Note: I've reorganized this site to use tags; the category archive remains to support old links. Only posts prior to April, 2006 are categorized. Tag Archive »
Just as I was was starting to get back in the swing of posting on a regular basis, I’m off on Vacation. Tommorow morning (well, later today) I head away for two weeks, with what will likely be very little to no net access. I’ll be back around July 11, hopefully with lots of good stuff to write about.
When I was in college, I think this was sometime in ‘92 or ‘93, I used to spend my spare time in the computer lab, which should come as no shock to regular readers. Our lab was equipped with Sun equipment (some form of Sparcs, I think), with nice (huge at the time) monitors (probably 17″). When I grew bored with programming class assignments, newsgroups, gopher, etc, I would sometimes poke around in other users’ home directories, looking for interesting stuff. I was looking for applications, not documents; I wanted to try out every app I could find, not pry into other people’s stuff. This got me in trouble once- I tried running a script I found in one of the lab assistant’s directories, and it turned out to be a password cracking program. That was unfun.
But this is the story of another occasion. While looking for interesting things to play with, I ran an X windows app that displayed a page of text in a graphical layout. Some of the words were blue and underlined, clicking them took you to another page. All of the text was seemed to be stored on some research server in Europe. I played with it for a while, but didn’t really get the point. As I seem to recall, there was the indication that these documents could link to others all over the network, but I could only find my way to documents on two or three servers, max. The information was mostly on the European server, and was uniformly uninteresting. After 15 or 20 minutes of playing with it, I moved on. Sure, it was graphical, but at least with gopher you could find stuff.
By now, most readers know that I was using a web browser. Possibly NCSA Mosaic, which would put this story in 1993. However, I’m pretty sure this was in 1992, I think the program was probably WorldWideWeb, Tim Berners-Lee’s original browser. The ‘European research server’ I remember is almost certainly the original web site of CERN.
Now, at this time, nobody knew what the web was. Version 1.0 of Mosaic was developed between December 1992 and April 1993. It would be a couple more years until the explosive growth of the web, and transformation of the web from academic curiosity to household name. I stumbled upon what would become one of the greatest revolutions in information technology in the history of the world, and I didn’t get it. Instead of inventing Amazon or Yahoo! (or even just envisioning them), I couldn’t see beyond the handful of pages I could access at the time. Instead, it would be 1996 before I had Internet access at home, and 1998 before I learned how to write a web page.
In my own defense, hind sight is always 20/20, and I really didn’t have much context to judge within. I had read no papers or newsgroup postings about what this was or what it aimed to do. On the other hand, I was a big BBS user back then, spending most of my time on a large, multiuser system, so I probably should have recognized at least the idea that this could be a platform for all kinds of communiction.
Neal Stephenson, author of the excellent Snow Crash and the unbelievably good Cryptonomicon, has written an op-ed piece for the New York Times about Star Wars, entitled Turn on, Tune in, Veg Out (via Bianary Bonsai). It’s an excellent read- both for what it says about the movies, and for what it says about our culture. Highly recommended.
Speaking of Stephenson, if you’ve never read his essay, In the Beginning was the Command Line, I also recommend it. The link points to a full-text online version. It’s a bit dated now (BeOS is dead, and OS X has changed the Mac landscape in many ways), but still an excellent read.
Incidentally, the final volume of Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, System of the World, will finally be in trade paperback this September. This means I’ll be starting the series this summer. Looking forward to it.
One of the selling points of ‘LiveCD’ Linux distributions is that they allow you to try out Linux on your computer with out touching anything on your hard drive. Sometimes, however, you you want to do exactly that. While playing with a Ubuntu LiveCD on my Powerbook, I decided that I wanted to do exactly that. These are the steps that I followed, after some Googling led me to this thread on the Ubuntu forums.
Please Note: By default, the Ubuntu LiveCD will not touch your hard drive. This is for your safety. The steps below allow you read and write to your hard drive’s OS X partition while running Ubuntu from the Live CD. If this makes you in any way nervous, don’t do it. If you don’t know why it should make you nervous, don’t do it. I make no warranties. You could lose all your data, your job, or your hair. In fact, you should just stop reading now, and go watch television.
Still with me? Okay. You were warned. From the Ubuntu Applications menu, choose Utilities, and therein choose Terminal (aside from the use of a menu instead of Finder, it’s just like OS X). Once in terminal, you need to create a ‘mount point’, which is just an empty directory where you want to be able to access your OS X partition. The traditional place for this is in /mnt:
sudo mkdir /mnt/macosx
Just as in OS X, sudo will make your command run as root. When running from the LiveCD, you will not be prompted for a password, so make sure you’re sure about your commands before pressing Return.
Next, we need to find out what hard drive partition your OS X data is on. OS X normally creates a number of small partitions for its own use. To check your drive, you can use parted. Another Dire Warning: parted’s raison-d’etre is viewing and changing disk partitions. It can and will destroy your harddrive. If you’re nervous, don’t do it. Here’s my entire parted session:
ubuntu@ubuntu:/usr$ sudo /sbin/parted
GNU Parted 1.6.20 with HFS shrink patch 16
Copyright (C) 1998 - 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This program is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more
details.
