malloc: * error for object 0x10000a720: pointer being freed was not allocated *
    set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug

In order to solve this issue from Xcode, you need to modify your build target information. Double-click your build target from the ‘Targets’ drop-down list in the left-hand column, navigate to the build tab, then scroll down to the ‘GCC – Preprocessing’ area, and enable fully dynamic strings by adding a new macro to the ‘Preprocessor Macros’ list: _GLIBCXX_FULLY_DYNAMIC_STRING=1

Feel free to leave a comment if you have any extra information on the issue (including fixes in newer versions/etc/etc).

References:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2234557/c-using-stdgetline-prints-pointer-being-freed-was-not-allocated
http://lists.apple.com/archives/cocoa-dev/2009/Sep/msg01199.html

Being deaf, I’m eligible for a DSA (Disabled Students Allowance) grant, which would provide for services such as note-taking and video transcriptions. However… me being the good coder I am, I’m also inherently lazy (this post may well have a few contradictions, I’ll warn you in advance!), I haven’t yet applied for DSA, so I don’t get any notetakers or anything. This, however, was also partly a justified choice on my part – while I’ve had note-takers in the past, I found that I generally did better in subjects in which I did not have a note-taker, and this got me thinking – was the note-taker holding me back?

The answer, I believe, was a resounding “yes”. While I would attempt to pay attention in lessons/lectures, I undoubtedly had the “well, I can always refer to the notes I’ll be given” mentality, which resulted in a smaller attention span. I never did refer to those notes.

If I don’t have a note-taker, I know that in order to do well, I will have to pay attention to the lecturer. Unfortunately, due to my disability, I am unable to take notes and listen simultaneously.

I’ve started using PBWorks for my notes. I’ll pay attention in the lecture, leave the lecture, and while the knowledge is still fresh in my head, I open up my PBWorks wiki and start writing up all of the notes from the lecture, using the slides as a visual reminder for what was covered. If there is something I don’t fully understand, I will research the topic in detail – resulting in higher-quality notes. As an example, a set of (incomplete) notes from last semester’s CS221 module can be seen here. The notes are much more in-depth than the slides – as well as many, many times easier to read.

While this may not (at first glance) seem to adhere with my “be lazy” principles, adding to a single set of notes for each module will inherently require me to refer back to previous notes in order to refresh my knowledge about a particular topic before I am able to complete a full set of notes for a given lecture. This allows one to subconsciously review course material throughout the entire duration of the course, the knock-on effect of which is a reduced requirement for revision before the exam.

this.lazy++;

Richard Shipman – one of the Open Source zealots at Aberystwyth University – hired a minibus in order to take 16 students along to FOSDEM. We left Aberystwyth at noon on Thursday, hopped on the ferry at Harwich and arrived at the Hoek van Holland early Friday morning. We were at ULB by about noon on Friday, eager and willing to help out – Richard had volunteered all of the students for a good 3-4 hours of slave labour at the hands of the FOSDEM organisers. I was a part of the networking team and helped lay many, many, many meters of cable around the university for the event. This year’s FOSDEM had the best network it had ever seen, with over 2500 users connected.

After checking in at the hotel, we wandered around Brussels a bit, ate some rather delicious Belgian waffles from a stand, and headed over to the Beer Event. I drank way too much, but I managed to do quite a bit of networking, and left with the contact details for a few new friends and also met up with a large number of old friends – all in all, a good night!

Woke up with a splitting headache (rather unsurprisingly), but still managed to attend all of the talks I wanted to on the Saturday – all of which were extremely interesting. We went to the Cheese Cake Cafe on Saturday evening, before settling in for an early night. We had to check out of the hotel on Sunday morning, and Richard had to be at ULB by 0930 at the latest. The FOSDEM staff very kindly reserved two parking spaces for the “Unspeakable University”, which was rather kind of them! I  managed to get some of the talk times mixed up, which resulted in me missing a couple of talks, but I was still able to attend a huge number of very interesting talks and met even more people!

After the final talk finished on Sunday at 1800, we all hopped in the mini-bus and drove to Hoek van Holland, where we got on the ferry back to Harwich, eventually arriving back in Aberystwyth at about 1430 on Monday, in a very sleepy state!

Can’t wait for next year! Although I will probably travel on the Eurostar rather than on a minibus… it was just a tad too cramped for my liking!

