Martin Geisler Online

While browsing my photos I suddenly got this nice little message in my Eterm:

Message from syslogd@futtelifut at Mon Oct 17 22:52:10 2005 ...
futtelifut kernel: CPU1: Temperature above threshold
Message from syslogd@futtelifut at Mon Oct 17 22:52:10 2005 ...
futtelifut kernel: CPU0: Temperature above threshold
Message from syslogd@futtelifut at Mon Oct 17 22:52:10 2005 ...
futtelifut kernel: CPU0: Running in modulated clock mode
Message from syslogd@futtelifut at Mon Oct 17 22:52:10 2005 ...
futtelifut kernel: CPU1: Running in modulated clock mode

(My Pentium IV is seen as two processors because of hyperthreading.)

Googling a bit revealed that “modulated clock mode” means that my system currently runs at 50% for up to a millisecond.  After that the temperature is supposed to have dropped to a safe level again.  I’m surprised if the temperature drops so fast that a millisecond is enough, but that’s what it says here :-)

I had my last exam last Friday, so now I’m finally done with the first semester here at the ETH.  Two of the exams were written tests, and the remaining four were oral exams.

The written tests was in OOSC and LBS.  In OOSC we made the Object Spyglass project and then had a 45 minute multiple choice test.  I have not quite made up my mind as to whether or not I like such tests — on one hand you can quickly answer a lot of questions when it’s just a matter of ticking some boxes, but on the other hand it’s very rigid and you cannot really express yourself in such a test.  For the project I got the grade 6 together with Peter Brandt, and for the exam I got 5.75.  Since the project counts 60% my final grade for the course was 6! :-)

The test in LBS was much more like what I’ve had back in Denmark: a two hour written test with lots of varied questions from the entire curriculum.  I got 5.75 for that test which I’m very pleased with since I think the course was interesting.

The oral exams were more different than what I’m used to.  First of all they were shorter: just 15 minutes and without preparation time.  I like exams without preparation time for then you’re tested on what you really know and not on what you can memorize in the preparation time.  It makes the whole exam much more natural and relaxed since you’re basically just talking about the stuff like if you had bumped into a friend in the cafeteria.  I mean — we’re not supposed to have to use 15 minutes to think before we can explain how a quorum system or Shamir secret sharing works.  We’re supposed to have learned that stuff.  Of course one cannot expect you to just remember huge proofs and to recite them of the top of your head — for that it’s very fair to get some preparation time.  But for testing if people actually have learned anything from a course, then I think it’s best to just simply ask them.

With all oral exams you have the little ceremony where you select your questions.  And here at the ETH they all seemed to have their favorite little game for doing this…  At the E-privacy exam the questions were written on some small pieces of paper and I had to choose two (I think).  I don’t remember the questions anymore, but they gave me a 6, so I must have been able to remember both the questions and some suitable answers then…

The PDDBS was more simple: the professor simply asked me about what kinds of partitioning systems we had seen in the lecture, and when we went from there with him picking the questions.  I still haven’t gotten a grade for that exam, but I believe I did well.

At the SS exam Nathalie Weiler took a long time to explain me the system, probably because I was an exchange student and she wanted me to feel comfortable.  I had to pick the area of the first question and then she would ask me something.  After that it went as usual with her asking questions from other parts of the curriculum.  I talked and talked and got a 6, so I must have said something right :-)

My final exam was SFT and Christian Cachin has deviced a cunning system for picking the questions.  First I had to pick three numbers between 1 and 20 (I picked 5, 13, and 17).  Then the surpice came in the form of a secret offset!  Whua! :-)  So in the end I got questions 7, 15, and 19 which now got titles attached to them: Quorum Systems, Secret Sharing, and Broadcast with Byzantine Failures.  But the game wasn’t done by then — I could choose to drop one of them.  So I dropped the third and we could finally get started :-)  For that exam I’m also waiting for my grade.

So now I’m looking forward to next semester.  I still haven’t decided which courses I’m going to take, I’ll have to do that before November 6th.

I’ve just had my exam in Parallel and Distributed Database Systems and I think it went very well.  Except for the beginning where they told me that I basically doesn’t exist — I’m not in their list of students, not in the computer, I’m nowhere…

But they did give me an exam, and then I’ll have to figure out to whom my lecturer can send the grade.  I now have ten days until my next exam, so today (at least) I wont be studying, instead Stéphanie and I will go to Berne to have launch with her parents.

My final three exams for this semester are approaching fast:

• Parallel and Distributed Database Systems: September 30th,
• System Security: October 10th, and
• Security and Fault-tolerance in Distributed Systems: October 14th.

So if you don’t hear from me, then you can assume that I’m busy reading slides or papers for one of the exams…

Hehe, I finally found Captain Blondebeards membership card to the Brimstone Beach Club… and so I could get past the pesky cabaña boy!  But only to find myself confronted with a very hot beach:

Luckily I think I know how to get across — it’s (unfortunately) not the first time I play The Curse of Monkey Island :-)

I would like to give a big thanks to the brilliant guys making the ScummVM engine, allowing me to play the game on Linux!  You’re doing a great job of keeping these old games alive.

So… I’ve finally got a new monitor for my machine!  After reading tons of online reviews I decided for the NEC MultiSync LCD2070NX, a 20″ LCD display with a native resolution of 1600 × 1200 pixels.  Take a look at it:

The monitor comes in two colors: all grey (which they probably call “silver” :-) and black/grey.  Mine is the black/grey one — I don’t know why it was cheaper than the all grey one?

