Friends tell me how hard Linux is to install and use and I’m always amazed by that. The majority of configurations and values and options are set in clear text files and often either poorly or well commented. My experience with Debian and Ubuntu is that things have gotten better. Of course if you want to use a Wizard for everything, Windows Seven dot Oh beckons. Then there is the update thing. I think Linux solved the whole update thing a decade ago at least. Now when you add new packages, you just add a new software source and that source is tracked automatically. Windows update is one cantankerous critter with Windows, Non Windows, third party updates, Kb updates, other updates. I’m sure that this all makes Windows Seven dot Oh easier to use though

So, dear readers, Windows 7 dot Oh is plenty kewl and it runs like gangbusters. Applications just open fast and trouble free. But don’t give it real hardware. Those new versions of that old legacy software will just plain go crazy. Friends don’t let friends install Windows on real hardware. You are asking for nothing but trouble…

We’ll  be spending a night down at the Westin Bonaventura Hotel and then the next day pick up a rental car and drive up to the beautiful Antelope Valley. I’m planning on showing my daughter around my the town, eating some great food down there, and seeing if we can see a sight like below. The spring display of poppies is always impressive there.

When we’re in the AV, I have plans to go see RWR who I have written so many blog posts about. RWR is a friend, mentor, and a person who I really owe a lot to. He influenced many decisions in a major way. He directed me toward practicing prehistoric anthropology, taught me that life is worth the living, and also showed me that there is a correct way of doing the business of living.
Truth be told, I have not seen him in some years and almost let the whole thing go.

Now I get to travel the rails with my daughter; show her a life that went past before but is still very much there.

Yay!

Always Innovating Touchbook – this thing comes with a variety of OS installations on it one can choose including Ubuntu and Android. You can order it with the netbook-ish keyboard part or just as a tablet PC. It has a nice set of core specifications but you will need to compare it against others. The variety of what OS to boot is very neat though. Ubuntu is so danged upgradeable and it ain’t your cousin’s legacy OS.

Notion Ink Adam Tablet – check this one carefully! The screen real estate is gorgeous and its propelled by android.

These two may not even be on the power curve but they offer a degree of flexibility and use which I think are compelling. The touchbook seems to offer a choice of OS’es which is growing while the Adam’s screen looks totally wowsers.

How does the recently announced iPad compare? Not sure; since I don’t intend on comparing it. I’m not a fanbois so the idea of no USB port, no flash, a “so big” ipad touch really does not do much for me. The new tablets will offer expandability, OS choices, ability to upgrade the core OS through multiple revisions and I can watch pron and load up a wifi finder as well. I also don’t need cousin Steve telling me what I can and cannot do on my device. I’m a big boy now. If I want to watch this or that and load it from an app store, I think I can make a reasonable choice. Even if I cannot; who is apple to tell me what I can or cannot do.

Is the iPad a “magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price”? Doubtful. Evolution in cultures and technology happen in a few ways I believe. Cultures either adapt gradually to change or they bump quickly along in a punctuated equilibrium. What does this product produce for the evolution of our technology? Choose wisely and well. If you choose the iPad, well done folks. If not, look at the options and do your selective shopping best.

Big question… Can you jailbreak a iPad?

Then the 3d generation touch… I had it for 2 days or so. I reset it numerous times. 100k applications but all through one place. Buh bye. Now I am down to my ARchos 5 android device and the rockbox’ed video. The Archos is decent. It plays all my mp3s, stores my photos, and has enough room left over to have movies on it. How do you add music to it? Easiest way on Ubuntu is to rsync music to it or just copy and paste or whatever. Its a simple usb disk drive when you need it to be. That’s not to say that my Archos is perfect. It has its Android moments. Sometimes it gets confused when I tap too quickly. I am learning to be patient with it. I like having everything on one thing though and it runs Linux.

So what do I prefer? The database thing or the simple USB disk drive thing? Seems to me the easiest way to add stuff is when its a USB drive. Linux does things real well in that mode. Plug it in, it mounts. Copy stuff to it or from it. Music comes off clean. No strange db-cursed titles. I still wonder why Apple in their supposed media superiority did things that way. I guess to again lock us mere mortals down to using only their devices with our music that we rent from iTunes. I won’t get started with iTunes though because it took me almost 6 months to get away from it, de-DRM my music, and shift my music purchasing to amazonmp3.com.

I always wonder why MAC users prefer the arguably insane iTunes interface to their world; yet they all complain about Microsoft Outlook or entourage. You’d figure they’d grok Outlook completely after using iTunes for so long. Honestly, the two are not that dis-similar. For me, I don’t use some dedicated application to manage my music besides rsync, a command line, and a simple script.

