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.

Accomplishment

Well, Kate and I finally got all of the machines in the photo computer lab imaged, and set up. We got the printers going, OpenDirectory works just fine, the drobo's doing great (3x500GB disks = 900GB of disk space for userfolders and other supporting materials.) and in general, the photo room's technology should be ready for another school year's worth of usage.

It's worth noting that setting up OpenDirectory on a Mac OS X network is ridiculously difficult. Surprisingly, it's more difficult than setting up ActiveDirectory on a Windows network, it's even more difficult than setting up and managing an old Windows NT4 domain, which I find to be ridiculous. It takes me a few hours to set up a fully functioning Windows NT 4.0 domain, with a server, three clients and roaming profiles. Mac OS X didn't take too terribly long once I got everything figured out, but it took a generous amount of time to figure everything out.

While I am definitely happy about my accomplishment at the photo classroom last week, I think the biggest accomplishment will be at the end of next school year, in spring/summer 2009, when I come back to Kingman and hear about how well it all worked, and about how we won't need to reformat the server again. At that point, I'll definitely start to trust the Leopard Server environment. I'll believe it though, when I see it. In the meantime, I would really love to get my hands on a few machines I can use to test out my own Leopard (and eventually Snow Leopard) server environment, but that's a project for later on.

OD Master!

Well, it's not actually as cool as it sounds, but I'm now officially an OpenDirectory Master! Today I ended up reformatting the server and setting everything up one step at a time, instead of the way I did it last time, which was "everything at once."

The moment of truth, when it finally happened, was nothing short of breathtaking. At first, I was able to add accounts just fine, which was our problem yesterday. Then, we were able ot see that the clients recognized something should be happening, but we weren't sure of the exact solution. Then it clicked, of course it had something to do with DNS! So I changed a setting on the client machine and blammo, the test user logged in perfectly!

We finished up the configuration of the PowerPC Macs (two G5 iMacs, three G4 iMacs, and one PowerMac G4) and tomorrow, we're distributing a new version of the system image we made on MacBook Pro 11 to the rest of the numerous intel-based Macs. From there, we'll be in business.

Tonight, I'm also setting up the software on the G3 iBook, which is just going to be an install of Mac OS X 10.4, iWork '08 and Office 2004. Much as I'd love to take the path of my Pismo and put Office'08 on there, I doubt that it would be appreciated. Tomorrow at some point I'll install Photoshop CS2 on the iBook, and with luck, be able to join it to the 10.5 OD server. If it works, Kate will have yet another machine she can have someone use. If it doesn't, I may put OS9 on it for her, along with Final Cut Pro 2 and recommend she have someone use it for on-site video capture. I presume it'll work though, as it's advertised as working, and the 10.5 system is nearly at a default configuration.

So, with luck that'll all work tomorrow, but the biggest and hardest part of the project is done.

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.

Plans for the 760s

Well, I've started working on the decision for exactly what I'm going to do to the ThinkPad 760 computers. One of them, the 760CD, will remain the same, because it's already nearly a museum quality piece of hardware.

The other two, a ThinkPad 760EL and a ThinkPad 760ED shall be combined to make one ThinkPad that I have decided will be nearly museum quality. I'm going to then throw the worst bits away, keeping the extra bay modules and anything else I think I'll need.

The exact plan is to make the 760ED the base of my new setup, because it's the fastest of my 760s and it has a nice big 1024x768 resolution display, compared with the 800x600 display on the CD and the EL. I am going to take the top case, the keyboard and the rear port cover from the 760EL and put them onto the ED. I'll also be keeping the floppy, battery and dead hard disc from the EL as a "just in case" pile of spare parts. One of the things I will then eventually do is put a new drive in the EL's hdd caddy, so I can have a drive for Windows and a drive for OPENSTEP4.2, which is the operating system I'd eventually like to run on the ED.

Tonight, I've actually gotten Windows 98 installed on the ED. It was surprisingly easy, and I'm pleasantly surprised with how easy the whole installation process was. Right now, I'm just copying the variety of Internet Explorer installers to it's hard disc so I can see how "modern" I can make Windows98.

