I haven't written in a while. I've been keeping busy with various things, like getting stared in business, building a piece of furniture, researching fibercrete, and dreaming about a nautilus-shaped house.
The process of getting started in business is an intense one, involving many time-consuming steps before one can safely begin working. I had to draw up a contract, start a bank account, order many little things, and start keeping track of all sorts of things.
But I think I'm just about to the point where I can really start working.
Incidentally, and just in time, I've gotten my new (to me) laptop working.
I want to keep as many things as possible separated as far as business or personal is concerned. So it's important that I do nearly all of my work-related tasks on a work machine.
I was given this machine by one of the members of the Pensacola LUG, and I'm very grateful for it. The man who gave it to me told me that it worked but needed a new power cord/brick. I ordered one, and it recently arrived. I booted up, and everything worked well. So I shut it down and started installing Debian. It had had Mandrake on it, but I don't know much about Mandrake, and I don't have an install disc for it, so I wouldn't really be able to administrate the system as it was.
The PCMCIA network interface cards (NICs) I have are a bit on the funky side, and Debian wasn't able to use them, so I pulled down an Ubuntu ISO and burned a new install disc for it. Debian is well-known for its handling of unusual hardware, and it read my NIC right away. It's based on Debian, so the system adminstration is familiar to me.
So, now I'm just setting up everything the way I want it and waiting for the other parts I ordered for it (a new battery and CMOS battery), and I'll be good to go. I'm calling the new machine Yum-Yum to match my personal laptop, Koko. Anyone who gets the reference (without the aid of Wikipedia) gets a cookie.
It seems to run a little hot, but I'm not sure. Does anyone have any hints on how to get a temperature reading from this? Is it too old to have onboard sensors?
I've been working on setting up various things on it so it'll be just the way I like it (installing software, putting items on the ring menu, making sudo behave nicely (i.e., not ask for my password for things I want to put under menu items), adding a line to the fstab for my new thumb drive, etc.), and I'm pleased with it. It even recognizes when a VGA cable is attached and switches automatically, which will be very nice when I make presentations.
I still need to copy over a lot of files and play with things to get all my settings the way I want them. After all, I recently answered someone's question about what software I use regularly, and it was a long list, so I have quite a few programs to tweak. I'm bad about tweaking things, so I have a lot of tweaking to do yet.
I'm already pretty comfortable with the trackpoint. Don't know yet if I will put a trackball on it. As I was editing this, I reached on my keyboard for where the trackpoint is on my business machine, hehe... I'd say I'm hip with the point. It's better than a touchpad. A lot better.
Well, I guess I'll post this and try to make an update later.
Sorry this has all been geekery, but this is my life right now... getting ready for doing business.
And I keep thinking of more things I need to have on the business machine. Off I go again... And I haven't even gotten to the important bits, like firewall and such.

Ran across this today:
Nokia 810.
*drool*
And its OS is Linux-based.

My new hard drive arrived today. Last week, when I tried to upgrade from the repository, my hard drive started clicking, and the upgrade failed from I/O errors. I tried running various programs that I thought might fix the bad places on the hard drive, but to no avail. So, I decided it was better to just give up on the drive and get a new one, which would be more reliable than my who-knows-how-old Maxtor (which, on looking at the case, turns out to have been manufactured on 06-10-96). So, I popped onto Newegg.com and found the cheapest hard drive with a high number of high ratings and ordered it.
It arrived today, and I installed it in the machine. By the time I can post this, the install will be done. Of course, I archived important files before I took the old hard drive out.
It occurs to me at this point that it may seem that I have been replacing my computer hardware at an excessive rate, given all the posts I've made about my various fresh installs. This is not the case. Most of my equipment is legacy. Probably half of you have nothing as old as my newest desktop machine. Well, it may be higher, given the technical factor to which my friends tend to have achieved. *grin* But this hard drive is a good example. It's 12 years old, and I don't think I was the original owner, unless it's the second drive I had in my very first machine, but I don't think so. I think it's one I picked up from someone who no longer wanted it, because it's a fairly big one, and I don't think I had a big hdd until much later.
Anyway, I have a lot of legacy equipment, and from time to time, pieces of it reach their end-of-service points.
Having finished the new install, I realized I'd forgotten to grab a few config files for aliases and profiles. Oh, well... but I also forgot the interfaces file for the network cards. Oops. My lapses in memory are unimportant, though.
After a few madenningly simple mistakes and their solutions, I had my gateway box up and running. I hope it is just as before, hehe. We shall see, I guess. Anyway, I am again proud of how much I've learned, humbled by how quickly I've forgotten the things that make the system work properly, and happy to be online again with expectations of reliable service for the forseeable future.
I love Linux. :)

