The Blog of Lucien Stals

acain has had his entire blog deleted, and some very evil stuff was uploaded to the blogs. I thought we had taken care of this, but …

So it’s time for an upgrade.

May the gods of linux shell scripting have mercy on me.

Australian Computing Society. So I went to their web site, and the first thing I notice is how abominably slow it is. And poorly layed out. And ugly. And dificult to navigate.

So I finaly find a link that goes to the online application section, and what do I get?

An exception occurred when executing a Com method.
 
The cause of this exception was that: AutomationException: 0×800a0046 - Permission denied in ‘Microsoft JScript runtime error’.
 
The error occurred in E:Inetpubsvc031ApplicationFormdsp_editMemberApplication.cfm: line 115
 
Called from E:Inetpubsvc031ApplicationFormdsp_editMemberApplication.cfm: line 110
 
Called from E:Inetpubsvc031ApplicationFormdsp_edit!
MemberApplication.cfm: line 1
 
Called from E:Inetpubsvc031ApplicationFormdsp_editMemberApplication.cfm: line 115
 
Called from E:Inetpubsvc031ApplicationFormdsp_editMemberApplication.cfm: line 110
 
Called from E:Inetpubsvc031ApplicationFormdsp_editMemberApplication.cfm: line 1
 
113 :
 
114 : 		<!— Logon —>
 
115 : 		session.pXen.sPasswordList,session.pXen.sPrimaryServer,session.pXen.sDatabase,session.pXen.sContext,session.pXen.sContextDesc,‘’)&gt;
 
116 :
 
117 : 		<!— Create views —>
 
——————————————————————————–
 
Please try the following:
 
Check the ColdFusion documentation to verify that you are using the correct syntax.
 
Search the Knowledge Base to find a solution to your proble!
m.
 
Browser   Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0;
Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
 
Remote Address   58.104.45.243
 
Referrer   https://www.acs.org.au/applicationform/index.cfm?attributes.fuseaction=initialpage
 
Date/Time   05-Dec-05 03:29 PM
 
Stack Trace (click to expand)
 
at cfdsp_editMemberApplication2ecfm979747104._factor2(E:Inetpubsvc031ApplicationFormdsp_editMemberApplication.cfm:115) at cfdsp_editMemberApplication2ecfm979747104._factor8(E:Inetpubsvc031ApplicationFormdsp_editMemberApplication.cfm:110) at cfdsp_editMemberApplication2ecfm979747104.runPage(E:Inetpubsvc031ApplicationFormdsp_editMemberApplication.cfm:1) at cfdsp_editMemberApplication2ecfm979747104._factor2(E:Inetpubsvc031ApplicationFormdsp_editMemberApplication.cfm:115) at cfdsp_editMemberApplication2ecfm979747104._factor8(E:Inetpubsvc031ApplicationFormdsp_editMemberApplication.cfm:110) at cfdsp_editMemberApplication2ecfm979747104.runPage(E:Inetpubsvc0!
31ApplicationFormdsp_editMemberApplication.cfm:1)
 
AutomationException: 0×800a0046 - Permission denied in ‘Microsoft JScript runtime error’
 
…
 
at jrunx.scheduler.ThreadPool$UpstreamMetrics.invokeRunnable(ThreadPool.java:294)
 
at jrunx.scheduler.WorkerThread.run(WorkerThread.java:66)

And these are the guys we are supposed to look up to? They can’t even keep their own web site from falling over. And when it does, it gives the world a lovely stack trace!? What standards do they work to?

Not happy, Jan

Ubuntu on my home system. Now I have a dual boot, WinXP/Linux (Ubuntu) system.

Since installing the new HD, and installing WinXP on it, the old HD (60gb worth) was sitting idle. Now it has a new life

The Ubuntu installer is nice. One disk, as most of the files are archived. But there wasn’t any hitches, which makes a nice change. IT downloaded quite a few files on the first reboot as part of the installation, and just now when I started it up, it downloaded a further 40meg of updates. But it’s all gone smoothly.

I guess since I was always using my crappy old AMD450 laptop without a monitor (so I use an old external 800×600 CRT) to install various Linux distros before, it’s not a fair comparison. Running on my 1.2ghz celeron with the 20″ wide screen monitor makes a HUGE difference. Getting it to recognise the monitor!
was a small issue as it defaulted to 800×600. Very uggly on a monitor designed to run at 1680×1050. But once I found how to run the config thingie, it all fell into place. It doesn’t seem to do quite as nice a job of font smoothing as WinXP does, but it’s still very good.

The OpenOffice.org apps it comes with seem to work well, but I still have a lot of playing around to do before I can say too much about the system.

It’s just nice to have Linux running on a decent system.

(This is the last chapter in the Project Mayhem saga)

Star Wrek, In The Pirkinning) was very cool. Hats off to the team that put it together.

The quiz appears to have been a success, and three people walked away with new iPod shuffles (1GB). Sorry to have been so coy about the prizes, but I wanted to be sure we had the things before making any promises. They came out of the ByteClub budget, but the purchase still had to be approved. Thankfully, our Dean, Doug Grant, was happy to say yes!

Thanks also to the two who put it on the line and performed wonderful Monty Python skits for us. The competition was too tight to call, so the third and final iPod was settled by a paper, rock, scissors showdown.

Since I will no longer be working at Swinburne (once my current contract runs out on the 16th of December. Gota love contract work), I may not be around much to help look after ByteClub. I now join the ranks of the Alumni. Andrew, Raj and Clinton all said they would do what they could to keep the flag flying, and I hope that all you ByteClub members will do the same. I’d hate to see this thing fizzle

But I do intend to keep blogging!

The decision was made today to shut down the old forum. Doesn’t look like anyone has used it in a long time, and all the activity seems to happen in the blogs these days anyway. As per Russell’s suggestion, I won’t delete it, but I will render it inactive and remove the link from the site.

Hopefully, if I get time before I leave, I’ll look into upgrading the blogging engine to WordpressMU. This should give everyone a nice new, feature rich, blogging environment to play in, and make maintenance easier

Finally, just in case anyone is curious, here are the questions used in the quiz today:

(Round 1)

1) What is Steve Jobs first name?

2) What computer company is Steve CEO, and co-founder of?

3) Who was the other co-founder?

4) What is Steve’s (official) annual Salary?

5) Who is the chairman of Microsoft?

6) What is Bill Gates full name?

7) What is Bills annual salary?

8) What letter comes next in the sequence “QWERT”?

9) What is “The prime directive”?

10) How much memory does a Commodore 64 have?

(Round 2)

11) Who is Capt’n Crunch?

12) How did Capt’n Crunch get his name?

13) How much memory does Tyler have?

14) How many bytes in a kilobyte?

15) How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?

16) What number comes next in the sequence “1, 2, 3, 5, 7”

17) How many types of people are there in the world?

18) What does the T stand for in the name “James T. Kirk”?

19) Who is Linus Torvalds?

20) What are the three primary colours?

21) How many books are there in the Hitchhikers trilogy? And what are their names?

(Round 3)

22) What are “Metaclorians”?

23) How many Microsoft programmers does it take to change a light bulb?

24) Who is credited as being the world first computer programmer?

25) What number comes next in the following sequence “1, 2, 3, 5, 8”

26) What does TARDIS stand for?

27) What does PHP stand for?

28) What does LAMP stand for?

29) What is the first rule of ByteClub?

30) What is the flight velocity of an unladen swallow?

(Solutions on request)

Good night, and thanks for all the fish.