Archive for April, 2006

Today, all Swedes are celebrating Walpurgis, but almost nobody really know why, and even fewer care about it. They are pleased enough by the fact that they have a good reason for boozing, in combination with another day free from work. Too bad, it is Sunday today, which means they would have been free from work anyway…

On Walpurgis Day, you should locate a place where someone have collected a fair pile of wood. At the evening, a parade of children are supposed to set the pile on fire, using torches or something. There you’re supposed to stand, freezing your ass off, until the fire has turned big enough to supply you with pleasant heat.

Me and some friends failed in locating a good pile. The one we found looked big enough, but unfortunately, quantity does not imply quality. It was made of wet and fresh wood, and it took bloody forever to begin fire. On the other hand, it provided loads of smoke, as the photos in the album can support (click the photo above to see the album).

Finally, we ended up at some coffee bar in the city of Västerås. The espresso at that place was yet another evidence of that quantity does not imply quality. But I had better not to complain; in company with good friends, you don’t need high quality fires nor coffee. Get the moral?

I’ve had my Canon Digital Ixus 700 (Powershot SD500) for almost a year, and I have used it daily. I am using Gentoo GNU/Linux on my Acer Aspire laptop, and I have connected the camera to it with no problems (using gphoto2 as the lowlevel interface and Digikam for managing the photos). However, some days ago, I updated my system software, including libgphoto2, and something happened. I could not longer access my camera. Then I remembered that I’ve seen this before, but I did not remember how I solved it last time. Therefore, I’m writing this post, for myself to remember it to next time.

The symptoms are as follow. When running gphoto2 –summary, it says “Detected a ‘Canon:PowerShot SD500 (normal mode)’“, then it fails with the message “Step #4 failed! (returned 0, expected 64) Camera not operational“. I tried with extended debugging information, but it told me nothing of interest.

The solution is simple. This problem is related to a bug in the driver for this very camera. The driver simply doen’t work very well. Luckily, it isn’t needed, since there is a general driver that can be used instead. A simple workaround is to remove the driver. So I did, with the following command: cd /usr/lib/gphoto2/*/ && mkdir old && mv *canon* old/. Problem solved. Thank you for the tip, _Marcus_ at #gphoto@irc.freenode.net!

“Uses hot air to make delicious, fat-free popcorn in minutes” says the box for the gadget I bought yesterday. Popcorn? Those things that you put in the microwave oven for two minutes, whereafter you eat them to your favourite TV show? Buying yet a machine which can do what the microwave does better, may sound like a sub-brilliant move. But wait, there’s more…

For about a year and a half, I have been roasting my own coffee. I find it interesting how you can fine-tune the result by varying the time of roasting, but the main reason is to ensure myself a cup of fresh coffee. The experts say coffee beans are fresh for 10 years - unroasted. After roasting, they shall be consumed within a week. After grinding them, one shall brew them (or do whatever is planned) within two minutes. I don’t know how strictly one really should apply to these time limits, but on the other side, I don’t understand the arguments against doing so.

Until now, I have been roasting my beens in the oven. It is not complicated, but it takes 15 minutes to warm up the oven and 10 minutes to roast one baking tin of coffee. That’s quite a waste of time and power. Roasting coffee also brings plenty of smelling smoke, which probably is not what you want in the kitchen. The most complicated thing about it, is that I don’t have an oven, so I have to do it at a friend’s apartment.

Recently, I read an article about roasting coffee, that mentioned a popcorn machine can do the job. After the time of reading, I have convinced myself that a popcorn machine would be a great gadget to buy. Said and done. Yesterday, I went to Teknikmagasinet (a Swedish store) and bought one. At the moment of writing this post, I have been trying it three times for coffee roasting, with a result much better than I ever had with the oven method. In the oven, the beans are lying still, which make them unevenly roasted. In the popcorn machine, they are constantly moving by the powerful hot blowing air.

The image above shows the first attempt of roasting. When roasting coffee, the beans release paper thin peels. They are quite tasteless, but why would you want something like that in your coffee? When roasting in the oven, most of the peels stay with the beans, but when popping them in this machine, they are blown away. Where do they go? Luckily enough, they find their place right of the mouthpiece of the popcorn machine (where the popcorns are supposed to go). By placing a little bowl there, they will be easy to get rid of.

This picture shows the result of my third attempt. It is freshly roasted Indian Monsooned Malabar. Best of all is that they taste as good as they look. I have even tried to make some popcorn in this machine, and believe it or not; it works!

Welcome home, my dear Polaris! I got this arcade cabinet with marquee and game PCB by a friend (thanks, Tobiase!). It is much of an object for renovation, which is probably one of the reasons he gave it away . However, it will be a fun project, and I’m sure the game will shine like a star when it’s ready.

As mentioned above, I also got the Polaris PCB, an original game by Taito from 1980. Yes, the game is one year older than me! I feel like being its little brother, and I’m perfectly pleased with that. Here follows a photo of the PCB.

Further, I would like to do something to the control panel. The printing is in quite bad shape and it would really need a polish. Do you have any idea how I can fix this? I am prepared to grind it completely clean and repaint it black, if I only find out a way to add the green, blue and white parts to look original. However, I won’t touch it until I’m sure I can make it look perfect.

This weekend, I live in my friends’ apartment, as a company for their cute little pussi. He shows himself being quite interested in my laptop.

Beside his interest for computers, he likes sleeping in bowls and drinking water directly from the tap of the bathtub. Funny little thing. I will have the opportunity to keep him next weekend as well.

My kind friend Kent pointed out that I should switch theme on this site. Well, I said, eventually I will make my own theme, and meanwhile the default will do. He then reminded me of the Beeblebrox Theme that Kent himself is using. That is a really nice one. Ok, I said. I’ll give it a try. And voila! I find it alot nicer than the hard-to-read default theme, and it looks much better with the gallery as well. Thanks Kent, and thanks Thomas Weibel for the Beeblebrox Theme!