jcm's blog

[ from the work-time dept. ]

Regular viewing time once more, as the “holiday” draws to a close, and I contemplate another term in Nottingham. Fortunately, my undergraduate days are numbered and I can begin contemplating life beyond.

I would really like my American interests to continue and perhaps lead to a job over there, at least for a while, if not for longer. In any case, the Genesis scheduler must be written this month so as to have some code for February.

I wish my regular readers a productive and enjoyable 2003.

Jon.

[ from the and-today's-playlist-is dept. ]

So today I am listening to:

Flash Dance…What A Feeling

Jay Semko – Due South

Charlotte Church – The Water Is Wide

Culture Club – Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?

Mozart – Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

Ravel – Bolero

Yanni – Aria

Yanni – Desire

Yanni – The Magus

Handel – Water Music

Girls Aloud – Sound Of The Underground

A-Ha – Take On Me (Superior Techno Remix) (Of Course!)

Badly Drawn Boy – You Were Right

Puddle Of Mudd – She Hates Me

Sugar Babes – Round Round (aka “The Scheduling Song”)

Sophie Ellis Bextor – Music Gets The Best Of Me

Enrique Iglesias – Hero

Also a little Rammstein and Tenacious D though Avril Lavigne may make an appearance later on The two aforementioned artist’s albums are pretty damn good as playlists generally.

Jon.

[ from the do-not-fear-voices dept. ]

I should be able to get hold of a Checked W2K SP3 build next week or so and then with a running Visual C++ environment I can have a go at some NT driver hacking. I have been reading Windows NT Magazine articles and have to admit to it being compulsive reading.

Linux User & Developer is now on sale in such places as W H Smith and I enjoyed once again being on the news stand this month. I wrote about Windows 2000->Samba migration and Powerbook Debian. I am hard at work on some more reviews at the moment.

I am trying to describe my scheduling ideas in some cohesive form for my project – most other Operating Systems have relatively primative Round Robin or Priority Based Scheduling environments and I do not think I can necessarily take these on now however I equally want to have a go. It is likely that I will support several varied scheduling environments eventually. Microsoft Research’s “Vassal” (loadable “modular” support for NT – sounds painful) scheduling kludge sounds like a really nasty hack but kudos to them. It [[UPDATED: refers to the Windows NT scheduler] all stems from a general trend to support the best environment for SQL server. Back to work now.

Jon.

[ from the just-for-fun-stuff dept. ]

I am planning to build an Amoeba cluster in Nottingham this coming term. Amoeba is a distrbiuted cluster based (Microkernel core) Operating System written by Professor Andrew Tanenbaum et al. For more information please see Amoeba WWW Home Page.

Typical requirements are for a minimum of 5 machines and this is my goal. IPC/IPX and SPARCstations will be used in this implementation.

I also plan to install a ChorusOS system (see also Sun Microsystem’s Laboratories Experimental Stuff Site) now that Sun Microsystems have released the code. I still do not know what is happening about Solaris source going online. Anyone? What happened to it [the Solaris Source Foundation Programme (or whatever it was/is called)]?

My research now concerns Amoeba, ChorusOS, HURD, Linux, Mach, Minix and Sartoris. A few others of lesser concern such as Windows NT are in there too. I will update project progress in the next few weeks.

Jon.

[ from the have-you-updated-your-diary-yet? dept. ]

The diary died for a few days again due to neglect. I went to G2002 last week, which though smaller was more fun, probably partly due to the size and also that I went in a group with Ben, Johannes, Hussein and Paul. Sleeping in a bunk was fun – as was the M25 in a large volvo stuffed with computer kit. I would guess the little incident hooking up Johannes’ computer to my UPS by the side of a random road in Harrow and that the whole bunker compound was running off generators after the first day (National Grid link went down or something) will be particularly rememberable.

I have completed an initial design for my Genesis Microkernel project. While hoping not to re-invent Minix it does follow a similar approach at the moment (small central schedular using message passing). I have functional units devised and a work plan for development so do look out for further updates. I am hoping to get some more IPCs and set up an Amoeba cluster after Christmas – it is a shame Nottingham do not do this kind of thing in house but I can at least do it in mine!

Happy festivities to everyone and now I shall continue with the contracting I have been doing for the last week and a bit for a few days until Christmas and then take a week off for academic work and other things. The US trip needs to be sorted soon but I think that will be March or so now.

Jon.

[ from the weird-huh dept. ]

Well, I am 21 today. This will be the last socially important birthday until 30 and then it’s all down hill or something…if you believe that.

As I said, I am not celebrating today particularly however I may find a quiet corner in a pub tonight for a brief drink. Tomorrow my project interim report is due in and then I have to travel to Reading as I start work in Oxfordshire on Thursday morning – then on Friday after work I will be travelling back to Nottingham The weekend will be G2002…done.

Jon.

P.S. The gym was fun last night.

[ from the please-regard-as-such dept. ]

My 21st Birthday, which is due tomorrow, clashes with too many other ongoing and urgent activities such as interim project reports and professional commitments. Therefore I have postponed celebration until Thursday or Friday. This both suits me better but also most fellow students and other friends. I will try to arrange a little gathering at some point in the next week or so for those who would like to join me for a drink.

Jon.