01.26.08
Posted in Slug - the NSLU2 at 11:27 pm by Nate Smith
It was an interesting experiment but I have taken the NSLU2 - the Linksys Slug out of service for running this blog. I had it running with lighttpd, MySQL and Php. It worked well enough but it just wasn’t beefy enough to meet the needs of running a blog. Even a poorly read, low traffic one like this. ;). I discovered a few things during the attempt at using the slug. Foremost, I really like lighttpd. Lighttpd is a small and fast web server that can remove some of the size and complexity of Apache. Lighthttpd itself runs great on the Slug but the overhead of Php and and probably mostly MySQL is what kills it.
The new machine has an Efficeon processor in it. These run at about 1 Ghz but have great power-saving features. I’ll be on the lookout for some other tasks for the Slug to take care of for me.
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01.18.08
Posted in Reviews at 7:45 pm by Nate Smith
What a clever little laptop! The eee PC is an ultraportable laptop that also happens to be ultra-affordable. It has a tiny screen and a tiny keyboard but fortunately not a tiny processor. The eee is totally flash-based, it has no moving hard drive. I think it has a fan and that is probably the only moving item inside the machine. The mouse pad has a single button to click and the action on the button is very stiff. It may begin to loosen as it is used. The installed operating system is based on Linux and works very well.
But the screen is too small! argh! Everything on the web is now being designed for 800×600 at the minimum and 1024×768 on average. I thought I could get by with the tiny screen but it’s killing me to scroll so much.
I really wanted to like the eee PC and I may yet find a niche for it. It has a lot of processing power in a small package but the screen is a big handicap.
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Posted in Geek Culture, Reviews, books at 3:56 pm by Nate Smith
If you work in Information Technology you should be running out to buy this book. Michael Lopp, the author also has a blog which I intend to 
start reading. This book is packed with humour and insighful observations about working in an office, and more specifically, software development offices.
If you are a fan of The IT crowd, The Office, Dilbert, or the movie Office Space you will probably find a lot to laugh at in this book. Good stuff -Funny, insightful, and sometimes even practical. Recommended.
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01.17.08
Posted in KnoppMyth, MythTV at 7:56 pm by Nate Smith
There it is. You don’t get anything special for installing MythTV the hard way or compiling it from scratch. (maybe the satisfaction of doing it). So take it easy on yourself and use knoppmyth This is the best way to get going with MythTV and really start using it. Add to this the KnoppMythWiki and you have a winning combination for installing and configuration.
If they start giving awards for slogging out all those hours to install it the hard way let me know.
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01.05.08
Posted in gadgets at 10:19 pm by Nate Smith
The Squeezebox Duet is the latest player from Slim Devices. It flips the current Squeezebox paradigm on its ear. In the current incarnation the remote is dumb and the playback information is on the device, probably located by the stereo in a harder-to-see location. The Duet turns the player into a black box and puts the display in the palm of your hand in an i-pod like incarnation with a color display.
I really like the squeezebox products, but seeing the display has often made it easier to just control playback using my computer. The new Duet may change this. The Duet has not been released but the price shown is $399 USD. The black boxes, plainly called “receiver” will cost $149 USD.
I’m looking forward to this.
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Posted in Uncategorized, miscellany, ramblings at 10:10 pm by Nate Smith
Some interesting things have gone on with regard to the organization of information during the evolution of the World Wide Web. Initially, the ability to link relevant items was key to the Web. While this is still important and the basis of the Web, search engines have almost replaced linking as a means to locate information. The search engines themselves require the links so links will always remain the key organizational feature of the Web.
The development of the Wiki realized the promise of sir Tim Berners-lee’s original vision of the web — at least until the wiki-spammers arrived to crush it. A wiki has micro links on an organized site. Relevant information tightly linked and easily updated. One might argue Wikipedia is almost the antithesis of what a wiki should be. This is because the scope of Wikipedia is really too broad for a classic wiki. Wikipedia requires special disambiguation entries in order to distinguish between terms that overlap subjects.
