The Flow of Consciousness

I realized today that as of yesterday, I’ve lived in my current dwelling longer than I’ve lived anywhere outside of my parents’ house. As of today, I’ve lived here in Regent Square for 368 days. I lived in Forest Hills for 366 days.

This is a little freaky for me, as I’ve moved around a lot since graduating high school, including a new dorm or apartment every year of college (not unusual, I know).

I’ll probably stay here at least until Brigette finishes school, but probably until a month or two after. Then, who knows?

I have so far kept up the mission. The first week, I walked to work every day.

The following week, I was in DC on a business trip, but I still walked from my hotel to the job site every day. It was closer—approximately 3/4 mile instead of the 1.6 miles from my apartment to the office, but I think I made up for it in the amount of walking I did every night after work. I didn’t use my car at all that week!

This past week, though, I hit an exception condition: “At some point during the day, I must leave work to go to something to which I cannot reasonably walk.” I had a package to send, and it was too heavy for me to reasonably carry it. I drove to work, returned, and went for a nice walk near dark.

What have I noticed? I’m certainly not as tired when I arrive at work as I was when I first started this. I’d get to work and be completely and utterly exhausted, and drenched in sweat. Three weeks in, I’m able to make it to work without being debilitated. I have a little more energy than I did before I started walking. I still need a jolt in the morning, usually getting a cup of coffee or tea around 10:30.

There are essentially two weeks remaining in the month. This next week is a normal week, while the following will be once again spent in DC. My hotel for this upcoming trip is considerably closer—one block away, so I’ll have to offset that with some walking around the monuments and Smithsonian. I didn’t make it to the Jefferson Memorial last time, so I’ll have to make sure I get there this time!

Oh, and if you’ve not seen them, check out my DC pictures.

For too long, I’ve put regular exercise in a priority below the various activities which follow work. I’ve favored hurrying home to watch a movie, write a review, or work on my coding projects to a healthy exercise regimen.

No movie, work, or project is more important than my health. I realized this a few months ago and have finally resolved to do something about it.

Somehow, I need to lose weight. I’ve not maintained my weight since Thanksgiving and Christmas were not kind to my attempted diet. I already eat fairly healthily, so the missing link is exercise.

I recognize that I could join a gym or something, but that costs money I’d rather not surrender and a time commitment which doesn’t fit into my schedule. How can I exercise without sacrificing too much time or money?

Just an approximation, you stalker you

I believe I’ve found an acceptable exercise method: I will walk to and from work daily through June.

The trip normally takes approximately 15 minutes, including about 5 minutes of walking from where I normally park to my office building. It can reach half an hour on bad traffic days. Google Maps says that the trip is 1.6 miles and will take approximately 33 minutes. Fair enough.

In walking, I can get some exercise and savings perhaps a quarter per day in gas. I suppose when compounded through the month, I could save up to…$5.50 by walking. Maybe I’ll buy a beer to celebrate when the month is finished.

However, I recognize that there are certain times when walking will be a great inconvenience to me or my coworkers. I am permitted to drive under these very few conditions:

• An injury sustained during the month makes the journey unbearable.
• It is raining with such ferocity that an umbrella or rainsuit would be useless.
• I awaken or would otherwise leave too late to arrive by 9:30.
• At some point during the day, I must leave work to go to something to which I cannot reasonably walk.
• I must go somewhere immediately after work and could not walk home in time to get my car and get to my destination.

If any of these conditions occur, I must go for at least a 30 minute walk after work in order to make up for it, unless it is unsafe for me to do so. If I am unable to walk for the day, there is no repercussion, as I can’t really think of anything to make up for it.

I tried this for the first time today. I was exhausted by the time I got to work, and I probably left my apartment just a little too late. I carried in my backpack a towel and an extra shirt. It was raining lightly, so I stopped at my car to get an umbrella. The journey back was far more pleasant, and I actually typed the majority of this blog post on my phone using WordPress for Android.

For future travels, I’ll likely wear my Jaybird bluetooth stereo headset and enjoy some tunes or audiobooks. The latter would likely help me power through some books I’ve been wanting to read, but have not found the time to read, such as Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.

I don’t know if I’ll log my weight loss during the month, but I intend as of this moment to post again in a month’s time on this subject and hopefully report positive results.

