Older blog entries for mx (starting at number 67)

Fedora and Laptop

Things are still humming along with Fedora and the laptop. The only things left to set up are the video driver and the magic buttons (both of which I can live without).

All of the Gnu/Linux bits have come a long ways in the last 5 years. The Red Hat configuration tools, for example, are nicer to use that the ones in XP, and they map to the orthogonal back-end tools in a natural way. Switching network adapters is trivial (between wlan and the wired nic), where XP stumbles on itself to magically reconfigure (which works, but is slow and confusing).

Other configuration is simple, and organized in a really sensible way ... unincumbred by blatent commercial interests, and weird internal politics. If it sucks, it gets rewritten, which is what has happened with the Gnome configuration tools. I've seen at least 4 full rewrites in the last 5 years -- and it's resulted in a damn fine set of toos.

The back-end stuff has matured nicely as well, and is as nice to use from the CLI as from user-land. Hardware detection and support is fairly complete (better than NT ever was), and working around unsupported bits can be done when needed. Supporting systems like sane, cups, kudzu, metacity, etc., are the right ways of doing things (even if usability can be improved).

And the applications! This is where things have improved the most, and the rate of improvement is fairly consistent. Not like in the commercial world where things change *only* based on perceived chance of revenue (*cough* IE, *cough*).

I grabbed a recent version of Inkscape, for example, and found a world-class vector tool: it looks good, it is easy to use, and it's powerful (I'm sure sodopidi is good as well). These tools give everybody a chance to work with great implements, not just those who can afford them. The Gimp2, while no PhotoShop, offers a great deal of utility for everyone to use. That's powerful stuff. No need to pirate. No need to spend and pray (that the company doesn't tank, or hijack your data). No good reason to get frustrated at the s/w (you can be part of the process). This is the right way to do things for so many reasons.

And they can't stop it either (I'm not sure what everyone is worrying about). It's not like I would give up contributing and using Free software, and I'm one of millions around the globe. It's a beautiful thing.

Prejudice

I have this problem with pre-judging software based on my personal heuristics. It's required too, as there is so much software out there, I need some way to improve the efficiency of my filter. The problem is that I can be wrong.

So I've been ignoring Wikis. The name bugs me, and I don't know why. I guess the first time I saw the concept that the effect of the sound of the word caused a synapse to fire the wrong way ... combined with the 'unique' interface that most of the wikis use. But I was wrong.

Yesterday I was reading the Inkscape documentation, which is stored in a big-assed wiki. There's a lot of information there. The volume of information is respectable, and I figure the tool has to have something to do with it, so I started to look into Wikis seriously. It ends up wikis are a cool balance betwen CMS, weblog, and something new (more likely that weblogs are the deviant, but that's a different argument).

I looked at several wiki implementations, and am impressed with their balance of usability and utility. Instead of applying policies around users and access limitations, they mostly offer a way for people to collaborate and write. A good focus really, and it's something I'll add my list of useful tools. I'm also looking at where wikis are used, and the results are quite respectable. Previously I would avoid wikis as they seemed a bit weird. Serves me right for being a prejudiced prick.

Fedora Core 1 - I installed Fedora on my test server and new laptop. Both installations were smooth, and the overal distro seems solid.

I was a bit wary about installing on the laptop (hp pavilion ze5400) after reading a few stories about rh9 and ze54*s. I think the stories were a bit outdated, and I know more than I used to ... I disabled apm and forced acpi, tweaked the wlan settings a bit, and switched the sound driver to something a bit more stable. I had similar problems with XP too, the network h/w configuration was borked, and the sound driver locked up the wlan. I haven't installed an accelerated driver for X yet, but at least now I can code in peace. XP just never felt like home.

Work - I'm really starting to like my new job. It's not quite what I'm used to (consulting, managing IT), but it's good for me. I'm learning, growing, and all of that good stuff.

One of our clients described a way of working that changed the way I think:

"We don't fail because we don't let those around us fail."

His principle is to take responsibility for things that could cause you to fail, if success relies on them getting done. So if you need some information, an email and phone message isn't enough. Get off your ass, and get the information. Even if it isn't your job to do it, it is your job to succeed. He's right too.

It's refreshing to see intelligence in business, and it has reminded me that business isn't all yuppies and retards. I knew that of course, but it's handy to see strong examples of it in the wild.

It is a challenge to be away from design and development, but the plan at this place is to work directly with one of those rare architects who is excited after decades in the industry. But first things first, we're gonna make IT sing, and knock a few consulting contracts out of the park.

hub - Yes, I really like Abiword 2 - and use it, OOo, or vi when given the choice. I used Word on that last project for a very simple reason: OOo couldn't import the dot file we were using (not sure about Abiword). It actually could have been that I didn't know how to import the dot file, but the result was that I couldn't collaborate with our MS-centric customer (and we need customers right about now). Abiword, though, is a Verg Good Thing (tm). Word, OTOH, is suprisingly unsable and quirky given the amount of time put into it.

Oh how I hate thee - I hate Word. Not words (those I like). I hate Word; the spawn of Microsoft, the generally-useful tool that crashes way too fucking often. It's crashed four times today, which seems to be caused by my habit of continually saving the document -- a habit formed because Word crashes way too often. Way too fucking often.

