EMAIL - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy say so, I will respect that. If I don't know that you want your email address published, then I won't. Be aware, though, that I am (usually) human and make mistakes.

Well, good morning, all. It's Monday. What? Do you want me to be excited or something? I got spoiled by all the continuous days off over the last week and a half. Now it's nose to the grindstone time. On Friday I popped into the office for about four hours, ran full image backups on all the servers, then shut everything, servers and clients, down for the date rollover (just in case). Yesterday I went in again, and other than the unfortunate mangling of the hub layout by the cleaning staff (no, I don't know why . . . yet!) everything came up first try.

The mailbox is fairly empty at the moment. But these links might provide a moment's diversion or two. Over at Salon, there is this article about the winners and runner's up at the Darwin Awards. What, you haven't heard of the Darwin Awards? Then you must, you simply must. My personal favorite? The lawyer demonstrating window safety.

Then, over at Linux Weekly News, Eric Raymond chimes in with his two cents worth on the DVD CCA action. As ususal, a good read from one of the leading lights of the Open Source front. To learn more about what's going on, you can also click the linked image above, DVD for every OS.

Have a decent day, and I will catch up with you later.

Hello, Hong Kong. Last month's data showed visitors from HK were about 0.3% of the total readership. First 3 days of this month ... 4%. Hong Kong wins the most improved award. Yeehaw. Meantime, I heard for the first time today of a game called Morninton Crescent. I have never heard of this before. A number of other people have, of course, but then I have lived such a sheltered life (snicker). Anybody care to elucidate?

I completed three PCB designs today, one more plus a brand new layout for a possible new product tomorrow. Sheetmetal went out for first quote today on something we have sold 500 of already - yes, the cart is well before the horse, but liberal application of the switch to the appropriate nether regions should have things righted shortly. Also working on a quote for a new website design, work for Brian as Orb Designs, rather than Brian as NPS for ETS.

We have our tickets for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival at Ashland (http://www.orshakes.org/) Our summer vacation this year will be spent enjoying Twelfth Night, Henry V and Taming of the Shrew. Also on our list, along with those shows by the Bard, is one of my favorites from Kaufmann & Hart - The Man Who Came To Dinner. I do so like Sheridan Whiteside (though I haven't seen the play since I worked on a production, sound and lighting, about 21 years ago - sheesh).

I am wearing my Silva Brothers t-shirt (a Christmas present). Surely you know who the Silva Brothers are? So, I am off to other points on the web for a while, and I shall (probably) return later this evening. Regards.

Well, I did run the stats to finish out the month of December, last of the months that end in 1999, new millenium or no. 15,401 raw hits. 6599 page views. 2856 visits. Altogether, about the equivalent of 15 minutes on Jerry's site. ON the other hand, he's been at the game a little longer than I have. Are you interested in seeing the generated report? It's here. For the purposes of exposure, I have converted all of the graphics, native to GIF, over to the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) standard. Thanks ever so much for dropping by. What I find interesting is the number of direct requests, indicating that I have (I think) been bookmarked by lots of y'all. I sure appreciate that. IE 5 users - Does the 'Favorites' icon look as odd as Bob told me? I don't know, personally, since we don't use that browser here, or at my place of work.

I found some interesting resources for consulting and design contracts to supplement my current efforts. Most of the source material I have is over a decade old - laws and the weasel wording required to abide by them have changed. Fortunately for me, I have Marcia, professional Senior Contracts Negotiator on my side, to review and approve anything I want to sign, or put forth for signing. Also, Marcia has been keeping up her Musings Page quite regularly, although she reports feeling no pressure from being drafted into the more formal NetWidows consortium.

She does hate the sound of this 52G9700 IBM Keyboard though. It is my emergency backup keyboard, pressed into frontline service through the failure of a second Gateway keyboard. Only complaint I have about Gateway, actually. I am tough on keyboards, though. Looking for recommendations by email tonight or tomorrow morning though, as a new keyboard, quiet enough for her taste, solid enough for mine, has been mandated and will be acquired on Tuesday sometime.

