Young Linux "Geek"

A large amount of this vacation, Patrick and I have been going to our Aunt Darla's house. Darla is my dad's youngest sister, and she has four children. She home-schools them, and for whatever reason, they are all very, very smart.

Darla's oldest son, Wade, is just about a year or two younger than Patrick I think, and since my last visit, he's become a pretty hilarious Linux programmer. He's pretty good at it I presume, he's definitely very quick at getting little file processing and browsing tasks done.

One of the comments he made was that he was a bit surprised that I wasn't able to do programming, as a result of the fact that I seemed like "such a massive computer geek" on my previous visit. Hilariously enough, my previous visit involved me re-combining little videos from my digital camera in Final Cut Pro, and a few other things in Illustrator and Photoshop, on the old PowerBook G4. I was definitely more of a creative arts geek at the time, than a programming geek, or a networking geek like I am now.

Of course, I don't feel too terribly bad about not being able to program, I've got a pretty good understanding of most networking concepts, and I've done pretty well in my studies of directory systems like OpenDirectory and ActiveDirectory. All I've got to do now is implement a few legacy directory systems like NIS or YP on A/UX, and then learn straight-up LDAP on systems like Solaris or IRIX, or even Linux, since those are easier to come by. There's also NetInfo, but I don't have enough (any) OPENSTEP systems running around to be able to do that. Like I said, networking geek.

Hilariously enough, Wade knows almost nothing about networking. He knows what packets are, probably in more detail than I'll ever need or care to have, but he doesn't understand the actual application of it, like how to plug some systems into a Linksys router in order to create a small network. I really wish my virtual machines were working, so I could show him some of the cool things a system like ActiveDirectory can do.

Another benefit of networking my computer to his is that it won't bug him so much when any of my online friends pop up with what he refers to "just punctuation!" There's a whole dialogue that some of my friends online and I have got going that sometimes doesn't use full sentences with proper structure and correctly spelled words. Ah well, I suppose it would be too difficult to explain communication theory and "Grammars" to a 14 year old. More importantly, I don't know if I want to bother.

Hilarity and youngness aside, it looks like Wade has a pretty good future ahead of him in the realm of open source programming. I wouldn't be surprised at all if after a bit of a formal education in computer science and maybe some volunteer work doing something like a Google Summer of Code, he would be able to get hired on at any of the big developers, like Novell, Oracle, or Sun. He could probably get hired at Microsoft too, were he willing to learn the Visual Studio development environment on Windows.

On the topic of the Internet, it's very interesting to see how someone who has access to it so rarely does when they get access to it. At first, Wade was unwilling to accept the idea that the Internet in and of itself was a form of entertainment, which is sort of an inevitability, at least for me. Then he wanted to use it to gain access to games, the one he tried was BZFlag, and that was "interesting" I suppose. If I could successfully get a Linux VM going, or if my Windows VMs were willing to work properly, there's a lot more we could do with even our small network.

Ahwell, one day he'll have more networking experience, I'm sure. I think he's still just amazed at the idea that we were able to connect our two laptops together with Ethernet, and share my silly EDGE connection to the Internet.

Rediscovery of Google Docs

Recently I've decided (on accident really) to take another look at Google Documents. The interface has changed a little bit, and of course there's the presentation feature at which I haven't really looked too closely -- but the biggest change I've noticed is the addition of an offline mode.

For those not familiar with Google Docs, the whole setup is pretty cool, basically it's a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation app all stored on the Internet. Although one of the problems I've had with it in the past is the fact that it's more of a gimmick that you can only access when you're on the Internet than an actual productivity application.

With a technology called Google Gears, the Google Docs interface stays on my computer and I can work on my existing Docs items in my web browser without having an Internet connection. When I'm once again connected to the Internet, either through that AT&T/Cingular mobile "broadband" card, or at home, I can re-synchronize my data with the google servers.

The only problems so far are that I have never really had an opportunity to try offline mode before -- because I never really wanted to be offline if I didn't have to be. The other problem is that you can't create new documents when you're in offline mode. It shouldn't be too terribly difficult to just write something into an existing document, or use a piece of local software. If, for example, I wanted to write my blog entry about how I'm on the bus going to Tucson, I could just open up my copy of Word 2007 and start typing away.

