Posted: April 8th, 2012 | Author:
admin | Filed under: linux | No Comments »
Trying to start a virtualbox VM resulted in the following error:
VERR_SUPLIB_OWNER_NOT_ROOT
So I checked and sure enough /usr and subdirectories were owned by 501:501
This is my fault of course, Adobe Flash messed everything up. If you encounter this you can use this command to fix it:
find /usr -group 501 -exec chown root:root {} \;
What this command does
Find any file or directory owned by group 501 starting at the /usr directory, when you find one execute chown root:root on that file or directory and continue.
Posted: April 7th, 2012 | Author: admin | Filed under: Algebra, Books, Calculus, Mathematics, Movies, Physics, Self Improvement | Tags: alan watts, art, books, buddhism, carl sagan, detroit, john steinbeck, mathematics, newton, physics, stephen hawking, walt whitman | No Comments »
For my birthday this year my wife and I decided to go on a used book store tour in/near Detroit (this also happened to be on the opening day of the Tiger’s season) I wanted to document this trip. It was a great trip and a lot of fun.
We started our trip at “The Self Esteem Shop” this store sells a variety of items (including new and used books) relating to self-esteem, self-help, psychology etc. Passing by this store frequently, it does make you wonder what is inside here is a picture:
The signs outside describe their book listings as “Books to improve your life” “For ages 1 to 101″. The employees were very friendly and although we didn’t have any questions, it did seem like they were ready to answer any questions if we did have them. Most of the books were what you’d expect, psychology books, self help, improvement. Some of the books though, were quite odd. I am by no means a psychiatrist or therapist, but giving a child a book called “We were going to have a baby but had an angel instead” doesn’t seem to bode well for a kid’s self esteem. I obviously don’t know though, it might be very helpful, I’ve thankfully never been in a situation where it might be needed. Another book that kind of put me off was one by known fraudster Sylvia Browne. I don’t think most book stores you can judge by their content, I am only judging the Self Esteem Shop by it’s content because that’s what appears to be it’s main selling point. I don’t really think that these 2 books ruined the experience by any means anyway! They had a lot of books on childhood development to help children who have ADD/ADHD/Autism and other learning disabilities. Non-competitive (cooperative) games, and puppets. If you are a teacher I would definitely suggest peaking your head in here as there are so many great resources.
Books we bought: We found a book “Ten Days to Self Esteem” which seemed to be a nice introduction to helping improve one’s self image. Another book we got was “The Well Managed Classroom”
All in all, it was worth a drop in at the very least. I really wish that stores like this would be less inclined to sell the psychic and speaking to the dead nonsense, but that’s just my hangup I guess.
Self Esteem Shop
(248) 549-9900
selfesteemshop.com
32839 Woodward Ave, Royal Oak, MI 48073
The next stop was “Classic Book Shop” also on Woodward
Classic Book Shop
Phone
248-549-0220
Location
32336 Woodward Avenue
Royal Oak, Michigan 48073
This place definitely was an unexpected (and pleasant!) surprise. A variety of older books of all kinds, lots of categories. All packed into this small shop. The shop keeper kept mostly to himself while we shopped around. The prices in this store were more than reasonable, hardcovers rarely were over $20 (and if they were you could see why). I would definitely recommend this if you are looking to find a book, but don’t know quite what you’re looking for and like to find things off the beaten path.
Books from "Classic Books"
We bought the following books here to give you an idea of price our total was about $70 :
A translated copy of “Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica” which also includes “Optiks” by Newton
4 John Steinbeck novels “The Long Valley” “In Dubious Battle” Tortilla Flat” “Cup of Gold”
“God Created the Integers” a collection of the great mathematical works, with commentary by Stephen Hawking
“Cosmos” a companion guide to the television series by Carl Sagan
“Guillotine” a history of the instrument most popularly used during the French Revolution
“Travel Log” a useful book for travelers of the world.
“Pardon My Body” a pulp fiction type novel which amused us (Classic Books had these at the end of some of their bookshelves, very fun and interesting books).
This book store is definitely a must stop place for the book lover, lots of great finds and very friendly service, they also offer a book repair service.
