I was really looking forward to making my first audioblog post this weekend, but computer "trouble" came up.

Well, of course I never have computer trouble, that's why I put it in quotes. For you computer geeks who love a good story here it goes.

So I re-wired my box today. I had some free time and I wanted to prepare for the new Serial ATA hard drive that is coming soon. Until now, I've had 3 drives like so.

Primary IDE Master - 20 GB - Contains linux /, swap and /boot partitions. Also contains the master boot record (grub) and a small fat16 partition (c:\) which grub points to for booting windows.

Primary SATA - 80GB - 40 GB of this partition is WinXP NTFS. The rest of the drive is the biggest FAT32 partition that you can make filled with my mp3s and other important media files.

Secondary SATA - 40GB - This drive is partitioned also with the biggest FAT32 partition you can make. It has all my video files on it and has a lot of room to spare surprisingly. It actually isn't a SATA drive, it has a converter on it.

So what I did was I removed the SATA converter and put the 40GB drive to the primary slave on the ide controller. My CD burner is all alone as the secondary master on that same controller.

Of course, because I did this windows wont boot. Why is that? Oh because this causes a change in drive letters and windows is dumb as bricks! And of course since windows doesn't have a nice bootloader like grub where I can just change the line to kernel root=/dev/hde1 or some such I can't boot it.

Oh, and Linux wont work either! But that's no fault of linux, but a fault of mine. I was messing around with my kernel recently and I must have made a booboo with the config because after about 10 minutes of operation the whole system freezes. It also may be the new version of NVIDIA drivers I emerged...

Anyway, so I have lots of live cds. I can knoppix for one day until my new drive comes. Then I can back up everything to the big drive and restore. Ooops, Knoppix 3.2 doesn't support my network card OR Serial ATA. Shite. Oh bones! Gentoo 2004.1 doesn't support my network card either! (nforce2, need forcedeth patch or kernel2.6 with forcedeth enabled). So I have to call up my friend who luckily has a knoppix 3.4 cd, yay! More proof that there is power in numbers. If I was a lone geek in a "painkeep" basement I never would have been typing this now.

So I'm glad to say that tommorow I will be backing up all my goods to a giant XFS partition on a 160 gigabyte drive. I'll also be removing that 40GB drive after I back it up so I can put it in my server. It's the only non-Seagate drive anyway so I can't have that in there :P Yes, I am a Seagate fanboy. They are the only brand of drive I have never seen crash (other than an ancient 15MB SCSI). And yes, I know Seagates crash all the time, but I haven't seen it happen.

Anyway, so I went to do the audioblog and all I've got is knoppix 3.4. I guarantee that on Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest I will be capable of talking into my microphone, creating a wave file, encoding it into a very small format and then uploading it.

ph33r.

In Puzzle Pirates they have really stepped up the features quite a bit. And in the interest of making my crew more efficient and more wealthy I want to start doing basic accounting of goods and moneys we deal in. However, all the pirates in the crew will need to participate. For this, I need a cross-platform, free, collaborative spreadsheet application with a moderate amount of authentication/security.

For more details check my blog post.

Also, since its going to rain tommorow I'm going to make the audioblog I promised.

So I made another post in my blog thingy.

Blog Link Here

It's about the "Supersize Me" documentary, a bicycle I just bought and other related tidbits about exercise. I also devote a paragraph to Gentoo is for Ricers because it made me laugh a whole lot more than I have in recent memory.

You know, when I turned this /.journal into a meta-blog of my blog my rationale was simple. The /.journal limits me to text and links. I can do inline images. I can't embed audio or video. Yet in my blog that I have set up, while I can control look and feel, and I have RSS, I have not use even a single inline image.

I promise you this. This weekend, after I ride my bike on Saturday (weather has never mattered before now, but I hope its nice!) I'm going to come home. Then I'm going to put on my logitech Internet Chat Headset, which I usually use for audio shitcocking in counter-strike. And I'm going to rant into a wav file. Rant rant rant about something. Then I'm going to take that wav file and encode it into an ogg file. Then I'm going to serve it up in a blog post, possibly with a .torrent. I've got 3 machines here, so maybe a torrent would be better, but I don't think so many people are going to download the file to begin with. Anyway, ph33r the impending audioblog. I'm going to try to be as informative and entertaining as possible.

