Ian Justman’s Deepest Thoughts (such as they are)

I recently got my first-ever netbook, an Acer Aspire One D250, nearly a month ago.  Thus far, I’m pretty impressed with it.  While I’ve been really happy with the machine, there are a few downsides, most of them which endemic to the netbook platform itself as a whole and not necessarily to this computer in particular.

Without further ado, here’re my impressions:

The pros:

• Comes with Windows XP.  I prefer it over Vista any day since it’s orders of magnitude more reliable.
• Small size makes it easy to carry and whip out at a moment’s notice.
• The three-cell battery looks to have decent runtime (about three hours) if you have your system set to a battery-friendly setting.
• VERY easy to upgrade.  There are three panels on the bottom of the unit, each fastened with one or two screws.  One leads to the memory, another leads to the hard drive bay, and a third leads to a mini-PCIe slot.

The cons:

• Keyboard’s a bit small, but like I said, this is generally endemic to the netbook platform as a whole.  However, there are enough models on the market which renders this issue particular to this model and others like it.
• No optical drive; this one is definitely endemic to the netbook class of devices.  You have to get a separate device to read CDs and DVDs.  Acer’s bundled eRecovery software will not work with drive simulators at all; you need a real CD or DVD burner.
• The copy of XP is XP Home.  Home has some limitations that Professional does not, like you cannot set up remote access, domain access or have good user account control (though there are workarounds).
• If you want to play games, this one really is a limiter in that department.  There are some games which play well, but if you’re looking to get a few frags in with TF2, for example, don’t even bother.  There are gaming laptops for this purpose.

One thing I did from the outset when I first got the machine home was do a bit of housecleaning.  I removed all the crap software (with notable exceptions).  Then, most importantly, I installed updates.  I did all of this before even connecting my new machine to my network.  Once I did all that work, I then carved the drive up the way I do any Windows machine I personally own and operate using another freeb I discovered before I later would see it on a magazine’s CD.  After all that, I then installed many of the applications I normally use on my desktops and laptop, with some exceptions due to the machine’s specs.

Note:  I’ll list much of the software I installed to aid in setup and/or for regular use at the end of this article.

The first hardware enhancement I installed was a mini Bluetooth dongle, the kind that you can leave plugged into your machine yet still pack it away.  Bluetooth is very handy if you have a cell phone, like I have my Palm Centro.  Plus you can use it for a Bluetooth mouse as well as a pair of Bluetooth headphones.  Picked up three of these at one of the local Big Lots! stores for $8 each.  However, the Widcomm stack (distributed by Broadcom) which this device uses has an annoying propensity to crash, and this has happened on all the machines I have Broadcom devices on.  When it does work, it works quite well.

One which I already had which is an absolute must for anyone who needs Internet access on the go is a modem dongle with whichever provider you’re with or would like to be with for that.  In my case, I’m using a Sprint EVDO modem which I got the latter part of last year.  Another option is looking into “tethering” your existing mobile telephone with your computer.  You may need special software, cables and/or other howtos to make this work, which is outside the scope of this blog entry.  If you get a modem from your existing wireless provider, be sure you read their terms-of-use document.  If you are will Verizon, you probably will have the most draconian terms of use, especially if you use your connection for VoIP; Verizon does not want its services used for this purpose.

The next “hardware” enhancement I got was a Targa netbook case which, at $20, is a good investment.  But for a guy who likes to bring cables, adapters and additional storage with him, you may wish to get an additional bag.  If you carry a laptop around with you as well, you may even have room in your laptop case for it, like I do if I have one of the interior pockets clear.  In fact, before my netbook got its own case, that’s how I caarried her around.

And, of course, there’s the matter of additional storage, whether it’s in the form of external USB hard drives, USB thumb flash drives or memory cards, like Secure Digital, Memory Stick and the like.  About all I didn’t have was a CD/DVD drive.  The latter wouldn’t come until the next round of upgrades.

This past Friday, I picked up the upgrades every serious netbook user might want to consider picking up.  This goes with how easy it is to upgrade this machine above.