Windows 98, at least the OEM version I installed, isn't really as bad as I remember it being so long ago. It's got some stuff I don't even remember in Windows ME, like "Windows Family Logon." (Although I may just not have looked hard enough, or needed WFL that long ago.) The cool thing about Windows Family Logon is that it actually separates profiles, and keeps them very mildly secure. You set up an initial profile, and from that point forward you create new accounts as needed, and you can determine exactly how much customization is needed for each account. You can also set passwords, but I haven't bothered with that yet.

Another thing I would like (but am unlikely) to do is recell and/or revive some of the spare 760  batteries. With as fast as the 760ED is, or as fast as the CD can be if I run a more slim OS, a 760 that's got two batteries would be a great notetaking machine. Two batteries that can get 3 hours each would be great for a portable system. Plus, since I have three batteries total, I could pop in a third and really get all-day computing.

PowerBook 520c

Today I've been playing some PowerBook, and have given some thought to exactly what I want to do with some of my older computers, because it was pointed out to me that I've got ten of them in the office right now, and another three in my room -- and that's not counting the two that I still haven't received in the mail.

One of my favorites of the old PowerBooks, purely for it's high specs, is a PowerBook 520c. Unfortunately it's hinge isn't in such great condition, and I need to consider whether or not I am going to repair it. I should repair it because I would like to have a nice fast 68k PowerBook around. I will probably take the hinges from the PowerBook 520c, and then sell the 520c later on.

At some point I will probably re-do the software installation on this particular 520c, it's running someone else's install of 7.5, with some software licensed to the university. I think it was used by a faculty member or a graduate student of French, in the department of modern languages. I should like to put my own installation of System 7.1 or Mac OS 7.6 on it, along with my own selection of software.

Speed Racer... oerr... Indiana Jones.

Last night, Meaghan, Tyson, Mel, David and I went to see Speed Racer, I mean Indiana Jones. It was a pretty great movie overall, and quite a fun adventure.

The movie itself was pretty epic, I'd never seen any Indiana Jones movies before, so there were a few little things lost on me, but it wasn't something I felt like I was unable to continue watching, which is good. I should check to see if there's any particular order in which I should watch the others, or if they're standalone too.

Because I can't seem to post without some technology update, it's worth noting that I chose and bought a video card for the flatdell -- I'm getting for it an nVidia GeForce 8600GT.

Errands

Today has been very busy. Lots of errands were run. I've been to the helpdesk, to Staples & Walmart, and I've just now gotten back from getting food (Taco Bell) for Glenn, who now has a job at the front desk of Gabaldon. In a few more moments, I'm heading out with Meaghan, Tyson, Mel and probably a few other people to go see the new Indiana Jones movie.

As an update on 'Precious' the Dell Inspiron 530s, I have decided not to get a new monitor for it yet, I am going to run it with the 19" dell trinitron monitor, which I found out is capable of running at 1600x1200@75Hz, which is a very viewable resolution and refresh rate. I'm going to try color calibrating the thing in the next week or so.

I'm also still looking at graphics cards for it. I've found nearly a dozen individual suitable cards, but I'm not a hundred percent certain which one I'm going to get yet.

"Gaming" PC

Today after taking the picture for Photo365, Meaghan and I headed to Staples, mainly to look around. In our exploring, we discovered a very cheap Dell. A Dell that I bought, somewhat uninformed about it, but I'm very happy with the decision. The idea is that I don't like dual-booting the iMac into Windows for games, and a slim desktop system would be able to take a graphics upgrade would be a very helpful type of computer to have around.

If it weren't on clearance, this particular system would've cost about $600. Luckily they had it on massive clearance discount, so I brought it home for about $300. The trip home with it was quite fun. Meaghan and I had to carry the CPU separately from all of the other stuff, because the original box wasn't included. Meaghan has decided that it's name needs to be precious, because it's such an adorable little computer.

