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.

For squirrel elimination, the most impressive I've even seen used was a .458
Magnum. It fires a 500 grain bullet, and is really intended for game about
elephant size, but it does make an impressive red smear when it's used on a
squirrel.

The rain and winds continue. We saw some nasty accidents yesterday, and that is likely to continue as people drive like idiots in the rain.

Played a little with RH6.2 in a VM last night, and there appears to be some tricky bits around the X-configuration portion of the installer, that is to say, I can't get it to progress any further. But, then again, I am working with two pieces of Beta software, so when I get less than perfect results, I am unsurprised. Interestingly, in real life (that is, installing on Grinch, not in a VM), the installer correctly detected both the video card (Voodoo3) and the monitor (Gateway EV900). Never seen successful auto-detection on a monitor before. These installers are really headed in the right direction.

Out early today, and back in the dentist's chair. Good thing, too, since something that shouldn't have, went crunch in my mouth during lunch yesterday. Methinks a filling went south. Sigh. Y'all have an interesting day! I will.

Subject: Web Site Progress
   Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 17:55:40 -0800
   From: "J.H. Ricketson" 
     To: [email protected]

.b -

I spent most of the afternoon reading, and printing for reference, the 
basic HTML stuff from Webmonkey's site 
http://www.webmonkey.com/webmonkey/
  I'm encouraged. It doesn't seem, in my 
total naivete, to be even as difficult as BASIC coding. It all makes sense 
- mnemonics, etc. (unlike Linuxspeak!).

What I plan to do is experiment with the hard way - HTML code & NoteTab to 
produce pages, rather than the well-documented grief experienced by users 
of apps such as FrontPage. I do NOT need that grief. I am also a firm 
believer in the KISS principle. In addition, it has been my lifetime 
experience that the slow, methodical, "hard" way more often than not turns 
out to be the quick & easy way to get results. Therefore, I plan to get to 
know intimately HTML & its offshoots, XML, SHTML (sounds like a restaurant 
review of a particularly bad meal), etc. and depend on NoteTab and coding, 
rather than FrontPage & Office nn.

I spent some time printing out your page for the current week ending 02.13, 
then printing out the same in its code view (with InterMute turned off). At 
first glance, it seems simple & elegant, and doable. I particularly like 
the full-page-width display, rather than blank wasted space at the margin, 
or worse yet, text bleeding into the margin. The more I look at it, the 
more I appreciate that page.

Point: What do you think of my trying to avoid the grief of publishing apps 
by using straight code & a text editor? is it doable, or am I totally naive?

Regards,

JHR
--
[J.H. Ricketson in San Pablo]
       [email protected] 

Also, I use (under Linux and under Windows) dedicated HTML editors Bluefish on Linux, CoolCat on Windows. The advantage here is that you have tool bars and shortcuts for things, but you see the code that is generated, rather than the effect the code is going to have - this type of tool generates considerably tighter, nicer code, mostly because they keep it on the front porch, instead of in the backyard.

This may just drive me all the way into StarOffice... Nah. I am beginning to really despise Netscape. Period. I also think that I am going to junk this RedHat install, go back to Debian and stay there for my primary Linux distro on Grinch. I will leave a large enough partition that I can do trial installs, and all that fun stuff, but the bleeding edge of GUI makes the user experience less than wonderful. I really don't need a lot of tools, and a bare-bones window manager running over X, on top of Debian 2.2 will do me just fine, with everything on the system JUST where I put it, and nothing else. Let's see what we can do here. Back at you later.


Orb Home  /  Top (& search)  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey

In brief, I broke Linux. I started mucking about with Debian last night (again), and playing with unreleased (but frozen) Debian was very strange - they are adding functionality to the installer like there was no tomorrow, and the crap doesn't work (yet - big surprise - unreleased software). However, I am surprised to find functionality being added to a 'frozen' product - that is one which is being changed only to fix the functionality that is already in place. Maybe that doesn't apply to installers. Once again, it may be my fault, because I have been noted to take odd and untested routes through installers.

It would also appear that Pacbell's email server is broken again. Sigh. I am going to have to look hard at just doing mail here at Grendel, rather than depend on Pacbell's broken email services. Their connectivity is great, but their ISP-ness is just a tad on the sucky side. Yup - server's down. I will hear from you when I can.

Have an interesting day, with less pain than I have. TTFN.

Sorry about that - Marcia called while I was on the road to inform me that I had put today's opening update into tomorrow's slot. I make no promises of coherence, today. In return for that good deed, you can email her, here, and wish my Marcia a happy birthday. Just remember, we have to thank the BBC for her birthday present. Oh, aha - now the email is up and running...

Subject: Windowmanagers and Linux
   Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 19:56:39 -0700 (MST)
   From: Ken Scott {[email protected]}
     To: [email protected]

Brian,

Hi there! Hope the tooth isn't putting you too far out of commission.

