Lunch Hour Report: InstaLinux, AIR 1.5 for Linux and Linux Mint 6

So today I'll be covering InstaLinux, a really neat custom distro building site. Adobe's release of AIR 1.5 on the Linux platform. And a quick guide to setting up smartd I found on Linux Journal.

So, first on to InstaLinux.com. This little tool is probably the neatest thing I've seen in my course of using Linux since Mint started improving upon Ubuntu's already rock solid operating system. InstaLinux.com is a site that I found out about while reading through some magazines at the bookstore the other day while enjoying what will probably be one of my last Gingerbread lattes for the year. It's a site that allows you to pick what distro you want to use, then you can customize what packages you want to be included on the ISO. It's basically what you usually do when you get your distro installed, stripping unused packages and bloat, installing your usual packages and customizing your configuration files, but it does it BEFORE you download the ISO. I highly recommend you at least take a look at it as the concept behind it, if nothing else, is really innovative and if adopted by the distro's themselves could be a very useful tool to have on their sites.

Next I would like to highlight Adobe AIR 1.5. A platform that is going to sort of (or hopefully sort of) turn into the next JRE (but better). AIR allows developers to simplify their development process so that they only have to create one application for one "architecture" (AIR) and Adobe handles the rest of the leg work of making it work cross platform because as long as the host machine has AIR installed, the application will work and only need to be made once, not 2 or 3 times like is often the case today.

Finally I'll hit on Linux Mint 6 briefly. Now, not to say that I think it only deserves "briefly" it certainly is more deserving than that, however, it's about 2 minutes to 4PM and I want to get this article done (it's like a dead week for tech news so finding the articles took most of the time today). However, I digress. Linux Mint is basically a fork of Ubuntu that takes Ubuntu, adds all the nice little packages everyone usually puts in their system, strips out some of the bloatware, configures Gnome a new way and adds a new GUI theme plus a lot, lot more. They just released their next version, version 6 and I'm going to be downloading it today at some point and giving it a test drive, I'll write a review of what I think later today or tomorrow.

Oops

Sorry, I probably should have said this BEFORE the Christmas break, but I wasn't intending to post anything all of last week because I was off work and hence didn't have a lunch break to make a post during (though I suppose I could have done posts anyway...o well). Anyway, I just wanted to apologize for not telling everyone. I'm writing today's lunch hour report right after I finish this one.

The Lunch Hour Report: Humor Edition

Today I would like to start off with the article that inspired this post, that would be the article on Aegisub titled "If Programming Languages Were Religions". While at times mildly inaccurate, I found it to be really quite funny and also true in some respects. I highly recommend you read it, enjoy it and take it with a grain of salt if you're offended by humorous religious comparisons.

Another great read today (though a short one thanks to the joys of my friend "WebSense" content filtering in my office, I can't actually read the entire article, rather I got the small blurb and some of the links given in the slashdot article, but it seems like an interesting read no-the-less. It was recently uncovered that Microsoft was hiding the fact that their Xbox360 consoles scratched game disks and not only did they hide it, they put a disclaimer in the manual (according to the slashdot article) that told the user if it got scratched, the user was at fault, not Microsoft. It comes as no surprise to me that Microsoft would try to hide something like this, but the fact that they had 3 other possible solutions but rejected all of them in favor of a small print section blaming the user for a defective product is just inexcusable. I was thinking of buying a 360 myself soon, and some day maybe I still will, but I think the PS3 just got bumped up on the priority list (right below a Wii) by a few points lost on the behalf of Microsoft.

And I'll close us out today with an article from the ComputerWorld blog. Apparently Cisco is in the process of getting screwed because they decided not to read past the lines of the GNU/GPL license agreement that said, you could re-distribute this software in your own way. They are being sued because most of their routers run an operating system that is either built using or designed around some form of open source software. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but Cisco unfortunately failed to realize that using GNU/GPL licensed software means you can use it how you want, but the source needs to be available to anyone who wants it, including any changes you made to it for your own purposes. So, basically, the fact that they won't give anyone the source code to their routers and other products means they are in violation of the license agreement they acknowledged when they first started developing their products.

