I have the CDs for Slackware 8.1, Red Hat 8.0, and a recent Lycoris, but when I install them they can't find my network card or my sound card. My first thought was to get real network and sound cards(they are currently integrated into the mother board), but I booted up Knoppix and every thing worked beautifully(my sound was working there before it was in Windows). Now I need to find out what all the settings are, and figure out how to transplant them to one of my permanant distributions. Any help would be appreciated(the biggest help would be to send me a Mac with OS X :-)).

I've finally got internet access again. It turns out it was a network problem and my hardware was fine. The only problem is that right now the only version of Linux that I can get working is Knoppix, and that's not really an option. I've got the drivers disk for Red Hat Linux, so I think it may work. Last night I tried to do a net install of both Debian and Suse, but neither of them worked. Since I don't have a CD burner, I wanted to do a netinstall of Mandrake, but I can't find any floppy images. Hopefully I can get my network card to work with Linux, bedcause I've already lost patience with Windows. I wish Apple would release OS X for x86.

I finally got my new computer. Initially I was going to get one of those VIA 800 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 10 GB HD, no flopp of modem Lindows computers from Wal-Mart.com, but I found a Athlon 1700+, 128 MB RAM, 20 GB HD, with floppy and modem PC on Pricewatch for only $40 more, so I got it. I've got XP on it now, and I'm trying to decide what Linux I want on it. None of them work out of the box with my sound card, except Knoppix, but I can't very well run it off a CD all the time. Slackware used to be my favorite, but now it seems more clumsy and it only has Gnome 1.4 right now. I tried Lycoris out of curiosity, and I liked it, but it felt way to much like Windows. If I knew someone who was migrating from Windows to Linux I would definatly recomend this first. I'll probably go with Red Hat 8.0.With Gnome 2 and blucurve, it is probably the best looking Linux(or Windows for that matter) desktop I've seen. Sure it's not Mac OS X, but I guess it'll have to do. There is one fatal flaw in my new computer, the networking just doesn't work. I've installed drivers and tried it in Windows XP and 2000, and in the four versions of Linux I mentioned above. Windows recognizes that there is a network card and that it's connected to a cable, but that's it. I had a friend connect his laptop to the same cable, that goes to the same network jack, and his worked flawlessly. My first thought was that the onboard ethernet adapter but be bad. Since I would have pay for shipping to get a warrenty repair, I decided to go to Wal-Mart and get a new network card since it would be cheaper. I got a basic Linksys network card and installed it. Oddly it behaved exatly the same way as the old one. Now I am completely stumped. I could get another card to see if my some weird coiensidence I got a bad card with the exact same problem, but I doubt that. If anybody has any ideas please tell me.

Well atleast no more modern usable Mac(I still have about half a dozen 68k Macs). This week end I sold my my to to my brother, so until further notice I am no longer a Mac user. I won't be able to order my new computer(probably a cheap Wal-Mart PC) until this weekend, so for now all I have are these Sun terminals in the computer lab here at UAH. At least I was able to find Mozilla, because I couldn't imagine having to use Netscape 4 for an entire week. Now I just have to pick an OS for my computer, I have Red Hat 8, Slackware 8.1, Lycoris, Windows 2000, FreeBSD, and the thing will prbably come with Lindows.

I was just wondering if Slashdot journals serve any purpose at all. Why do people write in them. I usually do when I'm bored and need somewhere to ramble. I wonder why other people write in theirs? I have also wondered if people actually read other people's journal, and if so why. I get messages when my friends write in their journals, but I rarely read them, unless it's about something that seems very interesting to me.

Oh yeah, I think Slashcode is in the middle of being broke because a lot of stuff on user pages are all messed up.

Since Safari came out and mixed things up, I've been trying to find the best browser for the Mac, but it seems there just isn't a perfect browser. Safari is nice but it doen't have tabs, and it has a few rendering problems Chimera doesn't. Chimera on the other hand has tabs and renders faster, but now after using Safari I miss the Google search bar, and it after using Safari, it doen't look like as good of a Mac app as it used to as far as fonts, and web forms(like the one I'm using now). Phoenix is nice since it has most of the features I want(google, tabs, rendering well), but it has the same integration problem as Chimera, and it isn't entirelly stable. Phoenix can also use a lot of the Mozilla plugins which I really like(Mozilla is too much like an outsider even with good themes to be considered). OmniWeb was okay, but I had even more rendering problems with it than Safari. I guess in the end it doesn't really mater since this is the last week with my Mac. I guess once I'm using Linux, Phoenix will be perfect since I won't have to worry about the integration and stability problems as much.

It's a very sad time. I will be getting rid of my Mac. Since I didn't have the cash to bu my Mac, I bought it on an Apple loan, and when I started college I quit my job and my parents have made he last few payments. They say they don't mind, but it doesn't seem like a very good time for them to have more bills, so I'm going to sell it too my brother. To replace it, I'm going to get a $200 Lindows box from Walmart.com. So I unless I can come up with a thousand dollars in the next week or two, I won't be a Mac user for a while. Hopefully I will eventually have the money to buy another.

I was just reading a response to one of my posts and I just noticed that instead of telling me how many times I received a type of moderation, it said 70% insightful and 30% underrated. It just seems bit odd.

