Sunday, January 30, 2011

Gandalf Vs Dumbledore: The Great Debate (Warning: Strong Language!)

Hello folks!

Read this the other day on the wonderfully funny Failbook and just thought it was too funny not to share. I paraphrased it slightly, but you can find the original post here. Special thanks to the fellow with the Batman(?) avatar.

Warning: Strong language!


































You have been warned.


Gandalf Vs Dumbledore

Lemme break it down for you. Dumbledore is pretty sweet. he runs a school where all sorts of crazy shit goes down. He has a bird that spontaneously com-busts and a pretty sweet office. Oh and he dies helping to save the world. No doubting: Dumbledore is pretty bad ass.

But then there's Gandalf

First, he finds the root of all evil, and lays out a plan to save the world. When he gets shit on by his buddy Saruman, he escapes by TALKING TO A MOTH, so that the moth can go get his buddy A GIANT FUCKING EAGLE to fly him off the roof of Saruman's tower. Then he hooks back up with Frodo and the gang. But wait, HE DIES. It is important to note however that he dies FIGHTING A GIANT FLAME DAEMON with a MOTHERFUCKING WHIP. Now, normally, dying would be a problem for most people.

FUCK THAT.

Gandalf just shrugs it off LIKE A BOSS and comes back to finish what he started. He also decided to update his wardrobe with some pimpin' white robes. Now fully pimped out, he tells everybody the plan then dips for a minute to handle some shit elsewhere, cause that's how Gandalf motherfucking rolls.

Then right when shit starts hitting the fan at Helm's Deep, he shows up WITH A GIANT FUCKING ARMY. Oh, and did I mention he shows up on the KING OF HORSES....RIDING BAREBACK?!?! So, not only does Gandalf have figurative balls of steel, he undoubtedly has ACTUAL BALLS OF STEEL.

Finally, after cleaning shit up at Minas Tirith, he peaces out and lets all the hobbits and humans enjoy a world PURGED OF ALL EVIL.

So, to recap,

Dumbledore: mentors the younger generation, sacrifices his live for the greater good.

Gandalf: Talks to animals, gives death the middle finger, constantly saves everybody else's ass, and then when it's all said and done, just leaves everyone else with all the spoils of war.

Gandalf WINS.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

LIRC module disable by update

Good evening everyone,

The other day I ran my system updates and one of the packages that got updated was a package called "lirc-modules-source".

Unfortunately, as a result of this update, my remote control and IR blaster was disabled.

Apparently, the kernel module I used for my infrared equipment, lirc_zilog, was removed in the update. The source file for the module was still available, but all traces of the *.ko weren't to be found.

In addition, I could no longer build the kernel module due to some changes in the newest Ubuntu version. I still intend to do some more research on *why* the update removed the module, but fortunately due to a very helpful blogger I found a very simple set of instructions to repair it:

* sudo bash
* apt-get remove lirc-modules-source
* rm -rf /usr/src/lirc-0.8.6/
* apt-get install lirc-modules-source
* cd /usr/src/lirc-0.8.6
* wget http://bobkmertz.com/blog-files/zilog-for-lucid.diff
* patch -p0 < zilog-for-lucid.diff
* dpkg-reconfigure lirc-modules-source

The last step will build the source and install the *.ko files. The original blog post can be found here with some more information, or if you are still having trouble: http://notepad.bobkmertz.com/2010/06/pvr-150-ir-blaster-on-mythbuntu-1004.html

I did this successfully on my HVR-1600 running regular Ubuntu 10.04. Full LIRC support returned after I modprobe'd the driver.

Otherwise, my MythTV-based DVR continues to work wonderfully. I'm making great progress on my complementary auto startup and shutdown problems I'm developing and will hopefully post them on line when they are complete. In the meantime, just wanted to pass along this info in case someone runs into similar issues! And also, it's a good idea to do a quick review of the system updates before you install them.

Protip: If you do see wonky behavior from any of your software after an update, you can review what packagers were recently updated with Synaptic. Just launch Synaptic and go to File->History and check the logs. This is how I ultimately deduced the culprit to the missing LIRC behavior.

All the best!