Geexology : nin.geexology.org
Sun, 30 Mar 2008
Recently, I posted a comment on Slashdot which posed the question "KDE or GNOME?" when it comes to window managers in X. I heartily replied with my Option C, or Fluxbox. I'll have to retract that statement. I think it really depends on the application. For example, my machine at home is busy doing many things, so a small, fast "out of the way" minimal window manager such as fluxbox is perfect.
However, the KDE in Slackware 12 looks great, and it's only 3.5. I can't wait until KDE 4 comes out. My Slack 12 virtual machine kranq, or vmslack, (haven't settled on a permanent name yet) functions properly and looks fantastic.
Meanwhile, anyone who's used Ubuntu lately, knows how nice the "Human" theme for Gnome is. I've taken some time over this recent rainy weekend to clear out some old hardware and tossed Ubuntu Desktop on an older machine. Wow, talk about Gnome done right. I loaded it up, plugged in a few things (like a bluetooth dongle), got it talking to my 3G cell phone, and downloaded some updates. 204 of them to be exact. The 3G performance leaves much to be desired, though. That being a factor of my cell phone provider and not Ubuntu itself. I also have gnarf, an Ubuntu Server virtual machine, but have not had the time to play with it as much. That topic is for another day as typically you do not want a gui installed for the server edition, and in fact it's not even installed by default.
Wed, 14 Nov 2007
Qemu: Could not initialize SDL - exiting
I received this error message recently while attempting to run qemu. I performed a google search (much like many others) and I never seemed to be able to find the answer. Well folks, I figured it out and here it is (you're going to laugh):
I ran qemu as root. While I was logged in as a normal user. The current X display belonged to the normal user, and not root. In other words, SDL was attempting to open a graphical window when there was no Xserver running for the user I ran qemu as.
In other words, you're logged into X as "bob" don't run qemu as root, but as user bob.
Mon, 07 May 2007
Whilist stromping around on the intarweb, I came across another project, where--if the "market" continues as it is--would be the next "killer app". At least in my mind. Sites like YouTube are incredibly popular, with their quick little online video clips, that it's really a shame they rely on proprietary software, namely Flash.
Which makes the Gnash project so interesting. Leave it up to the GNU folks to bring us another useful utility. Of course, I tried compiling it on my system, but ran into issues, because of the nature of my home workstation, it's weird, customized and definitely nowhere near any sort of standard. It's these oddballs I'm sure the developers love ... (or hate).
I'm really going to keep a close eye on this one, as Flash really frustrates me in Linux. My v7 plugin works most of the time, v9 crashes my Firefox, so I'm looking for an alternative. From just the initial contact with the developers, I can say this piece of software is going to be impressive. If I were a VC, this one would be in my portfolio. But alas, all I can do is try and find bugs as a lone user. I'm really looking forward to the end product.
Fri, 20 Apr 2007
Year Zero
So the cd was for driving music. Those moments where you just sit and think... percolate. It ended up pretty good. I wanted something like NIN in the car to make it through the crazy traffic here.
Speaking of which, Year Zero is out. Wow, just incredible. Been listening to it for a while now. It's great. I've been doing research (who hasn't?) on this alternative reality game. There's clues and hints scattered all over the internet. Should I get involved? Should I tell them I've been using "nin" as my hostname for my server for years? Nah gonna keep quiet. Hostnames don't matter anyhow.
Just the same, I'm a big fan of open source ... but what is up with OpenSourceResistance.net? It's not even running open source software! It's running IIS! Ugh!
I'm like an internet voyeur. Just here to watch the fireworks. No need to make noise of my own.
Sat, 10 Feb 2007
Not Dead Yet
In one of the most bizarre and extreme tests of psycological integrity... we've relocated partially across the country. an entire span of 850 miles. Needless to say ... it's been rough. The best laid plans. It all worked out well. But now we're here. And now what. It's very, extremely difficult to adjust. So I sit here ... in a strange state of mind. And plan something crazy. The next cd for my car. It's the only thing keeping me sane.
A visit to the old life is in order. To say the least.
Wed, 12 Jul 2006
Lately, I've been keeping a keen eye on some fascinating projects out there in internet land. Most of the issues we see on the Internet are social, and not technical, ie spam, viruses, phishing, etc. Sure some of them have sources which are technical, but for the most part the key to the solutions are influencing the bad guys not to be so bad. Or technical solutions which understand and circumvent the initial problem. Note this is still a social solution, as it took a community working together to recognize and make a stand against the problem. Those who sit back and do nothing are feeding the beast.
The projects I'm referring to, are ones like Shadowserver. I've been lurking around the IRC channel, and these guys have their heads twisted on right. By collecting intelligence about the bad guys, one can understand them and their motives better. It makes it less of an incentive to abuse the free internet resources out there. People who get involved in these projects are just working to make the internet a better place.
