CompHobby!

Recently knowing I needed to replace the workstations my wife and I were using I made an attempt to go cheap and just buy the PC du jour from one of the local electronics superstores. It seemed like a good idea, a fast not to expensive means to an end as opposed to building or even configuring and ordering a custom unit from Dell or some other such similar path and it could all be had right now. I was very mistaken. One of the two purchased units lasted just long enough to outlive the return policy of the store (30 days) where I bought it and the hard drive failed. The other unit persisted for about 90 more days than the first and then one day simply refused to start after being shut down. In the time the units worked I was exposed to Vista and really was sort of indifferent to the OS some things I liked other things seemed like a very definite backwards leap innovations. There was nothing as far as I can tell that would have kept me from using it though. However; none of that mattered now as both of the new units had now died and the task became getting my wife and I back up and running again. The lesson I learned in all of this is NEW + CHEAP = CHEAP ALWAYS.

In my wife's case the fix was simple. I dusted off her old PC added some memory then did a services and applications purge to get back some space and resources. She still needs and desires a new unit but due to a monumental task she is undertaking right at this time she insists on waiting until it is completed before trying to swap workstations again.

For myself though I was having some hardware issues with my PC, an older loud(ish) type, and I had been eying new computers for quite sometime (I really did not want to build anything new or repair anything old). Being the new owner of two new rather expensive paperweights I decided that the next PC might be a Mac. I felt the need to try something different and I did labor over this decision and thought about getting a customized Dell instead for at least a couple weeks. In the end however I choose a 24" iMac that I purchased locally satisfying that old got to have it now weakness I have. I also did something else I never do and purchased the Apple equivalent of an extended warranty as I can't afford any more expensive paperweights. So far the experience has been well... good, no overly steep learning curve (that was my biggest concern) and the ability to do everything I normally do on a computer. Apple really shines here as the included/preinstalled software is more functional than that of a basic Windows PC in my opinion. I did install four additional programs however; one many people would say is unnecessary for Mac users called VirusBarrier, an Apple offering called iWork, and Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac. An antivirus program just seems like a prudent measure, people had told me that iWork works well with Microsoft Office formats, and I knew Elements from their Windows offering. Also from my Windows experience I opted for a Firefox for Mac install as I use this the most and familiarity is double plus.

The initial boot of the machine went very well with my wireless network correctly identified and connecting was as easy as entering the password. It also found a NAS device we have and again connection to the device was easy. It had no problems with my printer So far as I can tell everything just works but, I haven't really tried it out in depth yet. It seems to handle iTunes pretty well (expected of course) and the display is as nice or even nicer as any one I've owned previous. I realize in the past I've been skeptical even sarcastic where Apple products were concerned and while I am not ready to declare an allegiance to Apple just yet the out of the box experience has been excellent thus far. Of course there is always the obligatory screen capture.... reduced res of course.

Well never did get around to upgrading to Vista. No need to now as it is of course going to be supplanted by Windows 7 the whole thing sort of reminds me of the Windows Millennium faux pas. My next casual use PC will be quiet and probably run Ubuntu or maybe Fedora. Maybe (so damned expensive though) I might opt for an Apple product. Of course opting for the Mac would be joining the most closed close shop of all. Thing is I've decided I get enough Windows at work and when I sit down at a personal computer (yes Macs are personal computers also) I really don't care if it bears no resemblance to Windows in fact I prefer it that way most of the time. Currently I dual boot with XP out of necessity for some devices I own to be able to update but past that I spend the largest part of my casual PC time in Ubuntuville. I am just about to buy a new computer mostly out of necessity, if I go with something already built it will no doubt have some version of Vista installed and my key concern will be how easy will it be to dual boot it with Linux. If I build it then it will end up more than likely being strictly a Linux rig. However I have not ruled out Macs they certainly look cool and I've heard they can do dual booting as well.

With IKE bearing down on Texas over here in Baton Rouge we are just getting over GUSTAV. Here at the CompHobby complex (my office in our home) we did eight almost nine days without electricity and one point the entire city was as well as surrounding parishes were in the dark. So as a result I've sort of been on different wavelength and not thinking to much about tech media things. It has been more of a batteries, gasoline, ice, and food related existence around here lately, actually until yesterday. I have friends and coworkers in rural areas who are still dealing with it and as bad as I hate to say it... I am sure glad that IKE appears to going somewhere else.