Please help me on this, and help keep me to this. Thanks.

I’m 25 today. Hooray. Nothing really happens when one turns 25, except that drop in car insurance rates. Work lunch today was macaroni and cheese and fish, with ice cream cake for dessert. I was pleased.

If you’re in downtown Pittsburgh tonight or tomorrow and know me, feel free to meet up with us as we meander about the Central Business District in preparation for dinner and tomorrow’s parade.

I didn’t blog as much as I would have liked to this year, mostly because of my crazy busyness.

My article on how to install Gears on 64-bit Linux continues to see quite a bit of traffic. I even host a copy of Gears, even though it’s likely out of date. Also in the Linux vein, my articles on how to buy DRM-free music online with Amazon MP3 on Linux and Android were moderately popular. I wrote an article on how to add CACert root certificates to Chromium on Linux and it sees more traffic than most of my other posts combined.

I wasn’t as active in the open source community as I would have liked, but I did make some contributions to Gwibber, Astrid, Celtx, and Lernid. I mentioned the first three in my Launchpad activity update. The latter is a newer development by Jono Bacon. I contributed the entire Esperanto translation less than two days after it was available on Launchpad. I have no way of verifying it, but I think that the Esperanto translation was the first complete non-English variant translation available.

I recently wrote two brief articles on how to automate some tasks on Facebook. One was how to rapidly expunge friend suggestions, and the other was how to select all friends in a friend select dialog.

I met Tom Dickson of Will It Blend? fame at CES last year. He was really cool and friendly.

I also wrote a few articles on politics, my favorite being A Comment on Socialism Defined, a comment left on a friend’s blog, Strike the Root!. I’ll not go into how much I think Obama and his friends have screwed up the country already (it’s not all been bad—he has done some good things). That’s something for another article.

A new hobby this year for me has been stock trading. I’d saved up some money and decided to use some skills I learned in middle school to make a buck or two on the stock market. Ironically, not 12 hours after I blogged about my flagship stock being up near 200%, that stock, SPNG, dropped 27.66% in one day, costing me $23,000 of value on a $10,000 investment in 65 minutes. It recovered, and I still made out with a profit, but I learned a very, very valuable set of lessons. I still kick myself occasionally because of this and probably will for a long time. My goal of getting into stocks was to generate enough money that I could pay off my student loans really quickly. I could have paid off more than 2/3 and I didn’t cash out when I should have.

I did meet many, many new people in the stock world, especially Stockguy22 and the Bulls on Wall Street crew. I said goodbye to StockTwits after I was temporarily banned for cheering on Vonage (VG) when it was less than 50 cents, riding it to 80 cents, and cashing out. They called it a worthless, crappy penny stock. A few weeks later, it spiked to ~2.20 and has been above a dollar since. HA!

I got some neat advice from friends while considering the purchase of a MacBook Pro (which I got and love) and the acquisition of a PS3 (which I did get).

The biggest changes in my life were in my location and work. I got a new job in March at Vivísimo, a search platform maker in Pittsburgh–I even wrote a post on the corporate blog! I moved in with some friends in May, but realizing we were a little cramped, I moved into a new apartment in July (I didn’t write about that!).

I wrote more than 28 articles for Bob Buskirk‘s ThinkComputers. My favorites were the Masscool MP-1371RS Media Player and QNAP TS-809 Pro network attached storage device. I use the former alongside my PS3 for video formats my PS3 can’t stream from the latter. The NAS has become the central storage hub for all of my computers, replacing the QNAP TS-109 Pro I reviewed two years ago.

BIOS LEVEL was fairly inactive this year, largely because of a major server outage from May to August. I did write an article on the Orbita Mouse, which I still use to this day at work. I did record and post several videos from Ohio Linuxfest 2009, including Linux Journal editor Shawn Powers’s keynote, Jorge Castro‘s talk on building a community around an open source project, and more on licensing, making money from open source, democratized design, and talking to policymakers and legislators about open source. All Ohio Linuxfest videos with a write-up are available on BIOS LEVEL, or on BIOS LEVEL’s Blip.tv channel.

