Guinness

By anders pearson 31 Jan 2001

a couple days ago, after i installed it on a new server at work, i was all set to post a glowing review of RedHat 7.0 up here. then i decided that first, i would upgrade my home machine. everything is basically settled down now. overall, i was pretty impressed with it although i have a couple small issues.

first off, the new installer “anaconda” is great. its done with Gtk now so linux newbies migrating from windows will be fairly comfortable clicking their way through it. it basically follows the same steps as the old redhat text-based installer (a few things are in slightly different order. eg, you set your root password and setup your network card before choosing packages now). also, the descriptions of the packages that pop up when you go through the list selecting them (assuming you choose “select individual packages” at the right step) are very nice; with the copious amounts of stuff crammed into a linux distro, even a fairly knowledgeable linux geek won’t know what every single one is and what it does by name.

the first problem i ran into wasn’t so much with the installer, but i encountered it during the install process, so i’ll mention it here. RH7.0 is now a two disk install. not knowing this, i went to linuxiso.org, downloaded and burned the first disk assuming that disk 2 was the standard disk of source code that the old versions shipped with. the install was about 90% complete when it stops, pops out the cd-tray and a “please insert disk 2” message pops up. crap. had to go download and burn disk 2 in a hurry.

while the installer’s interface is nice, the guts aren’t quite so good. i first tried to “upgrade” over my RH 6.0 system. it sort of worked. a little. not really. the console was basically fscked so i couldn’t logon to the machine. i could get it to boot in single user mode and start everything up fine (aside from hundreds of warning messages) by hand and then it was ok, but normal boots were no good. i never really did that much weird stuff to screw up my configuration so it’s disappointing that the upgrade wasn’t very smooth.

instead, i wiped the / partition and just did a straight install. that went real smoothly. then i noticed that i had no network. not only did i not have a connection, the system was pretty sure that i didn’t even have a card. i was pretty sure that i had a pretty standard SMC card (about 2 years old now) in there which previous versions of redhat had had no problem detecting and configuring. so i had to go back and do an “expert” install, forcing it to recognize my card. that did finally work.

i was happy to see that by default wu-ftpd is now not installed. however there were still lots of weird things like rpc, yp-bind, portmap, and nfs turned on by default. it seems to me like the default settings for an OS should be as restrictive as possible while allowing the non-power users to get the most common stuff installed without having to call a help line. so i expect to see telnet on a default install. someone new to linux might not know enough to install it themselves later, but they certainly expect to have it on there; if it weren’t, redhat would have to spend their entire budget on answering phone calls from confused newbies. but things like rpc and yp-bind aren’t really your typical home-user fair. they’re pretty useful if you have a well set-up (and firewalled) intranet, but out in the wild they seem to attract security holes at an alarming rate. but it also seems like the only people who would really be interested in them are the same kinds of people who probably know enough to be able to set them up for themselves. so why include them on the default? i don’t get it.

what made me the happiest though was seeing that openssh is now included and on by default. sweet. now they just need to remove telnet and i’ll be pretty pleased.

ASIDE: the new server at work came with a GeForce 2 GTS. if you keep up on graphics cards, you’re probably drooling right now. dear god. that is a fast card. i was running an openGL screensaver in the root window at full speed/resolution while i worked and it didn’t even make a noticable dent in performance/responsiveness.

export $HOME=128.59.33.118

By anders pearson 28 Jan 2001

sorry about any weirdness and downtime experienced in the last 24 hours or so. i’ve been moving everything over onto a fast new server and in the process of configuring things, i had to break stuff a few times. should be pretty much stabalized now though. hopefully things will also be a little faster :)

my $PDA = &get_pda(rand());

By anders pearson 25 Jan 2001

i’ve decided that the time has come for me to join the whole PDA craze and pick up a little box with which to run my life. so the question now is which one to get?

for obvious reasons (microsoft is evil, a UI designed for a large screen and mouse/keyboard doesn’t scale well to PDA sizes, etc) anything running WinCE (Cassiopeia, iPaq, etc) are right out of consideration.

what’s left is basically the Palm family, Visors, and the Sony CLIE. Visors are cheap and have the whole module thing going for them but i’ve been told that they’re rather flakey and the screen isn’t that nice. goatee.net sings some pretty high praises for
the CLIE and so that is a definate possibility. of the offical Palm
machines, the m100 is very cheap and has a plastic faceplate that doesn’t break easily
(important), the Vx looks pretty and is really small, the IIIc has a color display which is pretty cool, and the VIIx has built-in wireless internet, which is very cool.

after reading tons of reviews, i’m basically torn between the CLIE and a
VIIx. The CLIE is smaller, nicer looking, and cheaper, but that wireless internet has the potential to be better than sex.

so now i’m asking for the opinions of any of you out there who know anything about PDAs and have any recommendations to make or warnings for
me.

use the source

By anders pearson 21 Jan 2001

the source code for /dev/random is finally up. it really hasn’t been cleaned up yet but i try to write fairly clean code to begin with so it isn’t that bad. at any rate, you can now see for yourselves exactly how markov works if my previous explanations didn’t make much sense. i still plan on making a nicer looking template pretty soon too.

for the love of Newark

By anders pearson 20 Jan 2001

today, i went, with mimi and about 8 of her friends to Newark.

three of us took a train over and were meeting the rest at the train station there. we got there early and spent some time wandering around a bookstore reading trashy astrology books, connect the dot porn (don’t ask), and Oprah’s magazine (we learned how to “walk like a goddess”). for the most part, the train station was horrid. well, it wasn’t that bad except for the mind-numbing, soul-crushing muzak; but that was enough to ruin it.

when everyone finally got in, we walked down to a brazilian restaurant and stuffed ourselves on good food and sangria while a Xuxa episode played on tv. afterwards we went to a bakery for dessert, then descended upon the Newark Museum.

as soon as we got into the museum, one of the guards decided that we looked like we were up to no good and followed us around the whole place telling every other guard, in a whisper loud enough for us to hear, to keep an eye on us because we were some kind of vagrants or miscreants who were just there to cause trouble. naturally, we were a little offended. at first, the other guards who had been warned were also a little hostile to us but they got over it once Haydn started reading the Chinese calligraphy out loud in perfect chinese and was explaining to them the translation and the meanings of the poems. toward the end, we were in this replica victorian house and the evil head guard woman who hated us was there trying to shoo us out.

