Mind-Manual

Makefile error: “No rule to make target”

June 13, 2009 on 12:15 pm | In Tech, Uncategorized | No Comments

I’ve been using Ubuntu for about two months now, pretty much exclusively. It’s been pretty good so far. When I want to tinker, I can, but it just works most of the time. It’s also got Linux’s famed customizability.

Recently, while trying to install my Creative PD1001 webcam driver and kept getting this error:

$ sudo make
Building EPCAM driver for 2.5/2.6 kernel.
PLEASE IGNORE THE “Overriding SUBDIRS” WARNING
Remember: you must have read/write access to your kernel source tree.
#make -C /lib/modules/2.6.28-13-generic/build SUBDIRS=/media/DATA/Ubuntu/Creative PD1001 webcam linux driver modules
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.28-13-generic/buildÂ M=/media/DATA/Ubuntu/Creative PD1001 webcam linux driver modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.28-13-generic’
make[1]: *** No rule to make target `PD1001′.Â Stop.
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.28-13-generic’
make: *** [default] Error 2

Turns out the error was caused by a space in the directory in which the makefile was. So I just removed all the spaces in the folder name and it worked.

You can download the driver here. Instructions here.

I’m still messing aroudn with the driver to get it to work. If it doesn’t, I’ll just end up buying a different one, methinx.

Hope this helps!

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Bring a Bigger Hammer

June 8, 2009 on 9:25 pm | In Beliefs, Self-awareness | 1 Comment

Making money is a goal that cannot be successfully approached directly. There’s other such goals (such as grades) but I’ll stick to money. I’ll be bringing together the distinction between production capacity and production, incentive/extrinsic motivation and the importance of big hammers.

Let’s say you have a goal to make more money. Now, since you’re a hardworking productive person you start thinking of ways to get more money. After a bit you start to feel disconnected from the goal and from yourself because you don’t like the greedy person you feel yourself becoming. Perhaps you’ll also find that you haven’t made much money at all or improved your financial situation. Perhaps it’s gotten worse. Pretty common experience, it seems like.

Now, let’s say you decide that instead of trying to get money (the production), you try to improve the thing that gets you money (production capacity)–the value you deliver. Getting money is a consequence of value given/created for another person.

Here’s why you don’t wanna focus on getting money: 1. In the experience of a number of people (Steve Pavlina and myself included), it doesn’t work. 2. Extrinsic motivation reduces intrinsic motivation. Like playing guitar? If I start paying you for it, you’ll start liking it less and will likely play it on your own time less. It’s gotten bound up with the money, and if there’s no money, there’s no incentive to play for yourself.

Focusing on value creation and delivery, on the other hand, feels a helluva lot better. And here’s the thing: it works better by miles, too. My theory is that it works better because as you improve your production capacity, you get a bigger hammer to drive in this small nail. You can keep developing until a small tap crushes the nail right into the wood.

Grades are the same thing: you can try to focus on getting grades, or you can focus on becoming a better student. The second will work a lot better and you’ll have a lot less anxiety. And as you improve your ability to be a student, your grades will improve as a natural consequence. This is related to the idea that you don’t just get a certain goal (ie a certain amount of money or grades), you become the kind of person that gets that goal (ie a productive value-creating person, or a conscientious and effective strategy-using student).

BTW, if you’ve noticed the lack of posting lately, it’s because I’ve had the worst month of my life. Worse than the time I failed all my courses and worse than the time our house burned down…so it was bad. Good news though is that things are better but I’ll be very busy going forward, so posting will be spotty. Sorry.

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