We were wrestling with a weird problem in Windows the whole day. We were trying to transfer access rights to files from one user to another but we keep ending up with some directories that still can’t be accessed by the new user. We were stumped for quite some time before we found out that some directories can prevent inheriting access rights from its parents via an option that disables inheritance!!! How this came about we still can’t don’t know. But because of this option, the built-in ACL manager of Windows can’t completely assign access rights to all subdirectories. Neither can other Microsoft utilities like CACL (Change Access Control Lists) or XCACLS (eXtended CACL). There is definitely no way you can go from affected directory to affected directory removing that option. Thankfully there’s SetACL. Among its features: Reset permissions on all sub-objects and enable propagation of inherited permissions. Open source rocks!
Month: October 2007
dived with win and din
wanted to wine and dine
but there was no time
so maybe next time
still with win and din.
Forgive my attempt at a limerick :P
Erwin wanted to do a refresher dive at Anilao as a prelude to his trip to Bohol. So he, his friend Claudine, and I went to favorite dive destination Anilao. We were operating under a time constraint since he had to fly at 11:45 the next day. He didn’t want to pop and fizzle like a freshly opened can of soda so he wanted as much no-fly time as possible. We therefore planned for a quick morning dive.
We were supposed to leave for Anilao by 4 but I got lazy and thought it was too early so I moved it to 4:30. And then Erwin misplaced something (again :P) so we ended up leaving around 5. Talk about always leaving some buffer time. Still, we got to favorite dive resort Aquaventure Reef Club early enough at around 8:30.
After registrations and gearing up, we started diving around 10. The sky was gray and it was drizzling. We dived at Beatrice and Caban. The current was strong and the viz was not good at both. But we still saw the usual clouds of fishes and even two puffers. I haven’t dived since April so that was already great!
We were back in the resort by around 1 where we ungeared and had the usual lunch buffet. It didn’t disappoint: All the food you can eat in an attempt to make up for quality with quantity :P I don’t really eat that much but I know from experience that the ala carte items are expensive and take way too long to serve. Nor do they taste any better.
After settling our bill and packing, we left the resort around 3. On the way to Anilao, we had noticed the extremely long line of northbound vehicles on the South Expressway so I decided to take the supposedly scenic alternate route through Tagaytay on the way back. Unfortunately, the view was shrouded by fog. And worse, we ended up stuck in traffic at Tagaytay anyway.
When I finally got home, I felt tired but glad for a great drive and dive day. Here’s hoping for another one!
Of course, I’m not the only one who has problems with hibernate and standby on Kubuntu and Thinkpad X22. I saw this post at an Ubuntu forum. Which in turn led me to this post at ThinkWiki which led to the solution. In a nutshell, you just need to change your video driver to VESA and the monitor to 1024×768 LCD panel. That’s it. Hibernate and standby works now. Don’t you just love the net?
My college dorm mate posted in our mailing list this link to a blog entry written by her friend: Why I Don’t Like Using A Digital Camera In My Personal Life. It’s a personal preference thing but I do have comments on some points:
With a digital camera, it takes at least 30 seconds to get back into the holiday because of the irresistable need to review the image, check the histogram, zoom in to see if it is really focussed well or not (and too often it isn’t) and then more often than not, I’ll take another picture of the same thing because I might not be totally satisfied with the one I just reviewed – or I’m just not sure if I am – it’s hard to really judge an image on a tiny LCD in the bright outdoors. During that 30 seconds or so, I am no longer ‘in the moment’ of the holiday or the outing. My attention has been taken completely off the environment while I was reviewing the image on the digital camera. I resent that.
There’s a term for this: chimping. You go take a picture, then review, then take picture, then review, ad nausaum. You don’t have to do this. You have to not do this. Take that shot and go on. It just takes some discipline and confidence in your photography skills. That being said, I chimp more often than I want :D
And I really resent that the LCD monitor on the digital camera is so darn hard to view in the bright outdoors.
It’s true that LCD monitors, especially older ones, are sometimes hard to view so it’s still good to get a digital camera with a dedicated viewfinder aside from an LCD monitor. Then you can also have the option of turning off the LCD monitor, just use the viewfinder, and reduce the temptation to go chimping. Sadly, this is not an option if you want an ultra-compact camera as most dispense with the viewfinder in the interest of compactness.
I especially resent the time I have to spend in the hotel room every night transferring the images from the memory card to the laptop computer, reviewing the images yet again during the transfer process, and setting up the battery charger for the evening.
This is probably because the article was written in 2004 and a lot has changed since. If you take that many photos that you need to do this, there’s a solution. Get bigger storage capacity. That way you don’t need to transfer to your laptop nor do you even need to bring a laptop. Note that it’s better to have 4 1Gb cards than 1 4Gb card for safety purposes. Besides, if you take that many photos, you’d be worrying about rolls and rolls of film.
As for the battery, these can actually last hundreds of shots, unless you use the flash a lot in which case you’d still need to worry about batteries whether it’s a digital camera or a film camera. In this case, there are digital cameras that use rechargeable AA batteries. The same batteries for both the camera and your dedicated flash unit, if you have it. And if you abhor recharging, you can just grab some disposable AA batteries off the shelf of almost any store. But that’s not too environment friendly.
Alex lent me a DVD of Kubuntu 7.10. Kubuntu is the version of Ubuntu that is packaged with KDE. For some reason he likes it and since he’s the Linux guru, who am I to second guess him? Hehe.Soon as I got home, I installed to Selene, my Thinkpad X22. The installation went without a hitch and in no time I was in Kubuntu. Everything else does though. I updated everything, played around with the look-and-feel, and was browsing (with a separately installed Firefox) and chatting (with Kopete). Almost everything worked. But unfortunately, both hibernate and standby don’t work! Argh. Now I’ll have to wait for Mr. Linux guru to to help me fix the problem.