Using /dev/hda
(parted) print
Disk geometry for /dev/hda: 0.000-38154.375 megabytes
Disk label type: mac
Minor Start End Filesystem Name Flags
1 0.000 0.031 Apple
2 0.031 0.058 Macintosh
3 0.059 0.085 Macintosh
4 0.086 0.113 Macintosh
5 0.113 0.140 Macintosh
6 0.141 0.390 Macintosh
7 0.391 0.640 Macintosh
8 0.641 0.890 Patch Partition
10 128.891 33050.109 hfs+ Apple_HFS_Untitled_2
(parted) quit
Information: Don't forget to update /etc/fstab, if necessary.
First, I invoked it with sudo /sbin/parted. Under Ubuntu Live, only root can access /dev/hda, which is your harddrive. Note the line Using /dev/hda. If you see something else, you can try select /dev/hda, but you probably forgot the sudo, or else you have a system which is different enough from mine that you should just type quit now and seek another source of information.
At the first prompt ((parted)), I typed print which printed the partition table below. As you can see, my OS X partion is number 10. So I type quit and return to the bash prompt.
Now it’s time to mount the drive. Here’s the command I used, using the mount point I created earlier and the partition number I learned from parted:
sudo mount -t hfsplus /dev/hda10 /mnt/macosx
If you get no ouput, success. Otherwise, something went wrong, and you should quit now or seek other counsel. Assuming it worked, you should be able to access your OS X partition thusly:
cd /mnt/macosx
Your OS X partition is now mounted under /mnt/macosx. So for example, my OS X home directory, which is normally /Users/jclark, is now /mnt/macosx/Users/jclark. Should you want to write any of the directories in the mounted partition (don’t do it!), you’ll need to run your commands with sudo.
Final word: I don’t know for sure how Ubuntu will unmount the partition when I shut it down. It should be fine, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of reformatting. To unmount your partition, use umount (cd out of the /mnt/macosx directory tree first):
cd
sudo umount /dev/hda10
You can double check your work by running mount with no arguments to see a list of all mounted partitions. After the umount, /dev/hda10 (or your equivalent) should not be listed.
So, I have this thing for playing with new operating systems. I’ve built bunches of Linux boxes over the years, which I never really use for much, especially now that I have two Macs running OS X. I even tried Linux From Scratch once.
With the recent release of version 5.04 of Ubuntu Linux, I decided to play around. I was pleased to see they offer a Live CD (bootable Linux Desktop on a CD, no install needed) for PowerPC (Mac) as well as Intel x86 (PC) machines. I decided to try booting it up on my 15″ Ti Powerbook. It worked… I’m posting this from Firefox under Ubuntu.
I haven’t exactly stretched its limits, but it seems to work very nicely. Firefox is present, as is Evolution for mail (haven’t tried it, but folks seem to like it), Gaim for Instant Messaging, The Gimp for image editing, and OpenOffice for office-style applications. It feels a little slow, but it is running from the CD and ramdisk (memory). Slowdowns seem to coincide with CD access, so I’m guessing a full install would be snappier.
I’m not contemplating switching away from OS X, but it’s nice to see I have a viable option for my existing hardware if I did want to. Also, Sherri’s Windows XP laptop is getting slower and slower, and desparately needs a wipe and fresh XP install. However, I don’t have XP install media, since the laptop only came with a restore disk (lost at the moment), and besides, the default install wasn’t very clean. Instead of spending $129 for XP, I may have her give Ubuntu a try for a few days. I’m sure an actual installation would fly compared to her XP install.
Let me start by saying I’m a fan of the Star Trek franchise. I probably don’t qualify as a Trekkie, but I’ve watched large chunks of all of the various series, and I have seen all of the movies. Upon reading recently of the upcoming 11th Star Trek Movie, I was reminded of the Curse of the Odd, and wondered what portents it might hold.
The Curse of the Odd is my theory that every odd-numbered Star Trek movie sucks (to varying degrees of suck), and that every even-numbered Trek film is worth seeing. Before you agree or disagree, I’ll admit that there is an exception- but whether it’s the exception that proves the rule or a sign that the theory is flawed remains an open question. So, let’s review:
Star Trek: On Ice! - Featuring a stark, lifeless bridge as cold as a Klingon prison planet and the worst Star Trek villian ever. Sputnik so would have nailed that role. Odd=Bad.
Star Trek II: Khan! (Read aloud, the way Kirk screams into the communicator at his nemesis) - Brain worms and rich, corinthian leather. What’s not to love? Argued by many to be the best of the bunch. Even = Good.
Star Trek III: Where’s Spocko? - Spock’s big screen directorial debut. Perhaps the best of the worst, but just not a standout. Even though it had Klingons and Spock’s daddy, it just didn’t do much for me. Odd = Bad.