I've finally started work on Jim, a peer to peer file sharing client for Mac OS X. Right now it's a slightly forked version of GiftBoX. The main difference is that I'm distributing binaries and I've done away with the metal interface. The first thing I plan to do is to implement MP3 playback so I can listen to songs while they are downloading. I've been looking at some examples where people have just embedded Quicktime for playback, and it doesn't look that hard. If I'm going to use Quick time I might ingrate video playback. The only drawback to using Quicktime is that I have though of using GNUStep to port it too other platforms. If that's the case I could probably use some of the lower level Unix stuff, but that might be harder. I think I'll just use Quicktime for now and worry about that if I make a Linux version. The thing I really like about it is that is uses giFT and the OpenFT network. I'm sick of Limewire and all those other Gnutella clients. Gnutella wasn't so bad until Morpheus started using it. Using the OpenFT network gives you the speed and stability of Kazaa and FastTrack, although there aren't as many users on it now, which is another main reason for main reason for making Jim. If I can get people to use it, there are more people on the network, thus more files. I have put the preliminary version on Sourceforge.

First off, I'm posting this here since I just wanted to get it too the public, and my Slashdot journal is the closest thing I have to a blog. I've been trying to fix my very first computer, a Macintosh Performa 410. The problem I'm having with it is that the floppy drive seems to be shot. I put a new(well used but working) one in and it didn't work. Afterwards the new drive had the burnt electrical smell to it and wouldn't even work in the machine that donated the drive. Stupidly I tried another drive that suffered the same fate. Does any one know what could be wrong with the old Mac to make it burn up floppy drives. It is a perfectly good computer, it just doesn't have a floppy drive. Also, is is there any way to get a Performa 410 on a regular LAN(ethernet, DCHP)? Any help would be appreciated.

It looks like they are doing Slashcode updates. For a while it wouldn't let me log in. I'm glad they are finally integrating instant messaging user name links.

Update:Since the new Slash updates appear to support iCal calenders, I have finally published mine, unfortunatly it's blank

Like most of the mac faithful, I fired up Quicktime to watch Steve Job's keynote. At first I kept losing it, but I finally realized that the network here in the dorms have bandwidth for the UDP transport protocol (I can't use Limewire or Kazaa either). Luckily, once I figured out the problem, I jsut set it to http and got great bandwidth, and fortunately I only missed the beginning when Steve was going over what happened in 2002. I was hoping for speed bumps, but I knew deep down that they would be coming later, so I wasn't to disappointed.

My next computer purchase was going to be a top of the line iBook, but for $1799(or $1699 with a student discount), the 12" PowerBook has jumped to the top of the list. Even though one of my requirements for my notebook was that it be under $2000(that's why I planned on the iBook), I might make an exception for a 12" PowerBook with a SuperDrive, besides it's $1889 with the student discount anyway. The only thing I really didn't like was the absence of USB 2.0. I know FireWire is Apple's thing, but if they are going to have USB, they might as well keep up.

Even though I'm not that much into digital photography or movie making, the new iLife apps make me want to get a digital camera and video camera. I was kind of surprised not to see iTunes with Rendezvous. Keynote looks nice. I wish they had it when I was in high school and was stuck with PowerPoint. I just hope it is the start of an Apple office suite.

My favorite thing to come out of the keynote was Safari. As soon as the keynote ended I downloaded it, and I've been using it ever since. My biggest complaint is the lack of tabbed browsing, which I have come to depend on with Chimera. From what I've seen on discussion sites this is a big complaint, and I think it is very likely it will be in the final release. While I expected an Apple branded web browser, I figured it would either be Chimera re-branded, or at least Gecko based. I think it being based on KHTML caught everybody off guard. Aside from the missing tabs, it's a great browser. It loads a lot faster than any thing else, even Chimera(but I found all Gecko browsers to initially load slow). The page rendering is really fast, and for the most part as good a Gecko. I also like it's integration. Now, unlike in Chimera, I can check spelling in text boxes(which really makes this browser a must for all Mac Slashdotters). Over all I wasn't disappointed(except for no iTablets).

I added added a little more "news" to my website today. It's the only thing interesting that's happened. I added some information about the PanIP lawsuit, just so people will be abit more informed. Since I always block pop-ups, I never noticed that the hosting company(it's a free web site) puts pop-ups at my site. Since I have no control over it, I just suggested that visitors use Mozilla instead. I'm running out of things to say on my site. I just don't have any good ideas for stories.

A while back I started to use Linux a little bit on my Mac, but I didn't have the time to get everything up and running, especially the problems I had with the sound. Now I've reinstalled it and I've got every thing up and running. The only problem is that my printer doesn't have a driver for PPC Linux, and nobody is really making any open source drivers for Lexmark printers. I guess I'll have to go back to Mac OS X to print, but I don't guess it matters since I'm out of ink.The main thing I don't like about Linux is that it's not as pretty as Mac OS X, and the fonts aren't that great. KDE has okay fonts,but Gnome has terrible fonts, but it is Gnome 1.4, I think Gnome 2 would be better, but I don't want to compile the whole thing, and I can't find any PPC binaries.

Well, it's not entirelly finished, but it's at least presentable. I'm still trying to learn Perl so I can make it a bit more dynamic with CGI. The main thing I want is to add disscusion for the stories. By the way, it at http://www.junetech.com just in case you were wondering. Basically I just post articles that I write since nobody else will. I've had two of my articles linked to by Newsforge, which was neat since it brought in nearly 2000 people in the first week. If you have written an article, but can't get it posted anywhere, I'll put it on my site(as long as it meets my standards), and I may even get it to appear on Newsforge.