Jon Daniel and I spend most of November cranking out a beta version of Profyle.at, a personal profile directory service. We’re not entirely finished yet, but sign up for our Profyle.at beta and you’ll likely get in! We want to help people find you on the Internet so your friends and family can follow you on whatever sites and networks you like the most. We pitched for funding and didn’t get it, but were cordially invited to present again during the next round in a month.

Brigette and I are still together, and going strong. We’ve spent most of her winter break together, driving throughout western PA to be with friends and family, too. She’s been working on her web site for her beagle and vizsla show dogs, Glade Mill Sporting & Hound. She’s come a long way, from using a completely WYSIWYG editor to redoing it with a mix of code and WYSIWYG with Adobe Dreamweaver. I’m eager to see what she’s planning for it.

Regardless whether he acquisition may be via self-purchase or via a generous, collaborative Christmas effort, I’m considering acquiring a Playstation 3.

I’ve been considering it for quite some time, actually. The format war is won, with Blu-ray the victor. While I’m not terribly keen of Sony’s dominance, I do acknowledge the market success of the format. This success is primarily evident in Amazon’s stonking great Blu-ray deals as of late.

I’m not one much for purchasing movies, as evident by my relatively small DVD collection (~20-30, most were $5 deals or gifts). I tend to buy something when I know it will have replay value, or I want to buy it to support the genre, director, or other such thing. I find that most of my purchases also tend to be action movies wherein sound or visuals play a large part of the experience.

Given Blu-ray’s high quality visuals and high fidelity audio, it seems prudent to consider my future purchases in this format rather than the ubiquitous DVD format. My TV, a Vizio 32″, is 720p, so I’d be able to take advantage of the HD format provided by Blu-ray.

As for a player, it makes the most sense to consider a Playstation 3 instead of a standalone Blu-ray player. I know that devices in the latter category are falling in price and have recently become cheaper than a Playstation 3, which, for the longest time, was the cheapest Blu-ray player. However, given the fact that I do on occasion play video games, it seems that a Playstation 3 would be of greater value to me despite the added cost.

I originally considered a PS3 60 GB edition, the higher-end package of the first edition of the unit. Like the lesser, 20GB package of the first edition, the 60GB packed hardware PS2 compatibility, but added a wireless adapter and the larger hard drive. Subsequent revisions of the console eventually removed PS2 compatibility, much to the chagrin of hardcore backwards compatibility fanboys such as myself.

The newest version of the PS3, the Slim, is more power and space efficient, but sacrifices the ability to run Linux—something all previous editions could do. I really want to be able to do this, but after a conversation with Shawn Powers on Twitter (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8), I decided that a PS3 Slim might be more efficient for me (9, 10).

Linux on the PS3 seems to be not what it’s chalked up to be, and the likelihood of me actually ever buying and playing a PS2 game is to slim that it’s probably just not worth it. Also, the new Slim costs $299, and a used 60GB costs ~$250. A $50 difference? For that price, I could go get a used PS2 and have full hardware compatibility.

What will I go for first? Probably Blu-ray movies. I’m really interested in the new Star Trek movie on Blu-ray, as it’s not only a visual and auditory feast, but a great story with ton of reply value. I also wouldn’t mind getting Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and a few other recently released action and science fiction movies. There are a few PS3 games I wouldn’t mind trying, plus the Playstation network is free and has all kinds of tie-ins with Netflix, etc.

I imagine that I’d probably stick to DVD for older movies; movies which were filmed before digital production was the norm. There might be a few which have been remastered and would be worth it, but I’ll likely rely on others’ reviews to decide whether or not the potential premium cost for Blu-ray is worth it.

I guess, then, that the point of this blog post is to call for other arguments. Talk me into or out of a PS3. Remember that I’m not a huge gamer any more, so main attractor is the Blu-ray player.

A month ago, I mused purchasing a 13″ MacBook Pro. My primary reasons for considering the MBP were the freedom of OS choice, “seeing what all the fuss is about,” premium hardware for just a couple hundred dollars more, excellent customer support, and a healthy dose of nostalgia.

Approximately a week after writing the post, a friend let me know of a rare deal: a friend of his who just so happens to be an Apple authorized reseller was in jeopardy of losing her authorization because her sales were really low. In order to meet her goal, she was selling Apple hardware at cost. You can’t beat cost! Combine that ~$300 savings with putting the purchase on a credit card with excellent rewards, and it would put me over the edge of my reward amount needed to get myself with a free flight worth about $400.

