Hackferret is dead, long live hackferret!
http://geekchique.org
Live Long, and Prosper, Followers of Surak!
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What I'm testing, is whether the LiveJournal.app on my iPhone works. ( More! ) Easy interface, too!
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As normal, I'm going to focus on purely Linux and Windows for this quick-and-dirty review.
I received a free student license of Windows Server 2003 as part of Microsoft Dreamspark (http://channel8.msdn.com) and figured I'd test it out on my Compaq Proliant Rack Server (Previously running Windows 2000 Professional Workstation for want of Linux Drivers for my external Fiber RAID.) I'm actually surprisingly impressed.
It's clunky, the interfaces do some stupid things and the need to reload one application after you've made a change in a related one is annoying as hell, but it still beats Bind config scripts for a DNS newbie like myself. After a few days work (And one reinstall caused by a bad Ubuntu install)I have a fully working File Server that accesses my RAID drives, but can operate without them when necessary - like this week while I'm on holiday and want as little hardware running as is possible. It has RealVNC server to allow me to log in from my iPhone, giving me remote control from wherever I am (The router is configured to forward the necessary ports to the server.)
At the moment, only one of my two identical servers has arrived so I can't give any direct performance test on the 5 year old Server 2003 against the new shiny Ubuntu server 2008/04 I would expect them to be similar - the Ubuntu code is newer and likely to be heavier, but has no GUI overhead. I've definitely learned a large amount about DNS and Mail from working on this project so - while I don't generally advise installing older operating systems on production machines for security reasons, I've found this a useful "Getting Started" tool to practice with befor moving to a Real UNIX server. If you have the free Dreamspark download then it's worth a play.
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A Ford Focus in fact! The iGraham Datacentre is moving home. Ok, the iGraham EVERYTHING is moving home - as my housing contract is up.
If I had a working camera, I'd show you the devastation in the house. Sam's bedroom has developed woodworm and a nasty smell: A fitting continuation of the polished surface, sickening basis policy that she operates on. As a result, I'm doing no more than throwing out the garbage in there. Matt will have to deal with mopping the floor after he's treated the room: No WAY am I disturbing those things.
The bathroom however was more of a success... kinda. The toilet, brush, bath, sink, tiling, cupboard, windows, and walls are clean and the floor is brushed and mopped. I made the mistake of getting too close to the toilet though and discovered several years worth of caked black mildew growing underneath the tank, and under the MDF panelling below that. Now gone. At least one room in the house is cleaner than when we moved in. I've also stacked my bed and mattress up against a wall and cleaned under and around it. The ferret smell sadly is leaving the room. On the other hand, the remaining 3 walls are still piled up and surrounded by my crap which needs packing, trashing and cleaning. Same goes for a large chunk of the kitchen, and the downstairs floorboards need to be swept and mopped still.
Oh, and I'll be at work for 9 hours tomorrow. Oh ye sleepless nights - how familiar ye are!
And I can't find my collar... Devastating on its own, but also terrifying as it has one of the two remaining keys to the house on it. ;-;
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| 2008-05-25 01:29 |
| OpenSolaris: NOT what Ubuntu hopes to be. |
| Public |
| simpsong@ATLANTIS.FerretianCybernetics.local |
 The world is old chewing gum. |
| The RAID Test Rap. |
| compaq, fibre, fibre channel, hacking, hardy heron, opensolaris, ra4100, raid, scsi, solaris, ubuntu, unix |
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Well, naturally - I have already begun testing OpenSolaris 2008/05.
In fact, I began today, attempting to install it on my (Currently) Ubuntu Hardy Heron Rack server (Compaq Proliant DL360.)
GNOME on Opensolaris seems better themed, and more stable than on Linux - however the tree from which Solaris-Gnome is forked is a little older so that's to be expected. It is also slightly less featured, as a Desktop Environment - but fine for general use.
I also noted that the livecd performance was spectacular compared to Ubuntu - which typically hugs the floor like treacle. It's Device Driver Utility made it easy to view device support in the system, and on an installed machine - download drivers for that hardware.
Therein lies my problem with OpenSolaris 2008/05. AFTER you install. Not helpful for me, when my two only storage controllers (Compaq SmartArray integrated SCSI RAID, and an Emulex LP8000 PCI Fibre Channel SCSI adapter) both lack support on the CD. This leaves me with a technical challenge.
Currently, I'm working on my alternate plan to install the OS. Namely: I plan to install the OS onto the IDE hard disk of a spare workstation, configure the bootloader, install drivers for the fibre channel scsi, PARTITION said array - and dd the hard disk image onto my new fibre partition. this will allow me to boot to Fibre Channel, with luck - and run my OS over the network (At least until I have dd'd it back onto the Compaq internal storage.)
What have I learned? Standardisation and Open Source are invaluable for the future of computing - wait, already knew that. More simple maybe?
Keep a PCI IDE controller lying around, you never know when you'll need it.
OpenSolaris needs to have more drivers on the CD.