It would be a huge advantage to be able to create new docments in offline mode, because it brings a pretty healthy amount of unification to the workflow of using Google Documents -- especially if I were to be away from my Internet connection for an extended period of time, while somehow having the opportunity or requirement to create a fairly massive number of new documents. (Anything more than five new documents for which I intended to use the Google Docs workflow, is a number that I'd consider to be inconvenient to have to upload separately to Docs. For now though, I'll probably have to continue creating documents in Live Writer, Word or OneNote for offline use, and transferring them to Google later on if I need to. Docs.

Another cool new feature is Docs' ability to display everything in a fixed-width page view. This particular feature does help close the gap between Docs as a cool thing to talk about, and an actual useful tool. Google Docs is a great writing tool, and it is great for collaboration, since just about everybody ever has a Google account at which you can send them docs to review.  But it lacks in a few organizational things, and it's not the very best at making documents look very pretty, for presentation.

Obligatory WWDC post

Well, the Worldwide Developers' conference was today, and after getting home, I finally remembered to look at today's announcements. I've got to admit, I was a little bit nonplussed, based on Apple's web site, it's just a confirmation of the rumors that have been flying around for a few weeks.

The biggest thing is the impending arrival of the iPhone 2.0 firmware. I'm pretty excited about that one myself, because I'm really looking forward to some of the third party apps that appear. The 3G iPhone was there, but I wasn't really feeling it, except that the thing has a flush headphone jack, which made me seriously consider for a moment either selling my existing iPhone or just outright buying the 3g one. Of course, I can get one of the cool little iPhone mic/headphone-adapters for like $20, so that's a better option. In case you don't already know, the details  on the 3G iPhone are as follows: $199 for an 8-gig iPhone, in black. $399 for a 16-gig iPhone in black, or a pretty nice looking new white finish, which would match someone's white iPod collection, a white MacBook/iBook, or a white iMac like mine.

The other "important" news is Snow Leopard, which aside from one or two new things that might be considered as features, is almost purely a structural and stability/polishing upgrade. It's expected to be released in "about a year" and I'm expected to probably pay more for it than everyone else at the university. Such is life.

The update about which I'm really the most excited though, is the replacement for .Mac, which has been dubbed Mobile Me. It's touted as "Exchange for the person who doesn't have a corporate server," and the big, all-important thing about Mobile Me is Push, Push, Push. It's got push e-mail, push calendaring, and push contacts, completely (well, cross-platform enough anyway) cross-platform, supporting Microsoft Outlook 2003 & 2007, Apple's own Mail/Address Book/iCal combo, plus the iPhone, of course.

Add to all of that, a standard storage space of 20GB for mail, galleries and iDisk, plus a few other niceties, and you've got a a great, well-rounded set of online services to provide to people who buy iPhones and Macs in the Apple Store. Plus, it works great in modern web browsers, to the extent that the iDisk function lets you sort files just like in finder on a real Mac. (Plus, you can mount iDisk in finder, and map it as a network drive on Windows.)

The biggest drawback to MobileMe is that Apple is still charging for it, but I suppose they've got to make lots of extra bucks somehow. It's still $99/year for an individual subscription, and there are +20GB and +40GB storage options available, for "just" $49 and $99 respectively. Someone owning a MacBook Air might spring for the +40, to have 60 gigs of available space, to back up the entire contents of their little 64GB SSD.

On that note, I do wonder what happened to the Backup app with MobileMe -- will people currently using Backup be unable to continue backing up to their iDisks. I also wonder whether or not Backup will still be available to people who sign up as new members for MobileMe. I'll have to check that out at some point in time.

Overview of Summer Server Shenanigans.

This summer, I'm getting three machines that count both as desktop personal computers, and will probably be used as server computers. The first two, and almost the more important two, are the two Hewlett Packard e-PC units I'm getting and will be using. They're Pentium III computers running at about 1.2GHz, and if I remember correctly, mine will have either 256 or 512 megabytes of memory. The second, and almost certainly the more powerful and versatile of the group, is a Sun Ultra60 UNIX workstation. The U ltra60 is to have about a gigabyte of memory, and two 18-gig SCSI hard discs. It's also got a DVD-ROM drive to make installation of Solaris 10 more easy.