Haydn says “Wow! look at that ceiling!” pointing out the nicely decorated cieling about 20 feet over our heads.

the evil guard woman screams out like we were little kids on a field trip “Don’t TOUCH anything!!”

Haydn gives her a distateful look and says “I can’t touch the ceiling.”

you had to be there i guess.

all in all, Newark isn’t that bad a city. rather pleasant actually. just stay out of the train station and don’t touch anything in the museum.

w3m

By anders pearson 19 Jan 2001

i’ve been using w3m for quite a while as a light, fast text-based web browser. it’s basically like lynx but with support for tables, frames, and SSL. i just now found out though, that there is a w3m.org with some pretty neat stuff. there is a demo that will let you see any random url through w3m as well as a short history of how w3m came to be that outlines the algorithm that it uses for laying out tables.

i plan to lose control

By anders pearson 17 Jan 2001

i’m standing in line today at the Taco Bell on the first floor of my building waiting to get my recomended daily allowance of bean burrito goodness when i almost had to kill someone.

Taco Bell offers several different gradations of their “Border Sauce”: “mild”, “hot”, and “fire” (there might also be a “medium”; i don’t recall). of course, this being America and not Mexico, the first couple levels are merely variations on bland tomato paste and can’t really be considered particularly spicy or flavorful. only the “fire” seems to have any real taste whatsoever. naturally, the “fire” sauce is a little more popular than the others and so of the bins of sauce packets on the counter, the “fire” bin is almost always empty or near empty. it’s very sad.

anyway, i’m in line today and i see that the bin has a single “fire” packet left. then i notice that the guy in front of me has not one, or two, but about fifteen “fire” packets on his tray. as i’m watching, he reaches in and grabs the last one for good measure. i was absolutely speechless. he only got two tacos so unless he was planning on floating them in a pool of sauce, it was obvious that he was just hoarding them for the sake of hoarding them.

so i’m wondering if this guy really is as much of a complete and total asshole as i think he must be or did my parents just raise me with an underdeveloped sense of selfishness?

of course, as this is going on, i’m also listening to the kid behind me telling his friend about how over vacation he and another friend of his flew to some remote location in Colorado on his friend’s private lear jet for a week of skiing. i counted three times within a minute that he mentioned the fact that his friend actually owned his own lear jet.

illuminator

By anders pearson 08 Jan 2001

today i bought a fishing watch. i don’t fish. i don’t plan on fishing. why did i buy a fishing watch? because it was the only decent watch i could find that didn’t glow permanently.

for some reason, just about every digital watch that they are making now seems to be permanently illuminated with this annoying green light. they don’t actually have a light on, they just use some cleverness with reflective materials so that if there is any light in the room whatsoever, they look like they’re illuminated.

i think this is about the most irritating thing in the world. having something on my wrist that glows at me out of the corner of my eye all the time is bloody distracting. i have a hard time walking when i’ve recently polished my boots because the shine on the toes keeps catching my eye and i can’t look away. i’ve been known to walk into walls.

i don’t know, maybe i’m just weird. anyway, i now have a watch that doesn’t glow at me unless i press a button telling it to light up. it also shows the phase of the moon which, admittedly, is pretty damn cool. now i have to go find out what the longitude of new york is so i can punch that in and always know when the high and low tides are. never know when i’ll want to go swimming in the hudson.

k-spot

By anders pearson 06 Jan 2001

kamden has been assimilated whether he likes it or not.

headkick facsimile

By anders pearson 05 Jan 2001

just thought i’d let everyone know that i’m still alive. i’m still up in maine on “vacation” and shall continue to be for about another week.

maine is very cold.

other than that, there isn’t a lot to do here. i’m on an iBook on my parents’ kitchen table (the only available phone jack in the house is in the kitchen and i only have a 2m cable) working over a very slow dialup connection (the misery). but i guess that’s better than nothing.

other than sleeping, eating beaucoup mac+cheese, and drinking beer the highlights of my vacation have included:

getting contacts

having peripheral vision is something i haven’t experienced in over a decade. very neat. you really forget how much of a handicap glasses really are until you get rid of them. unfortunately, it’s taking me a while to get used to them. i apparently have superhuman blink reflexes. when i first got them, it took the eye doctor about 45 minutes of poking me in the eye and swearing to get them in. it was taking me an hour or so to get them in or out by myself until tasha let me in on the secret to getting them out quickly: just stick your finger in your eye and jab it around until they come out; surprisingly effective. now i just have to master getting them in.

new year’s eve

yet another spectacular party at Jere’s. got to see lots of friends who i haven’t seen in way too long (kara, zeb, anthony, matti, heather, tasha, nigel, elliot, jesse, etc), got to finally actually meet kim in person after having known her online for the last 3 years. and of course, we managed to consume enough alcohol to mortally wound a small herd of elephants. driving for six hours through “whiteout conditions” in the worst blizzard we’ve seen in a while was just icing on the cake.