RAID Arrays are great, and Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop mode allows you to connect 2 or 3 arrays to a single Fibre Channel controller in a server - making rackmount Network Attached Storage with redundancy a breeze - for the most part.
iGraham, signing off.
P.S. Drug induced insomnia sucks balls.
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In fact the trouble with all rackmount server technology these days is that it's really bloody expensive. Take the Xserve. You can get an old G4 Xserve for about £400, with a 160 odd gig hard disk and a gig or two of memory. Funnily enough, that's the same price as a Mac Mini. Roughly. And the Xserve has a slower Dual G4-133 than the Mini's Core 2 Duo. Buuut, the Xserve is an Enterprise class server, so you know it's reliable, as well as powerful for it's age. Mais A l'autre cote, it can take VGA card upgrades, PCI cards (I want one for my M-Audio Sound Card) and 4 hot swappable Hard Disk Drives. To do that with a Mini would require a degree in Electrical engineering and ALOT of solder.
I'm obviously still tempted by the Xserve despite the lower CPU power. A machine of that age can comfortably run Leopard, and happily run Tiger with iLife and iWork 08.
I shall for obvious reasons refrain from making a review on either machine. They are both intended for very different uses, and it's good in my opinion that hardware of this age can still be used for many purposes. I just wish I could afford the hard disk caddies for Rackmount gear!
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Well. . .Yatta!
Something tells me that the store staff decided to play a prank on me. At 4PM Monday, I had to go into the store to look for a couple of cables for XTV Online. While I was in there, I asked when I'd be hearing about the job. (The interviewer had said Monday) The employee I asked went off to find the responsible administration member, came back and told me that the time frame was two weeks, not Monday. As it happened they didn't have my cables, so I booked a Genius appointment for one of my iShuffles (Which was acting up) and headed to Curry's Digital. As I walked through the door, another member of the Apple staff called and gave me the job. So comedy and employment now come in one easy to manage package. Heh.
My current employer was very understanding when I gave in my notice that evening, and I start work on the 26th or thereabouts.
IMPORTANT!
Quite a few people so far have asked me how much I'll be earning, And I have to tell every one of them the same thing. Apple don't release that information. I don't even know exactly how much. In the interview, they ask how much you expect, and tell you if they'll beat it or not. Officially, it's an "Apple Trade Secret." So I can't tell you, and won't - since I've been wanting a job in computing since age 16. Now I finally have one and it's better than I ever dreamed: I work for Apple! So don't ask, because I won't tell. Ever.
It's about time I stop talking about my own satisfaction, and give you guys what you're really reading for. Pure, unadulterated technophilia. Well, as I said in the last post, iFerret Stage 2 - I bought a new CellWatch. My model is the "Copycat" M700 device. According to webforums, this model is plagued with bugs, errors and failures. I haven't noticed any at all. The phone runs perfectly. The bluetooth headset that came with it - didn't, so I look somewhat odd talking into my watch all the time, but that in itself has caused a lot of interest from people wanting to know what it is, and subsequently going off to look up the prices. And : http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp10082006.shtmlNuff' Said.
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Well, I passed Apple's interesting "Group Interview" So it's on to stage 2. I won't post much about these interviews because I don't know what's "Trade Secret" And what's not. You know how corporations are.
Secondly, it's stash time at Exeter University, and to celebrate the fact that we didn't do it last year, the EUSKC (www.euskc.org.uk) have come up with a slogan, in the traditional Exeter form, Euphemism:
"EUSKC: Fisting our partner's since 19XX" the X's because as of yet we don't know when we were formed, but Charlie's looking into it.
Finally, since my smartphone is getting decrepit, I've bought a new toy - a wrist mounted mobile, with tft touchsreen, bluetooth, mp3/mp4 playback and various other tricks. And yet it's still half the price of an iPhone, sim free. Gotta love Chinese manufacture!
The specifications are little better than the Nokia 6230i, but on the other hand, it's on my wrist!!! A step up in my opinion. And from here, the only way is up, baby! It shows just how far we've come since my Fossil Palmos WristPDA (Although I would like to note that said PDA still has a better CPU than the Wristphone. Perhaps that's the next version?)
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Before my main post section, here's an amusing interlude from Fifi, a fairly ungeeky biologist and furry who runs Linux on her TabletPC's, Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon actually, since I was the one to install it.
-- I was on train the other day going to bristol and on my laptop, and this person sat opposite and was talking and asked what I was doing. I was doodling on gimp, and they looked over and said "what's that, its not windows" and I said "It's Linux" he said ". . .You fucking geek." and walked off. --
Which just goes to demonstrate why Linux is not successful on the desktop market. Because people with only six braincells think that they're too stupid to use it. They are, but they're too stupid to use Windows or Mac OS X and that never stops them.
Back to the main topic
As an active member of the small high-geek community in Exeter (There are many geeks, but most of them are either antisocial, or function well in wider social circles - This is an observation on myself and a few others in the community, not an insult to any of the members, although I suspect most would agree.) Anyway: As an active member, I'm very into cyberculture. (The other main subcultures that have proved most popular are fantasy and the Furry Fandom - both of which also apply to me.) Cyberculture is a large genre which overlaps several other subcultures, as well as including subcultures that form a part of itself as well. Biopunk and Steampunk could both clearly be considered in this manner.