Another great idea, is OpenDNS. I knew it was only a matter of time for this one. The minute I saw the story on the news sites, and learned they're the same folks who provide the free EveryDNS service, I knew it was a sure win. Whereas EveryDNS is for your domain (we host secondaries there for redundancy), OpenDNS is for clients. Think of it as "fancy DNS" for your PC. It auto-corrects typing errors, and avoids known phishing domains. Also, with their large cache and network peering arrangements, you get very good performance. They've already served up over 100 million requests. It's nice to have this as an option.
Sun, 14 May 2006
Here's a Stupid Linux Trick (SLT). To get pine working in CentOs 4.3, under tcsh, add the following line in your ~/.tcshrc file:
alias pine mutt
Mon, 03 Apr 2006
I can't stand being bored. But I guess it happens. There was nothing much going on here, really. Must be the time of the year. You just have to not care. Think I need to go read something. Anything.
Things I've been reading lately... about the second earl of rochester, from that movie The Libertine... and the whole P vs NP "problem", which in my opinion boils down to the chicken and the egg, and has more to do with philosophy, religion and science, than math. And the nuances between Twinview, singlehead and Xinerama Xwindows displays. See a really good article here.... No need to write one, someone else did. The SD card mod for OpenWRT has been driving me insane. I'll get it sometime... everything looks good, just something silly.
Wikipedia says a third of Cobain's ashes were scattered in a Buddhist temple in Ithaca, NY. How odd.
Thu, 06 Oct 2005
Well that was fun... I passed my final test. Things have been too crazy/busy for me to do much of anything else.
Tue, 16 Aug 2005
Testing out this Blosxom blogging software. Pretty nice. I know a bit of perl, doing better with it all the time, and the blog software is small and simple. Perhaps I can write plugins for it. I haven't (yet) passed the BSCI (routing) test for the CCNP, but I have passed the BCRAN (remote access) and BCMSN (switching) tests. Half way there! Just need to get the troubleshooting under my belt...
Mon, 11 Jul 2005
07/11/05 - Move along, move along. Nothing to see here. Really.
Wed, 15 Jun 2005
06/15/05 - Ok, so I'm studying for this BSCI thing. Seems I'm gonna need a little more than a month's worth of studying to pass. And onto the other classes as well. CCNP training can get interesting. Still monkeying with the lovely OpenWrt thing, neat stuff. Someday I will replace my production router with it. Just to keep my sanity. It's almost exactly configured as I need it to be. Ummm what else. Oh, yea, that Star Wars prequel sequel thing or whatever. That movie was pretty neat, I enjoyed it. So much so, I've made my own prequel. For those of you (anyone?) who enjoyed the awesome power and integrity of the Meow: A New Script I hereby announce the prequel: Berp Geexology: Revenge of the Stupid. Enjoy!
Fri, 22 Apr 2005
04/22/05 - More of the same. I did buy that rx3115. What a slob. I went on a rampage looking for software for it. If you ever find yourself with a wireless PDA and in need of some neat networking utils, I recommend the vxUtils and vxSnmp from Cambridge. Especially because they're free for personal use. So, I did get Xen to work with my machine, well not my main machine. There's something about my funky SiS chipset it doesn't like. Meanwhile, try out the Xen 2.0.5 LiveCD, it did work very well on several machines I tried it on. Also, Alchemy 1.0 is out, the public Sveasoft release for the WRT54G router. Head on over to Linksysinfo and get it! Give it out to your friends and grandmother, or whatever. I've been looking into alternative firmwares, and one really has struck my fancy. That being OpenWRT. It's very different, reminding me of Debian. Where the install is basic and you can add packages (the ipkg command is almost exactly like apt-get, in fact!). This allows for flexibility and customization. But customizing it can be the difficult part. There's already tons of packages to choose from! The best feature is what many other custom firmwares lack, freedom.
Wed, 23 Feb 2005
02/23/05 - Well, that Slackware thing went fine. Hopefully it was a benefit to more than just a few people. I've added yet another anti-spoofing remedy to my mail server (besides already having implemented SPF), namely DomainKeys. Really neat stuff, it uses public key cryptography to digitally sign (and verify) email. I've also been researching the HP rx3115 lately. Seems like none of the links I've found are under two miles long. If I ever own a PDA, that might be the one. Oh, and last but not least, Xen, an open source project to rival the likes of VMware. And, it's supposed to outperform it as well. Couldn't get it working on my setup, but then again, it is kinda funky and unique. Imagine paralization software coupled with something like that Cell processor? Ouch.
Mon, 07 Feb 2005
02/07/05 - Seeing as my prediction that I wanted to be incorrect actually came true, I need to try something else. In the effort to celebrate the arrival of Slackware 10.1, I'm conducting my first Slackware Seedifesto. Didn't know what to call it... Bittorrent Bonanza, Seed Party, Iso Idiot Iteration, whatever. The Seedifesto sounded good. See, it's where I download all four Slackware ISOs via Bittorrent (ok, ok only way you can get them at the moment) and continue letting the session go, to show my support. And as of right now (approx 1930 EST) I have all four, but I'll let it continue uploading ("seeding") until about 0700 or 0800 tomorrow morning. Dunno, maybe longer.
