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Weekend Scenarios

June 7, 2008 in Events, News | No comments

I always approach the weekends with a great deal of appreciation. I enjoy the work weeks immensely these days; perhaps even more than the Visa days. I’ve always felt good when there is some “need” and I can help fulfill it. At work now, we have basic needs which can be met with simple things up front. Our marketing guy wanted a way to stage the website so he could preview it before launching it. Enter VMware Server with a ubuntu image. One of our support guys wants to learn basic Linux so we created a new image and some monitoring and management solution and he got to start learning how Linux is different. Its fun at Celestix because we use Linux for a lot of things but we’re not a so-called Linux company. I think over the past years the best and worst of times I’ve spent has been with the so-called Linux companies. Its been nice to get away from that and go taste other realities. Its really hard to work for startups I think. They require a significant investment in time, energy, motivation and spirituality. I’m always willing for it. But when you combine Linux with it; it seems like the requirements all go up. I don’t have a problem with it overall; but I do like where I’m at now, how we use Linux, how I can make others appreciate it. Linux is a tool that can be appreciated and when you can roll out virtual images that get things done, make lives easier, and allow people to be productive; Linux fulfills a goal.

All that being said, perhaps I’m lazier and need to just kick back on the weekends. I spent Friday glued to a Linux box or two; did meetings on how we can grow some customer confidence, and also started working on new projects. Celestix is very hands on with things while Visa seemed separated by a degree or two. All in all, the hands on part of things is nice and requires an every day sort of commitment.

Linuxworld Expo

I’ve given some thought to attending Linuxworld this year. I guess my main question is “why”. Why go? I don’t have the feeling that there is a lot left for me to find there. Its evolved or changed or lessened to something that I don’t recognize. Yet I have a few friends that will go. I’ve also organized little get togethers and this is the first year to not do one. I just don’t feel the need any longer. The guys are still important; but years have gone by and I’ve kinda left the whole Linux mainstream thing farther and farther behind.

Other Bloggables

I like writing combination posts that sum up the things I’ve done or not. I reached my own milestones here with the blog and I wanted to just say thanks to a few tools like Apache, PHP, mysql, and wordpress. I’ve managed to keep this site online now for a few years with a few hundred posts or more. I’ve evolved my own blogging away from some belief its the social thing to do. Its more like its the “me thing to do”. I don’t believe there is a future any longer in it but there is a now. The social institutions we may cherish or hate or even ignore may not have a future either; but we all as writers, cataloguers, definers do. As much as the prehistoric rock art blogger told us an incomplete story; our blogs do the same. We are all evolving that story day by day. But lets just put them where they belong in our lives. Is it really about links and authority or about beliefs and ideas?

Three Years Later…

June 2, 2008 in News, Weblogs | 1 comment

Its been three years with the content now for this place. I started the weblog over on the hosted wordpress and then moved things around a few times. I’ve used Drupal here and then moved back and forward and sideways. I even got this thing working with MovableType but I could never really tolerate it. There is just something big and bloated and difficult combined with a administrative interface that seems strung together with bailing wire, glue, and straw. I could never learn my way around.

Now, I’m sitting on this blog on my own Ubuntu powered Apache2 server. I own the server and it does mail, web, and a few other things. Linux just does these things well. I also run Dovecot and Postfix on it for mail and openvpn for vpn.

After three years of gently writing posts which appear in their chronological order, I’ve learned a few things about blogging:

  1. Don’t take it too seriously. Chances of me making it to the top 100 are not even in this universe and if they were I’d deny wanting it. Blogging is important but I don’t want or need to write “clued in” manifestos where I hop the train and ride to awareness. Where each post is adored and commented on and read and linked and relinked and reread. I have had a few posts with comments like my take on Linuxcare and Levanta and its passing. That’s cool! In fact, a number of old friends posted comments to the blogpost and I appreciate you guys taking the time to read my drivel.
  2. Blogging is habit-forming. I blog because I must. I feel the pressure raise and then its the five pound chicken/ten pound egg thing. I get constipated with words left unsaid, thoughts unexplicated, ideas lingering. I must blog.
  3. Blogging is not fun sometimes. I get bored with it and want a different thing. Sometimes, I want to stop; but then I get that full feeling and I know its not fun and I have this habit I must satisfy.
  4. Finally, blogging is just blogging. I’ve learned that its not some social fabric for me and its not raising some kind of consciousness that others can link to. No, its me being a part of a larger universal thing; but it is just me and I may fit and I may not. Its still blogging and I get chewy goodness from it but I want nothing more from it than what it gives me.

