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Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable. EMAIL - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message.. |
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May 13, 2001 - Updates at 0730
Good morning. It is one of those good cop / bad cop sort of days. After all, it is Monday. I'm conditioned to despise Mondays on general principles, since I have to get up for work, yadda yadda yadda. On the flip side, even though I'm not working right now, I'm still up, aren't I? And I got a better night's sleep than I have since before Marcia's surgery.
Right now, She Who Is Hobbled is over in her home office, working away with the cell phone plugged into her head and her fingers flying over the keys. Man, she types fast! Today she'll probably put in a full working day, less icing and exercise sessions.
Me? I have to get back into the Linux thing, I've got an article on OpenOffice Writer about 3/4 done for LinuxMuse. Additionally, if the only reason you keep a Windows partition around is to play games, then you might want to have a look at Greg's WineX articles (Part 1 and Part 2) - the second was posted just this morning.
Also, I've got the job hunting gig to continue. I may be changing my focus a little bit, shortly. You'll have to stay tuned for that, since I'm not at liberty to discuss possibilities that aren't done deals yet. I'm considering looking hard at the small business / residential consulting gig: being a high-tech handyman. Convert away from Microsoft before the BSA comes and destroys your business, wire up the home network, etc. But there are unresolved questions to answer before I start developing the marketing materials for such an effort.
Too bad, so sad. If it can happen to Microsoft, it can happen to anyone, even a Daynoter:
bilbrey@grendel:~$ whois hasselltech.net
...
Domain Name: HASSELLTECH.NET
Created on..............: Fri, May 05, 2000
Expires on..............: Sun, May 05, 2002
Record last updated on..: Tue, Apr 02, 2002
...
Oops. Jon, if you're listening, then you need to get Register on the phone now, dude. I can't get to your site via DNS anymore. This almost happened to us last month. I'd forgotten that one of our card issuers had changed over from Visa to Mastercard, and given us new numbers. So the auto-renewal thing at Register.com wouldn't have worked, if I had not been reminded by ... something. So I went spelunking for places where I had the charge card on automatic, including our domains.
Time to dive into the mailbag - These have been sitting for a while, because I kept forgetting to reply...
Subject: Snag-it Images
Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 12:14:41 -0500
From: "David Tanner"Bryan,
I enjoy reading your site and good luck job hunting.I noticed (I think) that you have taken screen shots with SNAG-IT to use in How-to-doits. What format do you save these shots in, and how do you keep the size of these shots to a minimum in your publication?
If you have answered this previously, forgive me.
Thanks,
David Tanner---
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Hi, David!
It's "Brian", actually (but no worries, I've been mangled far worse with a last name like Bilbrey... heh). Glad you like the site, and thanks, luck and a decent skill set will stand me in good stead.
I used Snag-It to capture images while running inside Windows, for the Linux Book that Tom and I wrote (http://linuxbook.orbdesigns.com/). There, we ended up saving them in TIFF format, since that was what HMI was requesting.
When I want to save an image with every possible detail, I save in TIFF, with no compression. I can always downsize, down-format, etc. from that basis.
The tool I actually use for screen captures today is called KSnapshot, and it provides many of the same output formats as SnagIt, only it (a) runs under Linux (it's part of the KDE graphics tools) and (b) it's free (both as in beer and as in speech). Most of the image work I do is in The Gimp (http://www.gimp.org/).
However, for converting digital camera shots, I have a pair of scripts that take the large JPG images output from the camera and produce 640x480 images, as well as my stock thumbnails. The scripts use tools from the ImageMagick toolbox, as well as LibJPEG programs.
If I did, I sure don't think it was at this level of detail. HTH.
.brian
Subject: No Subject
Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 20:21:16 -0700 (PDT)
From: Subhendu LahiriHi Brian,
I am wondering if you could help me get started on the install of OpenLinux 3.1.1 on Toshiba Tecra 9000. Caldera's website says it is supported hardware but my install fails at the LIZARD phase in VESA and text-install mode. I do not have a floppy drive so I don't know how to workaround. Any help will be graetly appreciated.
Thanks ..
Shub Lahiri
Linux enthusiast
Hi Shub,
From your email, it appears that you only tried two of the possible installation options from the list that's presented when COL 3.1.1 (which I happily have a copy of laying about, or I'd be no help at all). There are, after all, seven real options on the initial install list. Have you tried them ALL by now? If so, I imagine that you'll have had success by this time.