Royal Oak Books
(248) 545-6510
28806 Wo
odward Ave, Royal Oak, MI 48067
Our next stop was Royal Oak Books this book store is located on a corner of Woodward near 12 Mile. The outside of it definitely looks aged and the inside is the same. The selection of books was varied in here, but much more overwhelming. Many of the books were on the top shelves where even Manute Bol would have trouble reaching them. The shop keep was a nice lady who had 2 cats keeping guard. The cats helped show us through the store in exchange for pets. Seriously though, the amount of books was overwhelming, there was a large selection of paperbacks (things like Grisham and Christie) a room for religious books (mostly Christianity). Some of the shelves were noticeably worn and old.
There wasn’t too many books that I was interested in, but I did find “A Brief History of Time” which is something that I had found at the library many times as a kid, but I’ve never owned. So I was happy to be able to take it off their hands.
The next book store we visited was John K King Books North
Ferndale residence will recognize this from the sign post above the store. This book store offers a variety of selection in a well organized fashion. They are a little more modern than other used book stores. They have signs clearly stating the section you are in the front desk workers are regularly eager to help. They usually have some kind of great music playing when you walk in ( a variety of R&B when we went on Thursday). This store is where I originally got my “The World of Mathematics” collection from a couple of months ago.
However we did get “Turkish Reflections” and “Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire” on this trip. Totally worth it. This is a great book store even to just browse around in (although they have great prices so you really should just buy something).
The layout of the store is really nice, their shelves aren’t too high or too low, multiple rows make for easy viewings. There is a young adult section too. One thing they are happy to remind you of with a quote by
Patton Oswald: “If you haggle in a used book store, you are FUNDAMENTALLY EVIL”
John K King Books North
(248) 548-9050
rarebooklink.com
22524 Woodward Ave, Ferndale, MI 48220
Next we went to what was certainly the smallest of the bookstores “Library Bookstore Inc.”
169 West 9 Mile Road Ferndale, MI 48220
This store was small, but seemed to offer a different variety of books than the other stores. For example the lines were lined with music sheets from the first half of the twentieth century. Included high up on the wall was one in particular I wanted to see, which had The Marx Brothers on it, but I was too scared to ask about it. Once again, this store is great for browsing around in and finding something you may not normally be interested in. I was very tired at this point and we still had one more book store to go to, so I found a few books I was interested in and we were out of there.
3 Alan Watts books, “This is it”, “The Book”, “Nature: Man and Woman” and 1 Walt Whitman collection of poetry. One thing to note about this place: They do not have a credit card processing maching (they do take cards though) it’s better to bring cash to a used book store.
After a little bit of fighting with our GPS (which hasn’t been updated in a while) we made it to King’s Books in downtown Detroit (“De Twai” for those who like to speak with French accents)
This place isn’t so much a used book store, as a museum/used book mall. You could almost literally find a book on most any subject if you looked hard enough
As you can see, the the store hosts a huge amount of old books. It’s 4 stories tall, and is an iconic Detroit landmark. If you are looking for rare books quirky off the wall books this is the place. You can also find old radio shows, antiques of various kinds and old records (I saw a Sachmo record in a glass case hiding behind some other memorabilia but didn’t get a chance to get a good look at it). I really love this store, and I hope others discover a love for it too. Their website is the same as their sister store in Ferndale, but you really need to go in and check it out. They also seem to know the number 1 rule of being in the used book store game: know your audience. For example, while looking for Asimov, you may encounter a sign that leads you to another shelf full of Asimov books (see the gallery for a picture) looking for a Ray Bradbury short story? No problem the workers have already marked the books with tags so that you can find them in anthologies or other collections. From this store we bought: A Munch book featuring his artwork, and ”Arthur C. Clarke: Time Probe”
Posted: March 10th, 2012 | Author: admin | Filed under: linux | No Comments »
I always thought that the vi creators were cool, smart, interesting people. One thing I love is the “default” hjkl keys that control the cursor position. Catonmat describes the history of this here:
http://www.catonmat.net/blog/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys/
It mostly has to do with the computer that vi was created Lear Siegler’s ADM-3A computer terminal:
For more information about this go to
http://www.catonmat.net/blog/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys/