On the two HP e-PCs, I intend to install Windows Server 2003. One of them will run IIS and SharePoint services, the other will be the primary domain controller. (I'm inside my own LAN, don't worry!) I'm not exactly sure how all of the services will shake down onto the two machines, but I think it'll go like this:

• Machine 1
• Primary Domain Controller
• Terminal Services.
• Distributed File Services
  
• Machine 2
• IIS/PHP/MySQL/SharePoint
• Exchange
• Distributed File Services

My intent is to learn even more about networking with Windows Server 2003, which I am getting through Microsoft's DreamSpark program. I'd gladly try out Server 2008, but it looks like that particular piece of software is not yet available through DreamSpark. I'd try it via MSDNAA but CIS120 didn't give me proper MSDNAA access.

My other evil plan is to test Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows NT4 clients to the domain in virtual machines, to see how everything is set up, and how everything works on the different operating systems. I even intend to see how well the two e-PCs might work for hosting the UeberLandoWiki.

The Sun Ultra60 will be used directly on resnet, for maximum speed and reliability. My intent is to use this machine as a standalone web server, and web development server -- especially if I go ahead with learning some PHP this summer. We're going to put the UeberLandoWiki on the U60 and host it here at NAU. With luck, because I can just dump the U60 in the closet and leave it running, ULW should stay up pretty reliably. We can even point the domain at it's IP in my room.

In another year or two, I may consider moving ULW onto the Windows machines permanently, although for now it'll just be rocking out on Solaris' CoolStak AMP stack. ULW works quite well on the U60, so I don't expect to really need to move it around, although just for good measure, I probably will. Mainly, I want to test it in Windows 2003 on the e-PCs, along with maybe Gentoo or Debian Linux on one of the e-PCs.

I'm trying 10.5 Server out on the iMac pretty soon here, and I'm pretty excited to see how well 10.5 server works. I do wish I had another machine to use as a 10.5 client, but I think we should be fine with just having a 10.4 client to authenticate against it. I'm also pretty excited to see how well ULW will run in a 10.5 server environment, without MAMP. If it all works well, I may consider overlaying my 10.5-client install with 10.5 server, to keep some of the cool server things going.

So that's what I'm planning this summer, as far as some of my server projects go. Most likely, in a future summer, I'll combine the functions of my web server and my Windows servers into a newer box running Server2003 or Server2008, but that's for later on.

Blogging as a Career.

Recently there was a very interesting article on ZDNet, talking about the high-stress world of blogging for pay. The focus of the article is on the instantness of the Internet as a publishing medium, and the stress that's caused by the fact that anybody can get to any given story, and he who gets to the story first gets the most clicks.

One of the main points of the article is how there have been two fairly recent and fairly well-documented cases of bloggers having health problems, potentially related to the stress of their profession. It's great that blogging is now considered to be a very legitimate form of journalism, but it's unfortunate that in order to be successful at all at it, you need to be awake all hours of the day so you can be the blog that has the information first.

This is one of the things that admittedly makes me quite happy that I'm not really blogging for pay, or for another website where I'm stuck to someone else's publishing schedule. Although I'll admit I've had a few moments where I wasn't really sure I'd be able to get a post up onto the blog on time (my main goal is one per day, I haven't been strict with exactly when that post shows up, and sometimes a post will show up a few hours early or late, but since spring break there has been one post that corresponds with each day.

One thing I wonder about this relates to my intent to become a professional photographer. If this is what it's like to do freelance writing on the Internet, do some of the same stresses apply to being an independent or freelance photographer? Or will I find some job where I've got a predictable, reasonable schedule for shooting and delivering?

Maybe I'll start or be a part of a successful photo-blog. That would be cool.

Internet Cultural: Top 8 Musical

Hey faithful readers. I know this is a bit late in the day, but it still counts!

Anyway, today Meaghan alerted me to the presence of a musical about MySpace. It's called "Top 8: The MySpace Musical." I've got to admit, I am somewhat embarrassed to be so into it. It's about MySpace, after all. But it's got a really good sound, very modern, a lot of piano. Let's just say I can't wait for the FaceBook musical.

I leave you with this thought from my favorite song. "What's one more friend to you?"

Mac World San Francisco, 2008.

Every blog and forum I read has had a commentary on MWSF 2008, universally considered the Christmas of the consumer Mac world. Having bought an iPhone just shy of five days before the keynote, I'll start off by saying I was somewhat worried that my shiny new device would already be out of date. Luckily, not only was the iPhone not replaced, but it received a nice software update. The most important feature is that which allows me to manually manage the music and videos on the device, just like my iPod.

