Posts from December 2011

by not wasting food, but we definitely can make small positive individual contributions to bringing down the staggering proportion of food that is wasted in America, in particular.

I stumbled upon this site: (wastedfood.com) and the statistics are shocking... till you think back to the time you wasted food. It was probably waste that was entirely avoidable by a few wise measures such as:

1. not buying more food than you can eat or store properly.
2. realizing the practical limitations of storage in your kitchen and fridge
3. following a simple weekly schedule and fridge/pantry accounting plan to finish the older food before you go and get a newer version of the same food.
4. having a good idea of what is in your fridge and on your kitchen and pantry shelves so you are not always in doubt at the grocery store. If it helps, take a weekly picture of your fridge shelves and kitchen shelves before you go grocery shopping. (Oh yeah, don't forget to replace these pictures with new ones every week.)
5. (if memory is still fickle, maybe use small post it notes ON the fridge with days and dates by which specific food must be consumed.)
6. checking all stored (even supposedly non-perishables) for infestation and mold every fortnight.
7. storing nuts, grains, beans and lentils in PLAIN sight or in airtight containers in the freezer
8. researching proper storage techniques for all kinds of food and religiously sticking to best practices of storage for various kinds of food,
9. giving away the food you know you are going to waste to people who will eat them!
10. and again, making a pledge to not buy more than you will use in a practical span of time,

More nifty tips about how not to waste food are here at this and this

It breaks my heart every time I have to throw out something because I have forgotten to follow even just one of these guidelines.

for that one woman in the corner, don't you think?

Christmas should be called Consumermas.

I still can't get over the weirdness of people demanding random things from other people in their lives for the birthday of some random bloke from waaaay back that most of them don't emulate in real life and worse, don't even identify with.

When did shameless extortion get associated with a religious icon's birthday? Why not just call it what it is and not candy coat the entire extortion cycle in some pretentious gift-wrap of religion (that most are actually leery about)?

What I find even more laughable is people who place seemingly "reasonable" things on their extortion list. As if it is okay to extort "gifts" if it is some "reasonable" thing.

I am an outside observer but I find the whole culture of extortion and consumerism surrounding one's own birthday and the birthday of some centuries old hippie as extremely weird and venal.

Super easy sprouts sauté.


The toughest part is perhaps waiting for the mung beans to sprout. This is 2 days growth.

Heat a pan on high medium.
Drop in a tbsp of olive oil and swirl it around.
Add chopped ginger, red hot chillies and jalapenõs.
Add cumin seeds
Sauté for 20-30 seconds
Add sprouts.
Sauté for 2-3 mins or so.
Add chopped green and red bell peppers.
Sauté till crisp tender.
Add salt and chopped coriander leaves (cilantro) halfway through.

Garnish with finely chopped raw red onions, lemon juice and Haldiram Bhujia! Serve hot.

Take a look, @metalpeter:
[flv]1211/dragdropestrip.flv[/flv]
I just noticed that I don't drop the image when there is a + symbol. I drop it when there isn't any and it is just an empty box. Sorry about that oversight. I guess I wasn't paying attention.

And this is the result:


Can you replicate these steps? I captured the screencast using ScreenCast-O-matic .

It takes 2 minutes or forever in internet-time-units for e-strip and gmail to load in Firefox. I have to stare at this appalling animation all the time.


Granted, I don't have a fast connection but 2 whole minutes?? 2 Freaking MINUTES!??? I have never seen this incomplete phase of the (e:strip) homepage in the past couple years.

The last time I remember seeing it was in... Firefox. before I ditched it. There was a reason I hated you so much. This is it. You are a slow monster.

I booted up chrome at the same time and gmail and estrip loaded instantly, even though I emptied the cache before. (i.e. nothing was pre-loaded in the cache).

With continuing problems on fedora 16 with Google Chrome, I am going to give it one more shot before switching back to fedora 15 by switching my browser to Firefox. Maybe it is the Chrome-Fedora 16 dynamic that is causing all the trouble.

