Rogers Digital Cable

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I just got my Rogers Digital Cable box and set it up within 5 minutes. First impressions? The selection of additional channels doesn't peak my interest. The only additional channel that I'm interested in so far is TechTV. The only additional features that I like are the on-screen guide and the fact that it's a universal remote, which is cool since my Sony remote is almost dead.

The digital box costs $8.95 per month, and the single TechTV channel would cost $2.50 per month. I can justify the cost of the channel but the box doesn't give me enough redeeming features for $9.00 a month. If the box had video on demand (PVR, Tivo, ReplayTV) then I could totally justify it, but VOD when it arrives will be extra. For now, no thanks. After my preview I think I'll shut it off unless the VOD is a great deal.

Back into the Fray

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So I've been sick for over four weeks. This website has seen sporadic postings as I've wrestled with a cold, flu, and throat infection and lined my doctors pockets with a visit every Friday. Thank god all the symptoms are gone. I had an ultrasound yesterday and will be briefed by my doctor on the results and blood test results on Friday just to be sure I'm all better. Hopefully I can get back to a usual routine and start biking again. I feel so unhealthy.

To those that have been wondering where I am, and why I'm so off the grid, I'll be catching up on work and bills then I should be returning to a regular routine.

Copy-Inhibited CDs

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Via Slashdot, "MacUser is running an article about how the new Celine Dion CD A New Day Has Come with copy protection mechanisms to prevent the CD from being played on a PC not only won't play on an iMac, but it will lock the CD tray (so it can't be removed) and fubar the firmware (so the machine can't be rebooted), effectivley killing the iMac." ... "What was first thought to be an April Fool's joke, now appears to be true. Some Audio CD protection schemes such as Cactus DATA Shield 100/200, KeyAudio, and perhaps others may be defeated by invalidating the outer ring of the CD with a black marker or post-it sticky note."- Slashdot Posting

"Mac users may want to check the labels on their music CDs twice, as copy-protected audio discs flooding the market may lead to serious problems when they are played on some computer systems." - Cnet News.com

The Postgres Incident

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Not understanding past errors, I found out last week just how important it is to use the vacuum command in Postgres.If you don't vacuum your database, your pg_log file can exceed a gigabyte in size and wrap thereby corrupting data. In this case, and perhaps others, all databases in Postgres.

First, many thanks go to Tom Lane who's expertise in this matter helped save my bacon.

It started with the following message: 

Database 'xxxx', OID yyyyy, has disappeared from pg_database

I was using Postgres 7.0.2 which came with Red Hat 6.2. Now I should have upgraded a long time ago (more on that later) but this particular problem was caused by not using the vacuum command which cleans up databases and performs other background routines that are necessary to ensure database performance and stability. Now my pg_log file actually wasn't over 1GB as was the traditional indication. So, enter step 1. 

Probably the next thing is to look at pg_database and tryto understandwhy all the rows are showing as dead. There are a couple of toolsaround that can dump out the contentsof tuple headers. I'd suggestpg_filedump (http://sources.redhat.com/rhdb/tools.html), but it isintended for 7.1/7.2 and you'd need to do a little surgery to make itwork on 7.0 files. (I think ripping out the code that expects an LSNfield to be present in the page header would be enough.) If you checkthe PG list archives you will find references to one or two olderprograms in the same vein; there might still be something availablethat will work on 7.0 files without modification.

regards, tom lane

This took quite a while as I initially tried to compile the pg_filedump against a 7.2 source, and I should have compiled against a 7.0 source. However, that required a lot of inspection and alteration of the pg_dumpfile source. Eventually it compiled and I sent a rather verbose dump to the list. Tom looked at it and confirmed that somehow the log had either wrapped, was damaged, or both. So the solution was as follows.