Mission STS-118 Canadian Patch Design Contest

Posted on by
Reply

McGill University announced a pretty unique contest for the student body today: designing a commemorative patch that will be worn by the Canadian astronaut on Mission STS-118 to the International Space Station in June of 2007.

McGill and the Canadian Space Agency are proud to announce the launch of the Mission STS-118 Canadian Patch Design Contest. The winner will have the unique experience of seeing their design chosen for Dr Williams‘ uniform, AND will be invited to attend the launch of mission STS-118 in the Mission Control Room at the Canadian Space Agency.

Having a bad tech weekend…

Posted on by
Reply

I started on a quest to install Linux PPC on my older iBook G3 yesterday. I wanted to try and breathe some productivity back into it, as Apple has been phasing out G3 support over the last few years. But I’m not having too much luck so far…

I first installed Fedora Core 6 PPC, which all seemed fine until I tried to put the laptop to sleep. The whole thing crashed on wake up, and corrupted GNOME so bad, for all users, that I was unable to recover from it, even after rebooting…

Fedora Core 6 error when waking the G3 iBook from sleep
Not being in the mood to troubleshoot the thing, I decided to give a try to Ubuntu Desktop 6.10 PPC instead. Again, the install went fine, and sleep was working this time, but then I was quickly remembered why I stuck to a server environment when running Linux PPC in the past: no flash, no easy way to play video (vlc, mplayer, xine, ffmpeg, etc all crashed), no java, no wpa wireless security protocol setup by default, etc.

Aaaaaaaargh! I’ve had enough of that for one weekend… And it’s not for lack of trying, as I’ve probably spent more than 12 hours giving it all a fair try. But not being the type to just give up completely, I’m getting the FC6 PPC DVD at work as we speak, and I’ll try again next week. Knowing Linux, there are probably solutions to most of my problems.

We shall see.

Sony OtherOS Installer for Sony PlayStation 3 Released

Posted on by
3


Last saturday, I posted about Terra Soft releasing Yellow Dog Linux 5 for the PS3 on November 27th. And earlier this week, the Fedora developers tried to one-up them by releasing an add-on disc for FC5 PPC (which YDL is based on) to install the original distribution on one’s shiny new console.

Today, the very much anticipated Sony OtherOS Installer was also made available for download, unleashing the final key to enabling anyone to easily turn the powerful game console into a full blown computer.

It is advised to use the FC5 PPC DVD, rather than CD set, to proceed with this installation:

For more details, the Quick Journal team has a couple of nice articles on how to boot and install GNU/Linux on the PlayStation 3.

I would still imagine, though, that Terra Soft will probably remain the leader in Linux for the Power Architecture, all the more in the enterprise market, given the type of resources they have to support their distribution: dedicated team, first Cell-based supercomputer, IBM and Sony backing, etc.

But for many, you can’t be early and free! :)

Update: Someone has now posted a video of Fedora Core 5 running on a PS3 on YoutTube.

Our secret spot no more…

Posted on by
Reply

My family, Vieux-Boucau, Dec. 2004

I was browsing through The Channel Channel‘s 10 seconds video previews in the open source Democracy Internet TV Platform last night, when I stumbled on a podcast from the French region I am originally from: Les Landes.

I don’t think it could have hit any closer to home for me, since the subject matter is surfing (surfboard). It features the beaches I spent my childhood on, learning to ride those very waves with any board I could lay my hands on (surf, bodyboard, sometime without), before I left France when I was twelve. From Arcachon to Hendaye , and everything in between.

The video embedded below, shot by Julien Salomon, features pro and local surfers at La Gravière (gravel quarry) between Hossegor and Vieux-Boucau. This amazing beach used to be The secret spot only locals knew when I was a kid (80’s). Needless to say, such is not the case any longer, despite the fact that it takes 15-20 minutes on a sand trail through the forest to get to this little piece of heaven.

Anecdote: The wave seen in my blog‘s header (logo background) was actually shot in Capbreton, which in only separated from Hossegor by a canal and marina. The lighthouses seen in the background of the last few frames of the video clip stand at the end of the said canal, guiding ships into port.

And if more than 250 km (155 miles) of white sand beaches and Europe’s largest pine forests are not enough to get your mojo going, the Pyrénées are only an hour drive away, for World class hiking trails and ski/snowboard resorts.

Exactly the kind of reminder I needed to prepare myself for the loooooong Montreal winter… NOT! ;)