I picked it up at Digitec Friday afternoon and hurried home as fast as I could! Connecting it was easy and after adjusting my X server I got a nice, crystal-clear image with 1600 × 1200 pixels running at 71 Hz.  The new display is increadibly sharp compared to my aging PHILIPS 201P (which I bought in August 2000).  It is actually almost too sharp, at least that was what I thought at first, but now I’m getting used to it! :-)

Since this is my first LCD monitor I had been reading a lot of reviews and tests online.  Finding such tests proved more difficult that one would expect because of all the idiotic price comparison sites out there.  They all write something like “Prices and reviews for ⟨product⟩ at ⟨site⟩”, meaning that Google will list them first when you search for the product number together with words like “review” or “test”.  The problem is that these sites almost always lie by claiming to have reviews but in reality there are none.

Searching the newsgroups was more effective, as was searching specific sites such as Anandtech and Tom’s Hardware Guide, so in the end I did find some reviews.  Reading through the reviews for big LCDs was strange: there always seemed to be something wrong with them!  They would either be too slow for gaming (not a concern for me) and movies (a bigger concern for me, especially since we’re using my computer as our TV), or they would have poor colors / contrast / brightness!  Reading the very comprehensive Contemporary LCD Monitor Parameters and Characteristics guide at X-bit didn’t really help: it explains how the characteristics of LCD panels are much worse than what we’re used to from good old CRT monitors, and how the manufactures constantly try to make their products look better by inflating the specifications.  Sigh!

But since I couldn’t keep using my computer through an SSH connection from Stéphanie’s laptop I bought one anyways :-)  And I’m very pleased with it! I’ve checked it for dead pixels with some online test images and I haven’t found any — all 1.92 million pixels (5.76 million subpixels) seems to be in order!  The image is — as already mentioned :-) — very sharp, and that is with a normal VGA cable, not DVI.  The credit (once again) for this goes to Matrox for making the amazing G400 graphics card!  I’ve had it for almost five years now and it’s still one of the best for 2D graphics: fanless (a must!) and sharp.

One day I’ll probably upgrade to a G550 Dual-DVI or something similar to get DVI output, but it will only be if the G400 burns out or I buy a second monitor… for now what I have it just great!

I was sitting quietly playing The Curse of Monkey Island when the screen went completely blank… At first I thought it was the DPMS kicking in, that it had somehow managed to ignore my mouse movements.  I pressed ⟨shift⟩ a couple of times but it didn’t help; I pressed ⟨Ctrl⟩-⟨Alt⟩-⟨F1⟩ to switch to the console, but it didn’t help.

Going back to my X server I restarted it (⟨Ctrl⟩-⟨Alt⟩-⟨Backspace⟩) but even that didn’t bring back the display.  It killed all my open programs, and stopped the game music, confirming that the rest of the computer was operating normally.

Using Stéphanie’s laptop I was able to SSH into my box and reboot it — the machine came up fine, but still with no image on my monitor.  I then connected the laptop directly to the monitor, but that didn’t change anything. So it’s not a problem with my trusty old Matrox G400.

The monitor seems to be reacting to keypresses on the front of it and to sleep commands sent to it: the little diode switches from green to orange as usual and the monitor makes its normal sounds (a somewhat loud “boing”-sound when being awaken and a mild “static”-sound when going to sleep).

I’ve tried to let the monitor cool down a bit by having it turned off for half an hour, but like everything else that didn’t help either?  Does anybody have any good ideas?  I guess I should try replacing the BNC cable with a regular monitor cable, but how should such a cable become corrupt from one moment to another?!

It’s a real shame if it’s really broke — I really liked it in the five years I’ve had it.

Yesterday and today it’s been sunny all day with temperatures of over 30° C! How very strange — I had just gotten used to rainy weather, but then the sun comes back.

I hope the good weather will help clear up the remaining flooded areas here in Switzerland. I read in the 20 Minuten newspaper (ugh… they have way too many ads on their page!) that the Thun sea had finally reached a level below the so-called “damage level”.  I assume this means that the sea is no longer flooding the area.  A week ago the water reached a level of 70 cm over the damage level…

Here in Buchs, Aargau there’s no water in sight but all over the south and western parts of Switzerland they have all the water they need — and then some…

This morning Stéphanie told me that the Thun sea 70 cm over the “damage level”, and that she wouldn’t be able to go the direct way with train from Brig to Berne (and from there onto Aarau).  I assume that the “damage level” is the highest level is can reach before flowing into the surrounding areas?

There is an alternative (about two hour longer) route going over Lausanne but the SBB are urging people to stay put and not travel around the country unless necessary.  So she’ll wait in Wallis for now.  It’s good that she’s going by train and not by car — just look at this image:

Flodding is an almost unknown concept for us Danes, but the Swiss is not so fortunate: parts of Berne as well as large areas around Lucerne are flooded!  As far as I’ve understood it, then it started at some point last night when some of the rivers in central Switzerland could no longer handle the heavy rain we’ve been having the last couple of days.  The rain will go East in the next days, but until it’s gone people are still fighting the water.

I’ve taken some screenshots from my tv-card — it’s incredibly how much debris the water can pull along on its way. The first picture below is from Berne.  It’s very strange for me to see the streets in Berne like that, for I’ve been on some of them…

Stéphanie is down in Wallis right now with her parents, and she has to stay there for an unknown while since the trains no longer run between Brig and Aarau.  I wonder how long it will take before the water is gone and the trains can resume? And if the tracks still are where they were before?