Fri, 31 Mar 2006
The Happy Hacker Heyboard
I remember a friend of mine mentioning something about ergonimics and how these huge
keyboards with number pads totally break up the flow of mouse/keyboard
transitions. I started really feeling that when I acknowledged the fact that I
spend over 8 hours a day with a keyboard. I splurged and bought a
PFU Systems
Happy Hacker Keyboard. It is waaaayyyy overpriced but here's why it totally
rules.
- I look forward to typing on it. The keys are coated with this rough and
smooth substance that feels totally cool.
- The keys are super soft to the touch but still emit a satisfying clack when
pressed. Like a cross between the 30 pound IBM things from the 80s and a laptop
keyboard. Each key is perfectly even.
- The whole keyboard is less then 12" long. It fits in my messenger bag so I
can take it anywhere I go. It has a USB 2.0 mini cable to regular USB so it'll
work on every single computer worth touching.
- It has DIP switches on the back to flip the functionality of certian keys.
It also can work in "macintosh" mode where it gives you "vol up" "vol down"
"mute" and "eject" keys.
- You can optionally buy a model with blank key tops. This is too l33t for me
so I opted for the "charcoal grey" model, which is so dark you can't really see
the letters on the keys anyway. I'm still trying to figure out the advantage of
blank key tops for anything but typing dvorak.
So yeah, go out there and drop $260 on this shit if you spend more than 4 hours
working with a UNIX shell each day.
posted at: 20:51 | path:
/hacking |
permanent link to this entry
Sun, 26 Mar 2006
I was wrong. The Etch kernel is awesome.
Sike! But my
previous
post about the broken prism2_cs driver was wrong, the
Linksys WCF12 I own works "out of the box", it just needs manual configuration
via weird
iwconfig options. Namely, changing the mode from Master to Managed.
posted at: 17:58 | path:
/debian |
permanent link to this entry
Thu, 16 Mar 2006
The Palm Treo. Round two.
Today was the first time I left the house for a work day wjthout the laptop. It
was fine, sans an IM connection. In fact, I'm typing this on the train ride
home from an ssh session! But here's my gripes with the over hyped PalmOS and
it's applications included.
The PalmOS has no unified file browser. Each application appears to have
invented their own. This makes an interesting situation when downloading a PDF
file to the CF card, opening the Adobe Acrobat for PalmOS program only to see a
blank selection menu and no option to open the PDF I just downloaded. The same
thing with the included RealPlayer program. I can't listen to WFMU with their
low bandwidth mp3 stream because RealPlayer won't let me copy and paste a URI
into the open menu. Suck.
posted at: 19:01 | path:
/pda |
permanent link to this entry
Tue, 14 Mar 2006
My Least Favorite Part of GNU/Linux is...
Linux.
Yes, that's right. Linux is the worst part of Linux. Every time I get some hot
new device or upgrade the OS I have to recompile the kernel, recompile a kernel
module, or just live with the device not working. The stuff in user space is
great. Hell, I even know how to use XFree86 pretty well now and soon, x.org with
all of it's fancy drop shadows. But he
monolithic Linux kernel continues to be an endless game of
trial and error.
I am well aware of the "change to distribution X because it 'just works'"
response, but I think that's lame and it defeats the purpose of a good
distribution. That is to provide some consistancy to the user and give them a
support channel.
The funny ending to this story is that I have to say that my favorite
alternative to Linux, ATM, is...dum, dum, dum; Windows. But only the
NT kernel
and the lovley glut of drivers for every single piece of crappy or
extraordinary hardware out there. Userland in Windows sucks booty. If only
GNU
Hurd got off the ground, maybe we wouldn't all have to spend hours
recompiling kernels.
posted at: 20:23 | path:
/software |
permanent link to this entry
Jack...the project that will never agree on anything
My recent foray into an upgraded jackd configuration with a USB sound card shows that the
project still cannot figure out a way to interface with the kernel developers
to get realtime priority support into the vanilla sources. Jackd
always...always ends at compiling kernel level stuff, which takes hours of
trial, error and bug reporting. Everyone has their own special way of getting
it to "just work" and none ever do. Fuck! Get realtime-lsm into the kernel
source!
posted at: 12:19 | path:
/debian |
permanent link to this entry
Darkice and Lame on Etch
More time to kill while I'm waiting for some info on the
m-a bug. Installing
the lame libs from
Marillat's apt
repo, the darkice source from sid and
rebuilding for etch with mp3 support went fine after editing out --without-lame
from debian/rules. That's nice. Next stop are the
seemingly broken prism2_cs drivers in 2.6.15. I think I'll rebuild the
kernel...yet...again...on this laptop. This is begining to be almost as fun as
running Windows.
posted at: 00:30 | path:
/debian |
permanent link to this entry
Mon, 13 Mar 2006
Etch and kernels and audio == poop
I upgraded the laptop to
Debian testing, aka etch.
Big things like
x.org and
udev went fine. The USB sound card works by default with ALSA. Yea. But jackd
stands true as the complicated, difficult "professional" package and will not configure. I've hit the Debian BTS once again, despite some LAU email
list users describing the upgrade as "easy" and giving me the advice to "stop
waiting to upgrade to etch."
For the record, the 2.6.15-1-686 kernel does not work with module-assistant
0.10.2 in etch. I cannot rebuild the realtime-lsm-source module because m-a
complains the kernel headers are unconfigured. So I install the kernel source
and run menuconfig. Same complaint.