Someone asked me at work whether they should start writing weblogs. It took me a moment and I just stared at them and asked, “why would you want to do that?” If you cannot answer, then you should not be doing it. So embrace the years, watch the posts roll by but they are just that. I gather, capture, wonder, post. Will I ever tire of the never-ending dates and times arranged by this software? Probably not. Wordpress seems to get generally better as time goes by for me. Themes get nicer and widgets dress it up.

Calendaring, Contacts, Todos and Notes

April 30, 2008 in Current Events, News | No comments

The holy grail it seems of being connected is being able to see your calendar in any permutation, in any place, and using any client. I guess that this is important when you are a traveling dude or dudette. You have to know that you are late for an appointment and the announcement has to come on three different types of devices. First your cellphone or smartphone tells you. Then your laptop buzzes and wakes you up on the plane or train or whatever. Then finally you may get a SMS message or an alert from a friendly calendaring server. It all comes with the turf of needed to have messaging at any time, using any tool, and in any place.

My solution is simpler and so are the places that need to remind me. I share a google calendar with my wife so its nice if she sees my google calendar with its important update. But how do I tell her that there is a change without calling? Definitely a problem; but enter this cute little service called goosync. When I change an appointment time on my phone or at work or wherever, googsync syncs automatically to google calendar and whammo, blammo. My wife knows I am gonna be later for the hamburger helper. The other tools in my collaboration aberration are Sunbird with the Google Calendar Provider add-in. This gives me pretty nice and flexible access to my caldndar. The combination of a web calendar, goosync, and sunbird; make it all good. I also tried Scheduleworld and while I like the concept, I had a devil of a time making it actually work. Bu t it appears that others can accomplish.

My final take is that Evolution is too much like Outlook and I’ve used Outlook for over a year at Visa. But where I’m going also has an exchange server. I’m moving farther away from that open source company that I once thought was out there for me. Its dawned on me that I don’t belong in one of those because they have “issues”. I have issues too though and perhaps the combination of theirs and mine are just too great of a chasm. I cannot cross that divide and find something of worth. Or, its something like Levanta and the worth eroded into competing kingdoms of self-aggrandizement and empire building.

But the main thing is that I don’t need that crap. I don’t need what I went for before which was a company that appeared to have it together on the outside but could not understand why my resume could possibly change every 2 years. Dood! Its consulting man. But at a bigger level it all changes. Consider your own miserable failure of a life Mr. VP of this or that or Mr. CEO or Founder that thinks your s**t don’t stink. It does. Yours may be solid gold but its still shit. Solid gold poop is still poop. But you can probably find a VC buzzard that will sell it, promote it, or steal it.

So somehow, I got off the beam and way from calendaring. But its all communication folks. Writing, reading, listening, talking. I’ll soon be gone from what was and communication and its media will change.

In the end, I’m glad. I’ll put up with things, make the best even better and go off and build the things of worth for where I’m going. I’ll tell everyone next Monday where “that” is.

See ya then :)

An almost Howto – IMAP on the Cheap

February 7, 2008 in Events, Linux, News | No comments

I have this goal to learn how to make things work in Linux-land.  I assign myself a “project” and then go off and read about it, learn it, and try to solve it.  Last night and today, I set two goals for myself to solve and not ask for help from some people I know that would be willing to help.  Here they are:

Set up a secure IMAP server under my firewall and not reachable from the outside unless I VPN or use Sqirrelmail to get there.  I chose to use Dovecot which is pretty easy all in all.  On Ubuntu its as easy as an “apt-get install”.  I wanted to write a onger SSL certificate for it so I processed one from an old bookmark I have which I still go back to every so often for these things.  The IMAP server should offer SSL logins.

