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Jason Haslup
jason at haslup dot com

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Sun, 24 Oct 2004

Linux Kernel 2.6.9
blog :: linux

Well, I spent friday evening watching a movie and compiling linux kernels. Quite fun, actually... I'm running kernel version 2.6.9 on both my desktop (tess) and my laptop (gretta).

I originally started down this road because I thought something might be wrong with the kernel on my laptop. I'm new to ACPI which is the new way of controlling when the system sleeps, hibernates, wakes up, etc...

For some reason, I need to add "pci=noacpi" to my laptop (Toshiba Portege 3490CT) kernel arguments. Not sure why, but originally I thought it was messing up my hibernation & waking up.

So I figured I'd recompile the kernel on my own so I could make sure all the Toshiba settings were there. So as not to create an even more boring entry... it turns out I'm dumb and nothing was missing. However, I am running the latest and greatest kernel (or near-so), which is nice. ACPI's suspend and wake-up is pretty nice, but I don't have it fully configured yet. Not that I ever suspend my laptop... I normally just shut it down.

Anyhow, I'm also running a "patched" kernel of sorts on my desktop. Some nice fella migrated the PJB100 linux driver to the 2.6 kernel. I patched up my 2.6.9 source and lo and behold, I can get to my PJB again. Very nice.

Ok, not exactly linux, but... Half Life 2 will be released in November, and so will Everquest 2 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Ahh... three games, so little time.

Thu, 21 Oct 2004

Biggest Red Sox Fan Ever
blog

I've just jumped on the Red Sox bandwagon :) Ok, not really, but hats off to that crew... four straight wins against the Yankees, including two in New York. Yowza. I don't see either the Astros or the Cardinals (whoever it may turn out to be) stopping them now... look out, 1918, here we come!

Even though I'm still stuck in my minimalist mood when it comes to linux desktops (RatPoison + FluxBox), lately I've been tracking the Gnome hackers, a lot of whom are also Mono hackers. I've added a couple of the main people's blogs to my daily reading list and some of the stuff they've been doing is pretty interesting. It almost makes we want to switch to Gnome and try everything out, maybe even hack at it a bit (create a plugin for Evolution, try out C# development with Mono, etc...) but I'm not sure I can shake up my linux world that much. I think I'm becoming old and stubborn; much too set in my ways, I suppose. Who knows, maybe I'll set that all up at home and see how I like it.

Another interesting thing is a new linux distribution: Ubuntu. Apparently they've got some commercial backing and have a good number of open source developers being paid to work on it, so it might be worth checking out. Once again, I doubt if I'll switch completely to it, since so far I've been pretty happy with Fedora Core 2 + updates + dag's repository, but I might throw it on another machine to check it out. Ubuntu is based on debian which I've always wanted to try out, just never had the guts or patience to do so. I'm downloading the install image right now, but they also have a livecd.

Wed, 20 Oct 2004

Go Red Sox!
blog

Ok... I used to be rooting for the Yankees mainly because their seemingly complete domination of the AL side of the World Series is just too darn impressive not to admire.

But now! Who can't root for the Sox? Down 3-0 and they managed to climb back and tie the series!? You've got to be kidding me. Fantastic.

Mon, 18 Oct 2004

I'm Still Here!
blog

Yes, I'm alive! After berating a friend of mine for not updating his blog in over a month, I realized that I hadn't either. Stones and glass houses, you know.

I might as well start into the tech side of things since that's where I always end up in these things... makes me think that my categories don't really serve a purpose. Oh well.

What's been going on... I've been enjoying the latest version of OpenZaurus on my Zaurus... it's all compiled with gcc3 which makes everything nice and speedy, including KoPI and KaPI which I use all the time these days (organize and addressbook). I haven't had much success in playing mp3 files on the new version, but I really don't do that all that often, so it's no big deal. Still happy that I bought the 5500, though... and, of course, still tempted by the C860.

No, I won't be talking about window managers in this update (still on ratpoison and fluxbox, for those who are curious), but I will be talking about the other thing I always tech-flirt with: new email clients. I'm still using VM in emacs for my home stuff, but I decided at work to switch to reading my mail through gnus.

Gnus, of course, is the News (nntp) reader for emacs. It's got some great features to it, one of which is the ability to handle your email just like newsgroups.

I've decided that the best way I can approach email is to combine the worlds of news & google mail. Split up the mail to a certain point into different groups for easy reading, and then just mark the messages as read and hide them until you need it again. I'm such a freak when it comes to saving things that I usually end up filing away every email message I get into a set of folders. Those folders are usually the person's name who sent me the email.

So now instead of saving a message from my INBOX to a different folder, that message just gets split to that folder automatically when I receive it (unsplit mail, of course, goes to a general INBOX, still). Gnus gives me a nice interface within emacs to see all "groups" that have new messages. I can hit them one-by-one, or create a Virtual Group that has references to all new mail messages.

Once I've read a message, I can take one of several actions (other than reply or forward, of course). Usually I just leave a message marked as read... that way it's stored away but doesn't always show up as a new mail message.

Often times when I need to follow-up on the message, I'll "tick" it. This marks it in the summary so that whenever I visit that group, it will always show up. Once I finish the action item, I'll un-tick the message, and it will be saved away as "read."

When I know I'll never need this message again, I'll mark the message as "expired." This will instruct gnus to delete that message when the expired time interval has passed. For me that's 30 days.

So how do I easily get at old mail that I've marked as read? This is where the google part of things comes into play.

Every hour I run an indexing tool on all my received email (I'm currently using Namazu. It has a module specifically designed for email so that I can specify header fields in my searches.

When I want to find something, I type "G G" in gnus which creates a new group of a special type: nnir. This type of group simply runs the namazu search tool, gets all of the matching references, and creates a sort of virtual group with articles that are the matched messages. Very slick.

I've been using this system for the past two weeks and so far I really like it. Come to think of it, I'm not sure that there's anything from VM that I miss... I might just have to migrate to this model at home, as well.

The other thing I've been looking at lately is moving my home-grown VPN from vtund to PPP over ssh. This is mainly because I don't believe there's an implementation of vtund for kernel 2.6 which I'll be moving to soon at work. It seems like by using a trick that allows redirection of pty's to a pipe, I'll be able to setup a similar tunnel as my current vtund by using just PPP. Should be interesting. I might actually be able to get it working with my Zaurus, as well, which would mean a secure VPN to home and work is available from anywhere.

Switching topics... DirecTV once again shows that they're the leader in high definition by bringing the ALCS and NLCS games in high definition to subscribers. I've been glued to these games for the past three nights, especially the Yankees vs. Red Sox games. They are crazy! I'm certainly glad I'm not a true fan of either team... either one would have brought on a heart attack by now.

The games simply look fantastic in high definition. Fox is doing a 720p broadcast, just like ESPN and ABC do for their HD. I'm sure there are people out there complaining about compression & who gets to see the games, but for a guy in Montana without a local Fox affiliate, I am a happy customer.

Speaking of HD... Sunday's football games on CBS (and at night on ESPN) have been nice to watch, as well. CBS is broadcasting in 1080i, but honestly I can't tell much of a difference between it and the 720p of ESPN. I'm patiently waiting for the Fox football games to be added to DirecTV, but once that happens, football sunday will be in full force at our house! (The baseball games are a special feed from Fox, but DirecTV has announced that full Fox HD will be available "soon".)

Alright, that's enough for now...

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