First was a memory upgrade.  It bears noting that most, if not all, netbooks have only one memory slot.  So the upgrade is going to be a complete replacement of a memory module.  In my case, the machine came with a 1GB SODIMM.  One 2GB SODIMM later and I can actually consider doing some light-duty virtualization on that machine.  In this case, it was a Kingston 2GB PC2 6400 SODIMM.

The next was to ease my concerns about making a disc copy of the recovery partition on this machine.  To that end, I picked up a Toshiba USB-powered CD/DVD writer.  One thing to note about these drives is that you NEED to use two USB ports to make this work right (such a cable is supplied with this unit).  I found this one out the hard way (and maybe a coaster or two later).  Once I got the discs burned, I imaged them on my desktop so I could burn additional copies should I need them.

And finally, I picked up a Seagate 320GB hard drive to replace the Toshiba 160GB hard drive which was originally installed in the machine.  After a little bit of wrangling to get things migrated across (which included some partition removal and re-creating), it seems to be quite happy.

As it stands right now, this setup will likely not need any manner of upgrading for quite a while.  In fact, the RAM alone is at its maximum.

And then comes probably the most important part of any computer setup:   personalization.

In this case, I named the computer “Daiyousei”, after one of the bosses in the Touhou game, “Embodiment of Scarlet Devil”.  “Daiyousei” means “Greater Fairy” in Japanese.  The name comes from her ability to move like crazy and the fact since she’s an Intel Atom, she’s not quite as powerful as other processors out there, but she’s still a force to be reckoned with.  Not to mention, her namesake is quite cute, too.  I have pictures of her on my Facebook to peruse.  More information about Daiyousei the character in the game can be had at the Touhou Wiki at Wikia.

And here’s a list of the software I used in preparing my netbook for use:

• ctupdate: C’T’s offline Windows updater.  Perfect for those machines which do not (yet) have ‘net access.  NO new Windows install should ever be connected until a full update has been performed!
• EASUS Partition Manager:  Excellent partition manager.  It works much like (and in certain cases, better than) Partition Magic.  The only downside is that its messages are somewhat “Engrish” in nature since it is a Chinese product.  Product works under Windows XP and Vista.
• Ultimate Boot CD for Windows:  As the name implies.  Creates a bootable CD which allows a user to work with their system under Windows with a lot of freeware tools while it’s not in a fully-running state.  Has support for commercial utilities not distributed with this package.  User needs a Windows XP install CD or a utility to corral together the needed files in an existing Windows install to make this work.
• CPU-Z:  A utility which takes inventory of the core hardware and software in one’s computer.  Helps one determine whether a computer actually, properly or fully supports features one needs working.
• UltraVNC:  Gives one feature Microsoft opted to take out of the Home Edition versions of Windows, notably remote desktop access.

I also have a host of other applications which I have installed as well, but that’s for another post.

Any tips out there?  I’m always open to hearing tips from those of you out there who own netbooks.

–Ian.

I’ve finally gotten a new job, a miracle in this economy.  The only particulars I’m willing to discuss here is that it’s in the IT/Internet industry couplet.  Other than that, I’m sorry, but I do not discuss work- and workplace-related matters on my blog.

–Ian.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, so I’ve done it since I’ve been occupying myself setting up another MediaWiki site.  I figured I’d set one up for myself so I can get some more experience, and at the same time, make it serve a purpose, notably serving default content from this webserver in case someone types an address which points to my server, but the site doesn’t exist.

For those of you who don’t know what MediaWiki is, it’s the software that backs many wiki sites, perhaps the best-known of all of them being Wikipedia and the many fandom sites over on Wikia.

It’s been a learning experience, that’s for sure.  Right now, the site is a bare-bones MediaWiki setup with restrictions heavily set up so then only I can put material on the site.  I may set up additional namespaces for outside users to use, but I’ll have to read up on shoring up the security on MediaWiki before I do that.  Everything’s pretty tight as it is, but we shall have to see.

Anyway, the other site I set up isn’t live yet, so I can’t say much of anything at this time.  However, another MediaWiki I host is for the folks in the Mabinogiworld.com community.

–Ian.

UPDATE:  Thanks to Google and MediaWiki’s Subversion repository, I found an extension so I can tighten the screws down a bit more.  At this point, I’m actively considering using it for my personal site.  I’ll still keep this blog, however.

