about::me

UEFA Champion’s League 2009

Barcelona 2 - Manchester Utd. 0

Hardly surprising. Neither side performed remarkably, but Barcelona definitely topped Man U this time. I’m in agreement with all of the referee’s calls, and I find that to be a rare case.

The only sad thing is, I chose to watch this online rather than going to the nearest Mamak joint with a big screen projector. Luckily, there were no exquisite goals I would like to have seen in detail.

Congratulations Barca!

My math is rusty

I’m having a tough time figuring this out.

I want to generate a list of say, 100 random (electrical) current values. And the distribution is given by:

P(I) = (1 + (I/31)^2.6)^-1

where I = current (duh) in kA

and P(I) is the probability of current exceeding its magnitude

So as a simple example there is 95% chance the current can exceed 10kA and 1% chance the current can exceed 200kA. These aren’t exact values, but I hope they describe how the formula works.

What I’m trying to figure out is, how do I generate a statistically sound list of currents based on the given formula?

My father has suggested starting from higher currents and moving down in steps. Explained:

let’s say, P(200kA) = 1% = 1/100

so out of the 100 currents in my list, 1 would hold the value of 200kA.

then, assume P(190kA) = 2% = 2/100

that’s 2 values that exceed 190kA, which includes 200kA.

2-1 = 1 so 1 is valued at 190kA.

and so on…

Having read that, it’s a bit confusing. But I think all you math geniuses would get it.

The problem with this approach is that while statistically correct, it’s hardly random (in fact, not at all), and also does not take into account values in between (i.e. i could never have 193.2kA as a value).

Suggestions? Please, I would really appreciate any form of input. Last time I did any real math was years ago.

Jaunty Jackalope

pulseaudio is still retarded, but since moving to the latest release of Ubuntu, things have been ok. I say ok, because Ubuntu could take a few cues from Arch Linux.

Yes, I have become an Arch Linux fanboy. Some people they are more obnoxious than other Linux fanboys.

p.s. ur distro sux! arch roolz!!! /s

Arch Linux knows no defaults

Coming from a mainly Debian based background (Ubuntu is also part of this), not having sane defaults in Arch Linux really takes getting used to. Sometimes, I even have to create config files myself! Fair price to pay for such an easily maintanable system.

The Jaunty Jump: Dissatisfaction

I realize that this is a release candidate, but they said it should be fine for non-production environments!

The Jaunty Jump: Wireless

Upgrading from Ubuntu 8.10 to 9.04 completely broke my wireless. It doesn’t show under ifconfig. I can’t bring the interface up either. Cos it’s not there at all.

I tried looking in System>Administration>Hardware Drivers but there was no entry for wireless there either.

I could try reinstalling the proprietary drivers. Maybe the kernel change broke the link to hardware. But to be frank, I can’t be bothered. If I have to keep compiling things from source then I might as well use Gentoo, or Arch which has a driver for me in their <u>AUR repo</u> (which is redundant, I know).

The Jaunty Jump: CPU Frequency Scaling

I could swear that there are some bugs with the new kernel because the most severe problems lay at very low level interfaces with hardware. For instance, my processor suddenly no longer supports cpu frequency scaling. That’s weird, because it does with <i>every other</i> distro. There were also changes within /dev as if my hardware changed.

I can’t afford to let my CPU run at 2GHz full time, otherwise it overheats and powers off. For now, I’m forces to use two fans (the ones for cooling PEOPLE) and a laptop cooler just to keep from reaching its shutdown temperature. In case you are wondering, it’s running at 102 C at the moment. Anyonr want to boil some water?

The Jaunty Jump: Startup

After manually reconfiguring menu.lst, I booted with the new kernel in place. I was very surprised to discover that my boot time greatly increased. Especially after so many articles claiming a speed boost with Jaunty. Even after the initial boot process, logging in to Gnome took much longer than it ever did for me. Overall, I was disappointed at the performance.

However, it could have been a fault with the actual kernel or the way I configured menu.lst. From what I can tell, I didn’t do anything wrong. But then again, I know as much about Linux as I do about women; and that is saying a lot.

The Jaunty Jump: menu.lst

I must have selected the wrong option for updating the grub startup list, because there were no new entries for 9.04 or the new kernel (entirely my fault). But even when I configured the list manually, nothing fixed itself. In fact, things got worse (covered later). I tried to dpkg-reconfigure the new kernel image but to no avail.