So, I bought a stock mid-level 13″ MacBook Pro, the one with a 2.53 GHz Core2Duo, 4 GB of DDR3, and a 250 GB HDD. I did get AppleCare and a remote, although the remote was backordered and mysteriously hasn’t arrived yet (should hear why on Monday).

My thoughts?

Summary

I’ll never go back. Apple has a solid hardware product with bells and whistles which themselves make me glad I bought it, plus a slick operating system which appeases my desire for an easy-to-use, on-the-go environment.

TL;DR version

and it had been on for ~20 minutes

Hardware. Seven hours of battery life. Seriously. I got right around that many hours the day I took this screenshot about a week after I bought it. The multitouch touchpad with its gestures are amazing and have seriously changed how I use a touchpad–even more once I enabled tap-to-click I miss them when I use a non-Mac laptop. The magnetic power cord connector should be on every computer: it’s saved my ass twice now. The graphics card is enough to handle Left4Dead with most of the settings on medium, and it’ll certainly handle the older games and casual games I tend to play more often these days. The screen color is amazing and the keyboard is the most welcoming keyboard I’ve ever used. This is the first line of Mac laptops with an SD card reader, and that’s indispensable for me these days with the dog show photography I’ve been doing.

Downsides? I’m not too hot about the non-removable battery, but I’ve never needed a second battery even on my old Averatec which had approximately two hours of battery life. Apple made a data-driven design decision when choosing this path. I’ve not heard many complains except from people who are resistant to change. Folks who really need another battery can suffice for the hour-long charge time while plugged into something like a HyperMac battery. I also wish it had a real microphone port, but how often do I actually use a microphone? Never. The built-in mic is sufficient for almost everything I’d ever use it for. I’m also not too hot about the lack of a DVI or HDMI port and a mini-Displayport instead, but it’s another data-driven design decision and technically Displayport is a better standard for video. I ordered an adapter from Amazon; it’ll arrive this week.

Software. Mac OS X isn’t new to me. I used 10.5 on Jon’s Macbook when I borrowed it for a few months last year, and used 10.1 back in high school. It’s not a huge adjustment for me, so I’ll not go over such nuances. However, there are a few things I must highlight, primarily so that Linux folks like myself can mirror these features in Ubuntu, Fedora, and the like.

Time Machine is indispensible. I configured Time Machine to work with my QNAP NAS and it backs up regularly. The whole system! Efficiently! Recoverably! With an excellent interface for both setup and browsing and recovery. rdiff-backup pulls this off on Linux, but there’s no “don’t make me thing” GUI for it like there is for Time Machine.

Drag-and-drop installation of programs has always been one of my favorite things about OSX. No complicated installer program with click-through EULAs, no broken packages or forced upgrades. Sure, the packages are larger because of universal binaries and statically linked libraries, but I’d rather take up another 10 MB if it means I can simply drop an icon in a directory to install it, or move it to the recycle bin to remove it. I’ve been using iUseThis to track my used programs and combining it with AppFresh for version updates.

OSX is just Unix-y enough for a lot of the stuff I do. MacPorts gives me access to a lot of utilities, especially Synergy, which allows me to use the mouse and keyboard of one computer on another via a network connection. I’ve also used it for up-to-date Python and other scripting and development tools. I use Visor to give me a drop-down, Quake-style terminal in which I do lots of command line stuff, primarily via an SSH connection to one of my many Linux computers.

Perhaps one of the most care-free benefits of OSX for me is painless hibernate, sleep, and suspend. I can shut the lid and forget about it. I’ve rebooted the Mac maybe thrice in the month I’ve had it (outside of OSX updates). I’ve never seen Linux or Windows hibernate/suspend working this well on any hardware.

Downsides? There aren’t many. Sometimes I get frustrated when I can’t find an OSX analogue for a Linux program I’ve used. I have yet to find a decent microblogging client which I like as much as Gwibber on Linux. Despite being written in the highly-portable Python language, Gwibber depends on a few things that OSX just doesn’t provide. I’ve tried Tweetdeck, Nambu, Spry, and a host of others, but just can’t find the feature set I want (eveything most clients have, plus Identica, Facebook, and Flickr plugins). Twirl comes the closest, so I’ve been using it. Eventbox is showing promise as it becomes Socialite, but I’ve yet to actually see it in action.