Of course here is what I predict. I piss off everybody who listens to it. They poke a zillion holes through everything I say. And you think I'm an asshole.

Que sera sera...

I wrote two new blog entries this morning. In the first I ponder the idea of having a Geekstock. That doesn't need so much more explanation.

http://protoman.rh.rit.edu/blog/2004/05/31#geekstock

The second post relates to my previous idea of writing the in-between computer book. The book that transitions people from just using their computer by remember procedures to actually understanding how they work on a lower, but not too much lower level. Well, what do you think if I wrote this book with a Wiki? People could contribute and I would have to type less. The book might be done faster, and of course a CC license would make sure everyone gets credit and nobody gets money.

http://protoman.rh.rit.edu/blog/2004/05/31#wikicompbook

No, I'm not going to make a journal entry about the connection between those two things, sorry to dissapoint you. But I did recently write two entries in my blog, one for each of those.

The first one I wrote was about the local lilac festival and how advertising has become entertainment. It's not news, but I found a really good example to illustrate how it is so much worse than before.

http://protoman.rh.rit.edu/blog/2004/05/23#lilacfest

The other post is about another summer project idea I had to write a book. I'm looking for opinions if people think its a waste of my time or not.

http://protoman.rh.rit.edu/blog/2004/05/23#compbook

I'm also looking for opinions on what people think of this. I'm not really using this journal the way I used to anymore. I'm just making meta entries to point to my new "real" blog. Now that I'm actually doing it instead of thinking about it, how goes it? Do you think its cool because it saves you the trouble of reading my blog if the summary doesn't sound interesting? Are you just clicking the link and rushing to my blog right away? Did you subscribe to my RSS and now you ignore this? Maybe you stopped reading because it isn't worth the effort? I'd really like to know. Not that I'm dying to get 1000s of people to read it, but its nice to know I'm not just creating information that nobody cares about.

So I'm fiddling with xscreensaver the other day. I see there are some savers in the list that are greyed out. So of course I esearch for them and I find one called electric sheep. I think I'm way behind the times in discovering it, but its cool because my friends didn't know about it either. Let me tell you it is the awesomest screensaver there is.

Until now I have just been using the really slick screensavers, namely solarwinds. Now really slick doesn't lie, those savers are really slick. But electricsheep is better. Here's the premise. You know that quote about androids dreaming of electric sheep? Well when your computer is sleeping (i.e: the screen saver is on) your computer processes frames in these crazy fractal pictures of awesome. The server collects the frames and makes mpeg files out of them. Everyone downloads the mpeg files and makes a screensaver out of them.

Continued at my blog Gourmet Geek

I have finally made myself a real blog!

Here it is, Geek Gourmet

You can read all about the blog itself in the first post I made to it.

My plan for the future is to post the first one or two paragraphs of any blog entry I make that is /. related in the slashjournal. I will then link to the blog entry comments page for it in my journal. I think this is the best way to keep the foot traffic and still be able to blog in a free format.

My blog may move URLs, but that wont be for at least a year. And I just may purchase a domain and use that which would negate the problem to being with.

Here's the tech info. The computer running the blog is using gentoo-linux with gs-sources. It has a standard install of apache 2 with minor tweaks. I'm using blosxom to make the blog go and the comments plugin to make the comments go. I wrote all the XHTML1.0 compliantness by hand. I also used some CSS. This page will look terrible in IE, I'm warning you now. I purposefully made a page that was standards compliant in order to show any of you still using IE people just how poop you are. Use Firefox, it's objectively superior in all ways.

I'm also going to take advantage of the freedom of the freeform blog to post audio, video and pictures. That was really the reason I'm turning the /journal into a bunch of pointers.

I guess that's about it. You can continue to keep your eyes on this space for pointers to my real blog once in awhile. Or you can read my new real blog. Or you can go to my real blog, go to the bottom of any page and snatch the RSS feed. You can also just not read it at all, I don't really care. I'm just informing you of what I have decided to do. The rest is up to you.

So I went to CompUSA today. Yeah, I know. But I went to do two things. First to get something to clean my lcd screen with. I got a nice microfiber wipy thing for cheap. Second I wanted to look at the ipod mini and make sure I really wanted it, and yes I still do.