Enough for tonight. I am going to either watch PBS, read a book, or play cards. Have a lovely evening/day/whatever. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow (virtually).


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Malfunction due to pilot error. A very light email morning included a message from my box here ...

Subject: Cron  /root/backup
   Date: Mon, 03 Jan 2000 23:05:01 -0800
   From: [email protected] (Cron Daemon)
     To: [email protected]

/dev/tape: Device not configured
/dev/tape: Device not configured
/dev/tape: Device not configured
tar: Removing leading `/' from archive names
etc/
etc/hosts
etc/csh.cshrc
etc/exports
. . .

So. Businesses appear to be surviving the Y2M'ness of it all - is it time for giant rocks to be falling from the sky? Oh, that was last year's movie. Sheesh. I am tired and I just got up. This bodes not well for the day. Hope you have a good one, I will check in later. Ta. [Y2M credits to Steve Tucker]

The new keyboard is a Logitech. The feel is just a hair on the mushy side, but the compromise was necessary to cut down on the sound. Costs a bit more than the $10 to $15 kb's lying on every shelf, but then it is quite a bit more solidly built. I also miss Northgate, but I refuse to spend the kind of money that I would like to. It's like that Aeron chair from Herman Miller. Very, very nice, from everything I hear, although it is an odd looking beast. But at $750 as shown, I will go elsewhere, unless these machines move my income above the 5 digit level. Here's the part I like about this keyboard, though.

WARNING:  Some experts believe that the use of any keyboard
may cause serious injury.  Consult statement on the back of 
this keyboard.

I find it somehow distressing when I hear mutterings that a fellow Daynoter might find his site rootless and fancy free (ie - inaccessible) for any reason whatsoever. I have extended the friendly offer. There is always another couch we can drag out, dust off, and let you park on. I can make room for another site or three, backups are made every night (usually), and I sign nothing that starts off "SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT" - you get what you pay for. But if a daynoter's site is looking for a place to doss down for a while, then welcome. Hell, it might even make me figure out how to do email properly. We shall see, we shall see. But I am not going into the hosting business, just being neighborly, if you know what I mean.

My better half has taken the piece of junk I scribbled up, and smoothed it into something I can present as a contract for web design consulting services. Thanks, Marcia. Sure is nice, having a Senior Contract Negotiator as a better half. Don't forget, she has a site too, DutchGirl.net (yeah, because of the Dutch ancestry, of course). Check it out when you get a chance (Disclaimer - She's married to me - I am biased). Have a nice day/evening/afternoon/night/morning - I willen catchout up with you then/later/now. G'night!


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'... the best laid plans of mice and men.' One fine Monday morning a few weeks back, I must have gotten terribly confused about what I was doing, but let Don Armstrong tell you ...

Subject: bad & missing links
   Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2000 22:01:11 +1100 (EST)
   From: Don Armstrong
     To: [email protected]

In your pages you say (using your HTML): 

LINKING Revised... See GoTo Current Week link above. Right click on it,
then create a bookmark. If that gives you fits, write me - I'll try to help. 

Well, it gives me fits, and I'm writing - mainly because it 
(the clicking) ain't possible; which is principally because it (the link) 
disappeared when you changed your image - three weeks ago. 
Although to be fair I didn't notice until now, as I am only 
just following/catching up on "Daynotes" on a somewhat weekly basis now. 

Incidentally, an "end-of-year gotcha" must have arranged 
that last week's link to "Next Week" isn't a link, as
well. 

As Bo said recently "... can be great fun, as long as you don't 
insist on believing that your internal model of
the logic is necessarily the same as the one the code represents"? 
Haven't we all learnt it - frequently? 

Best wishes, Don Armstrong

Thanks - I think I made all the repairs correctly. Please advise if I did not. Thanks for reading, too.

