For a few days, this tree carpeted the street with its falling pink petals.
Carpet of petals
Carpet of Petals
A Little Garden
This spring, we decided to plant a little garden in the form of two window boxes that live on our kitchen bench.
Radish and lettuce seedlings
We had originally planned to put window boxes on the window sills outside our windows. However, finding a way to secure the pots to the window sill proved difficult, and we didn’t want to risk them falling and injuring someone.
In one pot we planted radishes and mixed lettuce, and in the other we planted mint and parsley. Our seedlings are almost two weeks old. The radishes were the first to emerge and now tower over the others, while the parsley has only appeared in the last day or so.
Parsley and mint seedlings
I haven’t grown anything since I was a child, and it is exciting to watch the seeds sprout and grow. The first thing I do each morning is look at the garden to see what has changed.
Launched Miln Checkbox for Trac
Today I released Miln Checkbox, my first plug-in for Trac.
Bowler hats with black paint inside – Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon
This is my first plug-in for Trac and my first open source contribution written in python. I continue to prefer perl but if I want to tweak Trac, I need to write in python. The plug-in is short and sweet. It matches pairs of brackets and replaces them with a graphical checkbox.
I wanted this ability to allow for more visual lists of to-do items. Miln Checkbox does its job well and even includes a couple of options for those wanting to expand its styling or output.
Want to install Trac on Mac OS X? Take a look at the Trac installation guide on DssW.
Greenwich Foot Tunnel – London Highlights
Greenwich foot tunnel is a pedestrian tunnel connecting the north and south sides of the River Thames. I was thrilled to be able to cajole our little band to walk to and through the tunnel over to Greenwich.
The tunnel’s entrance does not look appealing or particularly notable from the north side, but the views over to Greenwich call out for a photo or two. On the south side at Greenwich, the tunnel exits onto the Cutty Sark ship and close to Greenwich’s main street and market.
North entrance to Greenwich foot tunnel
Looking south to Greenwich
The tunnel has a long history starting in 1899 with various works repairing and renovating different sections as time has demanded.
Inside Greenwich foot tunnel
Metal sides of Greenwich foot tunnel
Tiled walls of Greenwich foot tunnel leading to the lift
South entrance Greenwich foot tunnel
Looking back to Canary Wharf
Fixing Mac Kernel Panic: IOGMD: not wired for the IODMACommand
Since upgrading to OS X 10.8, aka Mountain Lion, my Mac Pro has been suffering from kernel panics. The solution has been to replace my two NVidia GT120 graphics cards with a single ATI 5770 graphics card.
The problem appears to effect those running multiple monitors and using the Apple issued GT120 graphics cards.
For me, the kernel panics occurred while browsing the web with Safari. Often the kernel panic occurred as I scrolled down a page. It did not require a complex web page; just a web page containing plain text was enough. It was not caused by Flash or any third party plug-in.
I reported these kernel panics to Apple through Bug Reporter, and through the “send report” mechanism upon restarting. Months have passed since the problem began, multiple updates to OS X 10.8 have been released, and still the kernel panics continued.
Rather than continue to wait for a solution from Apple, I opted to bypass the problem.
Replacing the Graphics Card
Thanks to a discussion on the Apple Discussion Forum, I learnt that replacing the graphics card will stop the kernel panics. One ATI 5770 graphics card can drive up to three monitors on a Mac Pro. I only have two monitors, so was pleased to feel the new card would not be immediately pushed to its limits.
Thus earlier this week, my replacement card arrived from Amazon. I had fun swapping out the two old cards for the slightly less dated graphics card.
Swapping over took about 30 minutes and required surprisingly little effort. The small manual included with the replacement provided all the instructions I needed.
Upon restarting everything worked. I have not had a kernel panic since and am starting to regain faith that I can use the computer for longer periods without being suddenly interrupted.
Apple issued ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics card
Two Apple NVidia GeForce GT 120 cards removed
Mac Pro empty PCI slots ready for replacement graphics card
ATI Radeon 5770 fitted inside a Mac Pro Early 2009, 4.1 model
ATI 5770 offers two DisplayPorts and one DVI port for connecting three monitors
Kernel Panic
Below is an extract of the kernel panic reports I saw. The panics were frequent enough to change my behaviour and to avoid using Safari during critical work.