If not, then you might be much happier with either the Cautious install mode, or the VGA16 install mode. The Lizard installer is very, VERY sensitive to video hardware, I've found. In the future, I'd suggest trying all the available options, eliminating them as you go.
Good luck, HTH,
.brian
PS: Do put subject lines in your email. Somehow this one got past my filters, but generally, mail without a subject is spam, much of the time.
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May 14, 2002 - Updates at 0800
Good morning. Here's the big news of the day - Now I'm job-hunting in Maryland. That's right, we're moving to the right coast. Marcia's management has been gently pushing to get her out there in the same time zone as the sales guys that she supports for the better part of a year now. It finally started to come down on the day of Marcia's surgery. We got something official-ish in acknowledgement to an email yesterday, so now we can go public with the news. Let me just be the first to say Woo-Hooo! There's a tiny house on a postage stamp of ground up the street from us here in Sunnyvale that's just been listed at $699K. What housing market? We can't afford to buy a cardboard box to live in. In Maryland we'll be able to own, eventually.
I finished the writeup on OpenOffice Writer last night for LinuxMuse. It's in a holding pattern waiting for Greg to give it the once over, then we'll post it, probably tomorrow morning. Speaking of OpenOffice, here's another perspective for you:
Subject: Open Office, Linux MS Office Compatibility
Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 04:32:57 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Steve Mahaffey"Brian,
Since I see that you're working on an article about this, I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents.
I'm a longtime user of MS Office, mostly heavy use of Excel and Outlook, light use of Word. I thought I'd try the Star Office in SuSE 7.3 (I think SO 5.2?). It hung my system totally. Some time later I tried downloading the new Open Office 1.0. I tried to install as root (maybe I recall they'd like you to install in your own directory???--but multiple installs on one machine make no sense to me). Same result--total lockup...can't kill x or switch to a console to kill the process or ssh from another box. Just had to reset the box. BTW, this system seems fairly stable, and despite my messing with lots of stuff would have probably 45 days of uptime but for these 2 crashes.
I don't know what this means, being a data point of one, and, as I recall I didn't see any helpful log entries. It would be interesting to see how many similar reports there are, and if it's SuSE specific.
I've used Gnumeric a bit and it seems to do a fairly good Excel imitation, though I haven't stressed it too much. I'm hosting Squirrelmail on my SuSE server, but if I want an Outlook clone there's always Evolution. That leaves Word as my main compatibility interest. I'm a career-changer, less than a year in IT, about 5 months into my current contract job. I foresee an urgent need to be able to email Word-format resumes soon.
Giving up on Star Office, Open Office, I decided to spend about $60 on Crossover Office, despite my tight budget. It installed like a charm, even though I went against the recommendation to not install as root. Installed my Office 97 CD flawlessly, and seemingly a lot faster than on Windows (9x or 2k). Ran Word (only thing I've tried yet) perfectly, although the fonts weren't great.
Since then I've put Red Hat 7.2 on another box, and added the Ximian Gnome Desktop. To my surprise, Abiword now saves in .doc format. I'm sure it could only read Word files on the version I had on my SuSE box. I'm not sure if Ximian updated the version on the Red Hat box or if Red Hat had a newer version than SuSE.
I don't know what version but I emailed a document saved by Abiword as a Word file to myself, opened it on a Windows box running Word 97 and it translated just fine. Now if I can just figure out NFS permissions so that I don't have to open Pine to move files around! Anyway, I thought this whole experience might be of some interest to you as another data point.
I'm not trying to be negative about Open Office, and I will be interested to see your article.
Steve Mahaffey
Hi, Steve.
All data points are good to have. Running OO 1.0, I haven't had a single lockup or crash through about two weeks of inconstant (but nearly daily) use in a pretty heavily loaded system. I'm running an optimized 2.4.19 kernel in Gentoo land, and most ops have been with X, KDE, VMware, The Gimp, XMMS,all running at once in concert with OO. I've been pleased with the stability of the system.
The first article, on Writer, should go up tomorrow.
Hey, what are Pivot tables, anyway? <grin>
.brian
Earthquake? John Dominik wrote to ask if we were OK... That was barely a B-Ticket ride. Of course, a sprinkler system was set off in Gilroy (the paper said it "erupted"... wow), and a tipped-over water heater started a fire that trashed a house in San Jose. Silly people should have had their appliance strapped to the walls, it's supposed to be, according to code. But that's it, other than a few jangled nerves from someone other than us. Thanks for asking, though.