So I was computerless! Well, not quite computerless, but working on the ThinkPad became a bit iffy. Two “fixes” were investigated: purchasing a temporary laptop whilst getting the T61 fixed; buying a new laptop to replace the T61 completely.

The first option – to buy a new laptop to use whilst getting the T61 repaired was thrown out of the window quite quickly. To the get the entire LCD assembly replaced on my T61 would have been prohibitively expensive, excaberated by two factors. a) I’d have to purchase a temporary laptop as well; b) I originally purchased the T61 with a high-resolution (1400×1050) LCD, which I had grown rather fond of. In addition to those two factors, I had also been planning on upgrading to a Mac in the relatively near future.

So we decided to go for the upgrade route! I put in order for a 13″ MacBook Pro, which arrived yesterday morning. After fiddling around with things for most of the day (or possibly more accurately: working out what various buttons did), I finally had it set up how I liked it. I can definitely say that the move to Apple/OS X was a good one, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it.

As can be expected from moving to a different operating system (and possibly even a different way of thinking), my “working environment” has had to be adjusted. I didn’t really like OS X’s Spaces (even though I was a huge fan of multiple desktops in Linux), and this has led me to only keeping open the applications which I’m actively using open. In the past, I’d have web/email on one desktop, IM on another desktop and code on my third desktop. However, I’d keep switching to IM/web/email whilst coding – not very productive! Using OS X has encouraged me to only open what I need to complete a particular task – so if I’m programming, I’ll have Eclipse or TextMate open, and only open Safari if I need to quickly look something up. That’s it. It has resulted in huge productivity gains – I’m not quite sure why I didn’t work this out before!

On another note, I’ve become a huge fan of TextMate and Tweetie. Now, when I was using Linux, I would never have even considered forking out some of my *ahem* hard-earned money for a program. Ever. If I was using Microsoft Windows I would either use an Open Source application which had been ported to Windows, or (I’m sorry to say) I would pirate it. Now I’m perfectly willing to pay for software, and plan to do so for TextMate and Tweetie as soon as I can. They are both amazing pieces of software, and I’d strongly recommend them to any OS X users. I’m also using MarsEdit to write this blog post, but I currently blog so infrequently that I’m not sure I’d be willing to purchase it. Perhaps if it encourages me to blog more, I’ll look into paying for a full version.

• Portability – Ever wanted to take your entire book collection on holiday with you? eBooks make it possible! (Okay, perhaps not quite depending on memory restrictions, but eBooks are definitely more portable than their paper counterparts).
• Searching – Obviously, with academic texts this can be a great boon, but I find it very rare that I attempt to search for a particular word or phrase in a novel of some form.
• Backlighting – To the best of my knowledge, modern e-Ink eBook readers do not have backlighting available, and so are only readable in the same conditions as regular paper. I could be wrong here, so please feel free to correct me!
• Price – If you’re going to quote monetary savings as a reason to get an eBook reader, I’m probably going to ignore you. eBooks are generally only £1-2 cheaper than their paper counterparts (in the UK, at least), and Amazon often offer bigger discounts on their real books.
• DRM – If you’re a publisher, this might be a good thing. But I think a lot of people would quite like to be able to lend books to their friends and family without having to worry about DRM restrictions and so on… Paper books are so easy to lend, you just hand the book on to someone else. How do you lend someone an eBook?

I can see why eBook readers would definitely be an ideal solution for reading and distributing academic texts, but I really can’t see the benefits (at this moment in time) over “real” books. I also quite like to be able to flick through books, jump back and forth, quickly refer to something on the previous page (without having to wait for the lengthy “refresh” on e-Ink eBook readers) and various other things like that…

Oh! One more thing! I love good cover art. I know I’m not supposed to, but I often do judge a book by its cover…

I’ve recently taken up photography as a new hobby – if one shoots with a digital camera, the cost of a new camera is more often than not over £500 for a half-decent one. Let’s not even think about the lenses, which can easily sell for multiple hundreds of pounds for relatively “basic” models, and over £1000 for the “pro” models. If one shoots film, one has to pay for film and development costs. These all add up in a big way (not to mention the cost of the high-end film cameras – especially MF (Medium-Format) cameras).