Star Trek IV: The Whale Movie - My personal favorite of the original cast films. Cheesey, yes, but good, clean, honest cheese. This film has some of my favorite movie soundbites (Kirk: “Double dumbass on you!”; Scotty: “Hell-ooo computer!”; Spock: “They are not the hell your whales”) and some of the silliest Trek moments of all time (Sulu flew a “Huey” during his Academy days?). This movie is just plain fun. Spock’s second turn directing. Even = Good.
Star Trek V: Are You There, God? It’s Me, Sybek - or, why Denny Crane should never, ever direct a Trek movie. There are no words. Odd = Bad.
Star Trek VI: Those Klingon Bastards! (again, with Shatner-esque feeling!) - “I’ll never forgive them… for the death of my boy!” Kirk may hold a grudge, but everyone else loves those wacky Klingons. Why can’t we all just get along? Even = Good.
Star Trek: I’m Not Dead Yet! - The death scene he waited his whole life to portray as Shatner returns for his final hurrah, passing the torch the the next, um, generation. Or, to paraphrase Malcom Macdowell’s character, “Time is the fire in which I wasted two hours on this film.” Thumbs up to the crash scene effects, if not the whole stupid notion. Odd = Bad.
Star Trek: Back to the Future - Time travel worked for The Whale Movie, and it works again here. For my money, best treatment of the Borg yet. The Queen/Data scenes lacked a bit, but overall a good flick. My favorite of the NextGen era. Riker’s big screen directorial debut. Even = Good.
Star Trek: The Joysick Movie - Nothing sums up this piece of crap like the sight of a $30 wingman joystick rising out of the center of the floor of the bridge of the Enterprise on a pedestal so Riker can fly a mile-long starship one-handed. And let’s not even talk about Worf’s pimple. Riker’s second (and last!) Trek movie directing stint. Odd = Bad.
Star Trek: Bald is Beautiful… Unless You’re a Romulan - and here we come to the flaw in my perfect little gem of a Theory. This was supposed to be a good Trek film! Ten is an even number, I tell you! Alas, not even the power of Mathematics could save this beast. A Romulan Picard clone? Someone should have initiated the self-destruct sequence long before that script started shooting. Combined with the dissapointment (Even!!), this is my vote for worst Trek film ever. Even=A Major Letdown.
So there you have it. What will #11 bring, besides a new cast? Will the Curse of the Odd hold out, or did #10 suck so bad as to warp the fabric of the Trek movie continuum, resetting the Curse? Only time will tell.
Due to battery problems with my aging powerbook, the fact that I’ve never gotten around to setting up my own mail server, lack of time, and general laziness, I haven’t checked my email for about a week. Today I finally broke down and transfered my mail setup to the iMac, and got caught up on my mail. If you’ve mailed me in the past week, sorry for the silence. I’ll try to reply to everything today or tommorow.
I said I wouldn’t do it again. Never again would I fall for the hype. Listen to the babble. Believe the wild conjecture. And yet, I fell for it. Again.
I woke up this morning before 7. I turned on the local news to get the latest. “Four to seven inches by 2 pm,” they claimed. “High winds, blizzard like conditions during the afternoon” they cried. Based on this, and all of the hype preceding the “Nor’easter” the last few days, I decided to burn a personal day and stay home today. I’ve been caught at work during heavy snows before, and I didn’t want to deal with the hour+ drive home (which usually takes a half hour) and chance being in one of the many accidents that happen during these things.
So, here it is, almost 4pm, and the roads are wet. Just wet. There was some heavy snow, but it must be too warm- the roads are wet and the grassy accumulation is only an inch or two.
Ratings-starved idiots.
And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Time, Pink Floyd
Coincidence is a funny thing. I was cleaning out my office here at home this evening, and ran across an unopened CD package of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. This package was unopened because it was a spare copy I picked up somewhere years ago; I already had a (well-used) copy at the time. That original is now long since misplaced (along with most of my CD’s from college), so I opened the package and ripped the CD into iTunes.
Even before listening to it, the lyrics to Time started rolling around in my head. It’s always been one of my favorite tracks from this album, but seemed especially apropos. For the reason I was cleaning my office was to make room for my birthday present.
Shorter of breath, and one day year closer to death.
Time once again to look at the browser stats on the ol’ weblog. Here’s the final numbers for January:
Browser Hits %age
------- ---- ------
FireFox 49976 40.5 %
Internet Explorer 32787 26.5 %
Safari 12953 10.5 %
Unknown 10642 8.6 %
Mozilla 6224 5.0 %
NetNewsWire 4086 3.3 %
Netscape 2372 1.9 %
Opera 1868 1.5 %
OmniWeb 805 0.6 %
Konqueror 526 0.4 %
Others 1027 0.8 %
As compared with last month, Firefox has crept up slightly (.4%), while IE has lost over 4%, in bits and pieces. For example, NetNewsWire (+0.7%), “Unknown” (+0.7%), and even Netscape(!) (+0.7%). Not sure what it all means.
Of course, the numbers are likely to be skewed due to comment and referer spam; but nearly all of that shows up as IE. I’ve been trying to fight that stuff more actively over the past month, which might explain why IE has fallen off a bit, allowing smaller browsers to increase a bit.