I've got some more stuff, but the press of the clock says it's time to move on. I'll be back later or, failing that, tomorrow morning, as usual.
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May 15, 2002 - Updates at 0715
Good morning. Yep, we're up and about early - Marcia's done her first set of exercises, iced her knee, had coffee and breakfast already, and now we're about to shuttle her into the office. She's worked full days the last two, but from home. It's time to get back into full swing, today. In other news, I finally managed to make the time to finish up my first OpenOffice article over on LinuxMuse.
I don't have much time, so I'll simply leave you with this tidbit from Don Armstrong. Note that the content of the link is funny but rude, and might be considered offensive or dangerous to some. YMMV.
I submit for your consideration one of the results of a google search on "Maryland Linux".
Hehee. Have a good morning. See y'all in a bit.
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May 16, 2002 - Updates at 0700
Good morning. Do you remember how outraged you are about the attempted invasions of the MPAA and RIAA into our technology and the current and planned legal assaults on our current rights of fair use (like the DMCA, the proposed CBDTPA, and whatever else they can come up with)? Do you still feel that outrage badly enough to stay away from the "content" being rammed up our pipes by those bastards? Yeah, well, some of us do.
I'll admit it. I'm a Star Wars fan. In the 70's, I drove about 60 miles to catch the first Bay Area play of the movie, Part IV, at a Friday midday showing. I didn't even mind the idiocy of JarJar Binks that much in the most recent film. But damn I love those special effects. Looking back at them now, the F/X from the first film look cheesy, just a step above plastic models on strings. But at that time, the dive sequence onto the Death Star twisted me in my seat. I saw the film three times in the first week.
George? You're not getting any of my money on this one. I can only vote with my wallet on this issue (with this movie, and all the other movies that I don't go to see), since y'all have decided to stand pat while the studios shove their buggy-whip-manufacturing mentality up our butts at the same time as they try to push their manufactured celebrity vehicles through our eyeballs and ears in digital and Dolby perfection. I can take or leave most of the output of our entertainment industry. But I'll admit that I really wanted to watch your movies. You entertain me, George. But your industry is making choices that I find extremely unpalatable. Here's my stance: Figure out how to make money in the new age, don't treat customers (NOT passive consumers, but active customers!) like thieves, and keep your freaking laws off my computers. Then I can feel good about going to watch the entertainment that you provide.
Of course, there may not be many of us who have the fortitude to withstand your assaults. Slashdot had 18 outraged stories between last August and today that mention Ernest Hollings, sock-puppet Senator from Disney (How does it feel to have Michael Eisner's hand up your butt, Fritz?). Undoubtedly with overlap, in the same time span, over 90 stories on Slashdot refer to the DMCA. Yet in a story posted yesterday, Rob brags yet again on the tickets he's had for the midnight showing this morning. Make up your minds, folks, and take a stand. Or be sheep. My problem is that if most everyone else is sheep, then I lose. Now doesn't THAT suck?
Do you care about this? Then don't buy music, don't buy movies, don't go sit in their theatres. There's nothing else for it. And make sure at the same time that you let your congresscritters know what you're doing and why. That way, when the buggy whip manufacturers go whining to our fine legislators, complaining that the dreaded Piracy is wiping out their revenooes, congress can just wave boxes of letters, faxes and emails in their face. Then remind them that while campaign contributions are really, really nice, Voters rock!
Jon Sturm wrote to me yesterday with some interesting info about fonts and standards that I didn't previously know. Most of this is applicable to posts over on LinuxMuse, and probably my rant on the topic in the recent article there on OpenOffice 1.0 Writer. So I'll publish the letter here, and link to it from there...
Typographer's marks
Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 08:38:47 +1000
From: "Jonathan Sturm"Brian wrote:
"OpenOffice apparently does not handle extended characters well. The control character section of ISO-8859-1 (codes at or above 0x80) was partially coopted extended and embraced by Microsoft way back in the mists of time, to yield such typographic nicities as "Smart Quotes" and other wonders. While these certainly have made some forms of printed documentation prettier, they do so at the expense of a non-standard implementation."
In truth, the non-standard is Linux, or more properly ISO-8859-1, for failing to provide standard typographers' marks. Let's face it, typographers' marks have been around a lot longer than computers!