The first thing Jobs revealed was Time Capsule. It's a relatively simple device, it's basically Apple's Airport Extreme base station hooked to a 500GB or 1TB "server grade" hard disc. The gist of the device is that you can easily set up Time Machine to automatically and wirelessly use the Time Capsule as its backup drive. You can use it with "all the Macs in your house." Simple enough, and I think it's a cool device, the only questions I've got so far involve whether or not you can add to the storage in your Time Capsule, or if it would be possible to own more than one Time Capsule, and concatenate the available amounts of storage.

Afterward, Jobs demonstrated some iPhone software updates. I installed the iPhone software update recently, and without a doubt, my favorite feature, the feature that might actually cause me to keep the iPhone, is the ability to manage my music and movies manually. It's how I use my 30-gig video iPod, and I'm glad it's available for the iPhone. The third major announcement of the keynote was new iTunes movie rentals. I'm really excited about that one because like Jobs says, I'm the kind of person who doesn't really watch movies more than once. In a way, it's a lot like a daily ticket on satellite TV, where I can watch the same movie several times in one day. It'll be like in December when I watched "Chuck & Larry" about five times.

Part of the iTunes update involved AppleTV. In this part, Jobs admits that they'd gotten the concept of AppleTV wrong, and provides updates on the software of AppleTV, including the new user interface and renting an HD movie. The whole experience looks really well designed, and I've got to admit that the AppleTV with its software update looks really nice. I don't really want one, but I also don't really have an appropriate television with which I'd be able to peruse the content.

By far, the most important part of the keynote, the one causing the most controversy online, is the MacBook Air. Let me start by saying that I think the MacBook Air is an awesome product, and it's something Apple hasn't had in awhile. Let me also say that it's not something I'm going to be buying any time soon. Even though I think it looks awesome, and would love to be able to bust one out during class, but the high price and the fact that I've already got three working IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads, all of which have reasonable battery life, and good capability as note taking machines.

The main problem with MacBook Air, of course, is the price. For $1800 (retail) you get a 1.6GHz Core2Duo, from the new Penryn platform, 2 gigabytes of memory, and an 80 gigabyte hard disc. You don't get much other than that, of course, because being so thin, Apple had to make compromises somewhere, and they did it in reasonable areas I think. The backlit keyboard is full size, and the LED-backlit display is a full 13.3" glossy display, similar to the MacBook's display.

Not included are an optical drive, and a few "essential" ports. What I've noticed is that the biggest grouching people have been doing is the result of the ports. The MacBook Air features only a MagSafe power port on the left side, and on the right side behind a little door, one USB port, one "Micro DVI" port, and one audio output port. The biggest things the MacBook Air is missing is apparently another four USB ports, audio input, an internal optical drive, and FireWire. What bugs me about that is that the inclusion of those things basically turns the MacBook Air into a MacBook Pro, plus a few extra USB ports.

The problem with this, of course, is that the entire point of the MacBook Air isn't the thing those people want. Those people want a $599 mobile machine, as fast as a full-sized MacBook, with discrete graphics, basically adding up to a 12" PowerBook G4.

My take is that the MacBook Air is really intended as a companion Mac to a powerful desktop computer. I can see a lot of Mac Pro owners, or people whose desktops are high end iMac systems wanting one of these to use as their mobile systems, especially if they, like myself, prefer doing as much computing as possible on their desktop systems when they're in their offices or homes. MacBook Air is great then, for people who need something they can use on a plane or train, and that they need to be as light as possible. When it comes down to it, there will be people who are willing to pay this price for such a mobile computer.

Maybe if I were more patient, and hadn't already bought the ThinkPad, I would've gotten one, although I'm really happy with the ThinkPad, and think I'll have it for quite some time to come as my mobile computer. Maybe my next mobile machine will be some kind of MacBook Air successor.

Back At Work!

Well everyone. I'm back at work. It's been a "fun" day because of all the calls relating to the recent Cisco Clean Access appliance upgrade, overall not the worst day I've ever had though. Just a whole heck of a lot of escalations, and I'm going to have to go back through my calls to make sure all of them have a category and an OS.

I was planning on a longer, nicer blog entry, but was unable to deliver due to my own laziness. Even though I could've gotten up at 8 or 9, I slept until about 11 this morning, which I'll admit was pretty awesome.