I have an essay on cyberculture I need to convert and upload at some point, but it's four pages of writing in a Xournal document, plus a mindmap - and I haven't the time to rewrite it at the moment. However, one thing that is not included in that essay still to address is cyberpunk terminology. In fact, that's a pretty big subject, which will need another full essay to address it later. So here, just one word to talk about: "Fixer."
I can think offhand of two major items of cyberpunk literature that have included the role/class/job "Fixer". The more widespread is that character class in the free Cyberpunk MMORPG named "Anarchy Online." This is not the perfect description of a fixer, as Anarchy Online is a game, with a limitation on it's spectrum of operation, and to implement the functions needed to correctly demonstrate a fixer's role would be challenging on all fronts, especially for the interface designers and security engineers. The other major source is a book trilogy named "Hex", and written by Rhiannon Lassiter. The first book (Where the term is introduced) was published in 1998. I believe that it was the original source of the term, although I would not like to say this conclusively, as the list of cyberpunk literature I have read is woefully incomplete. If anyone wishes to research this, you may at your leisure, and please enlighten me to the correctness of this claim.
Next for the job description of a fixer. This is primarily based on Hex, which is the better version - but cross checked against Anarchy Online. The basic idea is of a "Combat Cracker." Now this isn't to suggest a 8' 16 stone berserker who incidentally has R2D2's cracking capabilities, but more a cracker and social hacker with limited defensive combat skills, for use in escaping a discovered hideout/territory. I also did an itinerary of a basic Fixer's equipment (E.G. what they would carry round in a cyberpunk universe.)
Storage: A few of these items are somewhat bulky, so some sort of shoulder bag would be needed to carry them. For me, I use a cheesy single-strap shoulder bag designed for animé nerds. It's very small, just big enough to cover my basic supplies.
Computer: In my case, my PDA's are all either Out of Date or closed-source for now, so I have to carry a TabletPC around. Thankfully, this is a device that can be carried reasonably comfortably by hand, and used on the move thanks to it's integrated Wacom.In most Fixer's cases though, a powerful UNIX or similar based pocket or wearable computer. E.G. the last models of Sharp Zaurus, a HTC Universal or similar with Linux installed, or a custom built device from an OEM board.
Communications device: While in an ideal circumstances this would be the same device as the computer, for example - a PDA/Phone with a secure wired/wireless headset would be a convenient combination device.
Data Storage: This is the trickiest part of a Fixer's arsenal. A major factor in cyberpunk is the suspicion, fear or belief that governmental, gang or similar powers rule, in a tyranny or dictatorship. A Fixer will typically be the holder of data with interest to these organisations. Stolen data acquired through cracking, private data entrusted for transportation to the Fixer by a client, and other similar information that must be protected. And in civilisations where warrantless searching and confiscations are permissible, storing data safely is an art. The best way to transport data is secretly, in devices people would not suspect. Encoded into non-randomised text written by hand in a notebook, so that it seems human readable and unimportant by an observer, but can be decoded to produce secret information. Another, less complicated idea would be to use camera cards (In Cameras), internal memory of a mobile phone or PDA. These devices would be more likely to be suspected. Another approach would be to use common everyday items, such as smart cards. (These include Debit/Credit cards, some gas/electric meter cards and similar.)
Storing large amounts of data would be difficult, but an ATM card is even less suspect than a notebook, especially in a cyberpunk era filled with Digital technology and communication. Accessing the data directly would generally require specific card readers that are well supported by open source software, but support for the integrated devices in peoples computers is ever improving. A good way to store the data would be to use a Sun Solaris system with card reader. These machines are designed for use in enterprise systems including thin client terminals based on smart cards, such as the "Sun Ray" series. Otherwise, use your imagination. Embroidering patterns into clothing, microchips in jewellery - There are many methods.
Referencing: My fixer bag has a book in it. It's a book on programming the C++ Language, and it's a very inefficient means of transporting the information, because it pretty much fills up my bag. However, I have no smaller guide. Most fixers would do well to have either an eBook reader such as the iRex Illiad - loaded with technical manuals. Or a few important and SMALL reference guides.
Armour: This is simple. While fairly unnecessary in my situation, Fixers in the typical CyberPunk sense would however need some armour. A simple body vest between two T-shirts and maybe wristguards/bracers should about cover it for a fixer in most situations. The job of a fixer is not to get in a firefight. The worst they should encounter is a few parting shots as they sprint past a ganger with a pistol, or a brief knife fight.
Weatherproofing: I myself am fond of a greatcoat for three reasons: Weatherproof. Pockets. Thick - can defeat a fairly blunt or non-forcefully driven knife. They can also double up as a field blanket to curl up in or under. A leather trenchcoat works in a similar fashion - although as a vegetarian animal lover, I do not advocate them in the slightest.