Set up a secure Postfix Mail server using SASL and TLS.  Now this one got a bit more interesting.  I followed this page (or so I thought).  But there are a number of steps in there which you have to carefully grep and get correct.  If you don’t you stand the chance of running into Thunderbird complaining that the SMTP server does not offer STARTTLS in its EHLO.  Not  a nice thing.  But when I telnet there, it seems to.  So, if you follow this howto, be sure to follow it step by step.  Create all the certs it says.  Copy them just like it says.  Edit the /etc/defaults/saslauthd file and don’t leave anything out.  My big mistake was to not copy things the way it said there and I also got the location wrong for some of the certs.  If you are not offered up a SSL cert when you first try to send email after doing the steps, something is bad.  Stop and recreate the wheel.  I had to do this a few times.  If you follow the howto, you get there.  That’s a good thing to say about a howto, BTW.

But why, you ask, why would I want all of this setup if no one can reach it?  Well, that’s a habilis answer friends.  Its because I can.  Its a challenge and I like making it work.  I will never want to reach the server unless I VPN or use the webmal interface or ssh and use mutt.

Yahoo Mail — The extreme suckage factor

I’m sorry to vent on Yahoo!’s parade.  But their mail program, how they manage spam, how it records new mail.  It all is kind of broken or at least badly bent.  I have been getting more spamoli the last weeks then ever before.  In one day I got over 25 spamoli and for months before, I never got a single one.  Someone borked something.  So being a good netizen, I wrote a helpful email to their Help desk. 

Know what?  Their help desk is borked too.  I get a form letter back telling me about the bulk mail folder.  I asked not about that folder because I could care less about that folder.  I asked why.  What has happened or what has changed to make Yahoo mail be so bad?  It also seems overwhelmed with the sheer number of users sometimes and it can never get the number of email that are new right.

I hate to say this and rain on Art’s parade.  But someone needs to go in there and fix things.  Its borked, man.  So off I went back to Google and Google Apps.  I like the overall feeling of Google Apps and I like the idea its not really done because it gives me some deep down feeling that I too can help fix things I find along the way.

With Yahoo!, things just seem broken and all I get are less than helpful form mail responses perhaps from real live people telling me how bulk mail the trash folder works.  Gimme break. So I broke.  And I’m gone.  They don’t do enough to earn my Mail+ and the changes to the Mail app are not even close.  Its like covering a cow dung with pretty electric lights.  You know underneath it still smells but its pretty on the outside.

SCALE-ness

Yes.  The time has come folks.  I took tomorrow off from work and I’m heading down to Los Angeles in the morning to do SCALE time.  This show has become the one for me to go revel in the Linux-ness.  And friends are going there too like Ed and DK and others.  I may write a blog of the day report on what I do and the fun I have there.  If you are going, look us up.  We’ll be

At a personal level to sum it all up; I’ve reached 185 pounds or so.  That means I have lost 90 pounds.  I’m gonna slip inbetween the tiles on the floor here pretty soon :)

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Final Intel Pentium 4 went bye

January 27, 2008 in Linux, News | 1 comment

Big occasion!! I was able to retire my final desktop P4 system and now have AMD64 upper end systems on my desktops. I’m running either Ubuntu 7.10 or Debian Lenny and things are pretty good. I tried to get Mepis to install but for the amount of effort, it simply was not worth it. Debian went on like a breeze. Here is footprint of one of the systems:

  1. AMD64 4200+
  2. 4g DDR2 800 memory
  3. 512mb PCI-x nvidia card (8500 I think)
  4. asus sata cd/dvd rw drive

These systems really haul buns for the most part and my fastest one is a 6000+ Windsor running Ubuntu. It also has VMware workstation with a few different guests on it. My needs are actually pretty simple for desktops but the new breed of processor really makes a quality difference at doing even common tasks and they’re cheap! Check out Newegg or others.

Forget the Intel offerings with the cheapo system boards and processors you can get these days which tap the advantages of 64bit-ness. I would compute that they are half the price in some cases. Throw in a 3ware SATA controller and a few drives and you got a class offering. My primary server is a smaller AMD64 with that setup plus a Maxtor OneTouch USB drive that does backup duty.

