Coronet "Three-D" with a Stuck Shutter

I picked up a Coronet "3-D" camera (their quotes).  It was in total working condition, but then I messed with it too much.  So I had to un-stick the shutter pin.  Apparently shutter *pins* were all the rage for a while there .. don't ask me why.  Seriously, look at cameras from the forties and you'll see shutter pins everywhere.

So anyways, I pulled off the face of the thing so I could look at the shutter apparatus.  I applied tons of trimmer oil (this is why you keep that little bottle when you get a new trimmer) and did some screwdriver prying, and did some pulling with jewelers' pliers.  (Everyone should own a set of jewelers' pliers, btw .. and a good pair of diags.)

So what was the best way to unstick the shutter pin?  After all that, you just gotta pretend you're James Dean with a soft-pack of cigarettes.  Holding the camera with your right hand, smack it into the crook of your left hand.  The pin is the cigarette in this scenario, and it ends up popping out very swankily.

Seriously.  Save the oil for another camera project.  You just gotta smack this one firmly and the pin pops out.  Probably.  I hope.  But it never hurts to have a bit of trimmer oil, I guess.

Minecraft on Mac OS X with 64-bit Java

So you're a slave to warning messages and you want Minecraft to use 64-bit Java.  Here's how to do it on the command line.  These instructions were crafted on MacOS Lion, which should prefer 64-bit Java when possible (Applications/Utilities/Java Preferences).  These instructions assume the default Minecraft.app location, in the main /Applications folder.  I had a few tabs open, while I was sussing this out, including an excellent forum post, a post on JavaApplicationStub bits, and the official reference for CF keys.

Here we go.

Swap out Minecraft's JavaApplicationStub for the current OS' version:
  gzip /Applications/Minecraft.app/Contents/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub
  cp /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub /Applications/Minecraft.app/Contents/MacOS/

Then, add 64-bit architecture to Minecraft's possibilities:
  /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Add :Java:JVMArchs:0 string 'x86_64'" /Applications/Minecraft.app/Contents/Info.plist

Launch.  That should do it.  Watch out for creepers.  Have a nice day.

* * *

If everything goes wrong, here's how to roll back from here to your original configuration:
  rm /Applications/Minecraft.app/Contents/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub
  gunzip /Applications/Minecraft.app/Contents/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub.gz
  /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Delete :Java:JVMArchs:0" /Applications/Minecraft.app/Contents/Info.plist


How to tell if you're using a 64-bit kernel in the first place is easy.  Look for "x86_84" in the output of the below command.  If you see i386 or ppc, you might be on a system that can't handle 64-bit, or you might need to instruct the system to boot with a 64-bit kernel.
  uname -a   # should include "x86_64" in the output.


What's this JavaApplicationStub anyways?  It's like a chain loader .. only different!  When you double-click the Minecraft icon, the Finder looks in Info.plist for the CFBundleExecutable value.  It launches that, to start the app.  The JavaApplicationStub is a native binary that helps invoke Java in the right way to get Minecraft running.

What's that PlistBuddy command?  It's a command-line tool included in more recent releases of Mac OS, that lets you directly read, write, erase, fold, spindle and mutilate Plist.info files.  It's got a man page, but here's a quick example of reading your JVMArchs array, if you want to double-check that it's got x86_64 at the top:
  /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print :Java:JVMArchs" /Applications/Minecraft.app/Contents/Info.plist

What's with you and the command line stuff?  I don't know.  I suspect that my epitaph will simply be an elegant one-liner.

Suzuki Gladius SFV650 Turn Signal Size

The Suzuki Gladius SFV650's turn signal bulbs are 1156 A Offset Pin size.  Since it took me a while to figure it out, hopefully this will save someone else a bunch of searching.

I have no idea what the 1156 is for, except that one of the 1s indicates that it's a single filament bulb.  The "A" is for "Amber" because the bike's turn signal cover is clear, so the bulb has to be amber tinted.  And the "Offset" pin configuration means that the two bayonet pins are not exactly across from each other on the circumference .. one is "offset" from a straight-across position.  So, the pins are closer to each other on one side, and farther on the other.  Wacky.

The Sysadmin's Wiki and the Advertising Executive's Rolodex

I've been pondering this a little, but I'm not sure where it belongs.  It's in my blog backlog, though, so here it lives.  I worked in advertising for a short while and noticed some fun quirks of the industry.  ("Worked" in the industry?  Hah!  Actually, I was answering phones.)

You see, executives had a rolodex on their desk, that they protected like a vital organ.  And it *was* a vital organ -- the contacts in there were "theirs," and made the executive uniquely valuable.  When an executive quit, or was fired, the first thing they did was grab their rolodex.  Only then would they make sure they had trivialities such as car keys or their wallet.

Sysadmins have an analogue ... our wiki pages.  But they're typically hosted on an internal company server, readable by the rest of the team.  And then, some sysadmins refuse to post information to the wiki, guarding it like their "rolodex."  They don't say as much, but you know which ones are trying to stay valuable by not spreading tribal knowledge.

How similar are these?  Sysadmins and ad-people have mostly opposite attitudes towards the information that makes them valuable, but the analogy itself might hold water.  Has there been a change in the advertising field, as companies have moved to shared, server-based customer relationship systems that the corporation owns?  I wouldn't dream of hoarding my information, and I think *that* makes me uniquely valuable ... so am I "right" or just used to having the corporation "own" my information?  I wonder.