UPDATE 2: My web page is now a MediaWiki page.  This should be a lot easier to edit now, especially if I’m on the run.  Though bear in mind, I will be the only editor on the site.  Enjoy!

Given the current climate concerning copyright, I have decided it was high time I put appropriate copyright licenses on my website.  This is especially needed considering the fact I have had a very strict “all rights reserved” clause on the front page ever since I first put it up.  Since I have this blog, and given the proliferation of web-based RSS/ATOM aggregators out there, whether it’s software for personal web sites or sites such as Google or Facebook, that would make inclusion on such sites problematic.

I have decided to license the content on my website as follows:

• Any how-tos I write and publish here will be under an Attribution/Share Alike license.
• This blog will be under an Attribution/Non-Commercial/No Derivatives license.  All content, including anything prior to today, is available under this license.
• All comments posted to this blog belong to their respective posters.  While I claim no ownership to any of those–nor should I, I will cover them under the same license as the blog. If you do not wish your comments to be so licensed, please do not leave any comments, but e-mail them to me instead.  If you have already commented and do not consent to the license, please contact me privately and I will remove them at the earliest possible opportunity.
• Any software I write and publish myself will likely be under the GNU GPL or the GNU LGPL with the version of each license to be determined at the time of release.  Special cases will be so documented.
• Contributions to other software projects–such as bug fixes or enhancement–will be subject to the licensing that covers the entire corpus of same whether so noted or not.  If said projects specifically allow me to specify a license on my contribution, usually in the form of a plug-in or external application which augments functionality of the specific project, they will be individually licensed at my discretion in a way the parent project’s license permits.
• Any site with an explicit license not described here will be licensed as described with a link back to the license’s website.
• I reserve all rights everywhere else until otherwise changed.

I hope this helps cut down on any perceived hassle of figuring out whether it’s okay to present some of my materials.  Especially since I have a lot of know-how I’d love to share with everyone.  I mean, I learn enough from others out there; I figure I should return the favor.

Finally, on a light-hearted but no less serious note, I ain’t a lawyer and I don’t even play one on TV.  I just want to make sure people know how I stand on my materials.  I just don’t like the notion of making people wade through a morass of legalese to figure out how to deal with my site or even ask my permission in certain cases.  I figured this would be the easiest way to do it.  If anyone has any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Thanks!

–Ian.

I have set up a link so that new blog posts get linked to on my Facebook.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with how I do things, I require that any blogs I write give me a lot of access, right down to the database it touches.  Ideally, I would prefer to own the entire machine it runs on.  In this case, I do own the machine.

It is very likely you may not see me post directly onto Facebook for normal activities, but do it from here.  As such, if you want more substantial information from and about me, you must get it from here.  I will not do much of that on Facebook since I do not have much access beyond that of a normal user.

Thank you

Just set up Wordbook on my site.  That way I can blog (which I enforce a strict requirement that I have complete control of the site AND machine on which it’s hosted) and still use Facebook.

–Ian.

Hi, all.

Been in town celebrating Christmas with family and visiting with friends.

Got into town via Amtrak on Tuesday because I really didn’t want to deal with the Christmas Eve rush.  Went to see some old friends at my last Sacramento workplace before moving to Fresno.

Thursday, went to Christmas Eve services with my mother and my sister, the latter having arrived in the early evening after fighting freeway traffic (which makes me even more glad I don’t drive regularly JUST yet).

Friday, went to see a few more friends.  Christmas isn’t the only thing we celebrate; I will not discuss what it was for privacy’s sake.

Saturday, and old friend from my junior high school days comes in to town.  Visit her and her mother that day.  Spent the rest of the day chilling out, watching what little American TV I can actually tolerate.

That leaves Sunday and Monday.  It’s Sunday now, so I’m chilling out for now until I hit the sack.  Will likely write more soon.

I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday season, and please, PLEASE, don’t drink and drive!

–Ian.