Bug, Bug!
posted at: 23:49 | path:
/debian |
permanent link to this entry
Thu, 09 Mar 2006
Lots of technology crap
Installing Zimbra on CentOS 4.2 requires a very strange modification to
/etc/sysconfig/i18n. It appears to now be able to use UTF-8 encoding. CentOS
4.2 also installed with SELinux by default. Turn that shit off, you don't need
it you paranoid weirdo!
The Linux IP Virtual Server is good, but overkill for something as simple as
incoming load balancing. iptables or better yet, OpenBSD's Packet Filter is much better.
VMWare is giving away the beta of their net Server product. Installing
proprietary software on Linux is not cool. But I'm doing it anyway. Fuck. It
installs without errors on Debian stable. The kernel headers and compiler tools
are required to build the tainted modules.
The Palm Treo is badass. Web browser, IMAP(S) client, camera, notepad,
telephone...hell SSH client! Still haven't figured out how to sync calendar,
tasks and contacts to Zimbra.
posted at: 14:15 | path:
/wrap |
permanent link to this entry
Tue, 07 Mar 2006
Weekend wrap up...a day late.
The
Edvard
Munch exhibit at MoMA is excellent. Strangely enough, they don't allow
any cellular phones to be visible in the gallery. I discovered
this as I tried to type some text notes about the pieces on my new Palm Treo.
The usher told me it wasn't allowed and I showed him my text. He wouldn't
budge. Strange, considering most of the works in the exhibit were over 100
years old. It reminded me of a piece by Cory Doctorow in Make 05 where he
argues that photography of master works of art should be part of our world
heritage and not put under this strange kind of copyright control. There is a
discussion of the article
online but you'll have to subscribe to the magazine to read it.
On the ride to MoMA, I decided to take 1st ave uptown instead of the Queensboro
or east side bike path. It was exceptionally fast. It reminded me of
an article
I read by John Forester.
And then on to
Union
Pool to relax. If you haven't been there, it's great in
the winter because there's a fire pit in the back yard.
posted at: 00:17 | path:
/wrap |
permanent link to this entry
Sat, 04 Mar 2006
Weird Hacker Patches Proprietary Code and Tells All
This is totally bizarre. This guy reverse engineered some CPU detection
code in the Skype binary executable and used a Windows API "feature" to bypass the
CPU check. The end result is some feature that the Skype corporation only
intends for Intel CPUs can run on AMD CPUs too. This is a blatant violation
of the
Skype EULA and this guy will most likely get a cease and desist
from Ebay (who owns Skype). But if you can catch it,
read his expertly written
blow by blow of assembler instructions and how to modify them. Oh yeah, and
like, download the patched binary if you use Skype.
posted at: 22:58 | path:
/hacking |
permanent link to this entry
The Palm Treo. Functional or the Emperor's New Clothes?
I got a Palm Treo 650 from work. I wouldn't have bought it myself but the
possibility of having internet connectivity and an ssh client in a hand held
device was quite appealing. This is obviously an extremely niche application
for something so heavily hyped as a producitiviy lifestyle device. Here's a
moment to moment account of getting it to function both with and without a
desktop system.
Voice and Data Service. This is pretty straight forward.
Verizon makes a deal with Palm for a bazillion dollars and ships branded phones
provisioned to connect with Verizon's
proprietary wireless network. This includes voice and data. The strange thing
about the Treo is the PalmOS functionality and the voice/data functionality are
split. By holding down the power button for three seconds, the phone part turns
off but the PalmOS keeps running. This is strange but whatever, it's probably
related to the bazillions of dollars.
PalmOS Applications. By default, the phone appears to
have a lot of neat toys built into it. Not toys that are fun but toys are will
make your life simple and streamlined. This is mot true. Here is the laundry
list
- Camcorder
- Calendar
- Camera
- Contacts
- Palm HotSync
- Mail
- Media file browser
- Text note pad
- MMS composer
- RealPlayer
- SMS composer
- Tasks
- Web browser
- Verizon Wireless Sync
- World Clock
So...this phone can take pictures and videos. These two things are the
same application but appear twice in the main menu. It can keep contacts with a
neat photo feature. It can sync to Palm Desktop software and perhaps other
applications that support this protocol. It should read email but the Mail
application is useless since it involves some mail store on the service
provider's side for actual message delivery. In other words, it's not an IMAP
client. The note pad doesn't do handwriting recognition, which seemed like a
staple of the PalmOS since the mid 90s. Real Player...heh, cool. MMS is a
format that I have no idea how many phones actually support. SMS is on every
other piece of crap cell phone you can get for free for signing a contract.
Task pad and Calendar are cool if they can sync to iCalendar compliant
applications. The web browser is some thing with a funny name I don't
recognize. Verizon Wireless Sync doesn't make any sense. It should be an over
the air sync gateway or something but I'm not sure.
posted at: 19:30 | path:
/pda |
permanent link to this entry
It's fucking cold. For real.
This is my new
link
section, where I don't write that much but only talk
about the things I did and link to them.
If you haven't heard, it's fucking cold in New York right now. When you bike
everywhere you really feel it but in a different way then the chumps walking on
the street or taking the subway, you feel it in, like, a pain way. All of you bikers in the
city, get this
Pearl
Izumi face mask.
After using the face mask to great lengths, I arrived at
Hotel QT for a
birthday party. It was stupid but fucking hell, there's a pool in the bar!
Prior to that I ate dinner at
Zen Palate. If you go upstairs,
it's just like the part in Kill Bill where all the Yakuza guys get chopped up
by The Bride. Oh yeah, and the food is vegan and
awesome!
And finally, go to see
Harry and the Potters perform. You won't be
disapointed.
posted at: 03:40 | path:
/wrap |
permanent link to this entry