First Aid/Hygiene: While I'm short a bandage at the moment, I try to keep a functioning first aid kit and hygiene pack with me (Toothbrush, Toothpaste, Deodorant.) My first Aid kit is a basic selection of drugs, one's I've been prescribed and one's that are freely commercially available plus plasters (Gauze, bandage - that kind of thing.)
Life Gear: If you're searched, and you don't have a wallet, or cash, or keys, or a watch, lipstick, tampons. (Obviously not all of the above, but at least some indication that you're a normal person) you immediately attract suspicion.
Armaments: Different cultures expect different things. In ours, the life stuff above would be expected. In Hex say, you'd be generally presumed armed. So, it helps to be. A knife, a pistol, a baton. Something like that.
This is just a rough guide, the biggest part of being a person is individuality. But that gives you a rough guide to sensible items to demonstrate who a Fixer is.
And I forget why I even wanted to write this.
Oh well! No worries!
Ferret.
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If only my boss was the computery type, and thus read this blog. Okaaaaay, they'd know about the Apple thing, but on the other hand, they'd learn to implement a no-snacking policy at work, and do regular lunch breaks instead, enforced by strict fines for those caught snacking on Camera.
On the plus side, my snacking today was down about 34% today over last week, from £15 to £10.
*hangs fron in shame.*
On the more relevant side of things, I spent about an hour at work (Not many customers) disassembling my keyboard and cleaning it. While it's now much more responsive, and I don't have to pay £70 to Fujitsu for a replacement I was unable to solve the other issue, namely my second deceased sound routing board in 6 months. And this time, with the death of my iBook's DVD drive I have no replacement notebook while I send this one in for repair. As a result, I'll have to wait till Easter (next holiday) to send it in for repair. Hopefully by then I'll have a new backup portable device. If not, I'll have to borrow Reginald off of Yksinainen. Reginald is a rather old Celeron TabletPC running Ubuntu Feisty Fawn. Eh. It'll do. In light of this, I've also decided to postpone OS installations till Easter if possible, which will mean my next clean OS install will be the brand new Ubuntu Hardy Heron or a release candidate thereof, along with Leopard 10.5.1 iATKOS (Or it's replacement) and if I get bored, Windows 2000 for playing Anarchy Online. (Windows would replace OS X Tiger, currently only used as a stage 2 bootloader to access my Bootloaderless Leopard.
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Yeah. Christmas has fallen to a new low in MacHaus. (My house.)
Ran out of money to decorate my tree. So, an iPod Shuffle has become a makeshift star, and a Mighty Mouse has been reapplied as decorative illumination for the lower branches.
On a more positive note, iATKOS/Uphuck 1.0i is most of the way through downloading. This is basically the most uptodate Leopard-hackintosh installer out there. It's a stripped disk, removing all the PowerPC code, with additional patches for various hardware configurable in the customisation box. It'll take a couple more days before the end of the disk filters through the 5000 other leechers to reach me, but when it does, I'll be having some fun. It also features the new EFI implementation for core processor users, so I'll be able to install updates through the Software Update function, same as all the other Macs.
Christmas is going to be low budget, no budget, and for many people postphoned this year, sorry. Bills etc are screwing with my limited bank availability. In case I forget on Xmas day, Merry Christmas to you all!
Hmmm. There's a fruit cake in my fridge. Remind me to get marzipan, icing, and brandy.
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Yep. You read right. The iFerret - Mac Specialist edition. No, it's not final, in fact - I'm only at Stage 2 of the application process. But hey, a huge number of people applied to work at the Apple Store, and I've achieved the first hurdle - I've got an interview. A group interview to be exact. It should be interesting - and I'm looking forward to it. Who knows? In two months time, I could be working in the Apple store!
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Well, what can I say? A few changes since my last major report!
First, some sad news. . . Kinda. My eyetest came out perfect, which is good in on way - my sight remains as good as ever. However, I think I look quite cute in glasses (hence the LJ icon) and I can't have any.
What else? As I'm sure you didn't notice, I'm typing this not from Atlantis, but from Asuras, a PowerMac G4 Yikes! That I finally managed to get running on Debian last week. The iBook sadly remains out of commission. Don't panic, the TabletPC is safe, but I like having the large screen to use every now and then. While it's the only change that will seriously affect my limited number of readers, there are others which make my life much more comfortable. Since I have a Mac, I figured it was a pity to not have an Apple keyboard and mouse to go with it. So, a little splashing out of cash from my new job, and I'm using a new Apple Mighty Mouse and Brushed Aluminium keyboard, both very attractive devices, and certainly in the case of the keyboard - very comfortable and reliable to use. The mouse suffers some click problems, and is not the best optical tracker I've ever seen - if you have tat much money to spend on a mouse (Mine was reduced in MORO) I'd purchase a Wacom Bamboo pen tablet instead, although support on Linux is only under the 2.6.23 kernel which is not deployed on many distributions.