Missed putting anything up on the website last month the last two+ months as my job is keeping me really busy and probably will continue for the rest of the summer or even the rest of the year. Working in a new industrial complex certainly keeps one exposed to plenty of fairly advanced technologies even at the humble position of production shift supervisor. Having been in this line of work for about 30 years it is amazing to experience the amount of changes that have been implemented over the years.

When I do find that I have time to myself lately I generally am not going anywhere near a PC for anything but the most leisurely of activities such as music, video, light reading, and shopping. Since the hours have been long lately I decided to get myself a new car. I got to thinking about different vehicles I have owned and decided this time around I wanted something a little sporty for a change. It had to get reasonable gas mileage, be relatively fast, comfortable (in an unpolished sort of way), and most importantly fun to drive. I went and test drove a 2008 MINI Cooper S Hatchback at one of our local car dealers. I was simply blown away by the cars performance which MINI likens to driving a go cart ...a really fast powerful go kart. They in my opinion coined it pretty well although I've haven't driven many go karts lately but in as much as the car can can turn very sharp, stop in very little distance, and accelerates in the 0-60 range very well (rated 6.7 seconds) it does at feel a lot like a go kart would I guess. Cliches aside though the way the car moves it really is a totally capable "city" vehicle fast enough to stay ahead (or get away from the SUV crowd) with enough maneuverability to keep every one else in the rear view mirror if one wants. Sport style seats keep the driver in place very well in relation to the task of darting through traffic at what feels likes "negative G" pulling forces. Hell it's just fun to drive. Cheap however it is not with options the MINI Cooper can very easily cross the $30,000 mark fairly quickly but it is the level of available customization that makes the car very popular with many people. "Youify" is what MINI calls it and there are scores of options available for their vehicles. Just for the record I have this PDF file with the exact details of the one I bought if anyone wants to know how much frivolity I actually possess. When I get a chance I will post a couple real pictures but I have no way of knowing when that might be. Until next time thanks all who have emailed or stopped by the page I haven't gone away just gotten really busy.

The statement in question is in my last piece about the Ubuntu release cycle versus hardware requirements (longevity) as opposed to let just say Microsoft release cycle versus hardware requirements (longevity) and my comment was...

some other OS products seem more like they are out to consume the current installed hardware capabilities of average user

The only reason I am bring this up is because there is an excellent article at InfoWorld about this which gives a Windows OS/Windows Office comparison from 1999 to the present. It is really well written because the author references the average hardware base at each part of the evolution, talks a little on how service packs affected everything, and how much more powerful PCs became as the years passed by. He even has an abbreviation for for the phenomenon (some people just call it bloat) The Great Moore's Law Compensator (TGMLC).

Despite years of real-world experience with both sides of the duopoly, few organizations have taken the time to directly quantify what my colleagues and I at Intel used to call The Great Moore's Law Compensator (TGMLC). In fact, the hard numbers above represent what is perhaps the first-ever attempt to accurately measure the evolution of the Windows/Office platform in terms of real-world hardware system requirements and resource consumption. In this article I hope to further quantify the impact of TGMLC and to track its effects across four distinct generations of Microsoft's desktop computing software stack.

This of course all begs the question but with evolving hardware aren't things really happening faster than they use too???

The net result is that, surprise, Vista and Office 2007 on today’s state-of-the-art hardware delivers throughput that's still only 22 percent slower than Windows XP and Office 2003 on the previous generation of state-of-the-art hardware. In other words, the hardware gets faster, the code base gets fatter, and the user experience, as measured in terms of application response times and overall execution throughput, remains relatively intact. The Great Moore's Law Compensator is vindicated.

The whole article is available at InfoWeek and is called Fat, fatter, fattest: Microsoft. So once again more of the do less with more type of thinking continues to rule in Redmond but then again there seems to an actual sort of kinda scientific principle in play here as well... The Great Moore's Law Compensator (TGMLC).

Well as almost always I decided to give the latest beta release from Ubuntu a try. I always start from scratch just like someone trying it out for the first time might do it. As usual I burned two CD images the i386 desktop and the alternate install ones. My experience has been that only one time I have been able to get the desktop image fully booted and installed. This foray proved no different than what I am generally used to. I just gave up I didn't want to spend hours with the task and used the alternate install CD instead. All went smooth with that except the part near the end where it comes time to install GRUB not only did the install program not ask me where to put it, the program itself couldn't figure it out either and kept giving some message to the effect of "/target" wouldn't work. Luckily good old reliable LILO boot loader thing was available and even asked where I wanted to put it (complete with a list of reasonable choices so I had to just pick one). Not exactly beginner stuff but not that bad as long as one pays attention to the whole install routine as it happens. Since this was a from scratch type install I repartitioned the drive on which I always put my Ubuntu installations as I had saved everything that mattered to me to a my rather recently acquired NAS device. One thing that was different this time was that my drives were being identified as sda* and sdb* instead of the usual hda* and hdb* flavors if the LILO thing had not been so automatic, not noticing this might have been an issue. Well that was it the system was installed and I was ready to reboot back into XP just long enough to modify my boot.ini file and then continue on to Ubuntu.

