Saturday, April 26, 2008

Asus Eee Pc 901 - interesting tidbit

Not enough for a whole blog entry, but for sure worth noting is that Asus which has published the specs on the 901 (due out later this year for most parts of the world).

The really weird thing is the internal flash drive. If you get the linux model, then you get 20Gig internal SSD. If you get the windows version then you only get a 12Gig SSD. Way to stick it to the M$ fan-boys.

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CafeNinja

Ubuntu Experience - Release Day

Well, Thursday there was the release of Hardy Heron. I did of course download and install it and a review will be coming in the near future. I wanted now to just talk about the experience of that day. I was logged into the release party channel on irc.freenode.org and there was much buzz as you can imagine. If you could manage to read and keep up with the conversation, you could feel the enthusiasm just spewing from the fingertips of everyone in the room.

This is where I have to herald the merits of the Linux community which is then compounded with "mac-fanboy" zeal. I've been to the linux-con's of old and there is a strange energy, a "high" if you will, of encouragement and acceptance on the level of what Martin Luther King and Ghandi spoke of. I've seen the novice and advance users come together and sing "Kum-ba-ya" to lighters in praise of developers and community. This was just as present on release day.

Maybe because I am physically removed from the grand event and the real-world release parties where everyone is dancing and shaking hands that in the on-line world I could actually catch the buzz and excitement. I should say, that if someone reading this has never used linux and open source software much of this energy seems bizarre and foriegn. I appologize, I don't mean to alienate, but it is in fact quite emotional.

My simple examination is that there were thousands of users online writing about their enthusiasm of the release of the new version of an operating system. An operating system that gets released every six months. Then compare it to the non-event which was the release of Vista, and the ensuing pain and laments of the users after having waited 5 years. Mac may be the exception, but it doesn't border on frenzy every six months.

Ahh, it feels good to be part of a community that feels more like the defition of community than I have with the people with which I share a physical community. Hats off to Linux and Ubuntu for keeping it all jazzed up.

Keep watching here for my Ubuntu 8.04 and my Ubuntu 8.04 + EEE Pc review coming soon.

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CafeNinja

Monday, April 21, 2008

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Social Networking responsiblity

My personal crisis, how much activity is required for social networking. This is where I see a distinct difference. Someone who is blogging, twittering or posting to flickr for the purpose of professional recognition...in my humble opinion is no longer really involved for social motivations.

Due to work travel I haven't posted as regular as before (I'm trying to settle back in) and for some strange reason I have a sense of guilt. I know there is little to no audience for my blog and twitter posts, but it's like that "thank you" note that you need to send from your birthday 2 months ago nagging at you.

I truly enjoy posting to my blog as geek is my passion and it is personally rewarding, but I would like to apologize in advance to anyone who reads about any black-out periods that may occur. There may come a point when my posting will be just as regular as brushing my teeth and then (save us all) there will be words flying like mad here.

By the way, I'm currently also occupied with putting Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron on my EEE Pc, so expect some review information on that soon. So, if you are watching, keep me in your RSS feeds and be patient :)

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CafeNinja

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Flickr.com has amazing photos

I've been cruising through flicker's most current photo streams and have found that there are some people who have a great eye.  It can be entertaining and almost as useful as google image search.  Look at this great picture I found at Flickr.




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CafeNinja

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Cloud Computing - Basics

Anyone who has read my blog knows that I have an EEE PC, which almost mandates cloud computing. I thought it might be a good idea to be a bit more specific than just talking about "cloud computing" so that anyone could try it.

I've used cloud computing for 3 reasons. First is insulation against hardware failure. This is self-explanatory but as an advanced step, I use it to bring a new system up to speed with all my existing ones quickly. The same steps for recovery applied to a system with no preferences or information demonstrates both the ease in which you can recover, as well as deploy a new system from the proverbial zero.

The second reason I cloud compute is remote access. Since all of these systems of cloud computing are available on the web, it means that I can access this information from any computer with internet access. Hypothetical situation would be to follow a link I had bookmarked, but can't remember the URL. Using one of several online systems you can then pull up that SINGLE bookmark and follow it using a friends or public computer without having to make any permanent changes to that system.

The third reason I use cloud computing is because of the resources available on the EEE PC. I should say that I had started to store my information on remote systems some time back, the frequency of which I did this has dramatically increased as there are now 2 EEE PC's in the home. Space is the biggest commodity and cloud computing negates most of that.

I thought I'd list the services/tools that I use in order for anyone just starting to use cloud computing to take a dip in the pool without being overwhelmed. Here are a few that I use. I use a Gmail account for all my online email, and many of it's services as well as other applications that use the Gmail as a backend for online services. Please understand that I assume that you have a Gmail account already in use. My other disclaimer is that I assume Firefox also...available for all platforms, and most extensions work across the different versions.

Email:
  • Gmail - duh. You could use any online mail service like yahoo.com, hotmail.com etc. My personal take on it is simple is better and Google doesn't tether which protocol you may access it with (geek disclaimer)

Bookmarks:
  • Use firefox -> export .html file -> email it to your gmail account. Viewing the HTML attachment in the online interface
  • Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site, but if you make them private, you can then use their extension to import to firefox.
Photos:
  • Flickr is awesome, free account a bit limited.
  • Picasa offers more space, but the interface isn't quite as elegant. (IMHO)
Video:
  • YouTube for most of the video's that I have from my digital camera, they are short enough to go up straight away.
  • Google Video is also available with a slightly different interface if you prefer it.
Browser recovery:
This was a big issue for me since I work/live out of my firefox and a browser crash alone would set me back a workday just trying to get everything back up. Google's Browser Sync extension for firefox makes synchronizing across multiple computer systems very easy without loss if information (even cookies). This will use a Gmail account to store the information, so it is a prerequisite.

I hope this offers a few ideas. These sites are not at all in any way the complete list and I'll be sure to post about future services that I discover that are worth mentioning.

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Cafeninja