On Other Fronts

This week brings me going back to the office after 2 days of working at home. I’m hoping to see an old friend that has opted out of a downward spiral for lunch. I’m also going to be departing for my annual exodus to Los Angeles to go to SCALE 6X which promises to be even better and brigther than before if possible. Thanks to all the organizers for producing a quality show that outshines the IDG offering in so many ways and ensuring that the community level is still there even with the IBMs and Dells and others that show up. It goes to show you can do a mix and keep the quality in place. I’ve got my dance card marked up with the things I want to do there and I’m hoping that Ed shows up. Not sure about that one though. Have to wait and see. Other friends will be there.

Quality of Life versus Life of Quality

There can be a mix of the two. I’ve found that my current work fuels both for me these days and the challenge and commitment level is pretty high but bring it on! I’m simply loving Visa these days with the new things I get to do. Has to be the first job I can remember to ever bring together so many positive forces for me.

Its dawned on me that I am writing more “combo blog posts” where i want to catch up a lot of stuff instead of just single ones focusing on each thing. I think that’s okay though since I save up on the Linux and other experiments. I’m also reading a few excellent books these days which perhaps I’ll offer up in a followup post for consideration. I don’t use the blog search engines at all these days because I have some reservations about what they deliver and what the offering actually is. I have some doubts about blogging too. It seems its shine has faded and now people are back to doing it because they want to and not because people want to be in a hundred or so top bloggers. What will happen to those struggling services I wonder which will not find a thing of value when the mores shift? Other institutions fade and go the way of the dodo bird. Social institution extinction. There is a precedent in anthropological thought for this.

We shall see.

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Linux on the Desktop — Fact, Fiction, Fantasy?

January 4, 2008 in Linux, News | No comments

Slashdot carries a story about whether Apple is sentencing doom for desktop Linux.  Look it up here and see what you think. I’ll tell you my take.  Linux on the desktop is beset by a few problems which seem to have been around for a bit of time and the idea of Linux and how people could possibly use it has been blogged ad nauseum.  Here are my new ideas:

Killer Applications – there needs to be a killer application that people would want to use and guess what?  Its only on Linux.  Is there such a thing?  What one application would you choose to leave the OS of your choice for?

Integration – not just apples and Orange Juice.  But the pieces must fit seamlessly together into the whole.  Its not just Beryl or Compiz Gee Whiz Bang, folks.  Things need to be tightly bound.  Fonts, display, how the desktop apparatus manages power, themes, skins, etc.

Portable uses – Yes people will want Linux on portable or embedded devices and they already do.  But on a laptop, challenges remain.  To me, the laptop must be fully supported and be able to do the things that make it a laptop.  Is this the case now?

Finally, Critical Mass must be defined or not.  Does it matter if there is no battle?  People will use Linux and I do also; but I also choose and pick the tools I want to use.  If I feel like using Windows XP, I’ll just use it.  I like Linux and Ubuntu and Debian just as well; but I stopped feeling warlike some time ago.  Consider what you feel are the compelling reasons to use a thing. Does it satisfy a need?  Does it make mundane tasks special or special tasks mundane?  Why do you use it?  You are in love with free (as in speech or beer) software?  I’m interested in the why of it and always have been.  I know people that confine their use because they feel that XX or YY operating system is beneath them.  They believe they have a quality of life to maintain.  Yay for them.

I’m a habilis though and I’m interested in statements like these from the article above:

It’s not hard to understand why Linux has failed to live up to the promise of being a viable desktop alternative to Windows. Linux’s problems are many. For example: Apple has Microsoft Office, Linux doesn’t; Apple has Adobe Creative Suite, Linux doesn’t; Apple has easily accessed and easy to use service and support, Linux doesn’t; Apple is driven by someone who has some understanding of end-user needs, Linux is not.

Consider what the article is attempting to say here.  Does it make Linux an influence or casualty?  Is Apple truly to blame or is the passage of time?