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding in our society about the meaning of the word hypocrite.
From its misuse in popular reference, I observe that many people think a hypocrite is someone who says one thing and does another. Certainly, that is a small part of the meaning of this word, but if that were all, there would be no point in having the word, because we already have a word for that: human.
Yes, every human whose father and mother were born on this planet has said things and then done different things. No human alive today has ever been completely consistent in words and actions. And you wouldn't want to meet someone who did, because there are often good reasons for changing our minds and not following through on something we said we should or would do.
No, there is something much more important in the meaning of the word hypocrite.
To understand this, we need to go back to the root of the word. The ways we use and misuse words changes over time, but however we twist the meanings, the words themselves will always convey to some their original meaning, and it is often useful to return a word to its proper meaning, because words have no purpose if they do not clearly and properly convey information.
Now, this word hypocrite comes from a Greek word that means actor. And therein lies its true meaning.
A hypocrite is not someone who says one thing and does another. A hypocrite is someone who does wrong and pretends to be doing right. It is easy to confuse the two, but there is a huge difference. Saying one thing and doing another may in many circumstances (either because the situation has changed or because it is realized that following through would be worse than not doing what was promised) be helpful to all, but pretending to be doing good while behaving wickedly is never helpful.
A hypocrite is a pretender, not someone who strives for a good goal and misses the mark. We are all human, and we all make mistakes. No one can consistently do good and never do anything wrong. The tendency, though, is to expect this of others and to pretend that we are always right. And by judging the foibles of others who are trying to do right, we ourselves become the true hypocrites, pretending and deceiving ourselves that we are better because we don't talk about the good we're trying to do.
The truly righteous people acknowledge that they are no better than anyone else, try to do right, and don't, when they do something wrong, pretend in self-righteousness that they are doing right.

I've been working on stuff today for my church's Web site. And I've been having a problem. In my little toolbar, I have a few frequently used programs, including my IM client. In fact, that program's icon is the closest to the "open programs" area of the taskbar, which leads to my often clicking on it by accident. When the IM client loads, it doesn't check for another instance of itself (because it allows you to have two different accounts loaded on the same machine, as I recall), and when it tries to login, it kicks my existing connections off. This is not my preferred behavior.
So I finally (after hitting it four or five times today) decided to fix it. To do this, I thought I'd write a little shell script to check a lockfile and decide whether or not to load the program. However, lockfiles are a pain, as I discovered in researching them. But eventually, I hit upon an idea that is foolproof and doesn't involve extra files. I merely check to see if the program name is in the process list. If it is, I pop up a message box giving me its process ID. If it's not, I load the IM client. No more errors!
Here's the code:

#! /bin/bash
y=`eval  ps x | grep gaim | grep -v grep | awk '{print $1}'`
if [ -z "$y" ]; then
  /bin/sh -c "/usr/bin/gaim" &
else
  echo "Already running!" $y "is the PID." >&2
  xmessage -center -timeout 3 "Already running!" $y "is the PID."
  exit 1
fi

Since I set up that xsession chooser, all I have to do to switch from IceWM to XFCE4 is type echo xfce > .wmrc and then run startx.
( Read more... )

Last night, when I finished up, I forgot something important.
( Read more... )

Beginning from the login prompt, I login and "su -" to begin making adjustments to the first thing I notice, which is that my prompt is boring and uninformative (I like it to be colored so I can tell at a glance when I'm root and when I'm an average user). ( Read more... )