I have not been on Firefox for the past many years. Chrome is my absolute favourite but right now, I am kind of desperate for a system that doesn't keep hanging and crashing on me when I try and write online.

It helps that the firefox homepage is this pretty orange that I love. :)


Let's see how smooth this ride goes...

is to finish and submit my dissertation with help from a untroublesome smooth-performing OS.

:-)

@metalpeter, this is what the song feels like in my heart.
The concept


The rendition.


And that is why I am in love with Michael Bublé's voice. I feel that Justin Bieber could have easily pulled off Bublé's rendition (well, if his voice changes a bit and he gets that deeper tenor/baritone-ish sound) if not for the pop-rot that they loaded that version with. I feel like they took someone with such an awesome singing and musical talent and are doing an equivalent of what-brown's-drugs-did-to-Whitney-Houston's-voice. Only this time it is what-overproduction-and-mindless-pop-did-to-Justin-Bieber's-talent. Choked and drowned it.

Okay. It just happened AGAIN. I could not even use the REISUB even though I have now enabled it on the system. None of the other methods of system rescue that I listed in my earlier post work with Fedora 16 when it freezes.

This is so insane. I don't understand what is so wrong. NEVER has been an OS so crappy as Fedora 16. I am switching. This is eating into my productivity.

Attached is the text file with the log of the "Oops" errors, which will hopefully show up when @paul sees this message.

This is how it all starts:

Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.169994] BUG: soft lockup - CPU#2 stuck for 23s! [kworker/2:2:520]
Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.169999] Modules linked in: ppdev parport_pc lp parport fuse 8021q fcoe libfcoe libfc scsi_transport_fc scsi_tgt garp stp llc nf_conntrack_ipv4 nf_defrag_ipv4 ip6t_REJECT nf_conntrack_ipv6 nf_defrag_ipv6 xt_state nf_conntrack ip6table_filter ip6_tables snd_hda_codec_hdmi snd_hda_codec_realtek snd_hda_intel snd_hda_codec snd_hwdep ir_lirc_codec lirc_dev snd_seq snd_seq_device ir_mce_kbd_decoder rc_rc6_mce ene_ir snd_pcm ir_sony_decoder ir_jvc_decoder snd_timer ir_rc6_decoder ir_rc5_decoder arc4 ir_nec_decoder uvcvideo videodev media rc_core rtl8192ce rtl8192c_common rtlwifi mac80211 wacom cfg80211 iTCO_wdt r8169 snd mii v4l2_compat_ioctl32 sparse_keymap iTCO_vendor_support rfkill jmb38x_ms memstick microcode soundcore snd_page_alloc i2c_i801 joydev uinput sdhci_pci sdhci mmc_core i915 nouveau ttm drm_kms_helper drm i2c_algo_bit i2c_core mxm_wmi wmi video [last unloaded: scsi_wait_scan]
Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.170017] CPU 2 
Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.170017] Modules linked in: ppdev parport_pc lp parport fuse 8021q fcoe libfcoe libfc scsi_transport_fc scsi_tgt garp stp llc nf_conntrack_ipv4 nf_defrag_ipv4 ip6t_REJECT nf_conntrack_ipv6 nf_defrag_ipv6 xt_state nf_conntrack ip6table_filter ip6_tables snd_hda_codec_hdmi snd_hda_codec_realtek snd_hda_intel snd_hda_codec snd_hwdep ir_lirc_codec lirc_dev snd_seq snd_seq_device ir_mce_kbd_decoder rc_rc6_mce ene_ir snd_pcm ir_sony_decoder ir_jvc_decoder snd_timer ir_rc6_decoder ir_rc5_decoder arc4 ir_nec_decoder uvcvideo videodev media rc_core rtl8192ce rtl8192c_common rtlwifi mac80211 wacom cfg80211 iTCO_wdt r8169 snd mii v4l2_compat_ioctl32 sparse_keymap iTCO_vendor_support rfkill jmb38x_ms memstick microcode soundcore snd_page_alloc i2c_i801 joydev uinput sdhci_pci sdhci mmc_core i915 nouveau ttm drm_kms_helper drm i2c_algo_bit i2c_core mxm_wmi wmi video [last unloaded: scsi_wait_scan]
Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.170017] 
Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.170017] Pid: 520, comm: kworker/2:2 Not tainted 3.1.4-1.fc16.x86_64 #1 TOSHIBA Satellite P750/PEQAA
Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.170017] RIP: 0010:[]  [] do_raw_spin_lock+0x21/0x25
Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.170017] RSP: 0018:ffff88022fa83e60  EFLAGS: 00000287
Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.170017] RAX: 0000000000003020 RBX: ffff88021847644a RCX: 0000000000006a1d
Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.170017] RDX: 000000000000301f RSI: ffff880218451ff8 RDI: ffff880218451d74
Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.170017] RBP: ffff88022fa83e60 R08: ffffffff813cfb77 R09: 000000007be27d4a
Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.170017] R10: 000000007be27d4a R11: ffffffff81b5d230 R12: ffff88022fa83dd8
Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.170017] R13: ffffffff814be49e R14: ffff88022fa83e60 R15: ffff880218450540
Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.170017] FS:  0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff88022fa80000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000
Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.170017] CS:  0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 000000008005003b
Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.170017] CR2: 00007f7e8a6d7000 CR3: 0000000001a05000 CR4: 00000000000406e0
Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.170017] DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000
Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.170017] DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000ffff0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400
Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.170017] Process kworker/2:2 (pid: 520, threadinfo ffff88021a3a0000, task ffff88021d9ddcc0)
Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.170017] Stack:
Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.170017]  ffff88022fa83e70 ffffffff814b7216 ffff88022fa83e90 ffffffffa0277866
Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.170017]  ffff880218451ff0 ffff880218451ff8 ffff88022fa83ea0 ffffffffa02793cb
Dec 11 10:57:07 why kernel: [  832.170017]  ffff88022fa83ed0 ffffffff8105cdd3 ffffffff81a040b0 ffffffff81a040b0

