Live from Austin!

The American Psychological Association (APA) set up a task force to “examine and summarize the best psychological theory, research, and clinical experience addressing the sexualization of girls via media and other cultural messages”.

The report has now been published.

However, I note that there were no men on the task force, and apparently no men were invited to comment (according to the document). It seems statistically unlikely to me that all the experts in the field of media effects on children are female. If a task force made up entirely of men produced a report on (say) the effect of violent media on teenage boys, and took no comments from women, I suspect that the report’s credibility would be questioned. Will this report get the same reaction?

Running OpenSuSE? Suddenly getting a message about MISSING KEYS: GPG#6b9d6523 from APT or Smart? It’s because the OpenSuSE maintainers have failed to include all the necessary keys in their repository.

Solution:

1. Download GPG key 6b9d6523 manually, say via wget -o key.txt "http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x6B9D6523"
2. Use rpm --import key.txt

Posted here for the benefit of people Googling the problem. Share and enjoy.

At the weekend I decided to give in and get a USB keyboard. I went to Fry’s, hoping to find something suitable, but fearing that all they’d have would be Microsoft keyboards.

I know Microsoft’s hardware quality is better than their software quality, and their keyboards are definitely much better than the trash you typically get with a new PC. They are also to be commended for providing a reasonable ergonomic layout at an affordable price. However, I just don’t like the key mechanism; there’s too much resistance, and it feels cheap.

The keyboard isle at Fry’s had a pretty good selection, including exotic gaming keyboards, glowing l337 h4×0r keyboards, and the extremely overpriced Logitech diNovo Edge.

After some hands-on testing, I settled on a Kensington SlimType keyboard. It’s basically the same mechanism as an IBM ThinkPad laptop, but as an external keyboard. It also manages to provide a full keyboard, with number pad, in a lot less space than my IBM Model M. I was frankly gobstruck to note that it was only $30. I may end up getting the Mac version for the other half of my desk.

My Linux keyboard problems went away immediately with the new device. No more unexpected screenshots or X locking up. I even managed to get all the fancy extra keys working; I can type Euro characters with the Windows key, and accented letters with the menu key, thanks to KDE. Getting the multimedia keys working was a bit harder, and required a ~/.Xmodmap file:

keycode 174 = XF86AudioLowerVolume
keycode 176 = XF86AudioRaiseVolume
keycode 160 = XF86AudioMute
keycode 162 = XF86AudioPlay
keycode 153 = XF86AudioNext
keycode 144 = XF86AudioPrev
keycode 223 = F14
keycode 161 = F13

These keycodes seem to be fairly standard for multimedia keyboards (they match what someone reports for a Dell keyboard), so they may be useful to other people. I made the moon key (161/F13) turn the laptop display on and off. The rightmost multimedia key is presumably supposed to be for firing up your MP3 player, as the icon looks like something rectangular with buttons. I decided to make it fire up Nonpareil, an HP calculator emulator, in HP-16C mode.

So far the new keyboard is working out well, apart from my hands having to get used to a new layout. So if you need a compact keyboard, the Kensington is recommended.