Meantime, there's lots of other interesting things germinating. Maybe there will be more to tell in a few days. I have another 20 messages to go through in Linux-Admin, and a few in SVLUG. Speaking of which, tonight I am off to the monthly SVLUG meeting, tonight taking place on the Netscape campus. Donnie Barnes of Red Hat is the featured speaker. Should be fun. I have got to run now, though, so will see you later.

The Grab Bag (now that my memory is functioning, thanks to L. M. Boyd, syndicated to the SF chronicle for many years, as opposed to Jim Boyd, a teacher I had in the sixth grade). Donnie Barnes is speaking tonight at the monthly SVLUG meeting, as noted above. Info about Donnie, along with the rest of the Red Hat management team, can be found here. More about him at this Linux.com interview.

A question came up about configuring the xserver for use with an IBM laptop, on the list today. A response from Rick Moen appears to have cleared things up, but also the message is a really good explanation of how to setup a minimal xf86config file properly. Here's a link to an archived copy of his messsage. If you are working with X and Linux, or will be soon, then bookmark this message, you will need it.

For those that live on the bleeding edge of Operating Systems, you don't get flesh wounds any better than those inflicted by the latest development tree Linux kernel... 2.3.36 is now out and available from kernel.org. And in line with Syroid's prediction of a March release for stable kernel 2.4, we are in code freeze, and Alan Cox has put forth the list of fixes (showstoppers needing attention prior to release)... So March sounds fairly likely, though it could be as early as February, or as late as Linus likes.

I haven't got time to Meta-Moderate at Slashdot today, but here's some echo's from the oracle (defined as hole in the ground from which semi-hazardous fumes emanate, making you see things you probably shouldn't) ... If you love Lego, or you know someone who does, go to Brickshelf - they have ALL the Lego plans, instructions and catalogs, apparently from the beginning. (Warning - FSCK stands for File System ChecK, remember that, kids) - Here's a BFPG (Big Fscking Potato Gun) - spuds at up to 550 MPH muzzle velocity? Patience, as the server is being /.'d as I write. Sheesh. Final Thoughts - send your friends and family spam from beyond the grave. Lastly, the profile of a software developer found here.

That's my linkfarm for the week, folks, sorry, but it just has to happen sometimes, like ELE's (Extinction Level Events, dinosaur killer asteroids, tot like that). Have a lovely time, see you soon.


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Opera. Linux. Technology preview edition available here. 2M download. Details and review here this evening. Please note, this is an alpha release. You can't buy it, they won't support it. They just wanted a feedback edition out in the world, methinks. They say stuff is broken. I will let you know later, since apparently I am good at breaking stuff.

Donnie Barnes did a good q&a session last night. He knows a lot of stuff, about a lot of stuff, and says to some questions - I won't answer that - and to others - I haven't been able to keep up with that, I really don't know. Kinda refreshing change from marketing schmoos who will say whatever they think you want to hear. Key topics included the directions that Red Hat is taking with its acquisition strategy, lots of crowd to Donnie feedback on what they should fix in the distro, horror stories from the IPO and more. Very fun.

One interesting sidelight, the Association of C and C++ Users, Silicon Valley (www.accu.org) is having a speaker as usual at the CLB (aka fatbrain.com) retail site next Tuesday, this time Bill Gibbons, on the topic: "Why Embedded C++ is a Bad Idea." Reg Charney, the organizer of the group, popped up in last night's meeting and said, "Oh, BTW, Eric Raymond is also going to be dropping by, thought you'd like to know." Tricky, since the presentation space at CLB San Jose can hold about 50-75 people max (I worked there, moons ago) and there is now going to be major crowd. <g>

Lastly, LinuxCare was handing out free stuff, so I got a t-shirt, and a batch of bumper stickers. Also news from yesterday, I got a belated Christmas present out of Canada - An Opus 'n Bill Y2K calendar . . . Now Berke Breathed hasn't produced any Bloom County in a few years now, and it had sort of dropped from my mind. So I open this package, knowing from shape and feel that it is a calendar. What do I see? A flightless aquatic bird using a scanner gun on the hind end of a malformed cat. I look at this picture, and think to myself, "Tom saw this picture and thought of me . . . hmmm!" You figure it out. <SEG> Thanks, Tom - I do like these characters.