I read your remarks about just wanting a windowmanager that puts the stuff
where you want it, and stays out of your way. It looks from your
screenshots that you usually use KDE, so I might have a couple of
alternatives for you.

First, try WindowMaker (www.windowmaker.org). This is a nice, good
looking, lightweight windowmanager that works well on it's own. You get a
wharf along the edge of the screen to put your most used apps, and it
features built-in session management that keeps windows popping up where
you left them.

Second, if you decide to try Gnome out, use Sawmill for the window
manager, instead of something like Enlightenment. Sawmill is much lighter
weight, and doesn't try to take over the desktop like Enlightenment is
prone to doing. I've been using sawmill with Gnome on my RedHat 6.0
installation, and have been very happy. The only downside for me is that
the customization is all done with Lisp. Great if you are an Emacs user,
yet another language to learn otherwise.

Anyway, I enjoy reading your journal. Reminds me of what I do way too
often. Sit all night and play with computers. Pay for it the next morning
:)

Ken Scott

Thanks also about the concern about the tooth - feels right now like a steel-toe to the side of the head, but I am at work (for the moment) and will muddle through, as usual.

Enough for now. Later.

{164} Messages in my inbox. One hundred sixty four. That's since yesterday sometime. Sheesh. Let's have a gander (The above was among these - the only time I don't leave messages on the server is here at home, so about 100 are probably copies of something I have seen already). Ah, there's part of the 'splanation... my joining the UUASC mailing list went active this morning. UNIX Users Association of Southern California (uuasc.org) Look to learn lots of interesting things hanging out on that list.

Subject: RE: Your web page
   Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 13:03:22 -0500
   From: "Gary M. Berg" 
     To: [email protected]

Oh yeah, on http://www.orbdesigns.com/bpages/metajour.html you need a line
break between the first and second week of the February.

Do you feel dumber now, having lost a wisdom tooth ?!  Probably groggier,
from what you write.  Take care, and don't play with live electricity ...

You could set up email server.  Or you could take advantage of Pair's
FTP-only account which only runs $4.95/month with all email dumping into a
mail store there.  If you can figure how to get your email to run into the
Pair server.  I'm not sure how you would handle having Pair host just your
mail server, not your whole domain.  Hosting the domain would cost an extra
$1/month.  I believe Pair assigns an IP address for each account, so you
might be able to set up an MX record to send your mail there.

Hmm, another thought - MyDomain.com.  I got frustrated with them and finally
got a Pair account, but they do allow some flexibility as far as domain name
maintenance stuff.

But, if Linux already has the stuff to host mail, that's certainly your
cheapest alternative.

Enough. Have a nice evening. G'night.


Orb Home  /  Top (& search)  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey

The news in brief. Linux on Grinch is back in place. I have gone with a re-install of Mandrake 7.0, where I finally learned a new thing or two on install, which allowed me to do a complete install, including the heinous cryptographic modules which may (or may not, said in my best Knights who say, "Echhi echhi echhi k'tang zhooooo-poui!" voice") be legal to have. Network setup detail available right here, later.

Also, I am feeling about 110% better. I can feel there's a hole the size of the caldera at Santorini in the back of my mouth, but it isn't bothering me at all like it was, yesterday. It is bothering me in other ways entirely, but much less intrusively. I am taking my amoxicillin like a good yutz. I don't have to visit the dentist again until the 29th. Unfortunately, this is a leap year, so . . .

For those of you who don't keep up with Marcia's pages, you don't know that I treat her birthday with equal reverence, even though it is adjoined to Valentine's Day, and may be thus lumped with it. For her natal celebration, I got her the entire Black Adder collection - eight video's of three (?) shows each. While I liked Bean (the show, not the movie), I find that Rowan Atkinson shines as Edmund Blackadder. We had a nice cuddle and a good chuckle or twenty last night watching the first of the tapes.

No mail to speak of overnight. Some unspeakable mail, mostly spam. A message that a message to Don Armstrong was unable to be delivered for the second day in a row due to a malformed SMTP packet. I will be getting those for the next few days, until the server where it is being held final dumps the folded, bent, spindled and mutilated thing into the bit bucket. There may be some interesting discussions of the use of CGI and Perl as it relates to providing password accessible pages on a website. I have some ideas for JHR, and they're just percolating right now.

Have a lovely day - I will do my best as well, even though (let me check, yep) the rain clouds, like your obnoxious cousin Bobby Earl, are back in town for what appears to be an extended visit. Take care, catch you later.

Back in the game. One more chapter in and out of TR, and I keep finding less and less room to piddle in the soup. Dat guy writes purty gud, like, y'know, eh? No other news - I have been staring at a screen constantly for 14 hours now, between home and work and home, so I am off and out until manaña. Have a nice evening.