I used to use another boot manager utility which worked really well but somewhere along the line I lost my license for it and most of the cooler features were tied to the license so the last couple times I went another route. The instructions make using the thing sound difficult but basically it just boils down to something similar to this.

Download th zipped archive
Copy the executable bootpart.exe to Drive C:\
Run bootpart.exe (there is a tool to simplify even this)

At this point the program will read the partitions on the hard drives installed on the system and output a list with information about the different partition types.

Next run:
bootpart 4 c:\bootsect.lnx "Some Linux I Like"

After this the executable bootpart.exe can be deleted or moved as it is no longer needed and leaving it in the root of ones system drive is some sort of risky behavior I would think. Although on second thought one might want to successfully boot Linux first.

The way the program fleshes out is "bootpart 4" is telling it what partition is the root partition or contains LILO or GRUB and this would be whatever number the program identified "4" is just an example. "c:\bootsect.lnx" is where the program will create a small image file that allows XP's bootloader to hand the booting process off off to GRUB or LILO and last "Some Linux I Like" is what will appear in the OS choices menu when the system boots (could be almost anything really but Iwould probably stick with letters and numbers). The only reason I am getting into all this is because the installer gave no options on how to boot other operating systems and I didn't feel like restoring XP's mbr later. Again not exactly beginner stuff but not that bad as long as one pays attention to the whole install routine as it happens. Fooling with way ones computer boots can and often does have consequences attached so proceed with caution.

The first reboot into Ubuntu was a seamless experience and not long after I was greeted with the message that I could install some 400+ updates which I went ahead and did the update thing and was suggested to that I reboot for best results. I forgot the first time to enable my restricted drivers and was obliged to reboot again. After that setting up is sort of like shopping add some additional repositories to simplify things somewhat and then get to picking and choosing what packages one wants. My printer/scanner both worked straight away with no additional configuration which is always a plus as I actualy like to print a fair amount of things like instructions for instance. Included of course is Firefox 3.0b5 (don't really know if that was the original installed version or from that initial 400+ package upgrade). Interesting thing is that while it still has a few rough edges it runs smoother on Ubuntu than same version for XP on the XP side of my PC. I am basing that on certain pages from CNET in particular (the next link could possibly lock your browser or even result in a BSOD) LIKE THIS ONE freeze Firefox on either Ubuntu or XP but in Ubuntu it recovers and asks if I would like to stop running the embedded script and then all is fine. On XP though it ends up being an end process type event and has caused the PC to crash completely. It only seems to happen on the CNET pages but that is not completely tested as it could be just certain CNET pages. Not scientific or anything just a observation on what I have experienced. So for the most part Ubuntu provides me with a decent multimedia PC experience (music, movies, light text-graphics editing, web, email, simple 2D game capabilities, printing...etc).

Once one gets it all up and configured Ubuntu is a very well behaved OS. It is not not for people who don't like tweaking however and therein is why it remains sort of an an anomaly, perfect for some (tweakers) to much trouble for others (pointers/clickers) even though the learning curve is really not all that steep. Once either group has it configured properly it is extremely easy to use. Each subsequent release gets more features and since they occur in a predictable cycle it is more like upgrades to than a radical departure from the base system. Unlike some commercial offerings Ubuntu seems to try and compliment the current installed hardware capabilities of the average user whereas some other OS products seem more like they are out to consume the current installed hardware capabilities of average user. I have been able to install 5 successive versions of Ubuntu on the same PC each improving over the last and to me that is impressive. If Ubuntu (I know I am looking at this from a beta release standpoint) ever gets some polish on some of those rough edges... who knows what could happen! Finally as always here is my new again Ubuntu Desktop Picture.

Saw this on the ARS Technica site. This doesn't make me want to give up Firefox, Opera, and IE just yet but will at least keep Safari in the mix every now and then. The funky looking bold text thing was a hindrance to any continued use of the software for me anyway. The exact details of the fix can found on Surfin' Safari Blog on the The WebKit Open Source Project pages.