One “hobby” I’ve been involved in since a really young age is reading. Okay, so at first glance reading isn’t that expensive. But when you’re finishing a £6-8 novel every other day or so (as I tend to do during the holiday season when I attempt to take a break from computers), it gets really fucking expensive. Since coming back from Aberystwyth on the 19th July (less than two weeks ago), I’ve read £73.91 worth of books. That’s almost three quarters of a hundred pounds. My wallet is crying (as is my bank account). It doesn’t help that I have another £49.95 worth of books on order… And that’s for five books alone.

I think my main issue is the fact that I like to buy my own physical books. And I like them to be new. This leads to two major problems:

1. I can’t buy books second-hand (well, I can. I just don’t want to and would probably refuse to do so)
2. I can’t borrow books from the library (see above)
3. I can’t read eBooks (they “feel” wrong)

Buggeration. Anyone want to recommend some cheaper hobbies for me? Pretty please?

On a side note, I’m starting the Infinite Summer project when my copy of the book arrives tomorrow (albeit about a month and a bit behind schedule), Infinite Jest is apparently about 1000 pages long and relatively difficult to read. Hopefully this means I’ll put buying new books on the backburner for a wee while – especially as I’ll have another 3 books to finish after it.

However, there have been a number of niggles which have been putting me off using Linux for a laptop. It’s highly likely that less “advanced” users wouldn’t experience the same issues I’ve been having, but none the less. I’ll outline the issues I’ve been having, then expand upon each of them in turn.

• Photo management software (F-Spot) is not particularly feature-rich, is slow and relatively buggy
• Need to fiddle around with things to get, for example, VPN connections working
• Hibernate/suspend doesn’t work
• Not much in the way of “set and forget” backup solutions

Although F-Spot does what it needs to do (mostly), it is extremely basic, and doesn’t offer solutions such as colour curve adjustment, converting images to black and white, scaling images, cropping images, and so on (unless I’ve missed something). It also doesn’t allow you to organise your photos quite as well as other photo management software, such as Aperture and Lightroom. I discovered a bug in my installation, which left both the F-Spot developers and me scratching our heads: attempting to export photos to Flickr crashes F-Spot if I launch it from Gnome’s menu. If I launch it from the terminal, I have no such issues… The options haven’t changed, and I can’t work out any way to pipe the error messages from when I launch it from Gnome’s menu to a file…

I use the VPN functionality quite a bit these days to connect to the University’s VPN whilst not on the University network. Although I have managed to get the VPN working thanks to one of my friends, I had to fiddle around with adding and modifying keys in the GConf editor, which I really should not have had to do. It might be possible to do it all through NetworkManager’s interface (I know that some of the options were available in the “Advanced Settings” dialog), but it was still a nuisance to sort it all out (and it was also undocumented. DO NOT WANT.)

Hibernate and suspend do not work on my ThinkPad T61. I’d suspect that this has something to do with using discreet nVidia graphics, but I would still like such features to work out of the box. I’ve had this laptop since Feb ‘08, and I’ve *still* not managed to get it working. With the MacBook Pros, you can just close it and wander off: everything just works.

Linux doesn’t really have a “set and forget” backup system such as Time Machine. With Time Machine, you set it up to backup to $external_harddisk, and it does it all for you. You just plug your MacBook in, and it automatically starts backing up in the background. You don’t have to think about it at all until you need it, at which point, you just fly back in time through their shiny interface, and you’re sorted. It really is quite nice.

I guess that I’m just “shifting” my expectations somewhat now that I’ve been at university for a year. At the beginning of the year, I was happy to fiddle around with things to get them to work. I was happy to make tarballs and scp or rsync them to remote locations to back things up. I was using Gentoo, and happy to sit through long compiles and reinstalls. Now, though, I just want things to work. I don’t want to have to fiddle around with obscure settings to make it work. I don’t want to have to sit through long compiles. I guess I want to be able to use my computer for what I want to use it for, without being side-tracked along half a dozen different mini-projects to be able to complete my main goal.

On top of that, Macs are shiny. I think that the Apple LED Cinema Display which has been designed specifically to go with the MacBook Pro is amazing, and just perfect for what I want. It allows me to compromise on the display resolution on the MacBook Pro itself (the MacBook Pro has a 13″ screen which operates at 1280×800. I’m a huge fan of portability, so I want to get the smallest model I can.), as I can just plug it in to instantly upgrade my resolution.