Sun, 06 Feb 2005
World's First Incorrect Psychic
02/06/05 - To try something new for this year, I have decided that I want to become an Incorrect Psychic. See, many psychics believe they can predict the future, or guess a correct answer from an unlimited amount of answers. When I was younger, I had an idea for a theory of negativity. Now I believe I should revamp that theory. For any given question for which there is only one answer, there are an unlimited amount of incorrect (inverse) answers. So, therefor, mathematically, it would be much easier to guess an incorrect answer than to guess the correct one. It answers the age old question of "If you plan to fail and succeed, what have you done?". If you plan to have the incorrect answer, your odds of being right are much better. For example, my record for guessing incorrect lottery numbers is 100%. Every single time I have chosen the incorrect numbers. Maybe some were right, but for the most part, all of them were wrong. Even when I won that cruise, someone was drawing my name... I had nothing to do with guessing an incorrect answer. It probably all boils down to nothing more than optimism versus pessimism. So here's my first incorrect prediction: The Patriots will win the Superbowl. Now, I know nothing of football or even if the Patriots are playing, so it's a good guess. This one will be tough as my odds of correctly being incorrect are about 50/50. But it's worth a shot.
Sat, 08 Jan 2005
English Ponderings & Disaster Relief
01/08/05 - Happy New Year! So, the other day I was thinking ... if you rearrange the letters in "Geexology", you can spell "Google Exy" and it's too bad you didn't have an extra "s" laying around so you could spell "Sexy". Or two S's for "Google's Sexy". Well, and an apostrophe. Damn. Things never work out like that. I coulda made the domain "Geexologys" but then, it would have to have been "Geexologies" ... hmm. Anyhow, I was looking at this site where one our mac friends lives, and I said, hey, good idea, I can steal^H^H^H^H borrow that idea... Other than that, not much going on.
Except for the Tsunami relief effort. One of the first places I saw was Amazon's website, where they've already raised over 15 million dollars. Look for the American Red Cross link on the right side.
Sat, 20 Nov 2004
11/20/04 - Wow... so much has happened. The presidential election is over, the president has four more years. Wether you were for him or against him, it's over now, and it's important we get back to business as usual. I think we're lacking some major cooperation, understanding and compromise in our political landscape these days. Or so it seems with the last campaign.
I've been tidying things up a bit. I found a really neat tutorial on CSS and thought I would give it a try. With a little inspiration from this fellow I was well on my way. That's a really awesome site if you take a chance to read many of the articles.
I also want to introduce some sort of entertainment and media links or section... new movies, albums, dvds. Dunno. It's all just still a work in progess.
Tue, 03 Aug 2004
08/03/04 - Weeeeeeeeeeeeee! Well, it's summertime. I should be on the beach. But alas, so is the life of a dedicated geek. Speaking of dedicated, things aren't so bandwidthly-challenged now. But don't let it go to your head. What have I been up to? Same junk, different day. I did get a chance to check out a Linksys WRT54G and some of the linux-based firmware you can find at Sveasoft, and there's tons of discussions going on over at that LinksysInfo site in the forums. I might just post some of the firmware (with source of course) of mine, derived from the pubically available source code. More to come. Betcha can't wait.
Sat, 22 May 2004
05/22/04 - Well, ok I didn't change the hostname to Ten. But it was an idea. Meanwhile, I did purchase the UT2k4 Cdrom set (the DVD special Ed went fast!) and it just rocks. In fact, Icculus just released the newest patch for it, 3204. Check it out. We're also mirroring it in the pix 2 section.
Tue, 16 Mar 2004
03/16/04 - With much fanfair (and excitement) as adding a new blade to a razor, (four blades!?!?!) the reign of Nine will soon be no more. I'm thinking the natural progression is, well, Ten. In other news... the Much Anticipated Unreal Tournament 2004 is out! Personally, I'm heading out to my favorite retailer to grab the DVD edition with the free Logitech headset.
Wed, 10 Dec 2003
12/10/03 - Well, considering doing away with the Community section and moving Utilities to their own section. The community part just didn't flesh out like I wanted. I've also enabled SSL on the site for parts of the Utils with "sensitive" information... not like it's anyone's underwear size, but then again, it would be kinda embarassing having that on the internet, eh? Also, with the holidays coming, might not have time to do everything I wanna do with the site, so... Happy Holidays!
Sun, 21 Sep 2003
09/21/03 - Wow. A few months ago, I joked about winning the lottery. A few weeks ago, I really did win a cruise. Much thanks goes out to Folts Homes and Cruise Wizards for the arrangements. Just goes to show, a raffle for a charity is a good thing. It's a win/win situation. Even if you don't win the raffle, your donation is appreciated. So we're preparing for that. I put a map of the western caribbean on the images page. Other than that, be aware of that new "Swen" virus, that came out on Friday. Makes itself look like an authentic Microsoft Security bulletin. Just tell all your friends about it and remind them MS does not email people directly, you must go to windows update for real patches.