I recently had the unfortunate necessity of replacing the RAM in my laptop, Koko, apparently because it was overheating. To prevent a repeat of this expense, I purchased a cooling pad (basically a box with two fans that sits under the laptop), which is too small for Koko's widescreen body to rest upon but which seems adequate for cooling if I perch Koko on its top just so.
While testing the RAM with memtest, I had to use my desktop system, Skimbleshanks, for research online and talking to the PcolaLUG. This was unsatisfactory, for various reasons. Mainly, since I use Koko for nearly everything and Skimbleshanks only for archiving my unison files, I had not customized it for my preferences or installed all of my most-used programs. Also, I had somehow messed up the configuration of something, and titlebars were not displaying correctly. Finally, though I could discern no difference in the configuration compared with Koko, Skimbleshanks was not viewing the Debian mirror as a trusted package source.
I use the past tense because I have begun a change in this situation.( Read more... )
Check out these links. They're two parts of a humorous piece on different distributions, comparing them to airlines. Enjoy:
http://linux.ucla.edu/pipermail/linux/2000-May/003064.html
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=704486

For the benefit of those who've known me a while and heard me talk about my computers, Koko is the new name of Zidgel, Skimbleshanks is the new name of Midgel.

I suppose I ought to update this with what's been happening to me, for the benefit of my friends and my poor memory.
The semester is all but over. I have to turn in one packet of assignments tomorrow, and I'm free. I'll need to go back on Friday to get my packet back from Thursday night's class.
I'm still way behind on sleep. I'm hoping I will grow a brain in the next week and start going to bed at decent hours.
We got new fire alarms put up in our house. We went to a free dinner and saw a presentation on fire safety, and really, everyone should look into what protection their homes have, because the standard smoke detector is not enough.
I've been thinking a lot about what I'm going to do when the spring semester is over. In the spring, I'm trying to get an internship lined up, but that may not work out. If it doesn't, I'll do another semester of practicum as a copy editor on the student paper.
Anyway, after spring, I've decided that what I'll do is try to get jobs working for churches or Christian organizations, possibly through my church conference, so I could get paid by them and work for the small churches without charging them... editing copy, building Web sites, teaching churches how to write press releases in a form papers are likely to print, etc.
I found a LUG in the area, and they have an IRC channel, so I've been getting on IRC some (freenode.net). This keeps me up a little later at night, but since most of the people are in the same time zone, not nearly as much as Undernet used to. And I'll be meeting many of them in person at the next LUG meeting. I'm looking forward to that. It'll be nice to sit down with some people who don't get glazed eyes when I start talking about Linux. Sure, the art director at the paper understood it, but it'll be nice to meet multiple people who not only understand Linux but advocate it.
I've been annoyed by things I've heard in the news lately. A lot of people are bashing President Bush about this NIE report and ignoring both the biases of the authors and the intelligence we're now hearing about that refutes its findings. I'm annoyed that I see so much action that is based not on the welfare of our nation but on how people can smear their political opponents, regardless of how much it hurts morale and mission effectiveness, even though the people in question were singing a different tune in the past. It makes me sick, and I'm not going to mention any party names.
On the crochet front, I've finished a major project. Yay! I'll post pictures eventually. I still have 25 exposures left on the roll.
I'm working on a few other things, still. I have a baby blanket I need to finish, a hat I'm working on that I should probably wait until I finish the blanket before I work much more.
I posted some ads for artists, but I haven't gotten any nibbles even. I need to sit down with the pad of paper and just practice drawing until I can do my own artwork, since it looks like I'm not going to have an artist any time soon.
I wish I could think of something else to write. I wish I knew what my friends want to hear more about. I wish I were caught up on sleep. I have a lot of topics I could write about, if I were better rested and more confident.

