Guðmundur Bjarni

Video

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 01:33:33 +0100

pitchfork: St. Vincent performs the title track from Strange...

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 22:19:29 +0100

pitchfork:

St. Vincent performs the title track from Strange Mercy as part of her new 4AD Session.

markvelasquez: Living close to the ocean my whole life, I’ve...

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 20:49:47 +0200

markvelasquez:

Living close to the ocean my whole life, I’ve known people who have lived in constant fear of sharks. Chill out people. There are far more important things to be freaked out about, like why Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian are respected by millions. That’s what makes me cry myself to sleep every night.

Behavior of words

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 01:51:10 +0200

Behavior of words:

bobulate:

Linguists and lexicographers are turning to a new research area to learn about the behavior of words and the way the language system works — Twitter feeds:

These have the advantage of providing high volumes of very up-to-date examples of language in use. Some of this data is used for what is known as ‘sentiment analysis’, as a way of discovering people’s attitudes on various topics, and tweets have even been used (with some success) to predict the movement of the stock market.

It’s being used for linguistic research as well:

One interesting project is looking at differences in language use between men and women. By analysing millions of Twitter messages where the writer can be reliably categorised as male or female, the researchers are able to compare the way particular words or phrases are used. They have produced a website where you can key in words and compare their frequency according to the gender of the writer. Try looking, for example, at these four words of enthusiastic approval, to see which are used more by women and which are favoured by men: lovely, great, brilliant, fabulous.

Head over to do some comparisons, and don’t miss the hourly differences.

pitchfork: Bon Iver: ”Holocene” [Director: Nabil Elderkin]

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:46:35 +0200

pitchfork:

Bon Iver: ”Holocene” [Director: Nabil Elderkin]

engineering: This is a VT220 serial console (circa 1983) set up...

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 02:21:57 +0200

engineering:

This is a VT220 serial console (circa 1983) set up as a terminal for my Mac Pro (circa 2010), a nerdy dream I’ve had for a long time that I finally made a reality yesterday.

Some quick history: in the early days of office computers, it was rare that you would actually have one on your desk. Instead there might be a central mainframe (running Unix) and everyone would have a terminal that connected to it over a long serial cable or modem connection. One computer, many users.

The terminal has a keyboard and monitor, but it’s not a full computer and worthless without the mainframe. It’s more like a teletype machine, all it can do is display the text sent to it (like a paperless printer) and send text back. It doesn’t have any knowledge of pixels or colors or graphics of any kind.

In modern times we don’t have mainframes anymore, but Unix is more prevalent than ever. It runs on the servers delivering this page and the iPhone in your pocket. For developers and power users the command line has never gone away, but instead of a dedicated hardware serial console we have Terminal.app (with translucent backgrounds and anti-aliased fonts). The software is just emulating the old hardware, though. The protocols haven’t changed much in 30 years. The Unix underpinnings of OS X still have all the stuff required to use a real serial terminal, it’s just no one actually does it (well, almost no one).

I’ve always thought those old terminals were beautiful, and I’m not the only one—there’s a Mac app called Cathode that does a convincingly wonderful job simulating vintage terminals, using OpenGL to degrade things into a nice analog haze. But it’s not quite the same as the real thing…

Hardware terminals regularly crop up on eBay for around $100. They’re actually still used in a lot of places (old warehouse systems, supermarkets, banks) and there are still companies that support and refurbish them. Back at Vimeo we discovered one abandoned in a server closet when we moved into the office. Finding one isn’t a problem, the main challenge is stringing together the right adapters to use an ancient serial port with modern USB.

My biggest source of information getting this going was Paul Weinstein’s post about setting up an Apple IIc as a terminal for his Mac mini (which is similar, but not quite the same since the IIc still has to emulate the terminal in software). I got the same USB-to-serial adapter, a Keyspan USA-19HS ($27), which has Mac drivers that I can happily confirm work well with 10.7 Lion. I also needed a null modem cable ($7) and 25-pin female/female converter ($4) to connect it to my VT220.

At first I used the same method as Paul to get it working, gluing together the terminal and OS with a utility called screen. As Paul notes, this is less than desirable. It still requires you to open a software terminal to make the connection, and you’re still operating through a layer of emulation. On most Unixes you can simply add a line to /etc/ttys and everything just works via getty, but apparently this has been disabled in OS X since 10.5.

Eventually I found this page, which explains the problem and how to fix it. After adding a line in /etc/gettytab to manually set the terminal type to vt220-8bit everything works perfectly! A real hardware terminal directly connected the old fashioned way, with no emulation. Awesome.

If this is something you want to attempt yourself please drop me a line; I learned a lot about how terminals work over the last couple weeks and the final result is quite satisfying, a soft amber glow and one less window on my desktop. It’s also a nice reminder that we didn’t get to where we are overnight, user interfaces and software development have been evolving in an unbroken chain for a long time and some of the old ideas are so solid that they persist 30 years later. Why not use the proper hardware?

IxD fail, card only worked upside-down to the picture. (Taken...

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 01:21:59 +0200

IxD fail, card only worked upside-down to the picture. (Taken with instagram)

pitchfork: “Surgeon” is the first track released from St....

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 15:19:58 +0200

pitchfork:

“Surgeon” is the first track released from St. Vincent’s forthcoming album Strange Mercy, out September 13 on 4AD. It features a sweet squelching-synth outro. (Photo by Tina Tyrell.)

"Ísland, minn draumur, mín þjáning, mín þrá, Mitt þróttleysi og viðnám í senn. Þessi vængjaða auðn..."

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 16:50:25 +0200

“Ísland, minn draumur, mín þjáning, mín þrá,
Mitt þróttleysi og viðnám í senn.
Þessi vængjaða auðn með sín víðerni blá,
Hún vakir og lifir þó enn.
Sjá, hér er minn staður, mitt líf og mitt lán,
Og ég lýt þér, mín ætt og mín þjóð.
Ó, þú skrínlagða heimska og skrautklædda smán,
Mín skömm og mín tár og mitt blóð.”

- Steinn Steinarr

What!? :) (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 12:16:28 +0200

What!? :) (Taken with instagram)

No iPhone love in here (Taken with instagram)

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 00:11:20 +0200

No iPhone love in here (Taken with instagram)

Að fara á svið í Höllinni (Taken with Instagram at...

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 14:11:43 +0200

Að fara á svið í Höllinni (Taken with Instagram at Laugardalshöll)

Once upon a time… (Taken with instagram)

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 18:47:44 +0200

Once upon a time… (Taken with instagram)

Hvernig gerir þetta nokkuð gott? (Taken with instagram)

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 00:46:34 +0200

Hvernig gerir þetta nokkuð gott? (Taken with instagram)

Close to being Acid2 compliant (Taken with instagram)

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 00:23:24 +0200

Close to being Acid2 compliant (Taken with instagram)

Taken with instagram

Tue, 31 May 2011 23:57:30 +0200

Taken with instagram

In Norway I’m better known as: (Taken with instagram)

Thu, 12 May 2011 18:09:48 +0200

In Norway I’m better known as: (Taken with instagram)

Taken with instagram

Tue, 03 May 2011 12:11:22 +0200

Taken with instagram

Fann helvítið (Taken with Instagram at Avenyn)

Sun, 01 May 2011 02:37:26 +0200

Fann helvítið (Taken with Instagram at Avenyn)

Owltastic (Taken with instagram)

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 23:09:08 +0200

Owltastic (Taken with instagram)