I’ll eventually get around to trying out Virtualbox‘s 3D acceleration for some Windows games, or Wine and WineBottler for some others.

A major problem I have with my OS choices is that I like to tinker. OSX gives me the freedom to tinker with a lot of things, but its defaults suffice for almost everything. I think it’ll be more difficult for me to screw up OSX than it is for me to screw up Linux or Windows.

TL;DR summary:

I’m pleased with my purchase and haven’t had the buyer’s remorse I’ve had sometimes when making such a giant purchase. The MacBook Pro laptop was designed with both low-level and power users in mind, and I highly appreciate it. It’s just enough to not be too much.

For some time, I’ve been considering buying a new laptop computer. I’ve been primarily considering a 13″ MacBook Pro with a 2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 4 GB of RAM, a 250 GB hard drive, and all of the fixins that come with it. I’d be adding only the Apple Remote and possibly the AppleCare extended warranty.

Why a Mac? Primarily, freedom of choice. If I buy a standard Windows, Linux, or OS-less computer, it’s unlikely that it will run Mac OS X as a Hackintosh. Mac laptops will run Mac OS X, Windows, and (Ubuntu) Linux. Running all three OSes gives me the widest choice of what tool I want to use for a particular task. I imagine that I’ll be using Mac OS X most of the time, switching to Windows for gaming on the go, and using Ubuntu in a VirtualBox, VMWare, or Parallels virtual machine when I need my Linux fix. I’m a software developer, so having access to the emerging mobile market (iPhone development with Xcode, Android development with Eclipse) as well as the established markets (system and web development) is important.

I’m a desktop Ubuntu user and prefer it for my day-to-day usage. I’m open to the idea of seeing what Mac OS X has to offer, but I’ll still have my desktop around for normal usage. I’ve been without a regular laptop for nearly 8 months (been using my XO every now and then), and I hadn’t really missed it until I started working at Vivísimo. It could be peer pressure (I’d estimate that half of the company uses Macs for development, system and web), or it could be seeing a lot of people very happy with their choice.

There’s also a bit of nostalgia in going back to Mac. I used Mac OS from 7.0 until 9.0, then briefly used OS X 10.1 at the end of high school, followed by some OS X 10.5 on a 13″ MacBook earlier this year.

Also, I compared the hardware, and for similar specs, the MacBook is only $100-$200 more compared to most offerings from MSI, ASUS, Dell, Lenovo, and HP at NewEgg, Amazon, and the like. This is a sizeable but understandable difference for the quality of hardware and, most of all, quality of customer support.

The biggest problem for me is simply figuring out where to buy it. I’m cautiously arranging for this purchase in my finances, and I think I’ll be ready before the end of September. I made this chart to show potential places I could purchase it.

The cheapest option seems to be Apple refurbished plus the $124 AppleCare plan from eBay. I’m also considering the MacMall sans AppleCare, as it includes Parallels for free after rebate. Currently, I see it like this: Apple (refurb) > MacMall > Apple (edu) > Amazon > Apple (new) > Buy.com. I have no qualms about refurbished things–they’re good as new most of the time, and I’ll have a hard shell on this within a month of purchasing it.

I’m wary of AppleCare, though, but I see its usefulness. I got a five year warranty on my Dell monitor in 2006 and I’ve used it three times already. I plan to replace the 250 GB hard drive which comes with the MBP 13″ with a 128 GB SSD I can get on the super cheap. I don’t really have a need for a ton of hard drive space, even with three OSes installed. I can stream my music, and my pictures will remain on my desktop. I have a VPN into my FiOS-connected apartment, so remotely accessing things on my NAS or desktop wouldn’t be an issue. I’d see faster boots and faster loads, plus some battery life savings.

The downside–the primary reason I mention this–is that, if I mess up when installing the SSD (unlikely), I void the warranty. An ill-informed Apple Genius tried to convince me that simply opening the back voids the warranty, but he is sorely mistaken. Replacing the insides of a MacBook Pro does not void the warranty based on the simple action of replacing them. One must really screw up something and Apple must prove that the replacement screwed up other things (hard to prove!).

I’ll likely up the memory when DDR3 prices come down, too.