(Note:  I had this sitting in my drafts area for a while (says it was October 29th) so I thought I’d publish it now)

In September and October, I made a few purchases at the Fresno County surplus yard for various reasons, notably OptiPlex GX-series boxen, mostly Pentium 4-class machines with a couple of Pentium III-class machines thrown in for good measure.  One of which, an OptiPlex GX240, a 1.8GHz Pentium 4-based machine with (get this!!) SDRAM DIMM slots (not DDR SDRAM, but normal PC133 SDRAM!).  I’d used it as a colo box for a short time, but I replaced it with a substantially smaller (and more powerful) GX260 based on a Pentium 4 2.0GHz.  When I made the replacement, that made the GX240 available for just about any purpose I could use it for.

The first thing I noticed about the GX240 is the fact it has two normal PCI slots as opposed to one low-profile PCI slot that the GX260 has.  While Asterisk can use a fair amount of processing power, in my context, even the Pentium III 600-based Compaq DeskPro SFF box I had been using was enough.  I was already pondering making a move, if anything, just so I can have more modern hardware.  I opened up the machine and decided to check the memory modules to see if it was PC133 memory (the GX240 will not take anything else, not even PC100, even though the processor’s outside bus was being hit with a 100MHz clock), only to find it was PC100.  Once I reinstalled the memory, thinking the memory had been seated, the machine acted up in a way I had anticipated it might.  While I figured I might be able to get the machine running again, albeit with some effort, it was this effort, however minimal, and the lure of a faster processor and the absolute need to have working e-mail (since I also do business with this e-mail server) which caused me to move to the Dell machine.  Since the drive had a completely-functional install of Ubuntu Linux I had recently upgraded to Intrepid Ibis and Asterisk, along with a full intranet mail setup consisting of Postfix providing SMTP and Dovecot providing IMAP (I hate POP3), all I needed to do was to cut over the drive and the two soft modems which serve as FXO (Foreign eXchange Office) devices.  I had to make a few adjustments to make sure the computer could communicate with the rest of my intranet as well as rebuilding the drivers for the modem cards for good measure.  The machine works very well now.

I’ve also upgraded my fileserver from Hardy Heron to Intrepid Ibis as well.  I will also be upgrading my Linux desktop in the same way at some point.

And some thoughts on Ubuntu in general:

Some people consider Ubuntu to be a “newbie” distribution.  I’ll grant that it’s designed with newbies in mind.  However, since its core is based directly upon Debian GNU/Linux, a technology with which I’m somewhat intimately familiar, everything is just like “old hat”.  Ubuntu’s main appeal to me is the simplicity of management since I can just “drop in” my Debian experience into this machine and get to work.  Though what appealed to me more is the fact that Ubuntu’s release cycles are much faster–at six months between each major release–than Debian’s are, which typically is about two years between major releases.

Sometime in November, I picked up yet another machine, this time, a Dell OptiPlex GX270 in the same form factor as the GX240.  For a Pentium 4-class machine, at 2.6GHz with a dual-channel memory controller which requires me to install pairs of DDR DIMMs for each bank, this has to be the fastest machine I’ve bought there by far.  This one I’ll likely set up as a set-top machine for watching anime.  I have since installed a low-profile NVidia GeForce MX440-based card, which probably isn’t the best thing in the world to play games on (though if I do play any games, they won’t demand too much; that’s what my Core 2 Duo is for).  Another thing I noticed is that for a machine this old, while I’m not surprised it has gigabit ethernet like my GX260s have, the one BIG surprise is that it has an on-board SATA controller, which I first saw when I booted a Linux CD on it.  I confirmed it on closer inspection.  Well, we all know what THAT means.  I can go out at any time and plunk in a big-ass HDD and use it for a PVR or whatever.  And like the GX240, it has two normal PCI slots so I can install just about any ol’ thing I wanna, including a nicer sound card, an IEEE 1394 controller card, whatever.  Replace the optical drive (assuming it’s a CD-ROM drive) with a DVD-ROM drive or a DVD burner and I’ll be beyond set.

–Ian.

Well, Konata, my dear Dell Inspiron 9100 a friend of mine gave me a while back, decided to give up the ghost back in October when I was working an event (I’m sorry, I cannot say anything about any work, given my rules; the rule is no blogging about work, so e-mail me if you REALLY want more info).  However, it wasn’t after she gave me a year and a half’s worth of service that she did so.  She’ll be sorely missed.