On the way out there was only one cashier. He is the super friendly old man type. Probably doesn't know much about computers. Has a very stereotypical too friendly old man name that I forget. There are also two older people in line in front of me. He's buying something security or whatever software.

I decided to not shut my mouth.

In my friendliest way I ask "how much does that software cost?" They say like 70$ or something. I laugh to myself. "you can get it for free you know". "how?" the man says.

"don't use windows"

"you have to use windows"

"no you don't, not unless you want to play fancy 3d games. I use linux every day and for e-mail and web and all that other stuff it works perfect. No pop-ups, no viruses, no spam, no nothing, and it's free".

"really?" the wife is interested. "what is it lun.."

"no, l I n u x, just search for it on the net and you'll find it. It's the secret of the geeks".

the cashier "yeah, they charge like 400$ for linux back there" points to software rack.

"yeah, never pay for linux, its free that's what make it great."

"ok, thanks bye!"

"your welcome, bye".

I had a nice friendly conversation with some random uninformed people. Even if they don't switch to linux. Even if they never search for it on the net. Someday they will hear about it again. They will remember that some college kid in compusa told them that all the nerds use linux. They will remember that there is this thing to use instead of windows and that it doesn't have the problems windows has, no crashing no popups. Yeah, I didn't transcribe the conversation verbatim, so sue me.

The point is this. People are willing to listen. People are willing to switch. They are genuinely interested in learning about a better way to use their computer. We just have to go to meet them where they are because they are too afraid to come to geek mordor".

Here's my plan of action.

Make flyers, make knoppix cds. Put the knoppix instructions on the back of the flyer. Get t-shirts too or hats if we can. Then go to places where software and computers are sold. Go on the weekends when it is crowded. Hand stuff out in the store or in the parking lot. Be friendly be courteous. Don't bring geeks without social skills. Don't pressure people into doing anything. Make it obvious you aren't selling anything. Ask before you tell. "Excuse me sir, I'm a computer nerd from the college nearby. Today we're giving away completely free linux software, would you like to know more?" If they say yes, give them the speech if not "well, would you like to take a flyer and a cd for free?" if not, leave them be. That's it. Don't impose, don't bother, don't annoy.

That's all we gotta do. We make a website to coordinate efforts and provide info. We put the URL on the flyers. We have pdfs of the flyers for other geeks to use. We have a cafe press shop or something to sell t-shirts to identify us.

Linux is non for profit so it needs volunteers. All the volunteers are busy coding and making it better. Nobody is going out and actively getting people to use it. Zealoting on forums is no good. Neither is telling people "you're so stupid for using windows omg!". IBM is doing a good job of marketing to businesses, and that will improve over time. The only way average folk are going to learn is by word of mouth. And since geeks have no friends this is what the more socially capable of us should do.

We're going to do a test run soon, for real. We'll tell you how it turns out.

Ok, I've got a test version of a blog up. It would be great if people could look at it and give me their honest opinion. As soon as I add user commenting abilities and touch it up a little bit I'll start doing stuff in it. From then on I'll just post pointers to the blog in this /journal. I think the good thing about this blog is that I'll start posting small things there too, in addition to just big ass things like I usually do.

RSS Feed
The actual blog

I know I'm not the best web designer in the universe, I never was. So be brutally honest, like I would be.

Ok, so I think what I'm going to do is this. Soon I'll have a blog set up, and I'll post in the slashdot journal pointers to the real blog. Anyone who's actually interested in reading more than 1 paragraph can contine to my real blog, and hopefully subscribe to my rss feed. I'll post here as soon as its ready.

Secondly, I need a new mousepad. The one I'm using I have had for 6 years. It's a flat circle with a picture of the death star and a TIE fighter chasing an X-Wing. It's very faded and no longer as impressive as it used to be. So I want a new one. As usual, here is my list of requirements.

1) Good for use with optical mouse.
2) Comfortable
3) Cool looking
4) Big enough
5) Not that LED one that came out recently

I'm looking for something with a cool retro 8-bit video game theme. Maybe tux doing somethign cool? How about something from an anime I like? I tried some quick googles and didn't find any great mousepad stores anywhere.