So, Internet friends, readers, countrymen, I ask you this: talk me out of this, or talk me into it. I need a decently powered, long life battery-ed, light gaming capable, webcam having, OSX/Windows/Ubuntu capable laptop for cheaper than the above. Bonus points for benefits and drawbacks of AppleCare, as most folks to whom I’ve spoken haven’t gotten it based on cost alone.

Keep the fanboyism to a minimum, please, and do be constructively critical.

I’ve done a ton of programming this week outside of work. I feel like I’ve had at least five browser tabs open for Launchpad at all times! If you’re not familiar with the site, it’s a code hosting service for open source projects, most notably Ubuntu Linux.

I’ve done some Esperanto translations on Launchpad prior to this week. I translated a large portion of Akregator (RSS/Atom feed aggregation for KDE) and a few others. I’ve also filed and added to a bunch of bugs, many of which were cleaned up by the recent One Hundred Paper Cuts bugfixing effort by the Ubuntu development team.

This week, I was abnormally active. I had some downtime here and there at work, plus some open nights, so I took advantage of this time to make significant contributions to three projects: Gwibber, Astrid, and Celtx.

Gwibber

Gwibber is a microblogging client for microblogging services such as Twitter, Identi.ca, and Jaiku. It also supports Flickr, BrightKite, FriendFeed, Facebook, and more, including generic RSS and Atom feeds. It’s written in Python by Ryan Paul (@segphault) of Ars Technica fame.

I had two and a half contributions this week. One is a patch addressing bug #364303, to add linkification of stock ticker symbols, denoted by a dollar sign followed by the ticker symbol, e.g. $GOOG. Clicking on a linked symbol will launch the browser and point it to Google Finance. Originally, it linked to StockTwits, but that site refuses to support OTC stocks.

The second contribution is a complete Esperanto translation of the program. I have mixed feelings on translating programs since most Esperantists would be using their computer in their native language. I decided to do it because, well, Gwibber has just a few more than 115 strings, so why not? It took me approximately an hour and a half, and it was well spent.

That half contribution is a committed, but as-of-yet unproposed/merged patch to fix bug #364322, wherein Gwibber doesn’t load Identi.ca/Laconi.ca groups at all. The problem is that the constructors for identica.SearchResult and laconica.SearchResult expect a TwitterAPI-compatible dictionary, but are passed a standard RSS feed dictionary instead. identica.Client.get_group() hits an RSS feed instead of an API function, because the Groups API in Laconica is not yet finalized. This causes Gwibber to throw an Exception–it’s caught and displayed, but the results aren’t loaded. I modified identica.Client.group(), which calls get_group(), to instead call identica.Client.get_search() and load the search results for the group name. It’s not a clean result set, though, because Laconia while searching strips the “!” used to denote the group name.

Hopefully the API will make it into Laconica 0.8.1 (the next release, mid-to-late September if they release on their typical schedule), I’ll modify the functionality to use the API instead and it’ll be much cleaner and yield more accurate results.

Astrid

Astrid is a TODO list manager for Google Android. It synchronizes with the excellent Remember The Milk TODO list service and provides task reminders and such. I use it on my T-Mobile G1 and would certainly miss it if it were suddenly gone.

My contribution to Astrid was another (nearly) complete Esperanto translation. I left about 10% untranslated because, well, I needed to go to bed! Unfortunately, I realized approximately 3/4 through my translation that Astrid is unlikely ever to be on a platform which supports Esperanto. The chances of there ever being an Esperanto translation of Android are atomically small.

However, my work was not wasted. Launchpad’s Rosetta translation system permits projects to share their translation with other Launchpad projects, using a essentially a central database of translations. This enables projects to speed up internationalization by using existing translations which exactly match internationalize-able strings. While it’s unlikely that anyone will ever use Astrid in Esperanto, it is likely that another TODO list project hosted on Launchpad could benefit from my work in the future.

Celtx

Celtx is an integrated media pre-production and screenwriting utility. I’ve used it for writing short plays for classes and such. I’m using it now for a forthcoming project which I’ll eventually let out of the bag.

My contribution for Celtx, as the link above shows, has not been code or a translation, but a package for Ubuntu. This was the first time I’d ever build a Debian package (Debian packages are what Ubuntu, a Debian Linux derivative, uses to distribute programs).