Then came the blog. Blogs are mostly comprised of chronologically organized, granular, topic-focused entries. Of course blog entries usually have their fair share of links to other pages. Initially few blogs had original material and were in fact a chronological pointer to interesting things happening on other web sites.
The social network is another interesting facet of information organization. Sites like facebook and linked-in organized on the basis of social connections.
Now we have immediate information organized by the likes of twitter. It will be interesting to see if anything useful comes of that.
My own idea is to combine the highly linked and organized nature of a wiki with the chronology of blogs and twitter. Wikis have a problem where old information goes stagnant and does not get removed or updated, but there is no way to easily tell what is new information and what is old unless authors go to lengths to make it apparent. I would like to see a wiki - I call it a horizon wiki - where each entry has a date or timestamp associated with it. Old entries would be visually different from new entries and corrections. For instance new entries could be dark while older entries are progressively lighter, or vice versa. It would be visually apparent what information was recent and what was old so the reader would have a cue to make sure it is still relevant.
There are a lot of neat experiments with information organization going on right now too. One of my favorites is the news application on the Nintendo Wii. You can place it in a mode where it shows a globe. Places that have news stories show as a small thumbnail picture. The globe is simulated 3D so you can rotate it and see that some locations have stacks of stories with a number to indicate how many while some only have one or two items in the stack stories. This is a neat combination of geographical, and chronological organization - older stories are on the bottom of the stack. Innovative.
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01.04.08
Posted in Reviews, books at 11:47 pm by Nate Smith
Dune, by Frank Herbert, has long been one of my favorite books. It has complicated plots, interesting science, creative settings, politics, intrigue, and the hero’s journey. Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have done a great job of continuing the Dune tradition. The three Legends of Dune novels are the history of the “machine crusade” that is often referenced in Dune and its sequels.
From the dunenovels.com website:
The LEGENDS OF DUNE trilogy details the saga of the century-long conflict, as well as the original breach that formed the deadly feud between House Atreides and House Harkonnen. The story includes Tio Holtzman’s development of foldspace and shield technology, the establishment of the Imperium by House Corrino, and the Zensunni Wanderers’ escape from slavery and their flight to the desert world of Arrakis. Readers will also see the seeds of DUNE’s famous Great Schools of the Mentats, the Bene Gesserit, the Suk Doctors, and the Swordmasters.
The books are Dune, The Butlerian Jihad; Dune, The Machine Crusade; and Dune, The Battle of Corrin. I read them over the course of the Christmas and New Year holiday. I am grateful to Mr. Herbert and Mr. Anderson for continuing the Dune stories. These books are all formidable volumes of around 600 pages, leading to one of my main criticicsms. The books are much longer than they need to be, I’m not sure whether the authors or the editors are at fault. It seems there are constant recaps that repeat the same summaries and some descriptions seem needlessly drawn out. The books also feel like they are being churned out of the “Dune factory” at a few points. I didn’t have this sense as much when I read the Prelude to Dune novels (House Atreides, House Harkonnen, and House Corrino). A few times it began to seem like a kid was telling the story, “then the biggest fleet of battleships you ever saw, went from this planet to that planet, but the bad guys were gone”. Descriptions like this seem very shallow when compared to the depths of some of the twisting plotlines.
The books tell the complete story of the Machine Jihad and also reveal the beginnings of several of the institutions in all the later books. This may have been the most interesting aspects to me, the origins of the Fremen, the Mentats, the Bene Gesserits and the Guild. I wish there had been even more detail about the developments of these facets. It seems to me the authors left openings for another trilogy of books: Dune, The Mentats; Dune, the Bene Gesserits; and Dune, Guild.
If you are a fan of Dune, and would be interested in some of the history leading up to Dune, these books tell the story. They are not the best Dune books to start with. Dune, by Frank Herbert will always be the one Dune book that stands alone and outshines the rest.
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