I've actually always had one really. A very haphazard one but a backup strategy none the less. On most of the PCs I've owned until recently anyway, always had more than one hard disk installed. The plan was to take valuable files and make duplicate copies on the additional drive. Then I would always make duplicate copies of stuff on different PCs as well, also I always seem to copy files from one OS to another on the same PC if possible. Things I would tend to copy would be pictures, un drm'd musics files, copies of databases, my web and mail servers, install programs, user keys, personal settings, configurations ...etc. Then there were the several USB flash devices I had acquired that I put various files I deemed necessary for one reason or another and they were of course very useful for moving stuff from one machine to another. The word centralized was not however in my vocabulary as the scattered method had always gotten me through the few emergencies I ever encountered without to much pain.

Recently though the idea of a network attached storage device had been intriguing me as a means of sort of automating the process and a way of centralizing everything. I at one point considered building such a device or maybe getting a bring your own disks type rig. There is certainly no shortage of options in the market right now and it almost seems like if one can visualize what they want they can either find a solution out the box or make it themselves. My criteria were pretty simple I wanted it now so it had to be available locally which is really huge as where I live as shopping choices for hardware are somewhat limited. It also had to be fairly compact because I wanted it hanging off my wireless router, and most importantly it had to be dead simple to to use. I wanted to plug it in, find it on my network, set it up, and start using it period without installing any additional software to access it. It also had to be accessible from Linux as well as Windows. With my criteria in mind I set out to one of the chain computer/home electronics style stores located around here. Very few choices were available but I was expecting that so I settled for one of these in the 500GB flavor from Circuit City.I knew it wasn't going to be terribly fast but I was pleased to find out that it wasn't terribly slow either and by that I mean for a home user not doing automated backups, but just backing up user files using the mapped drive interface its speed is tolerable. Now on my server via software I have backup set to happen synchronously and currently is at about 1 GB of data. Since it is set up synchronously it just runs in the background and keeps up with the task as things change hopefully causing a minimal impact on the servers perfomance. The initial backup took well over an hour and I used the Memeo AutoBackUp software that came bundled with the LinkStation Live which is only a trail version as the registration number they bundled with it did not work (less than honest sh*t imho). It would not copy empty folders and as slow as it seemed to be I wasn't about to buy it. So I've been on a download spree trying almost every free product out there before settling on another trialware offering. The program is called MirrorFolder and it completed the initial copy in less than 20 minutes which might not sound all that fast but compared to the various programs I gave a shot it is lightening fast and very easy on system resources. It copies everything you tell it to and as far as I can tell does what the program's writer says it will. To a new user this is not exactly the most intuitive interface but the program's performance compared to other offerings make the learning curve a worthwhile endeavor.

As far my backup strategy goes I'll still do all the things I mentioned in the beginning of the post I've just expanded a bit to include some new automation tools and hardware. Just for the record the LinkStation Live plays very nicely with Linux (Ubuntu anyway) as my installation had no problems finding and making it usable. Still though the whole experience has been sort of a mixed one for me being somewhat tainted by the bundled Memeo trialware debacle and I found the documentation that came with the product lacking. I mean there is a PDF file on the install CD which I didn't use and it is also available on the LinkStation Live once one has managed to connect to it. I just prefer a well written quick start guide in paper form at least. After all I did not want to have to install any software to connect it. Luckily I did not have to but I can see where some users might not have any choice as basically the PDF gave that out as the first step.

Insert the LinkNavigator CD into your computer’s CD-ROM drive.
On a PC, setup should automatically launch. If it does not, manually launch setup.exe by pressing Start and selecting the Run... option. When the Run dialog opens, type d:\setup.exe (where d is the drive letter of your CD-ROM drive). Press OK to continue.

Installing Software
If you are installing the software on a Mac, open the CD and click LinkNavigator to begin installation.

Not what I was realy looking for... a minor thing but a thing none the the less.

Everyone has their favorite free softwares and web based services that they have accumulated so I just thought I would mention a few of mine here.

Web browsing
Well for me its Firefox and a matter of fact I am using the the beta version now. To get it to work like I wanted I got to use one of Firefox's most unique features the about:config screen.


Firefox excels in my opinion because of the amount of customization the user gets with extensions. Everything doesn't always work as intended though which brings me to another utility I've found useful every now and then.

File Compression
For me the program of choice in a Windows environment is 7-Zip and really not so much for its archiving abilities but its Windows Shell integration which allows me a quick way to view the contents of almost any compressed file I may have downloaded.