Lunch Hour Report: Windows 7, DOSbox and XBMC

First off, I'll start by apologizing for being late on the post. I got stuck in a meeting so I'm having to take my lunch hour later than normal. Now, on to the news.

Lets start off with Microsoft and Windows 7. If you're reading this post, you likely are away that Microsoft is planning to release Windows 7 sometime near the end of next year, but today I found some benchmarks for it, and they look promising. Supposedly the speed is "head and shoulders above Vista SP1." Even though I still hold that I'm a linux guy, this is kinda interesting because as much as I don't like some of the things Microsoft does, or some of it's policies, on the tier of things that I don't agree with the policies of, Microsoft falls below some other companies, namely Apple and their lock down on the iPhone apps.

Next, I want to show you something very cool that I found today on LinuxJournal.com. I found an article while browsing their collection on setting up DOSbox, a nifty little program that's similar to WINE, in the respect that it emulates a Microsoft environment for the purpose of running apps native to that other OS, but this one, unlike wine, is designed to run DOS programs. In the tutorial in the article, they show you how to install it and set it up to play the original Duke Nukem game. I have DOSbox installed on my laptop which is running Ubuntu 8.10, but I've never actually installed any useful applications on it. I saw it in the apt repositories one day and said, "Hey, that's neat, that might come in handy some day", so I installed it. Now I have an excuse, that game was one of my childhood favorites, within the ranks of Sonic 2 and Kirby's Dreamland in my book.

Finally, I'm going to take a look at Xbox Media Center (XBMC). This little program is something I stumbled upon back in the days when I was in the process of modding my Xbox, chipping it, new hard drive, Linux OS and XBMC. I loved the application on the Xbox and when I found out that they ported it to the x86 platform under Windows, Linux and Mac I was very happy. So, it's not really anything new really, but it's something worthy of mentioning if nothing else. I haven't yet installed it on my laptop, but it is running on my Desktop which right now runs Windows XP SP3 and it runs absolutely flawlessly. There are a few features that I can't use just because of my hardware setup on my desktop, but overall, the look and feel of application is great. Very professional looking and it makes a great alternate for anyone who wants a media center PC and has a Vista version such as Business that doesn't come with the media center built in or if you're running a flavor of linux and don't want to put up with some of the hassles of some of the other media center applications (even if some of them are a bit more feature rich when they run properly).

Lunch Hour Report: HP and Linux, Google and SMS and Japan with renewable energy

Looks like HP has finally given in to the will of it's users and is now offering up computers with Linux preloaded on them. Nice move for HP, seeing that they were the last one of the Tier 1 computer companies to make the move. Reportedly, "The problem was HP was a house divided when it came to shipping a Linux desktop." Seems like the people who knew the technology, the developers, wanted it. But those people who were more in the management side of things didn't want to touch the idea. Seems like they finally got their heads straight though and I'm glad to see that the people who know the technology are finally starting to impact the products that this company makes, maybe they'll actually start producing decent computers.

On another note, it looks like Google has enabled it's users to now send SMS messages via gChat. An interesting feature that I foresee putting a dent in the profits of the cell phone companies. With phones like the G1 and others now starting to use the Google Android OS, the gChat program will start to be more and more common on cell phones and if techno-wise people, like myself, are as smart as I think we are. I see people taking advantage of this and canceling their text messaging service, or at least lowering the number of texts that they pay for per month because of this new feature...Now, if only they would unblock gChat and Gmail at work, I would be all set and I could actually reach some of my friends about that thing we were doing tonight when I get off work.