Now if only Pine Ridge Village worked properly. I have almost ten escalations right now of people who live in Pine Ridge, hopefully that gets fixed soon.

Publishing Schedules

One of the things I've noticed about some of my favorite web logs, even personal ones, is that they come out on a fairly regular basis. One of my intents for Strapped to a Desk has been to publish it on a fairly regular basis, my original plan for that was just to always be writing, and then I'd always have something to post to the blog. What ended up happening was a bit different. I kept writing, into a document called NaNoNovel 2007, and so I didn't have anything to publish during November. Between that, and not really having a dedicated blog-writing time, not only has my publishing schedule been sporadic at best, I've somewhat slowed down in my writing.

So one of my goals for 2008 is to start publishing my blog more often. I'm going to achieve this by just writing more, plus I intend to use a calendar, which will help me keep track of when I've started to write things, and when I intend to finish them. I've already started the calendar, I'm using Windows Calendar on my ThinkPad R61i to keep track of when I start writing things, and when I intend to publish them. My intent is to have something fairly major ready for publishing every Monday, and I've already started filling in Mondays in 2008.

One thing I've definitely noticed is that I think to my blog a lot, or at the very least, I think in things I write that could potentially end up on my blog. Another thing I suppose I would like to do is write some more things that don't get published to the public weblog, but that do get written, primarily as a personal record. It's a need I have because there are a lot of things I see and hear and experience that most people don't need to know about, but that I'd like to have in the future. I may just start writing Word documents into a separate folder for that.

Windows Live Writer

Hi Blog! I've recently found an interesting little utility on the Internet, it's called Windows Live Writer. It's a nifty little Microsoft application that can help manage blog entries. It supports my Blogger account, and it's got the advantage over Word 2007 in that it supports posting images to the blog provider.If it's worked properly, a screen capture of the about window should be to the right of this text.

Oddly enough, I found out about Writer while looking at Microsoft's various products, trying to find out if they've got anything in the way of helpdesk call management/tracking utilities. I was at dad's work today and found out that they use something called Remedy, which is a ticket tracking system also apparently in use at Purdue University. Currently the ACHD uses something that was written by a CS student some years ago, and they're working on a new system, but being overzealous and bored as I am, I started researching additional solutions today, just in case they ever ask me what I'd rather use as a call tracker, or I'm tasked with starting my own helpdesk. (Unlikely, but you never know, eh?)

It looks like neither Microsoft nor Lotus provides one of these solutions, although I'm not finished looking at solutions, and it *is* possible that Microsoft has such a solution that they aren't advertising too hard, or it's built into Dynamics somewhere, which would make it difficult for me to find, I'll admit.

I will eventually start researching various open source solutions but I don't personally have enough of a setup to test a full call tracker on the decTOP. (Which by the way, is all set up and running! Just be patient with it, because it's definitely not the fastest machine ever, especially with the MediaWiki-based ueberWIKI as its homepage.)

decTOP

Well, I suppose it is time to let the world know that I’ve got the decTOP and it’s been set up, I did it last Friday at work, and I’ve gotten to know my way around Debian Linux and its apt system (which I manage using aptitude) fairly well.

For those who don’t know, the decTOP is an adorable little low-cost computer system. In a way, it’s what e-machines probably should have aspired to create. In another freaky way, it’s a lot like the technology eMachines was using in 1998-1999. It’s got a 366MHz AMD Geode processor, comes with 128mb of memory (Mine’s upgraded to 512) and a 10 gig hard disc. Aside from that, it has VGA graphics, AC97-based audio, and a usb Ethernet adapter, which works, although I would’ve liked onboard Ethernet.

Linux itself runs with acceptable speed, somehow it almost always does. The apache web server seems to dish out static HTML pages relatively quickly, but the real test of the decTOP for me is how well it handles an app like mediaWiki, which I use for the old ueberWiki which I’m eventually going to put back up. Unfortunately, it handles mediaWiki quite poorly, it currently lacks any decent caching software for PHP, and its slow processor makes it difficult to want to let it actually process every page on its own, especially if ueberWiki ever gets back up and starts getting hits again.

I suppose that that particular question is one for later, and if anything, it won’t be super-difficult to migrate back to a Mac or PC server from the decTOP if absolutely necessary, although I like the “uses almost no electricity” aspect of the decTOP. Plus there’s the whole thing about how its small size allows me to bring it from home to the university and back relatively easily, in comparison with, let’s say just for example, something huge like one of the surplusDells or the PowerMac G3.