The specs of the system in it's base form aren't too terribly spectacular. It's got a 1.8GHz "Pentium Dual Core" processor in it, 2GB of memory, a 320GB hard disc, a mega DVD burner, and a card reader. The motherboard has an Intel GMA X3100, but one nice surprise is that it's not using the expected 965 Express series chipset, it's got a G33/G31 Express family chipset, which means it's capable of using much nicer processors, like either the Wolfdale E8500 or the Yorkfield Q9300 processor. It's also got a PCI Express X16 slot, and it should be capable of holding up to 4 or 8 gigs of memory.

My plan for that PCIe slot is an 8-series nVidia GPU with 256mb or more of memory. I've found five candidates on Newegg, which I'll talk about in a later post I think.

Right now the thing's running Vista Home Premium, but I think I'm going to load MSDNAA Vista Business onto it. Other than that, I'll put Office2007 on it, and as soon as I get the new GPU, I'll install the games on it and remove Vista from the iMac I think. Tonight's project is burning a Vista Business DVD and getting this machine up to date.

Speaking of the iMac, I'm not 100% sure what I want to do with the iMac yet. This system is shaping up to be more powerful than the iMac, and it's definitely more expandable. I'm just not sure about whether or not I'm too attached to Mac OS X and/or the iMac itself to impulse-sell the iMac. More on that in yet another blog post.

XIMETA is Dead

Today I loaned Meaghan the old 80gig XIMETA drive, in an attempt to help her get a bunch of data backed up. We started formatting it, but on both her and my computer, it can't finish formatting, and it'll end Windows Explorer until the computer is restarted, and/or the drive is removed.

It's been a nice, long run. I got XIMETA in 2004, when I decided I needed a drive for backup (haha!) and (mainly) for archival of different files. Initially it wasn't so fast because I had to use it over USB1.1, with the occasional visit to it's Ethernet mode.

I'll probably either toss it out, or replace the mechanism in it. We'll see. At some point, I'd like to replace all or most of my external storage devices with a drobo, with the exception of maybe a Windows backup drive, and a drive for the laptop. What I may end up doing is using the MyWD drive as my Windows/Mobile drive, reducing my number of externals to 2.

Anyway... here's to you, XIMETA. You were a good drive, my first USB external drive, in an era when two USB ports was good enough for everything I needed to use.

Gaming PC

For some reason, I woke up yesterday with this very strange urge to research computer parts. So far I've looked at processors, motherboards and cases. Glenn and I have been talking about building a gaming computer, and I always like having another machine around, so I decided to look at some parts today.

I've decided on two processors that are very similar in price. One is a dual-core at 3.16GHz, and the other is a quad-core at 2.5GHz.

• Q9300 Quad-Core.
• E8500 Dual-Core.

The two processors listed here are both 45nm processors that require some of Intel's latest chipsets. There are three motherboards that I really like, one based on the G35 chipset, one based on the P35 chipset, and the other based on the X38 chipset.

• DG35EC motherboard.
• DP35DPM motherboard.
• DX38BT motherboard.

My favorite motherboard is the DG35EC. It's got a nice complement of ports, and if I were building the machine purely for Vista use, the board's Intel GMA X3500 graphics would serve great -- and it's capable of HD video playback, at up to 1080p. The other two boards don't have graphics, which makes them quite suitable for what I'd originally intended to use the system for, which is as a gaming computer.

So far, I've pretty much decided on one enclosure, the Antec 300. It looks like a great enclosure, the power supply is at the bottom which is for whatever reason my favorite orientation, it can hold an ATX board, and there are plenty of . The big important part about this particular enclosure though, is the fact that it's not ugly. After looking at a lot of mid towers, I've got to say that I think the Antec Three Hundred is the one I'd probably be able to live with.

So far I'm happy with the components I've looked at and their prices. I'm somewhat terrified of the prices for the rest of the components. I'm not sure quite yet if I'm going to go through with building this machine -- the iMac is a pretty great computer as it is, and any of the games I'd like to play run great on it.

Over the next few weeks, I'll probably look at other parts and see what's out there, but ultimately I don't think I'll be building a new computer this summer, but if I do, it'll be later on in the summer.