And Finally, East Japan Railway Company has developed a method of converting the energy of all it's passengers walking in and out of terminals, into electrical power to power electronic billboard signs. Now, I don't normally refer to myself as a tree hugger or "greenie" or what have you, but I do promote self sustainability, this is just one great example of a country doing that. Now, if only the US companies would take the same initiative that JR East has and start developing these things for themselves rather then waiting for the government to require them to take action and do it.

New Ideas: The Lunch Hour Report

I'm going to start posting every day from 3PM to 4PM on a topic of my choosing. It will still fall within the scope of the blog, but this will be a guaranteed post every day. I'll be making it during my lunch hour, so I've named it "The Lunch Hour Report".

SongBird 1.0 Review

Earlier, we saw the release of SongBird v.1.0 and a lot of people were extremely impressed with the RC1 release and so when the final release came out, I made use to download it as soon as possible and I've been using it ever since. In a nutshell, this application has got to be the best music player I have ever used in my entire life. I used to be a pretty die-hard Winamp (windows) and Xmms (linux) user but with the maturing of SongBird, it has officially taking the number one spot on my list of music players. It has a full load of features, from basic music library organization to streaming audio. Thanks to it's ability to accept plug-ins just as easily as Firefox does, it can be expanded to do just about anything else you want as well. Most notably, it has plug-ins to add album artwork from Last.FM and there are even plug-ins to give you twitter feed access and a web browser right inside your music player. Now, this isn't to say it's without faults. It's not the fastest loading or lightest playback application around and it also doesn't yet have support for ripping or burning CDs, however, they are expected to be implemented in future releases and I'm sure there will be a number of 3rd party developers making plug-ins to add these features in this release. So, if you're interested in giving it a shot for yourself, it's available cross-platform from GetSongBird.com, make your own opinion on it and let me know what you think of it by leaving a comment at the end of this post.

I will also make a note that it's currently not available on the Ubuntu/Debian app sources and the getsongbird.com site only offers it in a tar.gz format for the linux platform so it can be used on multiple distros. If you want the .deb package for it, point your browser over to this post on Ubuntu Forums where you'll find a link to the deb package made by a third party, I used it, worked fine.

Linux Hits the iPhone

Gotta love this video. I still have personal issues with [Cr]apple and and their pricing and strict limitations on the iPhone and most of their products, but I will say that they come out with some really slick devices sometimes. I'm just glad to see that Linux finally made it to the iPhone...now, if someone could take this idea and try to drop android on it, we would be all set.(See boot video below)


iPhone Linux Demonstration Video from planetbeing on Vimeo.

Google Calendar Now Supports iCal

So, in a googlemac blogspot post Google announced today that they would start supporting iCal to synchronize it with google calendar. And, while that is a great thing for all the iCal users, I have one question...why do you still not support two way syncronization with google calendar through Mozilla Thunderbird without installing a third party plugin, yet you support it with iCal, a program that is used by only a niche market of people who can afford a Mac?

Either way, I'm not bashing Mac or Google for this, I just want to know why it's so difficult? Is there some mechanism that makes syncing iCal easier than Thunderbird? Come on Google, you have software that is free for the public to use, so start supporting those who continue the trend of free software use by Thunderbird users the same pleasure that the rich Mac users now have.

Steam Linux: Updates

So, I found some info on Arstechnica today that helps re-enforce my claim from the other day that Valve is on the way to porting the steam platform (and with it, the games) to the open source platform of Linux. This could be a huge boost for the popularity of Linux as a gaming OS, as the argument for many people not making the switch is poor game support on the operating system. Now, before I continue, I'm not making the claim that Microsoft should be shaking in their boots (but you know they are). However, I will say this, and that is that with this, comes Valve's virtual stamp of approval that the Linux platform is now a viable desktop operating system that has the potential to be a new market for them and considering the influence that Valve is in the gaming community, that could push some of the other gaming companies to start following suit and publishing more games on the Linux platform, and if nothing else, that should start giving Microsoft the chills and the hair stand on the back of their necks if not but just a little bit. So, to say the least I'm very happy about Valve's decision to do this and I wish the best of luck to them in this undertaking, it's not small task to port a game over to run on a new platform, let alone the mammoth empire of a gaming ecosystem that Steam has become, but I'm excited and can't wait to see what the future holds once this becomes official.

