures of anyone getting my password wrong.  Here's how I did it. Disclaimer: This uses an extremely cheap hack. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it introduces subtle security

Berkeleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12782837694341814329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3464311614098095430.post-91321114740572046732010-05-06T10:07:00.000-07:002010-05-06T10:50:52.892-07:00

For a class project I was required to add a new service to the MINIX kernel.  In MINIX, all the essential parts of the operating system are implemented as services.  For example, the file system is a service, the process manager is a service and so forth. To my dismay, no documentation on adding a service exists (or is hard to find), except in my project's description.  Unfortunately, that too

Berkeleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12782837694341814329noreply@blogger.com5