The drop of a line to Dr. KablooeyKeyboard, resulting from reading his site post of today (though he says Thursday, the page says Wednesday) . . . the latter bit relates to my link above to Bruce Sterling's The Manifesto of January 3, 2000. While an in-page repeat, why not - it is interesting.

So - to be concerned? Over what, pray tell? Anything I can do to help? And one caveat - could you spell my name the proper way 'round every third time or so? All the same, thanks for the link - glad you liked it... I find all these cyberpunk authors to be awfully bright and interesting.

Mr. Farquhar's book is out, and I am off to Fatbrain tomorrow to buy a copy. Nope, no special recommendation for Fatbrain, just gotta coupon, is all. Yes, a special recommendation for Dave's book, though. If he has half again as much useful material in his book as he has posted online, then you need this book bad. Just to be fair, here are links to the book in all the majors - I make money from NONE of them.

Optimizing Windows for Games, Graphics and Multimedia (isbn # 1565926773) is available (links to) from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and fatbrain.com, at least.

Now it's time for Brian to dive back into Perl. I intend to finish SOMETHING, someday. I am reading 5 distinct books, working on learning / refreshing 2 programming languages, holding down a day job, this place, having a life, and being Marcia's partner in love. I would throw all but the last out the window if necessary, but since it isn't necessary (at the moment), I think I'll work on Perl for now. Hasta.

Huh? Oh, what about the chocolate? Well, I got you to look, didn't I? Advertising, my friends, advertising. OK, to tide you over, here's a link to Godiva online. Later.

I know, I said Opera 'dis, and Opera 'dat... and here it is, sitting as a .tar.gz file here in my $HOME, and nothing to show for it. Sorry. Just wasn't in the mood for it, as it were - I have been on a run with Perl, and I am going to save Opera for tomorrow, or the weekend. Have a nice evening, and I will see you tomorrow. G'night.


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Gateway blames Intel for poor earnings performance. After getting out of the Amiga biz, maybe we can look to see Gateway jump both feet forward into the pre-loaded Linux market, eh? Especially if they can design good, Linux-friendly laptops, not containing win-Modems and win-SoundCards, etc, etc. Nudge, nudge, Gateway - great market possibilities here, even if you offer to load dual boot systems to acclimate new user.

Light mail day today . . . I have an email floating in from pre-holidays, from a Jerry reader whom I offered help to get network printing working in a Linux environment. So that is on the weekend plate, with results posted here as well, for posterity (posterity being myself, three weeks down the road, having forgotten what the hell I did :-> )

I am also still getting errors from my cron scripts, I think because the defaut Mandrake scripts expect certain services to be running. That is, I don't run MySQL (though bits are installed), but cron is still trying to rotate logs for the package. I could just dump the script, but I would rather understand more about how the overall cron script structure works, and I look at this as my goad.

That said - I have to run. Got a lot to do today, and little time, little time. Have a wonderful Friday and/or weekend - I will catch up with you later today.

Remote Printing with Linux - Advice and dissent.

OK - hints to make it work - I just did, again (as my setup had been broken, for some reason).

First, forget printtool - it seems to break remote printing more easily than fix it...

next make sure that each machine is in the other's /etc/hosts file.  
Make sure I see that zgate has a hosts.lpd, I presume that one of 
those two addresses is zsparc. You note that in my sample printcap entry 
(below), I have a spool sd=/var/spool/lpd/eps ...I needed to create that
 non-standard spool directory explicitly.  

cd /var/spool/lpd/
mkdir eps  (this is on grinch)

I also see that there are two identically named Epson entries in your zsparc 
printcap - dump them both, and adapt what I have below to your needs, or adapt from

http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Printing-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.1 directly, as I did.

once i did all this, then kill -9 (pidof lpd), then start lpd fresh, 
everything worked hunkydory...