Older Portable MP3 Players – A biography…

January 1, 2008 in Ideas, News | No comments

Recently, I went down this path of wanting to find hard disk mp3 players which would offer a few uses that would not require some dedicated program to install.  Here are a few of the finalists and some disclosures:

  1. Iriver H340 – This is the 40g model and its really hard to find.  I happened to find a “used one” on Amazon Marketplace so I snagged it.  I also saw one on Ebay recently here. I have never actually used one of these so I am pretty excited.  I am going to replace the battery and hard disk in it.  If you want a forum site and resource, consider either Rockbox or Mysticriver.  Both other great advice and use.
  2. Iaudio X5 – A nice, clean unit with characteristic good looks and easy to use controls.  The sound quality is a cut above.  Support, updates, seeing what the community is doing is at Iaudiophile.  A very nice and popular forum site.  Again, great advice, builds, themes, etc can be found at Rockbox as well.
  3. Ipod Video 60/80g and Classic Models – I am not particularly fond of iPods.  Without Rockbox on them, you are stuck using an application which reads and writes to its stupid little database.  That beng said, once you rockbox the thing, it becomes useful and you can simply copy music to any old folder on it you want.  Lets be serious here though… The iPods are not quality; but they are consumerish and available and Apple has cornered the “size in GB” ratio and offers a monster 160gb.  The Touch and iPHone are not even cntenders.  The phone is a wannabe convergence device which does not offer alternatives besides the equally wannabe iTunes interface.  Apple, if you wanna be open as in use why not stop using the stupid database and reliance on hard to decipher codes for use on other OS’es.  Now without the wondrous Rockbox, you have to either use a later version of libgod and gtkpod or other applications.  On the videos, you can remove all that cr-apple stuff and just rockbox it totally.  There are some things you will not be able to do like play DRM files.
  4. Creative Zen Vision M -This could be a finalist IF one could simply copy music tracks to its hard drive and not futz with Gnomad2 or other applications to read its obfuscated system.  But I like its quality and it works on Ubuntu and Debian Lenny easy.  I’m also not sure with Gnomad2 how you add tracks or synchronize against an evolving and growing audio collection.  More experimentation is required.

So the facts about the iPod naturally steers me away from anything Apple unfortunately.  They are silos and everyone knows it; but they become the only small footprint media player game in town these days.  Not so much quality but quantity and presence. 

Now I’m all about finding older players, extending their lives, learning about them, etc.  I replaced the battery in my X5 and it was fun to see it boot again albiet a bit scary doing the soldering deed.

I Centro’ed

December 13, 2007 in Current Events, News | No comments

front_centro.gif

Yes its true.  My beloved and frustrating Treo 650 decided to do its final act and seized up solid.  Sprint Tech Support Could not revive it so I went for a new phone.  The Centro is pretty cool and it sync’s to Ubuntu Gutsy pretty easy.  At least easier than what I saw for Fedora 7.  All I had to do was insert the visor module into the running kernel and the phone sync’ed all its stuff to j-pilot and then installed a few things I had bought.

Its more of a consumerish phone but it ships with stuff that I wanted like an IM client, a version of VersaMail that appears to work, and more memory.  It comes with about 64mb which is good enough for what I use it for.

There are a few gotchas.  I don’t particularly like the phone message after a call ends but it only lasts for about 3 seconds or so.  The keyboard is smaller but I can text on it and write email.  My eyes are old so I reset the default fonts.

If this phone lasts 2 years, I will figure for 99.00 I got my $$ worth.  My Treo lasted that long but it cost about 5 times as much.

Last Rant deleted; more reasonable minds prevail

December 10, 2007 in Linux, News | No comments

I decided to delete the last rant about Ubuntu and its problems with suspend and most notably with resume.  Its not like its fixed or that I believe after reading a few posts that I could believe it actually works.  I have tried this supposed Howto to see how it goes.  I don’t think I can just run Windows these days.  There is something about it that’s well…

Inferior

At some level, it seems to just work but you really step down to a level of really not owning the solution (or even the problem; however, I think you really do own the problem but Microsoft wants to borrow it and then return it unfixed sometimes).  I do have to say the few times I’ve called any “tech support pit” that I’ve been less than thrilled.  I’ve implemented more than a few of them from the ground up and integrated services into them.  Its difficult.  There is a magical amount of reason, need, insanity, and alcoholic beverages required.