I wasn't around yesterday because I spent the day setting up my mom's computer and doing homework.
Then I went out to watch a movie with the singles group.
I just got tired of myself. I've been making her wait a long time to check her e-mail and stuff easily because her laptop, which I had set up to do this, is having hardware woes.
So I set her up with a dual boot so she can play games in Windoze and do real work in Linux. :)
Well, so far, I've installed Windows(tm), installed Linux, and done (I think) most of the configuration for the Linux side. Once that is done, I'll do the lilo config so she can boot into Windows or Linux any time she wants.
I started by installing both KDE and IceWM on it, but since it's a rather old Dell(tm) (Entry regarding its arrival 12-20-2003m) with minimal RAM, KDE runs painfully slowly on it. So, I think she'll be using IceWM, which is the same window manager I use. This will make it easy for me to make modifications to her configuration, because I'm familiar with it.
I have set up her Web browsers, e-mail client, sound, IM, and games. I need to configure GAIM to use the sound system and sort out the desktop icons.

I am happy with the progress I've made in the past couple of years. I can now do a full Linux install, including configuration and loading software, in less than 3 hours. I can usually start using it in less than 2 hours from the time I insert the install disc.

This is a little faster than I can install a base Windows(tm) system and securing the most obvious security holes thereon, but not including the time to install all the software I'll need to do real work with it. To sit down and start using it is at least 3 hours from the time I insert the install disc, from what I remember of my experiences with it.

When I think about the number of things I'm likely to have to go back and fix again, and how often that is likely to happen in the course of six months, that difference becomes larger for me. I know when I set something in Linux, it's going to stay set unless I change it. With Windows(tm), my experience is that I often have to go back and set something I've set before because it has mysteriously become unset.

The only thing you need Windows(tm) for nowadays is some games. And that realm is shrinking. More and more games are being ported to MacOS(tm)/Linux/Un*x (think Unreal Tournament), or are becoming usable under Wine (think World of Warcraft). And there is a wealth of games available for Linux that are so cool, they've even been made usable *gasp* in Windows(tm) (think anything that mentions Cygwin in its install documents).
For anything other than games... anyone can improve their experience with computers by switching to either a Mac or a Linux install. If it isn't available for Linux or MacOS(tm), it probably isn't available for Windows(tm)... except for viruses; oops, my mistake...
And if you still want to keep Windows(tm) for some reason, there's always dual-booting, like what I've set up for my mom. If you have any questions, ask me. I'll be glad to help.

By the way, if you're wondering how many games you can play on Linux, here are some lists:
Natively (Some free, some commercial)
Natively (Debian repository (free))
Under Cedega
Under WINE

I have a list of topics I want to write about, but I don't seem to get around to it. Anyway, a few updates:
I've completed rewriting TLOC:SWL1 (Seeking What's Lost, Book 1). I need to find a few people who have spare time who can proof the book for me before I work on getting it actually published. They'll need to look for errors and tell me of places where things aren't formatted the way they are everywhere else. The proofers will, of course, be mentioned in the acknowledgements when the book is published.

I've been busy on the crochet front. I finished the scarf, added fringe to it, and started another scarf immediately. This time, I did it lengthwise and taught myself (using my bed blanket as a guide) how to do chevrons. When I finished that, I made what ended up being a potholder (or cold-dish trivet... If the yarn is synthetic, it might be bad to use it for hot things) because I put a little loop handle on it, hehe. I've made a total of three little squares that could be coasters or maybe quilt squares; I haven't decided yet. I've also made a little bookmark. I started to make another bookmark, but it seems to be too heavy, so I turned it into a bracelet.
So, I have a growing pile of crocheted items. I have not yet decided what I will do with any of them, except that i think they might make good Christmas presents.

Using my newfound skill in making chevrons, I am making a baby blanket of multicolored yarn. I think this will keep me busy for a little longer than the other projects.

I saw an ad the other day for an LG machine that plays BluRay and HD-DVD. This is what I expected. Format wars aren't what they used to be. Now consumers don't have to choose. They just wait until the multiplayers come out, and they have access to both. As for me, I'm fine with the plain old DVD format. Every time the compression and resolution takes another step forward, the shiny factor is nice, but every time there's a step forward, glitches become more obvious and more annoying than they were with the technology before.
With analog, a little bit of transmission noise meant a little static. With HD, a little transmission noise means large blocks of screen artifact, or freezing, etc. Compression is impressive, folks, but it's still lossy.
Well, anyway, have a great week. God bless you all!