Why don't I use OOo? I like OOo (for many reasons), and use it unless a client requires otherwise. OOo lacks in how it imports stylesheets, as they seem to be left out of any coversion. I'm not sure how much of a dot file is stored in a document, but to collaborate with Word <-> OOo, it's important that a document's general look doesn't change with each import (or export). Yes, I know I should shut up and fix it, but sometimes there's work to be done.

Fuck, I hate Word.

Gaim 0.75 - I'm really impressed with the progress made by the Gaim team, in terms of maturity and usability.

On my new XP-laden laptop, I installed an older version of Gaim, which happened to be a bit buggy (.6x series iirc). Previously on Windows, I used Trillian, which I thought to be generally quite good. So suffering a few annoying Gaim bugs, I tried to switch back to Trillian, and was amazed at how terrible their interface was.

So I grabbed an updated version of Gaim, and re-installed it, and was amazed. I've used Gaim on Gnu/Linux and BSD for a few years now, but always found it a bit out of place on a Windows desktop. The recent builds, though, with the built-in Wimp theme, and wonderful/magical instaler fit into a XP desktop seemlessly, AND the user interface is really quite nice.

Unlike Trillian (or *gasp* MSN), the Gaim interface is not at all obtrusive. It's simple to configure, and errors are reported with a hint of sanity. When I was setting up Trillian, it wouldn't connect to MSN, and gave no useful message to lead me to a solution. In fact, I had to search for the f##k#ng conection-log, and was then presented with obscure numerical codes.

In general Trillian configuration is retarded, and starting/stopping an account is worse. And, the interface hasn't improved since I last used Trillian regularly, which is at least a year ago (who doesn't improve a desktop app within a year??). Gaim, OTOH has improved considerably, on nearly every axis. It's even good enough that I plan to set it up for a few non-technical people I know who suffer life using MSN-messanger.

Kudos to the Gaim crew, it's a great app!

OOo 1.1 - I'm impressed. OpenOffice.org 1.1 has reached a workable level of maturity on Win32, and is even nice to use. It's comming along on Gnu/Linux, though it still suffers from integration and performance issues (maybe it's just my distro/PC).

The swx format is intuitive too (I'm looking at scripting some OO related tools in Perl). And, the knowledge that the data is easy to get at makes me happy. Damned be the propietary (and/or retarded) file formats!

Work - Found some. Looks good. Let's see where this takes me.

Home - Moved. Unpacking. Network up.

Life - Tired.

Moving - We rented a place in our new home town. Prices there are considerably higher than our island paradise, so we had to settle on a fairly old house. It's a nice place, but requires some cleaning and painting, so this week will be filled with some real-life work.

I'm also hoping to sign a few contracts this week, one with a very respectable company. It's not quite enough for the long-term, but the goal is to ease into something more fitting for all involved. Here's to hoping.

Hacking - Being between homes and jobs, I've not had the motivation or structure to hack much. The new laptop is really nice, and should make dev easy ... but too much turmoil has inverted my will to hack. That, and my CVS repository is in a card-board box a few hundred kilometers away.

At least I can catch up on reading a few things I've bookmarked over the last few months. A laptop (lcd) is a really decent way to read. I had a laptop 5 years ago, but this one seems to be much more useful -- probably the shiny factor. We'll see how it goes.

Retro - I was reading a classic kid's programming book last week, Basic Games. It brings back a lot of memories, and almost makes me wonder where the simple programming is today (there was a Slash thread on it too). But, simple programming does exist today, in many places: Python, Perl, Ruby, Basic, (the list goes on). Perl is no more difficult than the Atari basic + bits of ASM I messed with as a 7 year old. Kids are more intelligent than we give them credit for. I may not have fully grasped how the 6805 worked, but I could twiddle the machine code I found in books and magazines, to the point where I built a library of useful machine code chunks that I could use for many different things.

It may be hard for kids to find these tools, or maybe it's less interesting for them to search for them. When I bought my Atari 800, I could only afford one game and a tape-drive. I tired of Centipede after a few hundred hours, and the tape drive was shit, so all that was left was basic, and the local library. Boredom breeds a lot of things (luckily the Atari withstood a few bouts of curious disassembly).

Something that the community could do to improve accessability to a simple programming environment would be to sponsor a simple-ass way to install it for the dominant platforms. Say a one-click d/l, and a site dedicated to kid's programming. The language could be anything, or even a few for that matter. Kids are adaptable, and intelligent, and they thirst for knowledge. The one thing they may not excel at is finding the nuggets in the mess of the web (most adults suck at filtering too).

Laptop - Decided to splurge and get a laptop this week. While I wanted a Mac, I decided on a WinTel, as it's a platform worth understanding. I'll use Cygwin/XFree to access my linux boxes, and the other cygwin tools for unix fun. Not optimal, but workable.

Work - Still nothing solid, but am making progress with a few interesting leads. It's a difficult process, but not a bad one. I'm learning a lot about myself, and am realizing that I'm ready to be more indipendant. I'm just not sure if I'm connected well enough for that, but we'll see.

Hacking - Since my dev boxen are all packed up, I've been a dormant hacker ... but now with the new laptop I'm hoping I'll have some time to hack at one of the projects. It's tough though, still in transit, but we'll be all settled in a few weeks (I hope).