Now to the main topic of today's demonstration in geek drivel. A few years back, (I'm not looking through the archive to find the strip) Userfriendly.org ran a comic on "The word of the year 2003." It was embedded. This year, I think that we may be seeing a slightly different theme. Progress comes to mind. So does "Freedom." In the geekiest circles, including mine - "Operating Systems" looks set to take the title. After all, 2007 has seen more releases and progress in operating systems than any other year since I first became a technologist over a decade ago. ReactOS is becoming rapidly mature, and regular component forks from the Wine tree are keeping it as compatible with Windows 2000 as is humanly possible. Within the next 6-12 months it's likely to see beta, and R1 shortly after. Another OS which has made sudden leaps recently is Haiku, the FOSS implementation of Be Inc (Now Palm's) BeOS operating system. In fact, contrary to the traditional image of BeOS as suffering from limited hardware support, Haiku has garnered attention and major support from big companies like JMicron and google. As a result, it now has AHCI support, among many other things. This (for those not in the know) will allow it to boot on nearly all the advanced SATA hard disk controllers that have been in use for the last few years, a big step for a Desktop OS. Even AROS, the old Amiga clone that has been kicking round the net for well over a decade has finally got hold of the code to enable reliable networking and basic USB.
On the proprietary side of the ring, there have been major advancements, and unsurprisingly major regresses. No one will be surprised to learn that the forward thinking company is Apple, and that the backpedaling maniacs heading rapidly to a head on collision with fate are Redmond's own Microsoft Corporation. As well as Apple's regular and usually well coded Tiger updates, Apple has gone on to release Leopard, the latest line in their flagship OS. Like Microsoft's new Vista, it features major 3D interface enhancements, 64 bit for the masses and many other tweaks both on the paintjob and under the hood. Unlike Vista, the new OS will run comfortably on systems dating back to the G4 860, comparable to a Pentium 4 1.5 in age. It's efficient and reliable. Vista required re-installation four times within three days of attempting to enable my supposed "Vista Ready" hardware. In fact, OS X Leopard, meant for Apple Macs and ONLY Apple Macs, works faster, more reliably and better hardware support.
Embedded devices are still ploughing forward however, with Apples iPhone in the wild, based on the same Darwin OS as it's flagship desktop line. Compare with Microsoft, who are rapidly moving away from their poor quality Windows CE OS in order to put full Aero-enabled Vista on pocket machines. Of course, the resulting devices still rely on Windows CE for basic operating, since under Windows Vista they have a standby time of around 2-6 hours. Combine that with the latest batch of pocket media players, the HUD's built into nearly all modern cars and the latest trend in streaming media devices, such as the PlayStation 3's "Access Anywhere" technology, and the Apple TV (Essentially, a PMR running Front Row.)
Finally, the toy industry has shot forward. The Wii and PS3 have joined at last the 360 in the console market, and taken the whole planet by storm. Creations like the Spy-Video car, with it's Sub £15 Head Mounted Display show us the power and flexibility of current generation technology. Even more seriously, the One Laptop Per Child project has entered into production of their device, and sold a few devices to the public, are suddenly under a deluge of requests for more of their low price, powerful education and communications device. In fact, with it's Retro-Apple looks, the TabletPC rotation "E-Book mode" and superb battery life, the OLPC is in fact a device that would suit not only kids from Developed countries as well as the original audience, but also most of the adults, too! Finally, the world has taken some heavy loss of life. From soldiers in warzones, to crime, to executions...
And let us not forget either the faces of those who have been so influential in making the world what it is, even from out of the limelight. I'd like to make a toast, of shareware champagne (You get the idea over LJ, and I'll sell you the bottles by mail order.) to the passing of one of my favourite geeks from the last millennium computer era, Fred Fish.
Few people these days would remember Fred Fish, but his "Fish Disks" of public domain and shareware software, were the early 90's equivalent of P2P - before the home internet scene had migrated above text based bulletin boards powered by direct modem hookups.
So, a toast to the passing of Fish, Fred. Hero of the computer. Champion of the person. Requiescat In Pace.
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Well, it cost me the last of all my money, but at long last I have a new battery for my TabletPC.
This has resulted in a very large increase in battery life, from 5 minutes to 4-5 hours on wifi. (Low backlight.) This is about 40% more than Windows gave me. I have to say. . . I'm pretty impressed with Gutsy's powersaving features.
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This is a quick post for now, but may be edited and expanded later this afternoon - so keep an eye on it.
I have a problem. It's called Hewlett Packard. A few years ago, my problem was the similarly named Packard Bell.
Both sell computers. Both are available from PC World. Neither supply OS CD's with their computers. This is a problem, because most people hate the default windows install - even if they like Windows. It tends to come filled with dodgy custom apps, bloatware and hard-to-remove demo's. Not a clean OS to start computing with. But all the restore CD's do is to put that back on, without any of the USEFUL applications, like Office or Paint Shop Pro that may be bundled. That's today's gripe number one.
