Reading Again.

I've been meaning to do some serious reading while on my day-off, and read I did. You've probably read from my Jaiku page that I had read Blind Shrike (Richard Kadrey), which I really didn't like but still finished as was my habit with fiction. I started reading Halo (Tom Maddox) shortly after that and like the light way the story presented what a future with machine-intelligence would be like. It was a light read and entertaining. I finished Halo late-morning yesterday. I promptly started reading Geek Mafia (Rick Dakan) after that, which is a bit more contemporary and somethign I liked since it was about a comicbook-geek-turned-con-turned-fugitive-turned-redeemed-hero. I just finished Mafia and I went online to briefly update my blogs. And here I am again, searching through ManyBooks.net for any interesting eBooks I might find.

I am reading again, is the good news. I've always loved to read, though my love for books has waned over the last few years. I've only read an occasional book or two each year. Having a Treo650 has changed things a bit. I save all these books on it, and since I always have it with me I just flick it out whenever I feel the urge to read. No more I-want-to-read-but-I-forgot-to-bring-the-book situations. I'm using eReader (and the associated file format) to read these books. I've found it better than PDF , even if I do have PalmPDF on my Treo. I've reserved it for the "need-to" situations when I have no other choice but to view documents in PDF. I hate the fact that its so resource-hungry, especially when loading long books. I simply find it hard to read stuff using PalmPDF. eReader files are small by comparison, so I get to save more stuff to my media card. Who could say no to that?

Anyway, I'll post about more books I read as time goes by. Right now, I need to catch some ZZZ's...

Scrub Your Browsing Clean

I found this great article from PCLinuxOS' monthly magazine about
changing browsing habits to protect your identity online. Although the
article is centered around Tor (The Onion Router), ordinary Firefox
users still stand to benefit from the tips the author suggested.
Basically it boils down to: a.) assume that someone can eavesdrop on
your browsing; b.) trust a site with your information only when using
SSL and even then be wary of giving any information out; and c.)
change your browsing habits to protect yourself.

Read the article from here:
http://mag.mypclinuxos.com/html/Issues/200702/page3.html
Read about Tor here: http://tor.eff.org/overview.html.en

Thinking Green

The best motivation you could ever say to push going green would be to highlight how much money a company could save. Xerox and Userful are on their way to helping other companies go green with their useful discoveries. Xerox created high yield paper that does not require as much pulp (therefore less trees) to manufacture. Userful's Discover Station pushes the idea of thin clients to another level, maximizing computer use to save on electricity.

Even simple changes in the way things are done could mean huge savings. UltraSpeed is claiming its setup can save 40% off their previous operating expenses, just from switching to DC power and using more power efficient chips on servers. Of course, they were also harping about a particular piece of technology they are implementing that can influence customers to go to them -- called 'Diskless' server implementation. It's similar to somewhat to the Diskless Node,(for servers and workstations) but uses instead a centralized NAS to serve up software to servers without disks. Pretty neat, huh? It's also more fault-tolerant, as NAS setups are more reliable owing to the fact that if one disk dies the backups are there to take over.

And in the bigger scheme of things, one can't help but wonder if IBM's promoting of it's System Z mainframes truly makes the case for going green. They say mainframes work more efficiently and require less space than the now more popular server setups. Question is if they are doing this to revive the market for mainframes. Upside is the System Z mainframes will run on Linux and are optimized for virtualization.

For all businesses concerned, going green should also mean making green. It's the win-win formula that has the potential to win over all of those suits who don't care about the environment.

Xfce Did The Trick

I download Xfce and I now have a working desktop again. No more disappearing title bars in the apps I open. I downloaded Conky, its working well now. The .conkyrc file from Ubuntugeek.com worked just fine. Seems like all that was wrong was updating everything after a clean install prevented the Gnome WM from running 100%. I didn't muck around the configuration anymore, as I just wanted to get a working desktop that I could use Ubuntu in, and as fast as possible. The Xubuntu-related files downloaded and installed in less than half an hour.


I downloaded my usual stuff -- Firestarter, Xmms, VLC, Aria2, Firefox themes and extensions. I tested each before I started doing what I was supposed to be doing a week ago -- backing up our precious pictures over on MediaMax.com. I used to use Xdrive, but free accounts were limited to 5GB and the uploads were faster at MediaMax. Plus Xdrive didn't want to play nice with Ubuntu :-( I'm sticking with MediaMax.

I've a few more gigs to upload ;-) Bye for now.

Kernel Goes Green II

Here's an update. Click on the title above to go to the article.

More Linux in Consumer Phones, Please...

With the cellular phone market still in a flurry over the uber-expensive iPhone, it's easy to overlook some rather nifty development is occuring. Just take a look at this article from Computerworld. It stresses the strengths of Linux, mainly how deep customization can go and that it is free (both in cost and in licensing), 2 reasons that could push app development to a rapid pace. I'd like to see more function-laden Linux phones for the low-end market ;-)

Back With Ubuntu

I was able to install Ubuntu this afternoon. It took a while to update
the whole thing. I used an old copy of Feisty for 7.04 and it took
about 2 hours and a half to get it all down.

I was hoping to get Conky (http://conky.sourceforge.net) working so I
could have a system monitor that was a bit more detailed, but it
didn't want to play. I don't know what I did wrong but I messed up my
desktop after mucking up the the config file (.conkyrc). I initially
found settings from Ubuntu Geek
(www.ubuntugeek.com/conky-a-light-weight-system-monitor-for-ubuntu-linux-systems.html
) which I copied over to my .conkyrc file. I wanted it to display
somewhere else so I tried using different settings and eventually had
to restart. When I got back, any window I opened would only open on
the top left side of the desktop. The title bars also disappeared and
I could move any of the apps I opened, so it was a pain. Every new
window would open on top of the previous active window and obscuring
the one behind it, all on the top left side of the desktop.

I had to return everything to what it was and uninstalled Conky. I
didn't find out what caused it but I have a gnawing suspicion it could
have been enabling the the double-buffer and windowed mode at the same
time. I'll try and install it again tomorrow in windowed mode.

Turning to Wine

After having been hit with a virus yet again, I am contemplating on totally abandoning Windows (yet again). After I get my hard drive in order, I'll be experimenting with Wine to see if I could get a few Windows apps (I need) to work. I've been doing some research and I'll see if I could get IE, M$-Office 2000 and AOL to play with Wine. These are either apps I test (for friends) or something the missus just needs to ease her apprehensions about editing work-related files from home. Wish me luck!