Ok, so I tried a blog experiment once before. I used blogger.com and set up a blog that all my friends would participate in. It grew old fast and died quick. Now I'm going to have some free time in the near future. In addition to reading books, watching movies and writing software I'm itching to do some web stuff again. It has been a long time since I wrote html or css, and its always fun to do, mainly because of the near instant gratification.

So I think I'll make a real blog just for me. I think I'm going to use blosxom too, because my friend told me its good and it seems to fit my style. Doing this will help me work on my web skills and apache servering skills. It will also let me create new and interesting types of content not possible previously. Maybe I can do that audioblogging I thought of before. When I get a digital camera I can possibly do some video blogs. Pictures in the middle of blog posts will definitely be a plus. Also, the look and feel will fit my personal style.

My worry though, is that the people here, who read my slashdot journal will not read my blog. I could technically make them mirror each other, but that seems semi-silly. I like having readers like you because it gives me the power to ask questions and get answers, like right now. It also lets me check and see if my line of thinking is inline with some other living person out there, and that I'm not insane.

So what do you think my journal readers? Should I go make a "real" blog, should I stick to the journal only? Should I do some combination of the two? You decide.

There has always been this problem with open source software that you can't market it easily. You want to get more people to use it. You want to show everyone how amazing and superior it is. And there is no doubt, that technologically speaking that a linux 2.6 system configured properly is superior in most ways to the equivalent windows xp system. Especially in the security department. Firefox is the best browser bar none, it's a fact. But only the geeks seem to use it, and they can't market it to the general populous.

Advertising is the most basic and widely used form of marketing. It convinces stupid people very easily. But it doesn't work for open source because it isn't free as in beer. And sometimes it isn't even free as in speech. *cough*moveon.org*cough*.

It is difficult to convince a normal person to switch to OSS because they are generally resistant to change. And the superiority of open source software isn't blatantly obvious to those who aren't technically inclined. And most are so resistant to change they will rather wade in pop ups than have to learn something new.

It is difficult to convince a company to use open source software. When you propose something that costs $0 to replace something that used to cost thousands managers become skeptical and wont risk their business on something which comes with no support and no warranty.

Honesty doesn't work either. Because honesty gets out of control and becomes overzealous. You know zealots. They scare everyone away. They make people question "why does he want me to use this so much? What's the alterior motive?"

It is hard to market open source software. But I propose a solution. Here's how to do it. Whenever you come across a person who has a problem. SPAM. Pop-ups. Viruses. Crashes. Anything like that. Go up to them and have this conversation.

Warning!!: Minimum requirements are as follows

1) Basic Social Skills
2) Lack of body odor
3) Some amount of good manners
4) Overall friendliness
5) A voice not of doom
6) A real desire to help people

GEEK: "I notice you're having some trouble there"

(we'll call the normal person norm)
NORM: "Yeah, damn pop-ups"

GEEK: "Pop-ups, oh wow, I haven't seen one of those in over a year!"

NORM: ?? What do you mean??? (puzzle look)

GEEK: Allow me to explain. See, I'm a computer nerd. Computer nerds don't have problems like spam, pop-ups or viruses.

Pick one of the following two
1 - NORM: yeah right
2 - NORM: yeah, you have to be a genius though

GEEK: No, it's true and quite simple. Want to know the secret?

NORM: Secret?

GEEK: You're a good guy so I think I'll let you in on this. There's a secret the geeks and nerds of the world don't tell anyone. They aren't any smarter or anything they just don't let people know about the real computer software. They keep it hidden.

NORM: What do you mean?

GEEK: Geeks all over the world make software and share it with each other. And its free for anyone to download. And because its made by geeks its a million times better than the stuff companies like microsoft make. It's because their motivation is only to make good software and not to make money. They dont' tell anyone because its a geek secret. They want to keep everyone else in the dark because they think they're better than everyone else.

NORM: If its on the Internet for free how come not everyone found out about it by now?

GEEK: Because everyone is using Windows and Mac and has the mindset that software costs money. The nerds know you wont find out their secret unless you specifically look for it. And nobody even thinks to look for such a thing. You didn't even think about it until I just told you.

NORM: So, how can I get in on this? Is it hard?