A long-existing bug, #99965, requested that someone package Celtx from the source on its main web site. I took interest in it in November 2007, but my initial attempts to package it for Hardy (Ubuntu 8.04, released April 2008) were unsuccessful due to my inexperience with build systems and a lack of time/concentration. I revisited the task for Intrepid (Ubuntu 8.10, October 2008) and Jaunty (9.04, April 2009), but was too busy with my new job and other life happenings.

I painstakingly built Celtx from source manually several times before building a binary package myself without any help from the Debian packaging system’s helper scripts (debhelper, dh_make). It’s a pain in the ass because Celtx is based on Mozilla, the build process of which is not as straightforward as a ./configure && make && make install. However, once I had a working knowledge of the build process, I delved into debhelper and its kin and built a source package. I did it for Jaunty first, as that’s what version I’m running right now, but then I made some modifications here and there to convince Celtx to build on Karmic (9.10, due October 2009).

I’ve learned a ton about deb packages and about make, and I think I can consider myself a “packager” now, having done so.

I’m hoping that Celtx Studios, the company that produces Celtx, releases the source for version 2.0.2 soon. The 2.0.1 source is available, but out-of-date. I’d like to get 2.0.2 into Karmic, but it’s looking like 2.0.1 will have to do for now.

So, if you have an interest in media production and/or screenwriting, or wish to help test a new package for inclusion in the next version of Ubuntu, please, by all means, install my Celtx PPA for Ubuntu Jaunty or Karmic and test the crap out of the package. There are a few known issues on Karmic, but I’m not a C++ coder, so I don’t know what I’d even try to fix.

Moving Forward

I look forward to participating more in the development of Gwibber. Because of my fiddlings with it, I’ve come to know the DVCS tool Bazaar (bzr) pretty well, as Launchpad and it are heavily integrated (hint: Canonical, developer of Ubuntu, also developed Launchpad and Bazaar!).

I know that I’ll keep translating. I’ve noticed that my vocabulary has grown a bit and I’m not using the vortaro (dictionary) as much. I still reference Traduku.net, Lernu!, and Komputeko frequently to get technology terminology and infrequently-seen words.

GeekDad at Wired posted a list of 100 essential things that every geek should know. Do you know any of these or know how to find out any of these? Knowing how to know is just as important as knowing itself.

I decided to use a black list, so I bolded the ones I don’t know of. If I know the theory behind it or I’ve read an article on how to do it but I don’t remember exactly how, it still counts as knowing it.