Knowing I would get a considerable sum of money from said event and the fact I need a laptop for what I do, which I CAN divulge is local consulting and the like, I decided to go laptop shopping at the local Best Buy here in Fresno.  I found two units which fit my limited budget well, though given what I wanted, the Acer Extensa 4420 on clearance fit the bill just fine, and at only $20 more than the closest competitor, I had a VERY hard time saying no.  The other candidate was an ASUS Eee with a 120GB HDD, which would be nice as an auxiliary unit, but not for normal use.  So, I am now the more-or-less happy owner of a new Acer Extensa 4420 which I have christened “Reimu”.

I really like this machine, though there are only a few slight misgivings I have with this machine.  One is that I’d like to have built-in Bluetooth which I got used to when I installed a module into Konata.  I use this all the time with my Treo, mainly for hotsyncing and for getting on the Internet when my Verizon dongle’s not working.  It also found use in driving a set a Bluetooth headphones due to the fact that Konata’s headphone circuit’s a bit hosed.  So I ended up buying a Kensington “microdongle” so I can leave it plugged into the laptop full-time.  Given what I do with my personal communication gear, Bluetooth is practically a necessity.  One thing which would be “nice” to have would be a built-in camera.  Apparently, some units sport a built-in camera in the top part of the lid just above the panel.  However, it DOES have a microphone, which makes using Skype or any SIP phone app, like X-Lite (so I can connect to my Asterisk setup at the house), a snap.  There is one more minor misgiving I have, but to explain that, I have to explain my biggest problem I have with this laptop.

And the biggest problem I have with this laptop:  Windows Vista.  That has to be one of Microsoft’s BIGGEST failures in recent memory, apart from maybe Windows ME.  One of the biggest bugs features that Vista has is Aero, which is its extremely ugly theme which tries to compete with OS X’s eye candy and stuff for Linux/FreeBSD/Unix-like workstations running stuff like Compiz.

The ONLY bit of eye candy which has any functional element that I will willingly use is ClearType under Windows, and other sub-pixel rendering features, not sure what Jobs calls his version of it, and it’s called the XRender extension under the X Window System (NOT “X Windows”!).  This actually makes the computer easier to use because type is much easier to read.

Other than that, eye candy has absolutely NO place on a working system.  Screw transluscent windows.  Screw wobbly windows. Screw “cubic desktops”.  All those fancy 3D effects have NO place on a working system.  As such, these things need a LOT more video memory, which is where ATI’s “HyperMemory” comes in, robbing your system of precious system memory.  NVidia’s equivalent is called “TurboCache”.  Since this laptop has 256MB of dedicated video memory, I’ve been figuring out how to turn off HyperMemory because I have turned off the one pig which would use that memory, Aero.  I want my 600+ megabytes’ worth of stolen memory back~!

Once I upgrade to Vista Ultimate, I’m considering another upgrade; to Windows XP Professional.

Anyway, I’m writing this at a restaurant situated by a Starbuck’s using their WiFi connection.  Now I understand why people find this feature so useful.  The only problem:  No link-level encryption.  But for stuff like this, who cares?  It’s a public blog anyway.  Also picked up all the most recent local bus schedules which I then loaded onto an SD card via the system’s built-in memcard slot (which Konata did not have), which I then plugged into my Treo so I can look at it while I’m on the go.  That and I picked up a few applications via mytreo.net which recently came out and ‘toothed them to the phone.

Later this month, I’m dragging Reimu with me up to Sacramento, and while on the train, I’m going to use Reimu to watch some anime during the three-hour train ride.

If anyone has any suggestions for survival of the torture that is Windows Vista, I’m all ears.  Until I upgrade to Ultimate, formatting and installing XP is not an option.  Thanks in advance!

–Ian.

Hi, all.

As I was getting ready in earnest for Ani-Jam which would start the following day, I learned of the passing of a very important person in my life, Alex H. Urban, director of many children’s theatre companies throughout the United States (my family was involved with Sacramento Children’s Theatre) and subsequently, the world.  Unfortunately, I learned of it nearly a year and a half after the fact when I tried to reconnect with him after so many years have passed.

If any of you out there are alums from Sacramento Children’s Theatre’s years, please leave me a comment.  I’d dearly love to hear from you.

Thank you.

–Ian.