[txt]1211/SoftBugFedora16.txt[/txt]

---

Update:
I located this thread on Fedora forum with several people having random freezes on Fedora 16 almost everyday, sometimes multiple times a day, with varied hardware.

In addition, all the system rescue effects including ssh-ing remotely into the system are not working during these freezes. Nothing except a hard boot via the power button rescues the system. This is hardly some random whine isolated just on my laptop.I have added my information to the thread.

There is a bug-report for these odd freezes as well: One of these freezes now has a bugfix in the updates: Going to update my system and see if all this happens again.

EDIT 2:
More updates from the FedoraForum: A couple other users think the wireless module is the problem child.

Also, one of them reviewed my logs and said:

You seem to have rtl driver errors and also some apic timer problems.
Try adding "noapic" option to the kernel command line
Edit /boot/grub2/grub.cfg and put "noapic" you'll see some lines like
linux /boot/vmlinuz-3..... buncha options LAN=en_US-UTF-8 noapic

I am going to try that see if it helps.

REISUB did not work all these days on Fedora 16 because it was not enabled. UGH.

See if it is enabled with
cat /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq

It will give you either 0 or 1.
If it is 0, enable it with:

sudo su
(enter password)
echo 1 > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq

Next time your linux machine with Fedora 16 freezes or misbehaves in general, you are set to use the REISUB weapon.

Alt + PRTSC (or the SYSRQ key) +
R
E
I
S
U
B

-> issued in around 6 seconds with a second in between each alphabet.

Other ways to get around freezes and misbehaviour

• Ctrl+Alt+Backspace: End the X session

• Ctrl+Alt+F1 (or any function key from F2 to F6) followed by
• ps aux or
• top
• find PIDs of processes
• kill processes one by one with their PID
• kill -9 PID-goes-here