[Edit: added picture of pile]

1. Botnets surpass DoS as top security issue, survey says
2. When Macs Attack (Actually, the exploit was for PHP, not MacOS or Linux)
3. Attack of the PC Zombies!
4. Are you in a botnet?
5. 1/4 of all computers are zombies (part of a botnet)
6. Is Your Computer Part Of A Botnet?
7. Note to new Linux users: No antivirus needed - Personally, I use ClamAV, but the author is right. I don't really need it.
8. Five Flaws
9. Bugs/1000 lines of code
10. Zombies at Wikipedia

I found all of these because I was reading the first article. And I immediately thought of the fact that most botnets use Windows(tm) exploits to embed themselves on systems, and that most of the malware is written for Windows(tm) (because of its market penetration), and that most Windows(tm) users don't take the time to properly secure their machines (and many don't even know how). And I thought I ought to look around for some information. So I looked up zombie on my favorite search engine (AltaVista) combined with Mac/Macintosh(tm), PC/Windows(tm), and Linux. Interestingly, for Macintosh, most of the results had to do with a game called Stubbs the Zombie. For Linux, most of the links were informational about zombies and botnets in general. For Windows(tm), most of the links were about computers infected by malware.
Botnets are responsible for a lot of the spam you get in your inbox. It could be your best friend's computer that sent it, and neither of you might know.
I think people should switch from Windows(tm) to Macs or Linux-based PCs, as they tend to be more secure out of the box. And if you're running a secure machine, you're not sending spam.
People need to take more responsibility for securing their computers. If you don't secure your computer, you might unknowingly be violating your ISP's terms of service by sending spam... not to mention garnering for yourself the curses of those who receive the spam your computer is sending out... that might be why it runs so slowly.

So, take some time to inform yourself. Then either take the time and effort to secure your Windows(tm) machine (a starting point) or make the switch... You can get a Mac here. You can get Linux here (I recommend Ubuntu for the non-technical and Debian for the power users).

Hmyyaiesdcpgp?
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wnfueteenyoay

From the results page:
"From this time forward, you'll hold the title:
Kinda Dorky High Nerd

Carry it proudly!
Quick Fun Facts:

11659 unique people have taken this test.

Based on these unique user's [sic] answers...

63.6% of test takers are gals,
34.0% are guys,
...the rest are confused.

16.6% of test takers get aroused by "iPhone," while
39.5% get utterly ill.

41.9% of all test takers would choose the Internet over sex, and
33.3% of married test takers prefer the Internet over sex.

_____ Average "dork percentile" for ______
Mac lovers: 51%
Windows users: 63%
*NIX lovers: 51%"
Note: user's should be users'.

  I didn't want my new game console to be just an expensive plaything for myself. I wanted my mom to be able to enjoy it, too. So, we've started the search for games she'll enjoy playing on it. Needless to say, her interests in games are quite different from mine.
( Read more... )
  Do any of you have suggestions of Wii or GameCube titles my mom and I might like?

What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Literature Nerd   Does sitting by a nice cozy fire, with a cup of hot tea/chocolate, and a book you can read for hours even when your eyes grow red and dry and you look sort of scary sitting there with your insomniac appearance? Then you fit this category perfectly! You love the power of the written word and its eloquence; and you may like to read/write poetry or novels. You contribute to the smart people of today's society, however you can probably be overly-critical of works. It's okay. I understand.
Drama Nerd
Gamer/Computer Nerd
Social Nerd
Musician
Science/Math Nerd
Artistic Nerd
Anime Nerd
What Be Your Nerd Type? Quizzes for MySpace

Argh! I had to correct an apostrophe abuse in these results!

