Linus Torvalds's blog

Tove was cleaning out some random stuff, and came upon this Japanese model that I had bought years ago and never built up. So she told me to build it (with the perhaps implied threat that if I didn't, she'd throw it out).

This may be a shock to everybody, but I have to admit that I'm not generally a huge fan of most Microsoft software ("No, really, Linus? Tell us more!").

But I may have to admit that I was wrong.

No, I'm not talking about Windows 7. I'm talking about Songsmith, which is clearly a true work of genius. Yes, yes, the commercials are painfully cheesy, but when used right the end result is undeniably art.

Ok, so that's a plush Linux Tasmanian devil.

It's sitting in a bathtub, because my innate instinct for great photography (Ansel Adams has got nothing on me) made me think that "Hey, I'm in a hotel room in Hobart - and it's exactly like I was in a fancy photography studio if I just put the dang thing into the bath tub".

I'm totally not very sentimental about technology - the good old days really weren't very good at all, and I'm solidly in the "good riddance" camp when it comes to old computers and peripherals. I'll take the newest/smallest/fastest thing over those clunky machines of yesteryear.

It's that magical time of year when I actually play video games. I have one rule for christmas (and bday, for that matter) gifts for Tove: she should buy me toys. No practical gifts, no soft packages with sweaters or socks. I didn't enjoy them when I was little, and I don't enjoy them now. I refuse to grow up.

It looks like we may well have a white Christmas in Portland this year. Schools were closed all week long, and while it's easy to laugh at that when you come from Finland ("if it's colder than -20°C, you don't have to go outside for recess, and can do PE inside"), it's rather understandable when most years you only get a day or two of snow.

Two books this week: "Survival of the Sickest" by Sharon Moalem, and "The Hero of Ages", the final part of Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy.

The first one is a fairly light read on disease and genetics, and was really quite enjoyable. It's the kind of book I tend to read when I decide I want to read something intelligent, and it's a lot more modern about genetics in that it discusses genes as being much more dynamic than you'd find in more traditional ("older") books on the subject.

Nobody will ever claim that I have any real taste in music. I mainly listen while driving, and mostly just to classic rock. Sue me.

But every once in a while I get that "stabby feeling", and yesterday I realized why. It's "Brandi (You're a fine girl)". It's one of those songs that make me change stations really quickly, even to the insipid nasty soft-rock channel that Tove listens to (which does only christmas songs this time of year - a nice improvement over their normal fare).

...because it looks like we figured out what the suspend/resume problem was. And as suspected, the actual resource code had nothing what-so-ever to do with it, and was apparently just a trigger for timing.

It's frustrating with bugs like that, but on the other hand it's then a big relief when it gets resolved, and in this case we also ended up going through a lot of code and I think we'll be much better off as a result. It's also a huge relief to find the actual root cause, rather than seeing things that can be used to paper over and hide the problem.

So I've spent much of the last couple of days remotely debugging this insane suspend failure (or to be exact, resume failure) that happens occasionally for a couple of people.