Nintendo SDHC Support

If you have a networked Wii, check your mail today. Nintendo has just released an update that supports SDHC cards in various parts of the Wii Menu and applications.

Amazon has SDHC cards ranging from 4GB to 32GB.

This should come as welcome news to those that have been worried about the lack of storage on the Wii. The support for these cards and ability to play downloaded games off the card will expand the market for downloadable Wii Games. How ever it appears there is a limit in that you need to have free space on the internal Memory.

(Note that when launching games or channels from an SD card, an equivalent amount of internal Wii memory is required. To clear space from the internal memory, users can transfer games or channels from the Wii Menu to the SD card).

Here is the Nintendo press release.

Subversion Repository Script on Mac OS

Following the instructions from Apple Developer Center in this document about Subversion with Xcode 3. I wrote the following shell script to simplify my steps in creating a repository. I caution you that is does MINIMAL error checking.

#!/bin/sh
# Check if SVN_REPOSITORY is set
if [ "$SVN_REPOSITORY-X" == "-X" ]; then
SVN_REPOSITORY="/Library/subversion/repository"
fi

if [ -r /tmp/$1 ]; then
echo "/tmp/$1 exists - exiting";
exit;
fi

echo "Creating repository for $1"
svnadmin create $SVN_REPOSITORY/$1
mkdir -p /tmp/$1/trunk /tmp/$1/branches /tmp/$1/tags
svn import /tmp/$1 file:///$SVN_REPOSITORY/$1 -m "Project Create"

echo "Created $1 - cleaning up"
rm -rf /tmp/$1

chown -R www:admin $SVN_REPOSITORY
chmod -R ug+rwX,o= $SVN_REPOSITORY

I placed in in /usr/local/bin/, so that it would be in my path on the Mac command line. You can set the environment variable SVN_REPOSITORY to your repository location or it assumes the spot I used, /Library/subversion/repository.

Dell Mini 9 Hackintosh

This Dell Mini 9 Hackintosh video from Andy Ihnatko on Vimeo is really cool. If you have 9.5 minutes to spend looking at cool technology today, it should be spent watching this video. I just wish the Mini 9 had at least 40GB of storage. Maybe with a SD SDHC card I could could have the space I need for my purposes.

Memory options for New Mini

I got the following from the support folks at OWC today. I have yet to get my hands on the new mini to try it out. But this should help with those thinking of upgrading the memory themselves.

If you have one 1GB RAM module pre-existing in your mini, you could install a 2GB module in order for the machine to recognize 3GBs. However, the mini MUST be a Core 2 Duo. If not, the mini will only recognize 2GB. On a side note, if you have a Core 2 Duo mini, you may install 4GB (2GBx2) to take advantage of the dual channel architecture (promoting faster data thorough put and increased machine speed and efficiency).

OWC has their memory pricing page. Amazon also sells memory for these systems.

Coding and Sys Admin Posts

This post is here to capture the list of coding tricks or Sys-Admin approaches that have been posted to this blog in the past.

• Linux Swap Files
• Connecting AWS VPCs across regions
• Finding the Size of your MySQL Database
• Fixing ^M in text files using VIM
• Getting to Plugins on Chrome 
• Undock and Hibernating in Windows 7
• Compressing or Removing Old Log Files
• Tuning Eclipse IDE performance on OS X
• Browsing MySQL tables from the command line
• Explaining the "Cannot use object as a parameter to a method." error in Xcode.
• Migrating Subversion Repositories
• Creating users in MySQL
• Script for creating subversion repository on Mac OS X
• Removing Shared Memory Segments on Solaris
• Rows Returned from JBDC - setMaxRows and setFetchSize
• Using cronolog with Apache mod_jk
• Java command line options for Garbage Collection Logs
• Where to change the IP address on RedHat Enterprise Linux Servers
• Link to Sun's Archive of old Java Versions
• Search and Replace in vi
• Finding how much memory is installed on a Solaris 10 server
• Building a Ministack

Larry Brilliant in Forbes

Forbes has an article about Larry Brilliant and Google.org. Larry has appeared in a few TEDTalks, which is apparently how he got the job at Google. He has quiet a history and the article covers just what you do after ridding the world of smallpox. That is a tuff act to top in his future endeavors, but he might have the plan to beat a bird flu pandemic using search engines, news paper crawlers, and social networks.

Making money from fools gold in Solar?

Popular Mechanics has an article about photovoltaic solar panel prices dropping below $1 Watt. While good news they look at the raw materials required to manufacture the panels and conclude that looking for less efficient, but more abundant and easier to process materials is the key to success.

... Wadia and his colleagues found that iron pyrite—better known as fool's gold—was several orders of magnitude better than any of the alternatives, based on both cost and abundance. Copper sulfide and copper oxide were also attractive candidates. The problem with these materials is that they're less efficient in converting the sun's rays to electricity, and as a result have been the focus of considerably less research.

I personally take the view that photovoltaic is a solution for small private installations. Larger solar power production efforts will probably succeed on concentrating solar thermal approaches. Popular Mechanics also has an article on solar thermal technology.

On a crisp morning this past January, Andraka and his colleagues fired up Dish No. 3. The temperature was around freezing, and the sky was 8 percent brighter than average—the contrast between the cold air and the hot sun helps the engine run more efficiently. When power began to flow from the 25-kilowatt system, it did so with the highest conversion efficiency ever recorded in a commercial solar device: 31.25 percent of the energy shining onto the giant dish flowed into the grid.

For more information visit Wikipedia.