Imagining the Tenth Dimension

Found an interesting video on Youtube today, actually, I found it through my digg feed, but you know what I mean. The video is called "Imagining the 10th Dimension" and it shows a very interesting concept that personally, I had never considered before. The idea that there are not a mere 3 or even 4 dimensions, but that there are a whopping 10 possible dimensions. It gives a great graphical explanation of how it works and it's really fascinating to think about. While I was watching that, I found another video that was in the related sections on the page that went to a video titled "Why Stop at Ten Dimensions?" which is an interesting v-blog from the author of the "Imagine the Tenth Dimension" blog. Props to him for elaborating very well on the topic of the tenth dimension and why you almost certainly have to stop there unless you can imagine the possibility of there being existence beyond the beginning and the end of all matter and the universe.

Steam in Linux Today

So Linux has come a very long way since the first time I used it. The first version I had a taste of was SuSe 9.1 and since then there have been thousands of improvements made to SuSe and all the other distros out there. Well today I'm happy to announce that I've reached a new milestone in completely leaving Microsoft Windows behind.

About 30 minutes ago I successfully installed Valve's Steam application on Ubuntu 8.10 in Wine (Windows Application Emulator). I had tried this many times in the past but each time got hung up somewhere along the way, whether in the installation or the running of the app once installed, but today I was able to install it and open it without any problems and I'm now installing Counter Strike Source inside of Steam. As I write this it's at about 5% completion for the download and should be done within the next hour or so.

It still disappoints me that you have to run it inside of the Wine and that it doesn't natively run, but there were plenty of rumors abounding this year that Valve was porting the source engine to run under Linux and with it the Steam Application. So, as the year 2008 nears a close, I am glad to see that the Linux Gaming community is finally starting to gain some ground and I hope that next year will be even better as Valve releases (or at least prepares to release) Steam and other Source Engine based games natively onto Linux. And in the mean time, I will just use it in Wine and patiently await it's arrival.

IE 8 Beta 2 Goes Public

Ok, so I'm making this post from IE 8 Beta 2. I just downloaded it and installed it and overall, I'm going to just go out and say it, I'm really impressed with Microsoft this time. They did an overall good job with IE 8 and they fixed a lot of the things I had taken up issue with in IE 7...HOWEVER, that is not to say that I have found my fair share of things that really just piss me off.

Thing 1: Addons (biggest pet pieve thus far)
I'm not sure what it is, but for some God forsaken reason, Microsoft feels it's necessary to make their addons actual installed programs on your computer. This is a terrible, terrible idea in my sincerest opinion. Firefox had the grand idea of making addons and extensions only a part of firefox and they were installed as such, but for some reason Microsoft thought that making them programs that isntall on your computer like every other program was a good idea. All I know is that this is annoying. The first thing I did when I got IE8 was to install some extensions to see the new line up and I found one called Adblocker...I'm thinking of ABP (Ad Blocker Plus) on firefox and I said ok...it isntalls like a normal executable program and puts a TASKBAR ICON ON MY COMPUTER....WAIT WHAT!?...o no, the extension just infested my computer and then wanted me to buy it or have a 15 day trial of the adblocker...HELL NO...extensions, just like IE, should be free...way to go on that one...

Thing 2: Accelerators
Ok, these are a great idea, great concept but they were poorly executed...or possibly just still buggy but it seems all too convenience of a problem to be accidental. Whenever you use one of these accelerators, whether it be the Blogger one like I'm using to post this or Google Maps or whatever, if there is a search box or a text input field available on the page it pulls up, it will automatically fill it in with a link that goes to the "ieaddons.com" page and yes, you can just erase it, but WHY??? If it's something that's there to create a convenience, why on earth would you put something in it that everyone will clearly find to be a nuasance? Is this Microsofts new policy or something, "for ever convenience there has to be an equal and opposite inconvenience"...no, sorry Microsoft, you're not Sr. Isaac Newton it doesn't work that way for you.