I think I know how part of the mess was created. When ISO 8859-1, the Western European Character Set, was in a late stage of development, Microsoft, Lotus, Digital Equipment Corp and Commodore (for the Amiga OS) adopted it. Some time after that, characters 0127 to 0159 were eliminated from ISO 8859-1. Microsoft, far from adding to the character set, were just a little hasty in adopting an unfinished standard.
One story has it that the removal of the oe ligature was due to the French committee member being absent on the day the decision to remove it was taken. Does this mean that the Belgian and Swiss contingents sufficiently loathed the French to ignore their own needs? The removal of six of the most important typographic marks seems more than a little peculiar. Was the intent to hand over desktop publishing to the Mac, Windows, Amiga and DEC?
Of course the lack of standard typographers' marks in Linux makes it completely useless for most DTP. Until that situation is rectified, there's quite a few of us will continue with Windows, or the Macintosh solution that is different again. And I'm still jealous that the Mackerels have the dotless fi ligature and Windows doesn't.
Cheers
Jonathan Sturm
www.sturmsoft.com
Mmmm. There's not a complete lack, so far as I know. It's just that support is spotty, and since many fonts are copyrighted products, they can't be distributed for free with Linux distributions. I'd imagine that a DTP-enhanced product could be put together easily. But the impetus just isn't there yet, I guess.
Now it's time to finish my coffee, then drive Marcia to work. I'll see you later.
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May 17, 2002 - Updates at
Howdy. Welcome to Friday. I'm rather happy about that, I imagine you are as well. Marcia's doing very well indeed. She had her first physical therapy appointment yesterday afternoon, and the woman was quite impressed with Marcia's progress to date, especially given the magnitude of work done in her knee. I'm impressed, and proud, too. She's toughing out through the discomfort to do the exercises, forced inactivity during icing and elevation - everything she needs to do to help her knee make a full-ish recovery. "Full-ish", because this is not ever going to be the knee of a Boston Marathoner, but for Marcia, with an ongoing exercise regime, it'll be better and stronger than before.
Here's some more mail on the font topic:
Subject: Typography
Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 08:41:36 +1000
From: "Jonathan Sturm"Brian wrote:
"Mmmm. There's not a complete lack, so far as I know. It's just that support is spotty, and since many fonts are copyrighted products, they can't be distributed for free with Linux distributions. I'd imagine that a DTP-enhanced product could be put together easily. But the impetus just isn't there yet, I guess."
Perhaps I expressed myself a little more strongly than I intended. The fact remains that typography on Linux is far too time consuming compared to Mac, or Windows. The name of the game is to use proper marks and do so efficiently. I don't think you are ever going to see any decent fonts distributed for free. They take a loooong time to perfect -- like years. This Old Fart can remember when a decent set of fonts cost as much as a house!
Jonathan Sturm
www.sturmsoft.com
---
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Let's not forget that houses were cheaper then, too.
Let me add another note. Since I applied one of the work-arounds suggested in the OpenOffice bug database (aka Issuezilla), not only is the font anti-aliasing working correctly for all the TrueType fonts that I have installed, but also the smart quotes and all the other symbols that don't appear on a keyboard are working inside OpenOffice. I opened and reviewed several different Word copies of chapters from the Linux Book that Tom and I wrote, and nary a stray unknown character among them. Woo Hoo! I need to do an edit on my article up on LinuxMuse
Subject: Star Wars
Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 00:19:19 -0400
From: Jonathan HassellI went to see it. First, let me say I applaud your resolve in boycotting the movie. No group of companies could deserve it more. But I don't have your fortitude, obviously. I feel guilty in a way for ruining your boycott - I am part of the problem now, aren't I? - but it was a really damn good movie.
---
Jonathan Hassell
[email protected]
http://www.jonathanhassell.com
Well, yes and no. In a sense, it was ruined before it ever got started. It's gonna take a lot more than just me not going to see that movie. What I choose to do out of my convictions, many many people also need to do, in order to make a difference.
I would ask in which way you feel guilty, but... And I'm sure it was good fun, and yeah, I'm annoyed that my resolve prevents me from that 2.5 hours of distraction. But there's plenty else to life. In real terms, I'll never miss it. In real terms, I'd never miss Hollywood at all.
Have a lovely day. See you later.
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May 18, 2002 - Updates at 0830
Good morning. We've a busy day ahead. There's appointments to be kept, a hundredth birthday party to attend and more. So I'll occupy you with a few garden pictures, and some humor.
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Subject: We always hear "the rules" from the female side.
We always hear "the rules" from the female side.
* Now here are the rules from the male side.