Mac OS X 10.5 Server

Well, I've finally brought the ThinkPad and the Pismo to the new room, and started playing with Mac OS X 10.5 Server on the iMac.

I started out with "simple" mode -- because I was under the impression that in Simple mode, everything "just works." And for the most part, this is true. Although for whatever reason, I ended up switching to Advanced Mode. There were a few quirks with that switch-over, but new accounts worked just fine in OpenDirectory. I was able to get Mac OS X 10.4 running on the Pismo authenticating against the 10.5 server, with networked home directories and some group policies quite easily.

The real challenge will be to make sure that the knowledge I've gained from my tiny setup here in this dorm room will apply at KHSPhoto. I'm pretty excited about it all, of course, and I bet that everything will work just fine in the KHSPhoto installation. That'll be a big project blog post with pictures, diagrams, tables, and everything. It'll be great.

One of the biggest disappointments about the project so far though, is that I haven't got a sufficient number of Macs here at home to really try out some of the things OpenDirectory can do. I think it's reason enough to impulse-buy a few G4 iBooks/PowerBooks, so I can have a few machines to authenticate against the controller.
(I have actually been eyeing one of the G4 PowerMacs at Surplus Sales as a secondary machine for Leopard/LeopardServer, I may grab one later on in the summer, if I haven't decided to try out a Psystar, or my own hacked Mac or building a "gaming computer.")

Typing Speed

73 words
I recently took an online Speed-test, which I found while reading another blog. It was interesting to do the speed test, which I wasn't really very prepared for. When I first did the test, I got 73wpm, with two errors. When I re-did the test about 20 minutes later, i got 84wpm with 5 incorrect words, which is pretty good. I'm going to bookmark the test and in the next few weeks, I intend to try again. Because I had 5 incorrect words, my theoretical speed is a bit over 90wpm, which is pretty cool.

84 words

New Toys for Summer

Well, my summer projects are all mostly here. First and foremost is the Sun Ultra60 workstation, which I'm taking to work tonight. This one is just to have a Sun workstation, and because I want to host ULW locally again, on something that's ultra.

The other big part of today's shipment is some ThinkPad 760-series stuff. Unfortunately their epic amounts of memory aren't compatible with my 760CD, but I think that between the 760ED and 760EL, I can get at least one more very workable 700-series ThinkPad. My intent is to combine their parts to make one pretty ThinkPad, and install OPENSTEP 4.2 on the hard disc drive it's got. Maybe I can even find an OPENSTEP-compatible pcmcia ethernet adapter.

And on the topic of PCMCIA adapters, I got the Sony Ericsson GC83 GSM/GPRS/EDGE Network Wireless Internet PC Card, with the Cingular logo on it. I've already got it installed and set up on the R61i too, so that setup is ready for summer. I'll be able to blog and post photos in Michigan. I gave it a try today, and I'm really happy with it. Once things have started loading, it's faster than dialup, but there's huge latency issues, especially since my room can't get full signal with the EDGE card. I have no doubt that under any given situation where it's the only thing available, it will be no problem at all. It's not like I intend to rock out in the dorm with the EDGE card. (on a regular basis, anyway.)

I have nothing but contempt for VC251

I really don't love writing excessively negative things, but I feel the urgent need to express my disdain for one of the classes I've had the "joy" of taking this semester, VC251. It took me two or three semesters to even get into the class, and as a result of EMF252 (the UTV62 class), I was unable to take it in-person, so this semester I was finally able to get into (and therefore even able to consider settling for) an online section of the class.

To put it lightly, Online VC251 is a special kind of hell that I would never wish upon anyone, unless they didn't have other classes. The entire course, which is conducted via WebCT Vista, is very poorly organized, and the bulk of the instructional material comes from these two books we were told to buy, Adobe Photoshop CS3 Classroom in a Book and Adobe Illustrator CS3 Classroom in a Book.

So we work through the lessons in these books, which in a way, are very remedial and basic lessons, which serve almost more as an introduction to the very concept of "photoshop" and "illustrator." And immediately thereafter we're expected to do a complicated project involving type, compositing multiple photographs and a poem. A poem! For the Illustrator section, we learn selections, layers, LiveTrace, creating some simple shapes, and a few other little things, and immediately thereafter we're expected to trace a comic book cover.