The second is about product quality and suitability. Hewlett Packard sell great quality products, unlike Packard Bell. . . But as far as their printers go they limit their usability. You can't network a HP printer. So all the poor people I know (Tagged) who bought HP printers and then tried to network them are now stuck with a fairly useless piece of technology - since most of them use Laptops, not Desktops. Why is this? Why are HP so megalomaniacal about their printers? The answer is called the HP networking Add On kit, which allows you to network your £40 printer for only an extra £200. Hooray!
Might I suggest everyone go buy Epson's now?
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| 2007-09-30 21:56 |
| Pink snakes & bondage. |
| Public |
| gsimpson@ATLANTIS.FerretianCybernetics.org |
 Hyperausted. |
| Some song about refusing Rehab. . . |
| apweiler, bowser, evershed, gimp, isaacs, phone, pink, python, ruby, ubuntu, xtv |
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Well, my title for today is already an odd premise. Pink snakes? Bondage? I'll start with bondage, because it actually makes a little more sense. From those who know me well, will have come the thought "gimp" or actually, GIMP. The GNU Image Manipulation Program. It's a neat open source Photoshop replacement. XTV may also have noticed it on the desktop of one of the workstations; Sarah wanted a hand doing a simple graphical translation and it was considerably easier faster and cheaper to download and install GIMP than to learn Photoshop. I spent more time trying to find the right function in Photoshop than it took to get the GIMP, install it, and perform the operation. Lets be honest here: Those who say that one of the two makes the other COMPLETELY redundant is wrong. SO everyone, go get the GIMP, either from the GIMP website or from your UNIX distribution's Package manager.
"Pink Snakes" is a little more complicated to explain, although much more a hack than playing with the GIMP. Our TV station is a desktop computer pile. The processing side of it consists of three old workstations. My PowerMac Asuras, and our eventual media centre; an ancient blue SGI Indy with a CCTV camera called Deep Thought and finally, a resurrected gift from Anthony Evershed, Julius Apweiler and Thomas Isaacs: A (formerly) deceased Athlon XP station, painted a very bright pink and named Bowser.
Bowser is based on Ubuntu 7.04 Server Edition, because it's an OS that I felt like trying out at the time. It's also the OS that I want to move the XTV broadcast tower onto in the future (As part of a project to make it more futureproofed.) I'll explain. . .
The XTV broadcast Tower is just a computer that outputs a VGA video feed and a 2 channel analogue audio signal. However for some unknown reason, whoever (years ago) set up the tower; built it on a specially compiled distribution called Arch Linux, and programmed the broadcast script in another piece of arcane knowledge, known as the Ruby language.
Nobody in the current XTV has any clear idea of how the system works - and if it breaks, we won't be able to fix it... We'll have to start from scratch. And given my experience as a poweruser of linux technology, there are only two things to do.
Arch is a horribly custom distro. It's very fast, but because it only works on one machine - like ACORN, Amiga and Classic Mac OS's. If we were to pull the hard drive and put it in a replacement machine we wouldn't get far. And since the scripts are used to certain paths, they wouldn't work sensibly on any other OS either. So the first change is to replace Arch with something standardised, since a computer playing one stream of video to standard outputs does not need to be horribly efficient. Using XWM instead of KDE will make it fast enough. So, we have our new OS: Ubuntu
Ruby, has a slightly different problem. No-one bloody knows it. I'd rarely heard of it. In fact, it's probably a wonderful language, but since no-one can code in it, it's the worst language to program our script in. Python on the other hand (Hence the snakes) is a modern language that is used to script plugins for just about anything, forms part of some OS's and runs quite a lot of Google.
So, my next technical challenge: Turn Bowser into a much simplified and more elegant broadcast tower.Then undo the damage.
Final words:
Windows Mobile 5 seems to have forgotten how to suspend on inactivity, despite numerous hard-resets. This has hastened my transition to linux, which is going to happen sooner rather than later, phone-app permitting.
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Jack the Ripper is one of the most unreliable stories from modern history. Amusingly enough, his relation John the Ripper is a detector of unreliability. John the Ripper is a password cracker. One that I have been getting kinky in the bedroom with lately.
I actually discovered it several years ago, where I tested it by trying it out on my system's password file. However, Slackware is the most secure linux and such uses the best hashes. Similarly, a P4-1.9 is old news as far as processing power is concerned.My new shiny Core Duo 1.83 is considerably faster in single core mode - despite the lower frequency.
The rest of the system is snazzier to boot. The RAM is 667mhz Equivalent versus the 133 in my old desktop. The 60GB Sata drive is much faster than the old 40GB UATA-100. I never managed to crack my old password before getting bored. This time, however - John saved me considerable hassle.
Several years ago, I purchased an SGI Indy. It's previous owner didn't know how to turn it on, let alone any of the system configuration details. Two years later, I finally managed to link it to a display, picked up a keyboard from a local store (Had a mouse handy) and stuck in my CCTV camera. Only to find out that all the user accounts (including root) were password protected. Luckily, the bios (UNIX based) had no password, so I managed to use it's appallingly basic Stand Alone Shell to display the contents of the passwd file. Saving the contents to a file on my desktop, John it, 7 minutes and I had the code. 3 hours after commencing the hack of a modern Kubuntu password, still no go. heh.