* These are our rules! Please note... these are all numbered "1" ON
PURPOSE!
******
1. Learn to work the toilet seat. You're a big girl. If it's up, put it down. We need it up, you need it down. You don't hear us complaining about you leaving it down.
1. Birthdays, Valentines, and Anniversaries are not quests to see if we can find the perfect present yet again!
1. Sometimes we are not thinking about you. Live with it.
1. Sunday = sports. It's like the full moon or the changing of the tides. Let it be.
1. Don't cut your hair. EVER! Long hair is always more attractive than short hair. One of the big reasons guys fear getting married is that married women always cut their hair, and by then you're stuck with her.
1. Shopping is NOT a sport. And no, we are never going to think of it that way.
1. Crying is blackmail.
1. Ask for what you want. Let us be clear on this one: Subtle hints do not work! Strong hints do not work! Obvious hints do not work! Just say it!
1. We don't remember dates. Mark birthdays and anniversaries on the calendar. Remind us frequently beforehand.
1. Most guys own three pairs of shoes - tops. What makes you think we'd be any good at choosing which pair, out of thirty, would look good with your dress?
1. Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every question.
1. Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it. That's what we do. Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.
1. A headache that last for 17 months is a problem. See a doctor.
1. Check your oil! Please.
1. Anything we said 6 months ago is inadmissible in an argument. In fact, all comments become null and void after 7 days.
1. If you won't dress like the Victoria's Secret girls, don't expect us to act like soap opera guys.
1. If you think you're fat, you probably are. Don't ask us. We refuse to answer.
1. If something we said can be interpreted two ways, and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one.
1. You can either ask us to do something or tell us how you want it done. Not both. If you already know best how to do it, just do it yourself.
1. Whenever possible, please say whatever you have to say during commercials.
1. Christopher Columbus did not need directions, and neither do we.
1. The relationship is never going to be like it was the first four months we were going out. Get over it. And quit whining to your girlfriends.
1. ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows default settings. Peach, for example, is a fruit, not a color. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have no idea what mauve is.
1. If it itches, it will be scratched. We do that.
1. We are not mind readers and we never will be. Our lack of mind-reading ability is not proof of how little we care about you.
1. If we ask what is wrong and you say "nothing," we will act like nothing's wrong. We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the hassle.
1. If you ask a question you don't want an answer to, expect an answer you don't want to hear.
1. When we have to go somewhere, absolutely anything you wear is fine. Really.
1. Don't ask us what we're thinking about unless you are prepared to discuss such topics as navel lint, the shotgun formation, or monster trucks.
1. You have enough clothes.
1. You have too many shoes.
1. It is neither in your best interest or ours to take the quiz together. No, it doesn't matter which quiz.
1. BEER is as exciting for us as handbags are for you.
1. I am in shape. ROUND is a shape.
1. Thank you for reading this; Yes, I know, I have to sleep on the couch tonight, but did you know we really don't mind that, it's like camping.
Heh. I've seen or heard many of those before, but I got a good chuckle out of the collection. I hope you did, too. Comfy on that couch? See ya later!
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May 19, 2002 - Updates at 0950
My, how time flies when we're having fun. I was up medium early this morning. While Marcia and Sally slept on into the day, I cleaned up, did a couple of outside chores and whatnot. Then I made the coffee, and got the pancake batter ready. That's a nice way to wake my girls up, don't you think? Well, Marcia liked it anyway. Sally doesn't much like coffee, and we now know that she doesn't care for maple syrup either.
A good time was had by all at Colonel Uncle Mike's hundredth birthday party yesterday. Friend Pat wrote to remind me to keep Marcia from dancing too much on her healing knee - I replied with something scoffing about the probablility of dancing happening at a hundredth birthday party organized by a couple of Jesuits. Heh. However, it was a joy to see everyone, especially as we'll be less liable to make these sort of events when starting from the other coast. The good news is that we have a number of relatives in or near to where we're moving in Maryland. Isn't that nice?
I got started yesterday afternoon on the next article in my OpenOffice series for LinuxMuse. After shopping today, I'll dig back into it, and try to get the writeup on the spreadsheet component, Calc, to you in the next day or two. Certainly I won't have yardwork to distract me today, the rain is rolling in as we speak. I suppose I'd best get to it. Have a fun day, just try not to think about Monday, okay?
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Last Week
<-- * -->
Next Week
Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.
All Content Copyright © 1999-2002 Brian P. Bilbrey.