So, now I am trying yet another magical mix of ingredients including:

uswsusp – but not the uswsusp from Gutsy.  I’m using one with s2ram in it instead which is packaged by Debian Lenny.

acpi-support – this package has a bewildering array of scripts and event handlers that I’m not sure even the developer understand.  But, hey… They gotta know more about ACPI, right?

hal script hacking foo – I’ve hacked up the hal suspend and hibernate scripts a bit and removed all the guts and glory and only included calls to s2ram and s2disk for suspend and hibernate.  We’ll see where that goes.

/etc/default/acpi-support – I changed things in this file per the Howto.

/etc/X11/xorg.conf – I changed things here too per the Howto.

Now, the test is does it make a difference?  I’m inclined to bet it really doesn’t.  So I’ll probably go the kernel compiling route next.  I don’t really do kernels any more since I ran pure Debian.

The Gentoo non-way

Yes I tried the Gentoo way for fun and profit.  None of either.  Gnome will not compile, GTK wants the X11 included. Cairo is not happy either.  This distribution seems a lot of work to me and I’m lazy.  Everything on Gentoo takes “time”.  Time to do this and that.  I could get the later stage installer I guess; but that takes time too.  Perhaps in the end I would have a better thing.  I just get impatient.  I did compile a kernel on it though.  Woot!!

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Life, Linux, and Xubuntu 7.10 reveals itself

November 18, 2007 in Linux, News | No comments

As you can probably guess, I enjoy tinkering.  Mostly with Linux because its not finished.  It pisses me off sometimes because of that fact.  I also apply use case criteria to it.  For me to loudly proclaim its “ready” it has to be able to do what I call basic production tasks.  A laptop must be able to suspend and most of all resume.  Suspending is only one half.  Resuming is kinda handy too.  My wife just does not understand how to wake it up or cycle its power.  She is the consummate user of a computer.  At work, its XP and outlook and exchange each day.  At home, I figure I need something else to capture and captivate me.  Here are some of the playgrounds I kicked some sand in of late:

  • W64codecs – well this is kinda cool news from medibuntu.  Yes!! We finally have 64bit gooey goodness of codecs and apt-gettable as well.  You can install mozilla-mplayer, mplayer, and the codecs and have streaming WMV working as well as quick-time. It does ship with an older Real 9 codec; but deny it.  Instead use nspluginwrapper and use the 32bit real player (which is now called mozilla-helix-player for some reason).  This wrapper does flash, adobe, and real plugins very well.  What is the reason again for having a 32bit version of stuff like Firefox?
  • Adobe Reader 8 on AMD64 Gutsy – this took a bit of work and probably more than necessary.  I could not get HTML rendering to work until I got the xulrunner tarball and used it.  You want the mozembed library basically. Why does this seem so involved I wonder?  Adobe should make a 64bit version of the reader for heaven’s sake.
  • Slower Systems?  Use Xubuntu – I did this on a puny Celeron Shuttle PC system which I have punted around of late.  I finally installed the XFCE4 based Xubuntu on it. This really rocks!  It did manage to get the video wrong and created an xorg.conf file which would never work.  I had to go back in, kill GDM, and change out the parts.  It helps to know basic tools like lspci and friends.  The video card it wanted to give me was VESA which was okay bit the resolutions would not work because the card in the Shuttle is not that highly powered.   So I did a dpkg-reconfigure xorg-xserver and reset things.  All in all, the XFCE4 powered Ubuntu is very cool.  Its fast and the Thunar Window Manager seems capable. Capable with gnome and friends means able to hide out and be less than noticeable I gather.
  • Life in general?  – Is okay.  Changes always come around though and I’ve been thinking about change at a few levels of late.  We’ll see what we see.

I don’t have a plethora of other news.  Waiting to see Beowulf in a few weeks.  That should definitely rock the cradle.  In the weight arena and its loss, I am down to about 202 pounds.  That is 70 pounds gone at this point.  I feel better.  I never want to gain any of that back. Its taken too long to get it off and I don’t like some of the sacrifices.  But I would do it again.  There is life and then there is the quality of life.  I could go into sordid details about blood pressure, sleep problems, lower back pain. Forget it though. If you are fat; consider the alternatives and I won’t be doing any preaching today :)

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