My list of issues goes on for a few more, but I realize this is a long post, at least in terms of my posts, so I'm going to leave it there. But just to list a few more of my issues: tab coloring; why is it randomized whenever I open a new one? Address bar, the whole address other then the main "urlhere.com" is faded out...wtf? And of course, the ever present "Smart Screen Filter" formerly known as Phishing filter or whatever it was in IE 7...pointless and it blocks some legitemate sites so it doesn't relaly need to be there...O yea, and pardon any spelling errors in this post as well because in version 8 they have still failed to include spellcheck like Firefox has had for several versions now...

Till later...

Microsoft Photosynth

So, today I found this thing that was posted on Slashdot about Microsoft's new product that just got moved from "tech preview" status today called "Photosynth". It looked like a really cool idea so I immediately downloaded it to play with it a bit and I have to say, it's some pretty freakin sweet technology. The basic idea is that you take a bunch of pictures of either an object or a scene, as if you were making a panorama, but then you move around and keep taking pictures. Then you take all those pictures and load them into photosynth which then sorts through them all and aligns them to make a 3D model based on your pictures. It's not perfect yet as it's still a bit choppy and sluggish in the browser when you view someone else's "Synth" but it's a really neat concept and it works really well from what I can tell so far. I have yet to make my own "synth" yet though so I can't speak for that part, but it looks like it works really well from what has already been uploaded to their site.

Check it out for yourself <a href=http://www.photosynth.net target="_blank">by clicking here</a> and make sure to come back here to post your own thoughts on this program. I'll be posting again once I have my own synth uploaded and I can talk a bit more about the program functionality then.

Server Updates

So, as I've been saying in recent posts, my server is finally setup and running. Still trying to work the bugs out of it here and there, but for the most part it's good to go from a functionality standpoint. The only thing I have left to do, and this is really just a nit-picky thing is get mail going on it. I've got the DNS working as well as Apache and ProFTP so that's all taken care of, but if I really want a good, functional server, in my opinion, there needs to be a way to receive mail to the website address as well.

Overall though, and yes I'm going to turn this into a Ubuntu Server Edition talk, I am generally impressed with Ubuntu Server 8.04.1. It's not necessarily as light weight as some other distros I could have chosen, but the trade off was extreme ease of setup and maintenance in the future. But as servers go, it's also not that hard on resources either, at least compared to something like Windows Server 2008 which requires a minimum of 512MB of RAM and 10GB of hard disk space. No, Ubuntu server has been installed on less then 1GB of space and I have just 256MB of RAM, which only 100MB at most have ever been used of it at once so far.

So, if you're curious about the new server, you are free to check it out. The new server is hosting www.techmachine.net which is my old blog site but I am now going to be running my business off of it as soon as I get it stablely running using DDNS which is the only difficulty I've had thus far with it.

Google promoting new FCC legislation

Ok, so I found this today while I was surfing around. It seems Google is trying to promote an FCC bill that would free up the "white spaces" between the analog tv channels for public use and make them unlicensed wireless spectrums for use by anyone.

Personally I think this is a great idea, which is why I'm going to give them some publicity here on my blog. Imagine the possibilities in wireless technology if these analog channels were to be opened to public use! The possiblities are endless.

If you read this and you agree with this, go to FreeTheAirwaves.com and check it out. There is a short video clip on the main page that goes into some more detail about what this is all about and what Google's position is on it as well. There is also a petition on the site that Google will be presenting to the FCC for consideration with this bill.

So check it out, and I'll see you back here soon.

(PS. This is my first post using w.bloggar application. I'm test driving this app in hopes that I can use it more in the future. But in case this post comes out looking weird, that's why and I'll try to fix any problems I find as soon as possible.)