lp|eps|epsonS600:\
        :sd=/var/spool/lpd/eps:\
        :rm=grendel.orbdesigns.com:\
        :rp=lp:\
        :lp=/dev/null:\
        :sh:

Explicit problems I note from your files...  Operating under the 
assumption that you have the one printer hooked up to zgate, there 
should only be one printcap entry.  No ambiguity that way.  certainly 
there shouldnt be two printcap entries pointing to the same printer.  
Next, in your zsparc printcap file, there should also be only one entry, 
and the rp=name ... name should be Epson (if that is the name you 
settle on for zgate's printer, or lp0, which is the second name you 
have for zgate's printer.  The rp=name should not be 'name'=path to 
spool file.  the spool file is only referenced in the sd= line.  My guess 
is that the messages stuff relates to near duplicate printcap entries 
- if your printer works when you print to lp0, then get your remote 
printing working with pointing to 

:rm=zsparcIP:
:rp=lp0:

and once everything appears to be working, then try to comment out 
the whole Epson:  entry from zgate's printcap, if everything still 
works, then dump it.  Hope this rambling mess helps.

regards, Brian.

First, ensure that all the machines are listed in everybody's /etc/hosts file. The following lines should be on both machines.

192.168.0.1    grendel.orbdesigns.com     grendel
192.168.0.7    grinch.orbdesigns.com      grinch

Now, here is the printcap entry from Grendel for the Epson

##PRINTTOOL3## LOCAL uniprint NAxNA letter {} U_EpsonStylusColor stc600p 1
lp:\
        :sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp:\
        :mx#0:\
        :sh:\
        :lp=/dev/lp0:\
        :if=/var/spool/lpd/lp/filter:

lp|eps|epsonS600:\
        :sd=/var/spool/lpd/eps:\
        :rm=grendel.orbdesigns.com:\
        :rp=lp:\
        :lp=/dev/null:\
        :sh:

Here's a link to the joining at the hip of LinuxCare and VMware... what will it all mean? One commentator hopes that it means that VMware will open the source . . . I don't think so, but strange days.

To the left you see a link to a screenshot of Opera for Linux, 4.0a ... looks pretty clean in the image, and Opera renders images fast. But this is still a 'technology preview' edition. Most of the dialog boxes are broken, there isn't going to be a mail client in this version at all, and there are features that aren't implemented yet. We shall see how things improve as they move into beta. I also tried Mozilla M12 milestone over the holidays. Cleaner, but no joy yet, bits just looked wrong - parts of the graphical navigation tools at the top of the window didn't render properly... now isn't that odd. Supper time, and maybe all for tonight. We'll see.

A new definition for deranged... Priceline.com is using Bill Shatner in its new ad campaign. Bill Shatner singing. In front of an audience. You couldn't pay me enough. Eeek. Oh, and Citicorp reader? I don't update four times an hour. Perhaps 4 times a day, maybe 5. Way over the average, but you've generated - let me check - 330 page unchanged log entries (CODE 304) out of 342 raw hits. If it's the caffeine, then lay off a little, eh? If it's an auto updater of some kind, ask it to chill out. Meantime, oh, there you are again - better publish this. Have a good evening all. I'll see you soon.


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Culled from a mailing list... <SEG>

> I'm wondering if anyone here has read either of the "Teach Yourself
> [C/Perl] in 21 Days" books from Sams. I picked these two up today at
> the local library and just wondering if they're worth my time.  I can
> do some basic C programming, and I'm pretty good with Perl, but I'm
> sure there's something in there I can learn.

You have two books that you have actually borrowed from your library, you
currently have them in you posession, and you're posting to a mailing list
to ask us if it's worth your time to read them?

Now for the serious stuff. Another question came up about problems installing RH6.1, with equipment that had always been recognized at install time in prior versions failing to install upon upgrade (or clean install, more likely). Bits of the Red Hat installer as released were broken, and there is an update on one of the RH errata pages, and fetch the installer updates that became available in October. One of the difficult things to keep in mind with Linux is that there aren't Service Packs. When a bug is fixed, the change is posted, distributions don't wait until a whole bunch of bugs are fixed, then put out a service pack. So if you are using Linux, then keep an eye on the homepage of your distribution, or use the update tools that are available to you, if you know how, or ask someone how to. Of course, the other choice is to simply wait, then upgrade to the next version, because we aren't talking many years between releases either - releases are usually bug fixes plus significant functionality improvements, either in eye candy, or under the hood.