GEEK: It's not hard at all. It's like if you drove a chevy your whole life and now you're switching to ford. You still know how to drive, the car is just a little different. To get it just take this CD (Knoppix). Put it on your computer and restart it. When you want to get back to safe old windows just restart again and take the cd out. If you ever want to completely convert away from windows just give me a call and I'll give you more info.

NORM: Thanks, I might as well try it out, it's free. Wait, will this break my computer or anything?

GEEK: It's absolutely risk free, I guarantee it.

NORM: Cool, catch you later

GEEK: see ya.

Market open source software as a secret. The secret that the evil nerds have been keeping from the populous. Nobody trusts someone who genuinely wants to come and help them for no reason. Our society is fucked up and evil like that. But everyone wants to screw someone who has been doing them wrong. Revenge makes dumb people feel good. So we pretend the evil nerds have been keeping OSS a secret, then "reluctantly" give it up into the hands of the people, where it belongs. The best part about this is that word will spread. Nobody normal bring up a piece of software as a conversation topic. But they will definitely want to tell everyone someone else's secret.

Give it a try, I bet it works. If everybody does it....

Open Source is great. You can get code on the internet, edit it, reuse it, and save yourself a lot of pain. Got a library and don't know how to use it? That's ok, you can look at the source and know all its secrets.

Lately I have had a lot of pain due to lack of development tools. At work I had to work with an arm processor running embedded linux. I had arm-linux-gcc that came with the dev kit, but it was such a pain to install, and even then it didn't work perfect.

Just today I got my new monitor (Samsung 172x). And I realized, hey, in windows screensavers will only take up 1 screen unless they are coded specifically to take up two. Ok, well that's great. My favorite savers at www.reallyslick.com only support one screen in windows. It's ok, they're open source. I'll just look up online how to make then dual screen and then I'll recompile them. Oh wait, I don't have anything that can compile a windows screen saver. Sonofa! And I'm not about to go get Visual Studio or a Borland tool anytime soon.

So yeah, we all know that having source code to everything is great, and it makes the developers' life 1000 times easier. But it doesn't do you any good without the tools to build the programs and libraries. I propose... gcc-ultimate. There should be a release of gcc that support every processor architecture and operating system there is. It should come with a mountain of c libraries all free and ready to do. That way if I want to compile a windows i686 program under linux I can just do gcc-i686-win32. If I want to make a powerpc OSX program under windows I can do gcc-ppc-osx. Put it all in there, I need it all. Naturally there are so many processor out there, including every single one is nuts. The unpopular and rare processors shouldn't be included in the default package, but instead at a website freely available. If I want to write a C program for my Mac Plus I should be able to do that.

I know something like this probably isn't feasible for a number of reasons. But just because it isn't likely that this can happen doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

All I really want is for my screensaver to take up two screens. It should be easier than this.

I finally recieved an invitation into the Orkut social network from a friend of mine. I was dying to get in when I heard about it, then I forgot about it, then I became indifferent, now that I'm in it is teh awesome.

All my friends are in there now, because I invited them directly or indirectly. We're chilling in the communities, giving people sexy points, writing testimonials, it's a blast.

Anyway, my friend Pete made the best community ever. The universal church of google. He is an ordained reverend under the church of universal life, so now he actually has a church and stuff. I quote from the community page:

One can make a convincing argument that Google is in fact a deity. It is certainly all-knowing, and it can provide immediate answers to nearly all of your questions, which is far more than can be said for many of the popular deities of today.

The Universal Church of Google is run by myself, Reverend Peter Olsen. I'm an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church (www.ulc.org); the ULC will ordain anyone in a few minutes. If you're interested in becoming a minister, I'd encourage you to visit the site and become ordained. If you follow my advice, just remember to put me as the person who referenced you. It's absolutely free and takes 5 minutes of your time.

The Universal Church of Google has a few set tenets of faith beyond those set out by ULC. The goal of the Church is to further one's own knowledge by asking questions of our god, Google. The only thing I ask of my congregation is that once a week, at a specific time, you search Google with a question whose answer you did not know.

So Orkut is a load a fun, and very very useful and interesting. Church of Google is really cool and you should join. That's all I gotta say there.

I've got two things to talk about before I get the first good nights sleep all week. The first is "the list". Haha! I will go against the order in the title to confuse the reader, ph33r.