1. Properly secure a wireless router.
2. Crack the WEP key on a wireless router.
3. Leech Wifi from your neighbor.
4. Screw with Wifi leeches.
5. Setup and use a VPN.
6. Work from home or a coffee shop as effectively as you do at the office.
7. Wire your own home with Ethernet cable.
8. Turn a web camera into security camera.
9. Use your 3G phone as a Wi-Fi access point.
10. Understand what “There’s no Place Like 127.0.0.1″ means.
11. Identify key-loggers.
12. Properly connect a TV, Tivo, XBox, Wii, and Apple TV so they all work together with the one remote.
13. Program a universal remote.
14. Swap out the battery on your iPod/iPhone.
15. Benchmark Your Computer
16. Identify all computer components on sight.
17. Know which parts to order from NewEgg.com, and how to assemble them into a working PC.
18. Troubleshoot any computer/gadget problem, over the phone.
19. Use any piece of technology intuitively, without instruction or prior knowledge.
20. How to irrecoverably protect data.
21. Recover data from a dead hard drive.
22. Share a printer between a Mac and a PC on a network.
23. Install a Linux distribution. (Hint: Ubuntu 9.04 is easier than installing Windows)
24. Remove a virus from a computer.
25. Dual (or more) boot a computer.
26. Boot a computer off a thumb drive.
27. Boot a computer off a network drive.
28. Replace or repair a laptop keyboard.
29. Run more than two monitors on a single computer.
30. Successfully disassemble and reassemble a laptop.
31. Know at least 10 software easter eggs off the top of your head. — I don’t know if I know 10!
32. Bypass a computer password on all major operating systems
33. Carrying a computer cleaning arsenal on your USB drive.
34. Bypass content filters on public computers.
35. Protect your privacy when using a public computer.
36. Surf the web anonymously from home.
37. Buy a domain, configure bind, apache, MySQL, php, and WordPress without Googling a how-to.
38. Basic *nix command shell knowledge with the ability to edit and save a file with vi.
39. Create a web site using vi. — It’s my primary development environment!
40. Transcode a DVD to play on a portable device.
41. Hide a File Behind a JPEG.
42. Share a single keyboard and mouse between multiple computers without a KVM switch.
43. Google obscure facts in under 3 searches. Bonus point if you can use I Feel Lucky.
44. Build amazing structures with LEGO and invent a compelling back story for the creation.
45. Understand that it is LEGO, not Lego, Legos, or Lego’s.
46. Build a two story house out of LEGO, in monochrome, with a balcony. — I don’t know if I have sufficient LEGO bricks!
47. Construct a costume for you or your kid out of scraps, duct tape, paper mâché, and imagination.
48. Be able to pick a lock.
49. Determine the combination of a Master combination padlock in under 10 minutes.
50. Assemble IKEA furniture without looking at the instructions. Bonus point if you don’t have to backtrack.
51. Use a digital SLR in full manual mode. — certainly something I want to learn.
52. Do cool things to Altoids tins.
53. Be able to construct paper craft versions of space ships.
54. Origami! Bonus point for duct tape origami. (Ductigami)
55. Fix anything with duct tape, chewing gum and wire.
56. Knowing how to avoid being eaten by a grue.
57. Know what a grue is.
58. Understand where XYZZY came from, and have used it.
59. Play any SNES game on your computer through an emulator.
60. Burn the rope.
61. Know the Konami code, and where to use it.
62. Whistle, hum, or play on an iPhone, the Cantina song.
63. Learning to play the theme songs to the kids favorite TV shows.
64. Solve a Rubik’s Cube. — never done it!
65. Calculate THAC0. — That’s what a computer’s for. Or a GM.
66. Know the difference between skills and traits.
67. Explain special relativity in terms an eight-year-old can grasp.
68. Recite pi to 10 places or more. — 3.141592607, right? Thanks, Rocketboom.
69. Be able to calculate tip and split the check, all in your head.
70. Explain that the colours in a rainbow are roygbiv.
71. Understand the electromagnetic spectrum – xray, uv, visible, infrared, microwave, radio.
72. Know the difference between radiation and radioactive contamination.
73. Understand basic electronics components like resistors, capacitors, inductors and transistors.
74. Solder a circuit while bottle feeding an infant. (lead free solder please.)— hopefully I’ll never find the need to do this.
75. The meaning of technical acronyms.
76. The coffee dash, blindfolded (or blurry eyed). Coffee <brew> [cream] [sugar]. In under a minute.
77. Build a fighting robot.
78. Program a fighting robot.
79. Build a failsafe into a fighting robot so it doesn’t kill you.
80. Be able to trace the Fellowship’s journey on a map of Middle Earth.
81. Know all the names of the Dwarves in The Hobbit.
82. Understand the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel.
83. Know where your towel is and why it is important.
84. Knowing the answer to life, the universe and everything.
85. Re-enact the parrot sketch.
86. Know the words to The Lumberjack Song.
87. Reciting key scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
88. Be able to recite at least one Geek Movie word for word.
89. Know what the 8th Chevron does on a Stargate and how much power is required to get a lock.
90. Be able to explain why it’s important that Han shot first. — I just explained this to Brigette a few weeks ago.
91. Know why it is just wrong for Luke and Leia to kiss.
92. Stop talking Star Wars long enough to get laid.
93. The ability to name actors, characters and plotlines from the majority of sci-fi movies produced since 1968.
94. Cite Mythbusters when debunking a myth or urban legend.
95. Sleep with a Cricket bat next to your bed.
96. Have a documented plan on what to do during a zombie or robot uprising. — one of these days I’ll write it down!
97. Identify evil alternate universe versions of friends, family, co-workers or self.
98. Be able to convince TSA that the electronic parts you are carrying are really not a threat to passengers.
99. Talk about things that aren’t tech related.
100. Get something on the front page of Digg. — It’s all about the content, baby!

I’m a little weak on the Tolkien stuff, mostly because I’ve never read them.

I think I’m otherwise within acceptable limits!