In addition to opening and viewing the archive files inside can be edited and then saved back to the archive which depending on what one is doing can be a handy feature sometimes.

Text Editing for scripts, webpages etc...
This is in my opinion one thing that a default install of Windows (any version I've ever used don't know about Vista yet though) sucks at. When I say open a script file of some sort I want it viewable in a human readable format but when I close it I want it saved back to whatever format it was in unaltered with no questions asked including funky unix style carriage returns or whatever. My text editor of choice has become PSPad it does all those things and more. It has that same Windows shell integration feature that 7-Zip offers so it is always easily available and ready to use.


I've really only scratched the surface here as this program is really very feature full and I don't need a text/hex editor all the time. My exposure with it is rather limited in relation to its entire feature set, but for my needs it works easily and reliably.

Misc Graphics Tools....
As with text editing a default install of Windows (any version I've ever used don't know about Vista yet though) sucks at this. I mean Linux has The Gimp which is also available for Windows but I don't particularly care for either version Windows or Linux. However the program is at least capable of providing a base off which to work with images though. Windows has Paint which on a good day almost just doesn't cut it. There is Paint.NET which is a vast improvement over Paint and as with all graphics editors has its own learning curve but can be used for most basic tasks. Now the program I generally use or the one I am most familiar with is PhotoFiltre which actually comes in two flavors a free one or a more capable studio version which is a a 30 day free trail shareware product. I can't speak about the paid version as I have only ever used the free version but I might give it a try eventually. Now recently I discovered another freeware offering called PhotosScape. and like Paint.NET and PhotoFiltre has the learning curve but yields some pretty high quality results.


Of the three if I could only pick one it would be PhotoFiltre but as I stated earlier it has more to do with familiarity than anything else. I am going to close for now but I plan on speaking to this subject (favorite free programs) in the future again. One more thing I included this post to the serving category as these and several other programs are very important to that end.

Well I have now got everything migrated from my old server to my new server and as far as I can tell everything works. Since I wasn't changing my ISP, DNS, it was was a relatively easy task after I completed some preliminary stuff. One thing before I installed the OS on the new machine I set the new hard drive partition structure up identical to the old one. For that I used a partition tool on a bootable CD. That way once I got the OS and all updates installed I basically had to just drop files onto their respective drives and install services again. I copied all my directories from the server onto a USB drive and began the task of migration. In a text file I saved some path varibles information for Apache, MySQL, Perl, PHP, and ImageMagick. Apache, Perl, and ImageMagick I actually reinstalled form the latest versions available from each products website but was careful to make the new installs mirror the previous ones from the other server. Both ImageMagick and Perl (ActivePerl) actually offer to make file associations and set the path variable during their install routines but out of a habit that comes from usually dealing with zipped archives I always decline the option and do it myself. With Apache I got it from their binary offerings and instaledl it but declined to let it install itself as a service. I use this page as a reference but during the install I chose a different directory and partition that matched the old servers directory structure and declined the offer to install it as service and did that after I added it to the path variables on the new server. I then pasted in my web directories and configuration files from the old servers Apache installation. As far as PHP and MySQL went since each offers a zipped version and my versions are nearly always current. I just used the files from the old server and pasted them to their proper places in relation to my other folders on the new server. I forgot about the my.ini file for MySQL from the old server and ended up having to create on of those again for the new server, but it wasn't that big of a deal really since the web is full of information on that task. I have always kept my php.ini file in the same directory with the PHP program so it made the trip alright. Of course all this came after installing WindowsXP again so it had begun to be a very long task and even with all the tasks I have talked about being done I still had programs that I use for other server related tasks to install as well as migrate a mailserver program and antivirus subscription type program to the new machine. Each of which had it own steps related to configuration. Finally however I finished and was doing post install clean up things like defragging the disks and setting them up to scan before the next startup. I hadn't tested any services if everything had been done right they would start automatically with the next reboot. Well everything just seemed to work after the next boot so I assume I basically did everything right. All said and done it took about half a day to complete (at least half a day) but really when it all worked there was a feeling of satisfaction which is really the motivation for this site to begin with. Computers tech really really as a hobby trying to make devices do things, to control them actually, in ways that seem amazing, to me anyway.

Now this post isn't really intended as guide but more as an account of how one Joe Sixpack type approached the task. Some understanding Apache, MySQL, Perl, and PHP is assumed but not to much though just a little bit. A stubborn attitude about completing things one doesn't understand all that well is a requirement. There are probably better ways to go about it but this worked for me.