Anyway, I've got a job now. I work 40 hours a week writing code on linux boxen. It's quite awesome, especially since now I can graduate without worry. What isn't awesome is that its very tiring sitting there 8 hours every day. But I have money, hence the list. Because I am making more money than it costs me to live I have made a list of things to spend the money on. This way I am guaranteed not to make random impulse purchases and blow all the dough away. Only things on the list will be allotted money. Kind of like a mental budget. The reason I post the list here is because it is filled with techno geek goodies.

• pay off credit card debt
• Samsung 172x monitor: I have decided!
• Mini iPOD: green with the word "ph33r" engraved in it
• A DVI cable: it doesn't come with one
• A new CPU fan grille
• A green light for my rice computer
• Plextor PX708-A: burner of the gods
• T-Mobile Sidekick: hiptoppin'
• Initial D DVDs and Manga
• Trigun Manga
• Azumanga Daioh DVD + Manga
• One Piece Manga
• Comic books: Thanos, Sentinel and Voltron
• Trade Paperbacks: All the old Infinity ___ stuff
• Games on my Nintendo Wish List that I don't yet own
• Traders of Genoa: German Board game of awesome
• Penguicon
• Otakon
• 4th of July Shore Trip
• Jersey Shore Trip TM
• food
• gas
• tolls: EZ-PASS

Ok, that was fun, now for the other matter at hand. High standards

I've run into a problem lately, not a big one, but an annoying one. And due to my mostly logical common sense philosophies on life I was easily able to recognize the problem. However, I'm having a slight trouble deciding what to do about it. This worries me slightly because problems I can't solve by thinking about them don't come up too often.

My problem is that I've become a connoiseur (sp?) of sorts when it comes to certain things. Mostly anime and video games, my main medium of entertainment. I use to have fun playing just about any video game and watching just about any anime. Those were good days. Now that I'm older and full of knowledge some of it doesn't interest me anymore. I mean I still love video games and anime, no problem there. The problem is that now I only like the higest quality stuff.

The best example is probably yesterday at anime club. We watched redeath, an Evangelion fan parody. 3 years ago I probably would have been rolling in the aisles, like all the other club members. But yesterday I emitted only a mild chuckle and smile on occasion. The lowbrow immature "so stupid it's funny" humor just doesn't do it for me anymore. I've seen so many websites, so many strongbad e-mails, so many animes and games and I've heard so many stand-up comedians that it is more and more difficult to amuse me.

The only animes all season that have caught my eye are Full Metal Alchemist and Gokusen. Everything else is crap. I see other people watching other shows and enjoying them. And I remember 2 years ago watching every single new show with glee. But now I've seen so much that only the super best stuff is good to me. I'm like a judge on iron chef, foi gras isn't enough I need creme fresche too.

Video games aren't cutting it anymore. I don't like double dash. Me, a mario kart game, I no like. I consider the GBA one to be the best because the racing element is fair and balanced making it a real game of skill and not luck with handicaps. Think about it, the most spectacular Nintendo games are coming out and I find faults in them, even FF:CC. Only the most amazing of games can fancy me now. Please let Mario Tennis rock the house. I'm like an old man, baseball isn't the same since they moved the fences in.

Wacky internet meme stuff isn't funny anymore. I stopped visiting homestar regularly months ago. I still visit, but I usually get a double or triple dose when I do. The only thing I remember recently was seeing Rollins with the teen girl squad. And that wasn't funny, just notable. Even the recent comedy goldmines and photoshop phridays on something awful are not so good. Mario busting up the twin towers with his head just can't be beat. I'm like a cat who only eats fancy feast.

So I ask you. Is this normal? I mean, there's not much to life if I can't laugh anymore. And its not that I don't have a sense of humor or that I've lost it. It's just that since I've seen, played and heard so much stuff it is extremely difficult to get something that good. It's like if you can't top the stuff I already got, why bother? I understand now that my standards for entertainment are high. Maybe too high. But I don't know how to lower them, or even if I want to or should lower them. My current plan is to add a few good books to the list. I haven't read many books in recent times and I know there are many that are very high quality, sure to live up to my qualifications and not be a waste of time. Other than that does anyone have any insight? Ideas? Please? I don't want to become the old man who yells at kids to get off his lawn and never cracks a smile. I mean, I'm 21.9 years old, there has to be more out there.