A few very fortunate people were able to find very, very simple comic books, with no shading of any sort, no background to speak of, and only one or two characters with maybe one prop. Unfortuantely, after three or four pages of google image results, all I was able to find were hellaciously difficult comic covers. Add to that a lack of any real text other than the title, and you've got a manageable assignment. Unfortunately, since we were told to find our own comics, and I didn't want to spend three hours looking for that simple comic, I ended up using a quite difficult comic to trace. Hilariously enough, one involving fair use. The original image can be seen here.

And this was just a few hours before it was due, because I'd forgotten it in favor of completing projects for my in-person classes, taking calls, and other miscellaneous shenanigans. So I started looking at the image, and realized that the assignment involved tracing with Illustrator's pen tool. "oops."

A lot of this was my own shortsightedness, needless to say I really should have skipped out on both weekend overnights, and classes/work on Monday and Tuesday in order to work through the project and get everything done. I think that with that much time, working straight through, I might have gotten a simple version of the image completed. I ended up using Illustrator's Live Trace tool, which we were "kind of" told not to use. I got the image done and it looks great, but I'm not sure what kind of grade I'll get on it.

The project in and of itself is not too bad an idea, although I think it's totally inappropriate for a Freshman VC class, and almost more importantly, I'm fairly certain that the class itself is totally inappropriate for freshman Photo majors. In a pre-PHO382/199/282 era, I bet it's main purpose was to introduce Freshman/Sophomore photo majors to the idea of Photoshop, but between what we learned in my 382 class, and the fact that I've already worked through several incarnations of the Photoshop CIB during high school, the Photoshop part of the class was really easy.

I think the projects for Illustrator have been hellacious, unnecessary and completely out of line, as far as the actual skill set of someone meeting the prerequisites for this class are concerned, and a more appropriate tutorial, like something involving an actual comic, and something being an actual tutorial, would have been very much appreciated.

Purely for the purpose of making sure I know how to use Illustrator, I may this summer go back through the CIB on it, although as a result of my contempt for and disappointment with VC251, I may just trash all of my files related to the class and pack the books away somewhere.

I really am disappointed that this is how I end the semester... with such strong contempt for this class, but I feel cheated, having paid the tuition and lab fees for this class, when about 90% of the learning materials were a pair of $50 books from the vendor of the apps in question. The class itself was very poorly organized, so if the instructor did provide any information, I never found it until it was too late. That, and I've always thought the entire point of an online class was the ability to work at your own pace, and see everything coming up in advance. I don't even think this class had a syllabus, and if it did, there was no warning at all about the assignments coming up.

Don't take Online VC251. Trust me, and if you don't trust me, trust Brandy. If you have to take VC251, do everything in your power to take it in-person, even if it costs you more in supplies, or in printing.

Cleaning the Lab

I've been working Meaghan's overnight shift, and somehow randomly decided it would be cool to finally go ahead and clean up the lab desk area. I'm not going to lie, I enjoyed it. Probably a little bit too much, but it's something I have wanted to do all semester, and having done so gives me this weird feeling of accomplishment.

The main inspiration to clean the lab desk was the note put up by the South Lab director, saying that the Overnight people are to clean the lab station. My big problem with this is that there seems to have been no actual communication between Labs staff and Academic Computing Help Desk staff in this decision.

After having gotten it done and having gotten everything put back into place, I feel like I should have done this a very long time ago. The whole area was very grungy, and extraordinarily dusty. Being a bit of a clean freak myself, I'm not entirely sure how they were able to stand it day in and day out, the main thing is that there were massive amounts of used staples and huge piles of old dust. Not just dust, I think much of it was old dust.

They didn't just have dust. It was very, very old dust. Old dust that was probably last addressed in 2005 or so when the OptiPlex GX270 machines SCLLAB1 and SCLLAB2 were brand new. The cables were disorganized and a mess, and the workspace suffered from pretty terrible choices in the exact placement of the machines.

