[François Taïani] Resources

BESS Google App Engine Tutorial

Bigger UI fonts in Thunderbird

Thunderbird's User Interface uses tiny fonts by default, too tiny for my eyes. To increase Thunderbird's default UI font size, just put a file called userChrome.css in the 'chrome' directory in your profile (on Mac your profile is found in ~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/<some weird string>.default/, you might have to create the 'chrome' directory if it's not there), with the right kind of css code. Here is the one I'm using.


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Debian on an Apple PowerBook G3 (Wallstreet)

Here are some very valuable resources I used to install GNU/Linux Debian (Sarge) on an Apple PowerBook G3 Wallstreet.

A Linux/PPC Page: Stefan Jeglinski's pages on Linux/PPC. In particular, the explanation on the kernel video arguments in firstboot.html helped me a lot.
Debian GNU/Linux on a TiBook III: Christophe Barbe's page on how he installed Debian 3.0 on a Titanium. Of course, a PowerBook from the late 90's is not a Titanium (I wish it were!), but this page contains many helpful tips in particular regarding kernel compilation and 3 button emulation.

To get the text console and XFree86-4 work on my PowerBook I use the following kernel args in BootX: video=atyfb:vmode:14,cmode:15 with "No Video Driver" unchecked. (My video card is identified as ATI 3D Rage LT Pro (rev dc) by lspci.)

In /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 the most tricky part was to remove the "Modes" line of the "Display" subsection.

Note that you normally don't want to use my XF86Config-4 file directly, as it also contains options for the Apple French keyboard. If you do have a French keyboard, you probably can use this file as such, but you'll need to install the keyboard symbol mapping file /etc/X11/xkb/symbols/fr-shapiro-new from Marc Shapiro as the /etc/X11/xkb/symbols/fr shipped with Debian is currently broken. (See Debian Bug report #157170 for more details.)

The beautiful background image you can see on the above screen-shot was taken by my brother. If you want to use it as a wallpaper too you can get it here.

Software Engineering / Critical Systems

Formal Method Library: http://archive.comlab.ox.ac.uk/formal-methods.html
Network for Dependability Engineering: A collaborative research effort with academic and industrial partners focussing on critical systems. Partners include Airbus France, Astrium, LAAS-CNRS, Technicatome and THALES. The web site contains many interesting presentations and reports on current issues of applied dependability.
Safety-Critical Mailing List Forum: Many highly interesting discussions on all aspects of critical systems. I've learnt a lot reading this list.
The Risks Digest: The digests of the "Forum On Risks To The Public In Computers And Related Systems", of the ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy.

Transformational Frameworks:

Bandera: A Bridge between Java and Classical Model Checking Tools like SPIN or SMV using slicing and abstractions.
JCAT: A Tool to Analyze Java Concurrent Programs: This project aims to provide a powerful and easy-to-use tool for deadlock detection within Java programs that make use of multithreading mechanisms.
UMLAUT: A general transformational framework for UML models, with an explicit bridge to the CADP verification tool set.

The hacker's corner

Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby: One of the most entertaining programming book I've ever met. Adding to that that ruby is a cool language, this is a must read.
JUnit: A regression testing framework written by Erich Gamma and Kent Beck. In the true line of "Test first, then code." Really amazing once you've got infected!
Doxygen: A documentation generation tool, orginally for C++. A bit like javedoc. (Now supports many other languages.) Great too.
OpenJGraph: Opensource Java library to create and manipulate graphs and graph drawings. Spares you a lot of work if you're working with graphs.

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Last generated on 30 Sep 2011 f.taiani@lancaster.ac.uk