Orb Home  /  Top (& search)  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey

G'day. Rule # 6534 stroke Zed 9. Do not kill the shell process which contains your ssh session to the box which is forwarding your editor process to you, prior to saving the work in said editor. The editor dies, the work goes into the bit bucket, and the worker bee (me, in this case) innovates a couple of multi-syllabic four-letter words on the spot, designed to improve both brain and computer operation.

I had already written some *really* interesting things, some of which I have completely forgotten due to lack of caffeine in the bloodstream. Fortunately I am remedying that as I write, so all should be well, shortly.

It is Win2K Launch Day, so expect high winds and odd traffic on the net - there will probably be bandwidth consuming video presentations, people hunting for giveaways and deals ... yada, yada, yada. Mail service this AM was slower than molasses, but things appeared to pick up towards the end. What I liked was yesterday's ZD Anchordesk - at the bottom, the insta-poll with the question "When will you adopt Windows 2000?" The available options were: Tomorrow. Perhaps in 6 months or so. When you pry Linux from my cold, dead fingers. That last was winning over the first two choices by a 2 to 1 margin. Heh.

Must run. Later.

Howdy. I didn't know on today's list would be lucky number thirteen - do something relatively brainless and completely get away with it . . . ;). First, earlier in the day, I caught bits of the webcast from the Bill Graham Civic in SF of The Bill and Patrick show. That's right, along with Big Brother Bill Gates, we had Patrick Stewart reading his lines like a real pro, a supporting cast of hundreds of Dell servers (hmmm) and the closing act, Carlos Santana. Yessiree, Bob - that was quite a show.

Then, following that, also on the Windows 2000 front, I find that I need some of my Linux tools for doing art, etc. for Marketing and Web content creation...

Sideline - I looked at the PCWorld website about the testing done on Win2K, and Bob is right. This is the page that contains the data layout for comparing Win2K, WinNT and Win98. Even if the configuration playing field were level (shhhh, but NT had to run its disks in PIO mode), let's start by pitching every column in which one of the contestants couldn't compete. Oh, so sorry, that means that Win2K wins the shootout in 2 of 8 columns, NT in 4, 98 in 2. This make Win2K best???? Really funny. I am using Win2K in beta right now, and will buy it for my production workstation at work, because for my uses and my needs and my hardware it does work better than NT, and more stablely than 98. For many other people, the answer is, "Nope, sorry!" I did like the ZD Anchordesk insta-poll mentioned above. As of now (rough numbers), 2300 immediately adopt Win2K, 3800 wait 6 months, and 7800 are using Linux, so ESAD. <SEG>

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming, already in progress. I find that I want my Linux tools, explicitly the Gimp (Gnu Image Manipulation Program). Haven't heard anything about co-existing Linux and Win2K on a box before. I am not interested in buying VMware to run a slow Linux in a Windows-hosted VM. I want to be able to boot Linux and Win2K, interchangeably. Off I go to research. There's nothing. Well, duh. But there is this... the NT OS Loader + Linux mini-HOWTO from the LDP.

My setup is a Pentium 200, about 3.5 years old, 128M Ram, 10G Maxtor HD, 3Com 905B NIC, Diamond video PCI, Creative SB16 ISA, IDE 24x CDROM ... I have Win2K and programs living on the front 4 gig of the HD. Data lives up on the server. So, after reading the mini-HOWTO once, I booted into the Mandrake 7.0 CDROM, and loaded Linux, being careful not to invoke LILO, which would trash the MBR, and make reacquiring my Win2K partition an exercise in pain. Did my standard kitchen sink install (not pretty, but nothing missing), set up networking correctly second time in a row. My biggest peeve with this version is hereby banished.

Created a Linux boot disk, then rebooted ... into Win2K first - whew, first hurdle cleared. Then I rebooted, via boot floppy, into Linux, and followed the directions for setting up LILO to boot from the root partition (in my case, /dev/hdc6). Then

Which copied off the bootable part of the partition, and made a file called bootsect.lnx. Copied that to a floppy, rebooted into Win2K, parked a copy of bootsect.lnx on C:\, modified boot.ini in accordance with the directions from the mini-HOWTO, and did another reboot. There, in all its glory, was the Win2K boot loader presenting for my entertainment either OS - Select Linux and I was off to the races. Very cool. Fun. Dangerous and stupid - would have cost me hours, maybe a day to rebuild from one slip of the scalpel, but still - it worked. Now you know, too.

An interesting link for the night, and I am off to watch some more Blackadder. Professor Donald Knuth (of TeX and Art of Programming fame) is interviewed here. Culled that one from Slashdot. Good night.