Fri Mar 29 15:44:58 2013
panic(cpu 2 caller 0xffffff800a451107): "IOGMD: not wired for the IODMACommand"@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-2050.22.13/iokit/Kernel/IOMemoryDescriptor.cpp:1424
Backtrace (CPU 2), Frame : Return Address
0xffffff81009e30f0 : 0xffffff800a01d626
0xffffff81009e3160 : 0xffffff800a451107
0xffffff81009e31f0 : 0xffffff800a44bede
0xffffff81009e32a0 : 0xffffff800a44cb0a
0xffffff81009e32c0 : 0xffffff7f8a6dea04
0xffffff81009e3330 : 0xffffff7f8a73f1c9
0xffffff81009e3380 : 0xffffff7f8a73f13b
0xffffff81009e33d0 : 0xffffff7f8a726901
0xffffff81009e3460 : 0xffffff7f8a724ad6
0xffffff81009e34b0 : 0xffffff7f8a70f764
0xffffff81009e3560 : 0xffffff7f8a73c240
0xffffff81009e3760 : 0xffffff7f8a73d983
0xffffff81009e3830 : 0xffffff7f8b7ee480
0xffffff81009e3970 : 0xffffff7f8b7edf6c
0xffffff81009e3980 : 0xffffff7f8b7e4dfe
0xffffff81009e3db0 : 0xffffff7f8b79120a
0xffffff81009e3de0 : 0xffffff7f8b7952b3
0xffffff81009e3e00 : 0xffffff7f8b11d2a4
0xffffff81009e3e20 : 0xffffff7f8b11d237
0xffffff81009e3e50 : 0xffffff7f8b7a218c
0xffffff81009e3e80 : 0xffffff7f8b7918e2
0xffffff81009e3ed0 : 0xffffff7f8b78f8a5
0xffffff81009e3ef0 : 0xffffff800a4467a8
0xffffff81009e3f30 : 0xffffff800a4452aa
0xffffff81009e3f80 : 0xffffff800a4453d9
0xffffff81009e3fb0 : 0xffffff800a0b2977
Kernel Extensions in backtrace:
com.apple.iokit.IOSurface(86.0.4)[C1007599-42D0-32FF-9F2F-C63F4E6C1DEB]@0xffffff7f8b119000->0xffffff7f8b12afff
com.apple.NVDAResman(8.1)[A26D2A3D-C06F-3A0F-BCFF-901A98C93C3D]@0xffffff7f8a6d9000->0xffffff7f8a9e6fff
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.7.3)[1D668879-BEF8-3C58-ABFE-FAC6B3E9A292]@0xffffff7f8a644000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONDRVSupport(2.3.7)[38C214C0-83C8-3594-8A4C-DC6AC3FEC163]@0xffffff7f8a6c5000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(2.3.7)[74E3E50F-E50A-3073-8C96-06F854292A91]@0xffffff7f8a682000
com.apple.GeForce(8.1)[A15BB65E-3501-340F-87CB-2FD2BAD33E35]@0xffffff7f8b789000->0xffffff7f8b855fff
dependency: com.apple.NVDAResman(8.1.0)[A26D2A3D-C06F-3A0F-BCFF-901A98C93C3D]@0xffffff7f8a6d9000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONDRVSupport(2.3.7)[38C214C0-83C8-3594-8A4C-DC6AC3FEC163]@0xffffff7f8a6c5000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.7.3)[1D668879-BEF8-3C58-ABFE-FAC6B3E9A292]@0xffffff7f8a644000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(2.3.7)[74E3E50F-E50A-3073-8C96-06F854292A91]@0xffffff7f8a682000
BSD process name corresponding to current thread: kernel_task
Mac OS version:
12D78
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 12.3.0: Sun Jan 6 22:37:10 PST 2013; root:xnu-2050.22.13~1/RELEASE_X86_64
Kernel UUID: [redacted]
Kernel slide: 0x0000000009e00000
Kernel text base: 0xffffff800a000000
System model name: MacPro4,1 (Mac-F221BEC8)
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