New Server, W00T

Alright, so I just got settled in my new condo, had Comcast come out and setup my internet and TV and my server has been live now again for about 16 hours....14 hours into it I managed to bork it up, however. I was messing around with my user groups and accidentally removed myself from the "admin" and "adm" groups which allow my user to use the "sudo" command to execute programs and commands with root privileges...So, right now, the web server is still up and running (no domain name yet, working on it) but until I can get back to my condo to reboot into the recover root console, I won't be able to fix my group settings so I've been locked out of it now for about 2 hours and will remain that way for the next hour, until I can get home. I also got webmin installed on the server, but forgot to set the router to forward the proper port to the server for it, so even though it's installed it's useless until I can get home and set that on the router (I don't have remote administration on the router setup for security reasons).

But bad news aside, I'm really excited for this project. I will be documenting my progress as it goes along, but the basic plan is to make a big combination server that will be a prototype for the beefier server I'm planning for later this year. Right now the mightly PIII processor it's running on currently will be a standard LAMP (Linux Apache2 MySQL PHP5) server with Webmin, web administration and Samba installed as well as FTPd, OpenSSH and Postfix. My hope with all this is mostly just for educational purposes so that once I have the beefier hardware I can set this up in a virtual server environment so that each of these services will be on their own virtual server instead of all running on the same computer and then I'll probably keep it that way as long as I can partly for the educational experience it will provide, but I'm also planning to make it a fully functional personal FTP and Mail server for myself and my roommate, so we will see how it goes, I'll keep the updates rolling.

How to fix Ubuntu Splashy problem

I've seen reports all over the web of people saying that the new "splashy artwork manager" for Ubuntu 8.04 doesn't work on their computer. I had the same problem so I thought I would post up how I fixed it.

First you need to open up a terminal and type in:

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer

Once you are there you will see a list of different drivers, look for the one that says "vesafb" (this is what worked for me) and put a # in front of it to comment it out. Save that file and then in the terminal again type:

sudo nano /etc/initramfs-tools/modules

This will bring up a list that contains these two lines at the end:

# raid1
# sd_mod

Below those two lines put:

fbcon
vesafb

Save that file and then in the terminal again, type:

sudo update-initramfs -u -k all

Once that's done, type:

sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

Find the line towards the bottom/middle of that starts with "Kernel" and then has a bunch of stuff after it, it should look something like this:

kernel        /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=763f09b5-cf76-42a1-8dd2-123a2739b3ab ro quiet splash

Once you find that (it will be the first one you come across most likely), you will need to add a line that says "vga=xxx" where "xxx" is a numer that you will find in the table I've linked to here (It's the table right at the top of the page). You'll probably want the number for your resolution that is in the 16M line since most monitors can handle 16M colors now. But if you're resolution is not there, pick the closest one (for example, mine is 1280x800, so I picked 1024x768 since 1280x1024 would have been to large in one dimension).Then you will save the menu.lst file. Type in:

sudo update-initramfs -u -k all

Then when that has completed reboot your machine and splashy should work now with the proper image coming up.

Good luck

How To: Dual boot and use only one Mozilla Thunderbird inbox

Ok, so I have been dual booting Windows XP and Ubuntu for some time now, as many of you already know. I have also been using Mozilla Thunderbird now for a few years as well on both platforms. However, until today, the idea of merging both installations of Thunderbird into one unified profile had not crossed my mind. But today I was reading around on the web and noticed someone asking about it, so I thought I would see if I could figure out how to set up Thuderbird in Ubuntu so that it would share the same profile as my Thunderbird installation in Windows, that way I wouldn't have to worry about keeping both inboxes syncronized and having duplicates of all my emails in two separate places. The following will be the instructions you need to setup your Ubuntu Thunderbird installation to use your Windows XP Thunderbird installation's profile. (These instructions are assuming that you have already started up Thunderbird at least one time so that it has generated a profile directory and a profile.ini file.)