For now I’ll move the ueberWiki over and if it becomes a huge problem, I’ll figure out how to move the ueberWiki back onto the iMac I suppose.

Epic Song

Jim was browsing 7-Chan today, and we discovered this most-epic song. Here is a YouTube video of it.



I love the Internet.

In other news, I discovered something called Ruckus. It's kind of stupid and kitschy at first, until you realize how much awesome, free music can be attained from it.

Word 2007

Today, I'm working the desk in the South LAC as well as the ACHD phones. This certainly provides an interesting opportunity, as I am now having some time up close and personal (for the first time) with Microsoft Office 2007. I would still like to get my own copies of Vista and Office 2007, but at the very least, this is proving to be an interesting foray.

It'll be the first time since its release that I've had Word 2007 opened for more than a few minutes. I find it interesting, actually that the first thing I find in Word 2007 is the blog post function. I can see the usefulness though, it's a nice simplified view that provides mainly the functionality that I would need/want while writing a blog post. I can see actually, how somebody doing this for a living might want something like this.

One of the biggest changes is the ribbon and that new Office button. The ribbon provides what could be an excellent and much simpler interface to Word functionality. Although, it could also confuse a lot of veteran office users to no end. Plus, with no "traditional" menus such as File and Edit, I happen to have received several "how do you print?" questions about Office 2007. Once I got over myself and my Office 2003/2004 expertise, I realized that this is a great program. Presumably, it's suitemates in the Office 2007 systems are also worth their weight, but I haven't tried them yet.

I suppose this means that I am holding out, and instead of switching all of my office tasks over to Apple's new iWork '08 suite, I am going to be looking at Office 2007 and Office 2008 more closely. I am even considering just only using a PC for Office tasks, were I to get a newer mobile computer that happens to have the ability to run Windows. (Thinkpad T61, R61 or X61!)

Another interesting tidbit is that the monitors here at the S-LAC can be raised pretty high up. I can see how for somebody concerned with ergonomics, or rotating the display, that would be a pretty important little tidbit. It is accomplished on these (and other similar Dell LCD monitors) by pressing the button on the back of the base, and lifting the display up.

Also: I've linked my blog site to the blog of one of my online friends, Aeroraptor.

Merits of Expandability

Hmm... Well this is entertaining. One of the things I discuss with certain people quite often is whether or not the average mere mortal will actually need in-computer expansion capabilities such as slots and extra hard disc bays. I know, almost everybody could always use more memory, but honestly, will most people ever actually install an upgrade graphics card?

I typically say that most average human beings won't need these things, and in fact a lot of people who are considered "high end" users don't actually use a lot of the expansion capabilities bestowed upon them. I typically include myself in this, because I realize that almost everything I've ever wanted for my Macs has either been an add-on that I could do externally via a firewire port, or something I didn't need.

On the other hand... just today, I found one or two different PCI Express cards that I'd like, and I realized that if I had the opportunity to do so, I would probably have all four bays of a MacPro filled within a year. Getting those drives will cost more because I've got to figure out something to put them in, and when I do that, I won't even get all of the performance the drives are capable of offering. (after filling the internal bays, I'd probably have to try to get an eSATA card. :P)

And all of this comes from just two tangents I went on today... data longevity and video i/o. Actually, data longevity led to video. I was researching using a MiniDV deck as a tape drive for making backups of my iMac's external hard discs. (one of which is, in and of itself, a backup of its startup drive) From there, I was surprised at how much cheaper it is to buy a whole MiniDV camcorder than to buy a standalone MiniDV or Digi8 deck. From there, i researched high def camcorders. I found that there is a 3-ccd Panasonic camcorder selling for less than 600usd. The catch is that it records AVCHD data onto DVDs or SDHC cards, and AVCHD is pretty much impossible to use on a Mac.

Enter another PCI-E card. It turns out that blackmagic design has a card out there with HDMI input for just $249 This brings a complete high-def setup (with a fairly nice camera) for less than a thousand bucks. (though there is the Canon HV10 for 650 too, which is "proper" tape-based HDV that can be imported into imovie or final cut.

Well... not that I've got money for any of those upgrades now, or for the prerequisite "really high end Mac," but it was at least an interesting observation on the apparently "not totally useless" expansion slots, and how a higher initial investment in a system with more options for connectivity can result in a lower investment later for things like getting into high def video, or expanding storage capacity. I think next time I buy a Mac, I'm going to save up a bit more and try to get a MacPro [or whatever midrange/highend system is suitable at the time].

Getting Things Done

On this luckiest of days, it occurs to me that this summer has been wasted mostly on trivialities, little things that don't matter much in the long run. That's fine with me, but I feel as though I should do something that I feel will have some kind of lasting effect.

More importantly, I've been thinking about the status of the 68kMLA, and the 68k User Base. What I've noticed is that the users of older 68k and PowerPC machines are really just that -- users. We've got very few mega-hobbyists who do programming on them, and get deep into the hardware and architecture of the machines. The 68kMLA/PPCMLA on their own aren't very conducive to those discussions, and most of the people around wouldn't be interested if it were there.

So I feel like I should do something for the retro Mac community -- but what? Should I be writing software? Lobbying for the simplification of websites? I personally don't think that either of those is a very great idea, but I do believe that there are things I can do to help the community.

One of the things I've tried to do before is work on a database of software titles for Macs. This is important for a lot of reasons. It gives me something to do, for starters, and I think it's a fairly important contribution to the community. Especially if I could find information on things such as intro and discontinuation dates on various pieces of software, plus prices to help indicate to people just how much software actually cost.

We'll see though. I'm working on setting up a spot on my own website where potentially, a few people will be able to post information as they get it, but with any information-gathering project, it's not just something we'll be able to do and say "oh cool, done now." It's something that we'll have to work on, pretty much for a long time, I don't think that archiving all of the information about 68k Macs, even just about the software, will ever be done.

Another thing that was pointed out was the fact that the information about Apple's systems is really inconsistent, not only between Apple's website, but given the fact that there were a certain, well-known range of models released, I find it less important to release yet-another specs database.

Anyway, maybe one day I'll start on my Software Titles database, but for now I'm just going to write blog entries about how I think I should. Plus, I'm not entirely sure how I'll coordinate it yet.

Happy Ice Day!

Well, I've started to get back to my old shenanigans of declaring every day some kind of holiday. I've been drinking a whole lot of water with ice lately, so I declared today a Day of Ice

I learned also that there was once an emperor so crazy as to have ice brought down from mountains.

Bethany: And Emperor Nero would send servants up mountains to get ice for his form of ice cream :3

So this begins the first of probably-several incidental random celebratory days.

I've gone ahead and created a calendar that anybody with a google account can subscribe to. If you've got suggestions for a celebration, feel free to send me a message through the message-sending implement of your choice.

Wicked Avenue Rent Express-- The Extreme Acid Jazz-Polka Musical.

If you could create a musical, and/or your life (or your ideal life) were a musical, what would it be called, and what kind of music would it have?

My musical (maybe not my ideal life, but my ideal musical. :P) would be called Wicked Avenue Rent Express , and would have the subtitle "The Extreme Acid Jazz-Polka Musical." It would basically be about junkie wizards and witches who live in a cheap, run-down apartment building in New York, Oz. They'd also conduct train (or trainwreck) races -- in which magic, talking, quite-snarky trains race around quite uselessly. (because it's somewhat dangerous to ride the train, given how fast they go.)

I'm actually not yet sure what the musical of my life would be though. I need to work on that a bit.

It should be a bit obvious what I've been listening to recently.

Also, I've been reading the Gregory Maguire novel "Wicked" subtitled "The life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West." It's very good. I've actually got the sequel here too, a Yanni CD, and the first LoTR novel. I intend to catch up on some reading and whatnot. I found out too that I can place holds online, and (in theory, though I've yet to test it) have them make their way to a specific branch of the Mohave County Library System. In this way, I intend to make fairly regular trips to the now-walking-distance Valle Vista MCLD location. Summer of Reading! Yaay!

It's also worth noting that I recently discovered the "Indoor Walking Machine" aka the treadmill. Quite a nifty device, which I'm taking advantage of by using it. I found that after an hour or so, I can work up quite a sweat on it, which is cool because I think that means it's helping me achieve my lofty goals of losing the "Freshman Thirty" (Come on, you can't think I've been denying the fact that I'm a bit chunkier than I was at the start of the school year.) The Treadmill also (niftily enough) can be attached to an audio device (such as my iPod) to provide a form of entertainment (midis converted to MP3s by iTunes) while I'm walking (but not actually leaving the house.)

