[François Taïani] Resources

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.

Square

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 22 Jul 2008 francois.taiani@comp.lancs.ac.uk