Orb Home  /  Top (& search)  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey

Happy Friday. I know. For some of you, it is over and you have begun your weekend. I am jealous already. But then again, if so, you don't celebrate two dead presidents' birthdays on the wrong day next Monday. Heh. Yesterday I was pointing out the picture of Chateau Keyboard to my boss as just a hint of an idea where I might like to telecommute from, and noted Daisy in the corner of the picture. She said, "Ha! You know them all by their dogs, don't you?" Hmmm.

I am working a new catalog for ETS, a product design or two, and an ad campaign. Should be an interesting day. We shall see. Later.

Dan Bowman wrote last night giving me a ration and a half, then volunteering to accompany me to Vegas on my next trip, all as a result of my antics of yesterday involving making my production workstation dual boot Win2K and Mandrake 7.0. <smirk>Still working, too!</smirk> It really is nice to have all my tools here, one reboot away, rather than having to send work home. Now the next goal is a faster box to run this desktop, eh, Jack? Maybe next week?

To the right we have a screenshot of my desktop (Linux) at work. The foreground window is bluefish, editing this page, X11 forwarded over the encrypted and compressed SSH pipe. The code and data reside and are executing on Grendel at home, I am just using my box here at work as a remote X-terminal for this application. To the left is local netscape, pointed at the ETS website, as I was pointing out to Jack some changes that I want to make in the site. Above is my SSH session into Grendel, and you can see the output of the who command, showing that I am logged in both locally (on display :0), and over a remote connection (pts/2). Later!

One distinct advantage of running two boxes with one display is that I can control two sessions of grip simultaneously. What is grip? Well, you could follow that link, and may later if you desire. Grip is a GTK+ based frontend for CD ripping and encoding. It actually is compiled with cdparanoia integral, and will front-end about 6 different encoders with defaults, or you may create an entry for your own decoder. I am currently ripping our Loreena McKennitt collection for my love.

In the linked image, the Grip session to the right is running on Grendel, with a new disk (The Visit) queued and ready, waiting for the encoding from the prior disk to complete. To the right is a session running on Grinch. Here you can see the Rip and Encode progress bars. The default encoder installed with Mandrake 7.0 is lame. But I have located and installed the latest version of Bladeenc, which is quite fast. On Grinch, over six tracks, Bladeenc has only fallen one track back of the ripper. Very sweet. See you tomorrow.


Orb Home  /  Top (& search)  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey

Likely to be a very, very quiet weekend around here. But a few loose ends to tidy up here and there - I might as well do so in public. Talked to Tom last evening. He sounds exhausted but optimistic; we had a nice chat. Between the three machines we now have too much dynamic content for me to do a single-tape full backup every night. That means, I suppose, restructuring around a two tape master backup, and differential backups intermediate. But I shan't figure that out today. This next, from Chris W-J was a general interest enough question that I thought the answer might be useful. All of the responses are resources I use every week.

Subject: Linux books
   Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2000 09:21:58 +0100
   From: Chris Ward-Johnson {[email protected]}
     To: Daynotes

Chaps

So I'm going to do this Linux thing in the next few weeks. Can anyone
recommend a good book or two to set me on the right path? And/or a couple of
good websites?
I installed Corel Linux the other day and was extremely impressed with the
ease of the whole process - and then got stuck as soon as I had to change
some of the configuration. It all looks like wizard's spells from a
DOS/Windows user's point of view.
TIA.

Regards

Chris Ward-Johnson
Chateau Keyboard - Computing at the Eating Edge
http://www.chateaukeyboard.com

That last is the one I used as a basis to get the home network up and running, although there are modifications, ask me for details if you need them.

Subject: Re: Linux books
   Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2000 10:58:30 -0800
   From: Dave Farquhar {[email protected]}
     To: }assorted persons{

Ditto on Brian's recommendations. I also suggest O'Reilly's Learning the 
Unix Operating System. It won't help you with installation at all (but if 
you're using Caldera or Mandrake you don't really need much help these 
days) but it'll get you familiar with the commands and everything. It's 
under 100 pages and you can read it in an afternoon.

I like Craig Hunt's Linux Network Servers 24seven (published by Sybex) as 
well. It's big and server-oriented, but there's a lot of good info in 
there, and where server and workstation configuration differ, Hunt usually 
goes ahead and tells you the right way to set up a workstation too.

Other web sites:

www.linuxtoday.com -- a daily Linux news portal (I primarily use it to 
watch for up-and-coming Linux sites, plus it's an easy way to watch for new 
material on the sites I regularly read)
www.linuxworld.com -- Linux tutorials, reviews, articles
www.linuxgazette.com -- monthly Linux 'zine, includes an excellent Q&A column

There's a lot of good stuff out there but it can be hard to dig it out. 
It's worth it though.

Not Likely, and late on Monday too, if I have any say in the matter.


Orb Home  /  Top (& search)  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey