timothyhoward.org

Fun in WV.

Testing

As I have mentioned before, a blog is a great place to save little tips that you track down for various things and so here is another one that at some point later on I will want I am sure. It is a great way to generate a very detailed profile of the hardware Ubuntu is running on. The info came from this site called Tech Recipes by way of our overlords, err that is to say Google. The command is “sudo lshw -html > hardwareprofile.html". As you can probably tell it will generate an HTML version of your hardware profile. Very detailed and quite handy.


I am not sure this qualifies but I just fell in love with virtual consoles. Up until now they were mostly just an inconvenience when I accidentally dropped to one of them by pressing the Ctrl-Alt-F1 through F7 combination (or whichever ones actually work). However, today I was working on a project and I changed it from running as a window to running fullscreen. For whatever reason the app did not maximize to full screen but did take focus and there was no way for me to exit (need to add that in pronto). Enter virtual console. I did not really feel like killing the X Server through Ctrl-Alt-Backspace (I think that is what you are doing) and logging back in. By some pure stroke of luck today I was reading this brainstorm idea. It mentions having a notice to users of how to return to the desktop in case they accidentally ended up there. That triggered some neurons in my sleepy brain that it was probably possible to drop to the console, log in, kill the app in question and return to the desktop. As if by magic it worked. I do not claim to be a wizard when it comes to Linux by any stretch. But in the span of a week I have gotten code building under Linux that was only compiled under Windows to date (simple project though), successfully debugged a crash in that code using gdb for the first time, setup subversion and did a couple of merges for the first time and now using a virtual console to kill rogue applications. I do love me some Ubuntu. Now if they would just release Steam for Linux with a large catalog, life would be grand. Of course it is just about 1:00 A.M. and I will be paying for it in the morning.

It is because they were subjected to this movie. In The Day The Earth Stood Still Keeanu Reeves plays the part he is best at, a barely verbal human being. If you limit the lines Keeanu has to deliver he can be a powerful figure in your movie. Unfortunately Keeanu’s perceived mystique is not nearly enough to save this movie. In fact even it was poorly executed a long with everything else. The casting was awful from Jaden Smith to Kathy Bates. Jaden Smith’s debut(??) was particularly bad as the presumably annoying kid who you end up liking at the end. That is certainly not the case as he was annoying all the way through the movie — to new exteremes. Sorry Will, you know I love you but your kid can not act. Oh and get him a hair cut. The movie is anti-climatic, distracting and unconvincing. I want my $11 back. Also, whatever you do, do not see a movie in an IMAX Dome if it was not specifically shot for an IMAX Dome.

When you are cleaning your office and trying to reorganize things and you find a computer you do not really remember having. I mean after I have looked it over I can remember details about its existence and how it came to be but I do not really remember still having it. The thing is that for people like me (people with hardware addictions) computers are not an atomic unit like they are for most people. Instead a computer is merely a sum of its parts. And on any given those parts could be drastically different and in a completely different case, of which there are like 4 spare in my office. Anyway, the point I am making is that it was past time for me to reogranize and minimize.

Someone said that ignorance is not bliss but slavery in the comments of a blog post I just read that is astounding. A teacher in Austin, TX confiscated the Linux live cds of a student and then sent a nastygram to the creator basically accusing him of illegal activities because, “No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful.” How Ken Starks of HeliOS Solutions kept his response so cordial is beyond me. He points out a lot of things that avid Linux users already know. Microsoft has billions of dollars and does a marvelous job of shaping public opinion about the choices you have when you use a computer. They do this especially well when it comes to organizations where they can donate large sums of money. If this teacher had spent 30 minutes reading even Wikipedia she would have found that indeed there is a lot of software that is free. Some of it is free as in beer (no monetary cost) and some of it is also free as in speech (no license or copyright).

Today I received an early Christmas present: The Netflix Player by Roku. After setting it up I can say definitively that if you have a Netflix account and broadband already then it is a no brainer. I am quite impressed with the image quality and the increasing selection. There have been some criticisms levied against the player and while valid have not immediately seemed like a big deal at all. One criticism is that you have to add new things to watch to your queue from a computer. I almost always have a laptop on next to me so that is hardly an issue. Also there is the fact that the selection on Netflix for Watch Instantly is not the most current. That is true but I find the selection to be quite good. There is some new stuff, a lot of documentaries and a nice selection of independent and foreign movie. All in all I am quite pleased.

Freeshipping.org is a new site I just found out about. It has quite a bit of information about current deals from retailers that offer free shipping or promotional codes that allow you to get free shipping. These days it is worth checking out before you place an order to see if you can save some green.

Any way you slice it this is a big deal. Google has made the G1 phone available unlocked for developers. It is unlocked in the traditional since in that it will work with any carrier (with a compatible network) but also in the since that the bootloader for the phone does not require signed images. What this means is that you could customize Android and easily use it on your phone. There are really no requirements to be a developer. You have to pay $25 to sign up and $399 for the phone.