My goal is to return to the weight I was before I started at NAU. Unfortunately, even if I do, it may not do me any good, as I'll just be back at NAU again next fall, probably following the same eating patterns. Though, I do admit... my food intake patterns probably didn't hurt my GPA, so for now I'm not complaining too bitterly.

Visit to Mom's

I just got back from visiting Mom's house. It was better than over Thanksgiving, but I had difficulties in getting to my 68k Macs. Apparently a whole lot more stuff has been added to the garage, as well as the office, making neither location suitable for playing with old Macs. Additionally, it was very difficult to get to the Macs.

Luckily, I was able to find my 17" VGA monitor, the displaced PC133 memory (128mb sticks from the Dell/500, apparently) and the SGI Octane. I didn't, however, seem to be able to find my Powermac G3. Unfortunate, but I am sure it'll show up. That, or I'll use the Dell/933 as my main Mom's-House computer.

While I was there, I found out that Intel uses really cool codenames for their processors. Examples include Deschutes, Banias, Dothan, Cedar Mill, Conroe, Merom, Merced (boy do I remember the Merced!) , among others. (Prescott isn't that great, but I suppose I have to say "whoo for prescott!" because I have friends from that particular location. -- At any rate, I intend to give my unnamed computers names from a selection of Intel codenames. I may even give one to my iMac.

Schlangenbeschwoerer, however, is still a very tempting hostname for the iMac. Truthfully, who can resist something like "Snake Charmer?" It is currently named PRAGMA-II after the PowerBook G4 it officially replaces. (The PowerBook G3 being considered a stopgap machine, and now filling a different usage slot.)

Also, I really like Initial D music now. The Eurobeat stuff they use is nothing short of excellent. I will probably use this stuff for NaNo Writing Music this coming November.

Gentoo Linux

Hey everybody! I am just writing this to let you know I am running Gentoo Linux on my PowerBook G3. It's working well enough that I am even comfortable using it unplugged, although I have yet to find out exactly how I am going to monitor the life of my battery or batteries.

One of the things I'm interested in is whether or not Linux can really manage the power very well. Naturally, it's not of the greatest concern right now, but I will be interested and concerned when it comes to me using the machine for school, taking notes for classes. Next semester, I have a lot of classes in a row, so it'll be me with my backpack and my notebook computer for probably eight hours straight. I suppose it won't really be a huge problem if the other battery were working, I used to be able to get ten or more hours of use without any problems in my dual-battery setup.

Another thing I am concerned with is whether or not wireless will work properly. I'm sure I can make it work but it's another thing I have to figure out *before* the next school year starts, elsewise I will end up using Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X 10.3 again. (While that's not so bad, I do think I'd like to give
this operating environment a proper chance.)

I must say though, that I do quite like xfce4. Everything works properly, and nothing is too glitzy to be functional. OpenOffice, Xchat and Firefox2 can all be open and running quite well without many issues.

CS3!

I bought some Adobe CS3 apps today. I now have the Adobe CS3 Design Standard suite, as well as the independent Dreamweaver CS3 kit. I bought them instead of Design Premium because the NAU Bookstore didn't have Design Premium for Mac in stock.

So far, the applications all look and work great. Several improvements have been made in Illustrator, and so far, inDesign, Photoshop and Dreamweaver all work as expected. I am also working on the next generation of my Dana/CLW249 website, which will hopefully start coming together this summer. I intend to include more of my photography and a few other things in the new website. I will eventually start moving my old Dana/CLW249 content over too.

I have also determined that I would at some point like to get a Wacom tablet and start getting into doing some stuff with Illustrator. Brandy even mentioned that it wouldn't be too difficult for me to get into doing a webcomic if I really wanted to, if I were to do fairly simple and/or stylized people, so I may just have to bust out the pen and some paper to get some practice with that.

I also downloaded and installed the cool free font bonus, and I am currently partaking in 30-days of free training from lynda.com, another registration gift from Adobe. Both are pretty interesting, I do like the font, and I will probably use it somewhere, for something. The lynda.com training is interesting too. They've got training on just about everything, and I intend to use it to improve the way I use these Creative Suite apps. Plus, I've been learning loads of cool tips from the Adobe Creative Suite podcast, which is now covering mainly CS3.

Needless to say, I will have a lot to do this summer, a lot of which includes the Creative Suite.