I even re-did some of the wiring on the left computer, whose wires were very badly messed up. A nifty little advantage of the re-wiring is that the overnight staff can pull the phone out a bit more to get easier access to it while on a call and printing at the same time. It may be fine for the daytime lab staff that shouldn't be on the phone.

Over the summer I'm kind of going to miss this desk, especially now that I've put so much effort into de-grunging it. Ah well, at least I won't have to suffer the moral question of whether or not to let a student sans-ID into the lab before 8 a.m.

Reinstalling Vista

Well, I finally got what I perceive to be "enough" time to go through and back up all of the data from the ThinkPad R61i, and reformat the thing to get a fresh install of Windows Vista Ultimate. Everything was getting slow and quite disorganized, so I figured I'd go ahead and get everything cleared out and set back up. Mainly, I want to be ready for my trip this summer where everything will need to be fast.

Another big concern was that I've been somewhat irresponsible in the management of my Vista system so far -- I wasn't sure for a very long time of exactly which software I wanted on the machine, so I ended up uninstalling and reinstalling a bunch of different pieces of software several times. That, a few mistakes with some developer tools, and the upgrade from Home Premium to Ultimate kind of caused things to become disorganized in the system. My intent after this reformat is to keep everything going well not only for the summer, but for Fall 2008 and Spring 2009 as well.

Maybe it's a bit of a far-fetched goal, but for this install of Vista to last until Fall 2009 would be pretty great. I've had Mac OS X installs last that long, so my presumption is that if I do it right this time around, I can have the setup last quite awhile.

Another thing I'm doing to try to increase the longevity of the install is to actually keep up with a backup regiment. In the next week or so after I find and install all of my favorite utilities, my intent is to make a master backup onto DVDs that I can fall back upon if necessary. In addition, I'm going to be doing a complete PC backup on a weekly basis.

For software, I'm going to go with Outlook for mail, and I'm going to try to find a Calendar connector for the Oracle Calendar setup. For productivity software beyond Office, I can't think of anything I really need aside from the Adobe Creative Suite, which I'd like to buy for the Windows machine at some point. (Although until then, I'll just do Photoshop CS3 on it's own, because getting all of them is quite bothersome.) I'll probably grab XChat and Pidgin, and a few other little utilities like the VNC client and whatnot will fall into place over time.

So here's to keeping my Windows system running better!

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.

Engineering Building

Today was the first time I dared to venture into the Engineering building. After my trip to the Lab Sciences building the other day, I was feeling confident that I could go and get some compelling images of the fairly newly remodeled building.

I got a few great outdoor shots of the building, and a few other random things on South Campus, but I don't feel as though I've done that beautiful building justice. I need to work on both the Engineering building and the College of Business Administration this summer, because I think I can get much better images than what I think I got today.

Although the adventure into the Engineering building did afford me an interesting opportunity to take a look at some of their systems. They've got a bunch of Sun Ray 2 thin clients hooked up to a little farm of terminal servers, and you can select at the machine whether you'd like Windows, UNIX, Linux or just a web browser (which I presume is firefox coming in at full screen off of a Linux system, but I didn't check.)

The setup they're using, with terminal servers and the thin clients is pretty clever. In theory, your thin clients stay modern for a very very long time, and they're extraordinarily low maintenance. Add to that, the fact that you can terminal into different systems, I think the thin client setup, especially in the College of Engineering where it's fairly quick, is a good winner. The only problem I can see is that there are a few instances where network bandwidth isn't really good enough to support a lot of thin clients. The W.A. Franke College of Business Administration has some problems with it's SunRay clients because, I suspect, of high server loads or slow network connections. The size of the display may also have something to do with it, as the CBA runs very large 24-inch monitors on it's thin clients, while the thin clients at the Engineering building were running at 1280x1024.

One of the only negative things I can think of to say about the thin client situation is that I would really like it if Apple or some third party Mac vendor were to get everything set up so that Mac systems can be used by thin clients.

Ahwell, just dreams I suppose.