I've been doing some research for class, and here are some of the gems I've encountered.
It's about time I saw someone else saying these things. Most of the points in Nintendo's Wii Is the Best Product Ever are things I've been saying ever since I heard about the features of the Wii, and PS3, and the Xbox360.
That article had links to some others which I couldn't resist reading.
Yeah, I think I was right to avoid MySpace all these years... and for many of the same reasons mentioned here: MySpace, Second Life, and Twitter Are Doomed. I did not, however, predict what is predicted in the article. I just complained about it and stayed away.
Even though I could not care less if you paid me not to care, this article, iPhone to Flop...Then Fly is a pretty good read, and I think he's mostly right in his analysis. I disagree about the keypad issue, though. That will hold them back. Anyway, I don't really care if iPhone does well or poorly, because I'm not into multi-function phones. I want my phone to be a telephone and nothing or very little else. Text messaging is sort of useful, now that we have predictive entry.
Another news item is this one about Blockbuster video choosing Blu-Ray for its high definition rentals. As A Slipped Disc? explains, the war is not over, and since HD-DVD is more closely aligned with the computer world (while Blu-Ray has a good corner of Hollywood), HD-DVD may be the winner in the end. That's where I'd put a wager, if I had to. Computing and recording are more important than Hollywood releases.
Finally, Google is doing things that annoy me. Their maps service is the one thing I do use on their site (except when individual sites use Google for the backend of their site search page, but that doesn't really count. Anyway, this article suggests that Google Is Watching Us! An interesting read.
Well, i should probably get back to my assignment. I have more research to do.

  Linux is designed, like most POSIX-compliant systems, for multiple users on one machine.
Because of this, I was able to get my mother started on becoming familiar with Linux without having to blow away all the hard work I had done getting her Windows(tm) installation working properly.( See what I did... )
Incidentally, my lips seems to have cleared up completely.

Getting Windows(tm) to play nice with Linux is usually a pain in the neck for me, but getting it to talk to a CUPS print queue was a real bear. As usual, it was a fairly simple thing once I stumbled upon the right information... except that that information happened to be in three different places, or maybe I didn't read all of the page on some of them; I was in a hurry, and that is the source of many problems for me.
Most of the references I found said much of the same things. You have to setup the printer in CUPS (Common Unix Printing System), and you have to do the following things to CUPS configuration:
1. Make sure network machines can reach CUPS by properly configuring the allow and deny statements in the location sections.
2. Configure Samba for the printer (Here's a good page about that, because this was easy to find: http://tr.samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-HOWTO-Collection/CUPS-printing.html ). Actually, most of this was easy to find, except for the last key step that made everything work for me.
3. Set Windows(tm) to use your printer. Most of the HOWTOs I found were saying things at this point like "Just set it up normally" without any real indications or examples on how to make it work when it just wasn't. So, I finally found one resource that answered that question AND the question of where to point the silly Windows(tm) printer dialog, because it wasn't finding my printer, even when it was finding it.
I just bought an HP Deskjet 5940, specifically because linuxprinting.org said it works perfectly with CUPS. It does.
But getting it to play nice through Windows(tm) was another story. Here's what I had to do:
I had to install the printer on the Wintel by connecting it directly to the USB port.
I then tried to route it through CUPS. No dice. The install disk wouldn't find the printer because it wanted to directly talk to the printer, not to a spool location.
I tried browsing the network, which would let me find the printer, but the driver tried to run its own diagnostics and again failed. I tried a number of tedious steps and finally landed on this one, which was that, having the printer installed as a local, it was now in the driver list.
I had to set up a class in CUPS. This gave me that magical requirement: the location to point the printer to. Then, I had to add a printer using the location http://CupsAndSambaHost:portnumber(default 631)/classes/ClassNameIChose to make Windows(tm) treat the printer as an IPP connection. By the way, before this would work, I had to add the IP/hostname pair to my hosts file (but that was on most of the HOWTOs I found).
All of which was much more complicated than setting up my laptop to use the printer, which consisted of waiting five minutes after configuring the printer on the CUPS server, loading my laptop's CUPS administration page, and saying, "Oh, look! There's the printer. Yes, I want to add it. Gee, this test page is much prettier than the ones Wintels print."

Hope you're all having a wonderful week. :)