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A few months ago, I was involved in an argument with (at the time) a good friend. This friend happens to work at Microsoft - and as such, is not a big fan of competitive software, or people putting down Microsoft software.
Now, I'm not suggesting this unnamed gentleman actively dislikes competing software, just prefers to stick with his home brand. (No, I do NOT know Steve Ballmer's contact details.) The argument actually arose because I was having a bad day with a piece of poorly built Microsoft software. And as far as Microsoft software goes, this one is bad.
Actually, most people haven't heard of it, and most don't have it installed on their PC's. It's a component of only one Windows XP distribution, and of the more advanced Vista distributions. It was in fact - the TabletPC Edition "Windows Journal". It's a neat little program that allows you to make notes using your TabletPC's digitiser onto a virtual notepad. This in itself is cool, and the application is on a par with the basic functions of open-source replacements. (For once, they are the more advanced programs.) Unfortunately though, Windows Journal is unsurprisingly a Windows-Only program, with no support for even reading the images on any other OS than Windows. It was actually a problem because at the time I ran both Windows and Mac OS X on my TabletPC (Don't ask how) and Windows had destroyed itself for the second time in 4 months.
So, all my University notes from semester one, all carefully written and saved in Windows Journal format were no longer accessible on my computer. Eventually I wiped the drive with the restore disk and started again from scratch, making all my notes in a different program called "Jarnal" a Java based replacement with many additional functions. Windows Journal only exported to greyscale .tiff files, so months later I found myself converting all my old notes into Jarnal files (Which are basically .zip files containing an SVG [Scalable Vector Graphic] of each page.)
Soon after, I discovered that unlike its predecessor, Ubuntu 6.04 - Kubuntu 7.04 would install and run happily on the Tablet. At which point I discovered Xournal.
Xournal is a GTK program, so it doesn't work on any PC with the same binary as Jarnal does, and is essentially a Linux-only utility. It's file format is marginally different from Jarnal's and so is not interoperable (This is currently being remedied.) However, being a true program, compiled for the platform, it runs far, FAR faster than Jarnal ever did. It also supports the full subpixel resolution of a Wacom tablet (18000 instead of 1024, over 15 times!) meaning that the quality is incredible. Native SVG support will allow exporting to graphics programs such as Inkscape, Photoshop (ugh. x.x) and the GIMP, allowing simple Xournal sketches to become the basis of full artwork.
I advise everyone with a TabletPC or a USB (bus powered) external tablet for a standard laptop to look at both Jarnal and Xournal, and have a go at making University and business notes using it. It's a very efficient and reliable system, once you know how to do simple backups (Which you should have been able to do within an hour of using your first computer.)
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Welcome issue 2 of HackFerret! The journal of pointless minor Techno-garbage. Like GeekTechnique.org, only uncool!
Well, it's fair to say, I had a little accident recently. I walked into a little local retro store called "Kitsch U Like." What greeted me there was a little bit of my childhood. A 1978 BattleStar Galactica bed-sheet. While this may not sound the most exciting thing for the average person, I figure an unused relic from 30 years ago, for well under £20 is a nice treasure to have. After that it all got a little insane. . .
I'm not going to go into how much I spent, but needless to say. . . I am the fairly proud owner of almost enough gear to successfully impersonate a Galactica Bridge Officer on duty. Perhaps I should infiltrate the set in Canada and kick-start my acting career? Perhaps not. I have gone a bit over the top on detail though. Although the uniform I have is not even close to perfect, it was the only reasonably priced version available. My own limited experience with a needle should allow me to make the necessary modifications.
While the uniform was the single most costly purchase, I think the rank insignias to match were the most expensive - since you get quite a lot of uniform, and not much insignia. My Duty Blues do come with two sets of rank pins, but they are cheap pot metal devices, like several other low cost pieces found (and purchased) on eBay. My final choice for emblazoning my uniform with shining beauty was an American who custom made several sets of Rank Insignias. These aren't the cheap pot metal, but copper insignias plated in two tone gold and silver and fitted with high quality mountings. In actual fact, they're as good as those found on the show. Along with this go an improved patch for the uniform shoulder - it too is imperfect, but it is a large improvement over the stock one, and is the right colouring, just the wrong material. Still, I have a little work to do. The cuffs of the uniform are shaped wrong, and are too long - thankfully giving space to make the shape modification in. The belt loops on the trousers are also thin types as normally found on jeans etc - whereas Colonial Uniforms have wider straps around 2" long.
Finally, the few problems that will likely involve sourcing some other odds and sods - The shoulders of the uniform themselves are made of a material black in colour, whereas the originals are a blue colour only slightly darker than the uniform. The buttons are a plain silver type, whereas those on the canon uniform are detailed and darkened. Finally, the last components I need are the undershirts. Oddly enough, the best matches for the undershirts are commonly available. The grey base shirt is a normal grey tank top. The darker layer on top is custom made by the studio, but can easily be approximated by wearing ladies underwear - namely a dark grey to black racerback vest, backwards - So the "racerback" covers the chest. These look surprisingly good, even on men.