First thing you need to do is open up a terminal, then copy and paste this, editing where necessary:

cd /home/Your_home_dir/mozilla-thunderbird && mv xxxxxxx.default xxxxxxx.default.bak && ln -s /location_of_windows_partition/"Documents and Settings/your_windows_username/Application Data"/Thunderbird/Profiles/xxxxxxx.default ~/.mozilla-thunderbird/xxxxxxx.default (where xxxxxxx is the name of the profile directory and you need to change anything that is italicized to fit your configuration)

Once you have done that, all you need to do is open up Thunderbird and you should see immediately that you have all the messages and contacts and EVERYTHING from your windows installation of Thunderbird on your Ubuntu installation, easy right!?


Intel moving forward with incredibly fast 45nm chips, what will AMD do to counter?

It seems that Intel isn't going to be losing it's crown as fastest CPU manufacturer any time soon. They are testing new 45nm chips that will increase the processing speed of their processors from 8-10GB/s up to an incredible 128GB/s and that's just at 2.2Ghz clock speed. It is speculated that if they can manager to increase the clock speed to those of the Q97xx series that they would be able to accomplish an incredible 200GB/s if not more.

In comparison, AMD's quad core, Opteron processor can manage about 8GB/s. Assuming that AMD is not going to utilize Intel's new methods of production, it is unlikely that we will see AMD processors as being any serious competition to Intel in the near future. AMD does have plans for new processors to be released in 2009, the "Bulldozer" processor, however, they are still working on completing the "Shanghai" processor to be released later this year and there is still very little detail about that processor and as such, even less information available about the "Bulldozer" processor. However, the one thing we do know about "Bulldozer" is that it wil be a total redesign of the AMD processor. "Shanghai", to be released later this year, will be the last of the Athlon 64 based chips AMD is going to produce before "Bulldozer's release.

Changes on the blog

If anyone at this point is following this blog, you will notice some changes I just made. I have changed the theme a little bit (still playing with that, so you might still see it continue to change). I also changed the title and description. This is in an effort to try to re-direct the focus of this blog. I am going to start focusing on two subjects that are very near and dear to me: Bicycles and Computers. For the Bikes, I'll mainly be covering my commutes and stuff that is in cycling news (or maybe not) and with computers, I'll be covering "hacker" conventions that I attend regularly and I will be throwing up some interesting computer news on occasionn too.

New hours, New commute, New Apartment

Alright, well thanks to the guys at ecomodder.com giving me the extra boost of motivation I have needed I have begun riding my bike again...a lot. I do the daily 10 mile round trip commute to work 5 days a week which so far has knocked a total of 280 miles off my car per month so far. I have also started riding pretty much everywhere else too. I rode to my parents house the other day, about 11 miles away, but had to have them drive me home with the bike on the rack because we ate dinner too late and riding 11 miles in the dark didn't sound like much of a plan.

I've also picked up more hours at work, and CONSISTENT work at that! I'm now pulling almost 30 hours a week, so I can actually afford stuff, WOOHOO!!! The only thing that kinda sucks now though is that I have to wake up at 6:30AM to have time to eat and get out the door and to work on the bike (commute takes about 30 minutes) and then still have enough time to clean up a little before I sit down at my desk for the day. The commute home is great though, I get off at 2PM and that means there is NO TRAFFIC so it's a really relaxing commute, all be it uphill.

In upcoming news, I'm preparing to move at the end of next month. I am moving in with one of my fellow con goer buddies that I met at Carolinacon earlier this year and she's really great, we get along like we've known each other for years. The other plus to moving there is that the place is literally across the street and down a block from the apartment, so I won't even need my bike anymore to get there. So, I've begun packing for that all while making plans for going to H.O.P.E next month too. Looking forward to that as well, I'll be posting here while I'm there (assuming I can find some secure wifi while I'm there, unlikely) and putting up some pictures as well on my flickr page, so be looking for that.