The drawback of the wait, then upgrade, procedure is that some of the bug fixes are related to holes in the wall your operating system presents to the world via dialup, or worse, persistent (DSL, T1, OC3) connection. Especially if you have persistent connectivity, keep your system updated with recent patches for the connectivity portions of your system. That means bind, sendmail, any services that are active and touch external ports that might be probed and abused.

This morning's Citicorp results . . .

[me@grendel 08:36 me]$ grep -cG "citicorp.*304" /var/log/httpd/access_log

448

Due to time constraints, I have taken to brief snapshot views of interesting sites during the week, followed by extended return visits to catch the things I missed, over the weekend. In this case, on Slashdot, I caught this link to an interview with Stephen Hawking in the Sunday Morning Herald. I have a fascination with physics and physicists - it doesn't border on unhealthy or anything odd, just find the field itself fascinating (from a lay POV), and am interested in the minds and people doing such work. Hawking is preeminent. This was an interesting article.

More DVD...EFF "Intellectual Property: DVD issues" Archive makes some interesting reading. The next phase of the dispute takes place next week.

I just died for the second time. Hi. At Costco today, picked up a game called Starseige, from a company called Dynamix (sub Sierra). It's a drive and shoot or 'walk' (as in imperial walkers) and shoot game, based on a Mars some 600 years in a future. They built a lot of plausible story about the activity, but when it comes right down to it, the game is, drive somewhere and do unto them, first. Well, I was just done unto, sigh. Proving it's worth as a gaming platform, when I died, I appear to have locked up Win98. Sure will be interesting to see if I can prune away a little deadwood and make it run better - though this PIII makes for a nice gaming machine. Especially fun, using multiple sound channels and the DSL line . . . I point RealPlayer at KFOG online, and listen to the radio in the background while running, say, Motorcycle Madness (came with the Sidewinder Freestyle). The game sound effects are foreground, the music is background. Fun. You know, I do have Quake ][ for Linux, perhaps I will load that under Debian, and see how the game runs under a fast processor. It was fun on the PII, we shall see, we shall see.

Subject: Remote printing problem solved!
   Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2000 23:39:32 +0000
   From: John Zbesko 
     To: [email protected]

Brian,

I cannot thank you enough for giving me the advice that solved my remote
printing problem. Your modications for my printcap file on the client
machine straightened out the printing. I don't know how the problem
originated- I have tried many things and had many different "symptoms"
so that the printcap changes may have only been the last thing that
needed changing.

One of the reasons I have embraced Linux and the open source community
is because it is indeed a community that helps each other. Armed with
this additional knowledge, I'll check out the newsgroups and see if I
can help others...

Again, thank you very much.

John Zbesko

It's always something, as Roseanne Rosannadanna used to say. In this case, I am up at Sunday PRT (Pacific Ridiculous Time) to help a neighbor move, starting off by fetching the truck in a few minutes. Between this and a probable trip to visit the Monarch butterflies in their winter home in Santa Cruz, there may not be much here today, though plans can change in the wink of an eye. Jakob Nielsen has a new alert box out, here, discussing the lack of use of elaborate navigation schemes. Enjoy your Sunday, I will catch up with you later.

We took a day trip, and a bunch of pictures. My trip report, and some of the pictures, are on this page.

Also, certain types of formatting inflicted upon a message by (I presume) Outlook will kill Netscape 4.7 for Linux dead. Can't reply, can't forward, can't read, try to do anything while the message has focus and bang, Netscape is just plain gone from the list of active processes. Quite an interesting bug, eh? I have a couple of things yet to do today, so hope that you enjoy that Trip Report, and I will catch you tomorrow.


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