One thing I'm slightly saddened by is that the colonial Dog Tags that were produced by the guy selling insignias have long since sold out. (3 times!) So the chance of me getting an uncut set is slim.
Now. Enough of the uniform, but more of Galactica. Not counting my dawning collection of DVD's and comics that goes with the Uniform and other paraphernalia, my own aircraft design based on the viper is pressing on fine. The fun parts at the moment have been working on the limitations and issues with the whole "Atmosphere/No Atmosphere" divide. The key issues with that functionality have been temperatures of reentry, fuel and engines. My current thinking is revolving around a jet/rocket hybrid that sucks in air while in atmosphere via a turbine prop and combusts that with fuel to create the propulsion mass and thrust. However, while this is a standard design in flight, it's useless outside of the atmosphere. So my thoughts are heading towards a system whereby the engine intake impeller seals and flattens, preventing major leakage from the front of the engine (Which would diminish efficiency.) and the jet converts into a more traditional non-rotary rocket mode of propulsion, relying on the same fuel, but internal oxygen reserves instead of the atmosphere.
The major current problems are putting those concepts into a practical design and testing them, as well as accounting for heating of reentry. Pain in the ass, is Aeronautical engineering.
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Several people had to put up with a small Ferretic rant earlier about applications software - more specifically Microsoft Journal and it's associate, Journal Viewer.
Many of my closer associates will be aware of my extensive use of this software for the first term or so of University life. This is because of my standard operating hardware - a Tablet PC. I chose this hardware (And am eternally grateful to my parents for the investment) because of the incredible flexibility it provides for making notes in lectures. Unfortunately, that time came as it always does - when windows demonstrates that it is too fragile and unstable for rigorous and regular work. N.B. This is not a universal fact, windows has demonstrated that it can be quite sturdy under certain use (Mainly Educational and Business use with severe security lockdown) but less often as a poweruser workstation OS.
So, I migrated as I always do - replacing ATLANTIS' (The Tablet PC) default operating system with Slackware and Mac OS Tiger. (Apple, try to avoid the urge to sue me, I own several of your officially branded computers and am a dedicated patron of your hardware - You just don't sell Tablet PC's!) Actually, my installation of Tiger was a 1 up for Apple, since I was not a heavy fan of Apple till that moment. Since I've begun to use it and develop with it, I've bought myself a PowerMac and an iBook as backup computers and copurchased another PowerMac (With a flatmate who uses a G4 iBook solely) for a housemate who is saddled with Windows.
Unfortunately, Microsoft only produce Journal products for Windows XP - leaving me without the note taking functionality I had come to rely on. Not a big problem since I discovered a small java program called Jarnal when setting up the Tablet I bought as a christmas present for my mother - Although it was also a big apology for her computer blowing up in my care, just after I finished it and a week before I went to University. I to this day have no idea why the PSU chose that moment to explode.
Still, Jarnal - being a Java program was fully portable and I still had the binary from setting up my mother's Windows 2000 install. So, I loaded it onto Mac OS X and found that it works beautifully with OS X and the hacked Tablet PC driver from TabletMagic and Khashoggi. Another big advantage of Jarnal is the .jaj files it saves in: SVG files for each page, all enclosed in a (renamed) zip archive. This is of course very open source and me friendly as it allows me to extract each page in another program for separate use, and it is also a good example of both combined-format file saving and innovative use of open formats.
Of course this leaves me with yet another problem, the source of my rant earlier. My first term of patchy but useful notes are all in Windows Journal file format. So now I have the arduous tasks of finding a Windows based computer with journal installed, then converting or printing *goes pale* several hundred pages of notes into a format that I can then recreate in Jarnal files. *goes even paler.* Still, this is my comeuppance for never redoing the notes properly, or completing them. Or organising them.
Another of Jarnal's many improvements over Microsoft's program (Apart from the obvious Open format Vs. Proprietary) is the ability to easily import a PDF into your Jarnal file and use it as a background. Namely, to create an annotated version of the PDF.
I am not Microsoft's biggest fan, although neither am I their biggest opposer. But in this case their monopolistic software has irritated me even more than usual - Creating a proprietary document format is insane - especially when such a simple open format has been demonstrated it's equal. I fully understand the move behind .doc - When you are multi-platform and heavily competed against, and with a commercial application it makes complete sense to close your file format. But for a freebie that you give away with your operating system? There's just no point. None at all.
Morel of the story: Jarnal is better than Windows Journal. Do not use Windows Journal.
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Ferret Simpson's Technical Journal and probable lifeblog - All data (C) Ferret Simpson 2007 onward. For more information email Ferret Simpson.
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hackferret's journal
Sleepy and Icky
Exhausted and drained.
Happy, if a little stoned.
DOOK!
Long night of coding ahead o.o
Thoughtful