As I said going into this; I am not a fanbois. No iPad for me in April. No MAC laptop. No i-anything if I can help it. I’ll stick with 3 to 5 year old thinkpad T60 laptops that cost $500.00 US which will take Windows 7 or Ubuntu Karmic in minutes. I’ll also just go ahead and keep my decidedly inferior Android devices which are just USB Drives.

The lesson I learned tonight is never do this to yourselves. Its never too late to reach out and I am so glad I listened to an old friend Nan about it. She told me to do it. Women have this sense that we men seem to not. They know what they should do in these kinds of situations and we men misery our way through it.

All I can say now is that I am relieved, happy, and will soon see my dear old friend RWR again. To hold a beer, a piece of pizza, an engaging discussion about prehistory, physical anthropology, life. Remember those old surveys, juke boxes he kicked, hotels we stayed in, and all that beer we drank. Its all good.

Wrap all this up in the Coast Starlight AMTRAK and you have a trip that will engage me, make my 11 year old enjoy, and then the real and true reward is the visit with Rog at the very end. We’ll get on board on the 24th of March and head down to Los Angeles. Have a nice room that night and get a rental car. Drive up to Lancaster and stay a few nights.

Its interesting that after so many flights back and forth that I can finally sleep on the plane. First few flights no sleeping at all. Flying from Chennai last night was good. Fell asleep next to this rather irritating Australian guy who complained about everything. Flight 5 minutes late. “is this bloody plane going to take off today or not”. Kid crying. “shut the brat up”. Food not perfect. “what’s this crap?”. So glad to nod off and not let him up to the bathroom until he looked full and round and fully packed. I felt like saying “shut the f up. what the f is the used in complaining? the flight don’t get there any quicker with your stupid mouth moving”. But I restrained. The flight is 4 hours long. Too much time to breed angst with a neighbor. So instead, I slept and he grumbled about the bathroom. I have to admit to pretending to not hear him when he started needing to remove package in the lavatory. I was ipod’ed so volume up with Pearl Jam.

Now on to the next…

Anyways, getting ready to get ready here. I leave for the hotel at 6pm and then will do the dinner thing, sit around and watch TV in the room for awhile and leave around 10pm. My flight boards at 00:45am Saturday morning and then leaves at 01:15am. I land in Changi at 8am or so and then get my room at the transit hotel until about 4pm when I board SQ 2 for my fllight back home. Turn the clock 14 hours or so and I magically appear around 5pm in the evening on Saturday at SFO.

Travel mode is reset pending a few more hours at the work place here in Chennai.

It will be good to get home this time. I’ve had this congestion and cough for some days. Same thing everyone had at home when I was there. Not fun to travel with it so I am medicating now and have been.

I will whistle back to the states here in a few nights. Thanks to Chennai as usual for your open arms and great restaurants. Had my share of great South Indian vegetarian and some good chicken, mutton, and other stuff.

All good!

Hotel Internet always sucks. If its wired, its in a place where you have to sit at an uncomfortable table and they go by MAC address so you are limited to how many systems can be up at a time.
Its its wireless, you can move around but there is still a limitation.

Thankfully my friend Art to the rescue my last trip to Singapore. He suggested one device to replicate wired connections and I settled for another that does the same thing. My solution is a D-Link one here. You basically plug it in using AP Mode and it basically takes the hotel internet and lets you authenticate with the hotel portal but it uses the MAC address of the Dlink and not specific systems. After plugging it and authenticating, I can bring up my netbook running Windows 7 and do work on it that I need while still having my primary Ubuntu-powered laptop running. I can even let my android phone share the IP happiness.

On wireless, I can use internet connection sharing. In this mode, I plug in a second USB wireless card but I cannot seem to get this to a reliable state sometimes. Instead if I share the connection using the wired ethernet port and this howto for doing the work using IPtables its easier. As I’ve blogged earlier, the network mangler one never worked for me at all and not for others that commented either. The IPtables one just works for both wired and wifi. Its not the same type of solution as the first, but I can get two systems up at the same time. Anyone know an easy way with Linux to share a hotel wifi connection reliably?

Anyways, I’m sure you can do all this on other devices; but the Dlink is so small and configurable and works so easily and has no antennas to bend or break. Works for me. Also pack a USB hub, a 4 port travel power strip, and some ethernet cables like a crossover and regular and you have a decent mobile warrior setup.

Hope that Gareth and Ilan had a great show this year and that all my buddies attending had the usual great mix of fun and education.

Were there any T-shirts this year?