Myrtle Beach

So, just got back from Statesboro, visiting my friends from high school. That was fun times and now I'm in Myrtle Beach South Carolina with my family for the week. The weather up here is absolutely gorgeous. I'm outside in the courtyard of the place I'm staying at and it's got to be maybe 70 degrees out right now and just a little breezy, mmmm love it.

Off to the BEACH!

Trying to Keep My Sanity

The last few days have been absolutely nuts. This week is finals week and I've been trying my best to keep from having a complete panic attack over this stuff. I had my Music Appreciation final last week so thankfully I don't have to worry about that anymore, however, this week isn't any more fun. I had my Government final on Tuesday which hopefully went well, I didn't study too much for it because, by looking at previous tests I have been doing pretty well on all tests with very little studying if any at all so I did a little extra preparation this time and just took the test and got it over with. Today is a little worse, though thankfully not too much more then Tuesday. I had a final paper due this morning which I got done, but then was promptly informed I was missing several other assignments that unless I did them, I would be failing the class. So thankfully my teacher was generous enough to give me until Friday to finish some of the major ones that would kill my grade if not finished. Then tonight I have my Grammar final, which, aside from sentence diagramming, I should be pretty good for. Hopefully I can at least pass it so I can keep my GPA up, it was one of those mistake classes where it seemed like a good idea and then inevitably, right after the withdrawal date, the teacher starts the difficult stuff so until then I thought I would do pretty well in that class, after then, not so much. So I have to take that tonight and then I'm officially FINISHED. The only things left to do after that would be to finish some of these missed assignments if I don't finish them before the end of today (which I'm trying to do) and then I just have to start my application process for GSU for the fall.

Bored on the Week Before Finals

So, it's the week before my finals start, that means it's crunch time, WOOHOO...not. So far this week, I have managed to skip most of my classes in favor of sleeping and studying basically 24/7. This week they were thankfully just doing review for finals in most of the classes so I just go to the few that I think I need help with and otherwise I just try to keep my mental sanity in tact, which often proves more difficult then it sounds.

Also, in news this week, I have switched my laptop to Kubuntu 8.04 instead of Ubuntu 8.04 just to try something new. So far so good, it has some quirks I'm not a fan of, but nothing I can't live with for now. Hopefully I'll find fixes for what I don't like in the near future.

Jan 2nd and a happy new year to everyone!

Well happy new year everyone. Today is Jan 2, 2008...wow, it still feels weird saying 2008 I guess I'm going to have to just get used to it though. Do you ever get that feeling when the new year starts? You just can't let go of using 2007 (or just can't remember to use 2008) when you write things? I know I do, it's actually kind of annoying on things like school papers and such. I often times will catch myself still saying or using the previous year often times well into June or July, but I really try to remember what year it is, it's just usually a slip of the mind when putting the date on a last minute paper or something. Anywho, so my girlfriend of many years now got me some wonderful things for my birthday. Among them were two video games for my Nintendo DS: "BrainAge 2" and "My Word Coach" (I guess she thinks it will help me in my classes this semester or something). But I have to say, I'm very impressed with these games, especially BrainAge 2. This game is not like traditional games when you think of things like Halo or Counter Strike, heck, it's even different then the other teaching game I got before it "Big Brain Academy". The game isn't really oriented in a "beat this as quick as you can to brag about it" kind of game. I really feel this is a teaching tool. The instruction encourages you to take your time and to only do each lesson 1 or 2 times per day as to make sure your not just cramming it in you're head, but rather that you are actually learning. I have played it now for about 45 minutes a day since my birthday and I have to say, I think it really is helping me think more. My "Brain Age" is certainly improving (I went from having a brain of a tired old 56 year old man to a 45 year old man in just 3 days) and I feel like I can do things off the top of my head a little faster (or maybe I just 'think' that I can) but whatever it is, I like it. I will continue this post later since I'm at work, I probably shouldn't post up too much at a time so I can still get some work done while I'm here.