I think I shall probably write a number of blog posts about the software which I currently use and compare it to what I plan to use. Doing so should help me confirm the “upgrade route” I’m going to take, and how I’m going to manage my files and hobbies.

The E-P1 does away with the mirror box of D-SLRs, whilst retaining a large Micro Four Thirds sized sensor, which results in a camera which isn’t really an SLR, but produces high quality images akin to those typical of D-SLRs. It seems to be an ideal camera for street photography – the silver model isn’t overly obtrusive, and coupled with the 17mm lens and optical viewfinder (fitted onto the hot-shoe), makes for a compact camera capable of taking high-quality images whilst still being small enough to not be highly noticeable. It is quite expensive, at £749.99 for the kit including the 17mm lens and optical viewfinder, but I feel that it is well worth it, and there won’t be many (if any) running costs involved – no film to develop and scan. As well as this, Olympus will be producing an adaptor which will allow me to use my OM lenses from my OM-2n on the E-P1, which is a great benefit. I will be waiting until reviews are available on the camera before making a final decision, but I’m almost certain that it is the camera for me.

I have also been looking into the 13″ MacBook Pro, and believe that come September, I will have enough money to purchase a model. I’m willing to accept the lower resolution of the 13″ model due to the extra portability offered, especially as I am also planning to purchase the 24″ Apple Cinema Display to go with it, which runs at 1920×1200. An expensive investment, but well worth it I feel. The MacBook Pro comes with an SDHC card-reader, which will be extremely useful when coupled with the aforementioned Olympus E-P1, which also uses SDHC cards – that’s one less cable for me to worry about! It is highly likely that I will purchase Aperture with the MacBook, and use that for photo management. I’ve looked into Lightroom as well, but it seems from reviews that Aperture is more suited to my needs. Furthermore, Macs provide an ideal environment for doing development work in, especially as they are Unix-based, and thus have a half-decent shell available to users. I’ll most likely be using Eclipse for Java programming, and I’ll possibly be doing some Qt development on Macs as well, but we shall see.

According to this wiki page, it should be a simple matter of going to about:config and changing the value of gfx.color_management.mode to 1, which enables full colour management (default is 2, which enables colour management only on properly tagged images). This, however, does not seem to work…

After looking into the issue, it seems that there’s a bug with the way in which Firefox identifies the colour profiles, resulting in some incorrectly rendered images. Although the bug has been fixed in the trunk release (i.e. the nightly/hourly builds will have the bug-fix), the “proper” versioned releases will not.

From what I can work out, the bug-fix won’t be pushed into the main release until the last minute, and will most likely be put in the 3.5.1 release (or possibly even the 3.6 release!), so if correct colour profiles are important to you, you’re either going to want to start using the hourly/nightly builds or downgrade back to an earlier version of Firefox which doesn’t have the bug.

Now, I know the article is rather explicit in saying that one should use a Leica, but I quite frankly don’t have the money to buy one, and believe that a camera such as the Bessa R3M (similar to the R3a, but with no auto-exposure) would be an ideal camera to complete the project with. As the writer quite rightly points out in his [next article], Leica cameras hold their value extremely well, and you could quite easily re-sell the camera for what a price very close to what you bought it for. As I mentioned earlier, there’s no way I’d be able to fork out for a £2500 camera unless I got like two full-time jobs or something silly along those lines, so I think a £300-400 Bessa will have to do.

It is advised in the original article that one should shoot as many rolls of film per week as possible. This is a pretty large expenditure, but I imagine that I would purchase a box of 10 rolls of whichever film I decide to use per month. This would probably amount to around £35 a month for the raw film, and approximately another £35 a month for processing costs. The article recommends getting 1-6 “work-prints” per film – I would not get prints of these photos, but instead upload them to Flickr, so I would effectively be uploading between 10 and 60 photos a month. Every month, I would pick out the two most interesting photos (as calculated by Flickr) from what I had uploaded that month, and get prints made of them.

The monthly cost would come to around £85 a month, with an initial outlay of around £800 for a camera and lens, and £200-250 for a film scanner.

(Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I would most likely get a 50mm lens. Or possibly a 40mm lens. Not 100% sure on that one.)