Blog migration.

Just to let everyone know, I’m going to be migrating this blog over to wordpress.com within the next day or so. When I do, I’ll update the post here with links so you can update your feed readers and such, then sometime next week the blog will be gone from here. No, I’m not shutting down endperform.org, but I’m redoing things.

2009: A Quick Look Back

I never really posted anything around Thanksgiving about what I was thankful for, so I figured I would post what I am thankful for this year:

 

Bethany

This is my rock, my partner and my wife.  She’s stood beside me during tough times, and 2009 has seen some ups and downs, as with any relationship.  The strength of our bond cannot be broken, and she is definitely someone I’m thankful to have in my life.  I don’t know where I’d be without her.

 

Emmalynn and Heather

My daughter and stepdaughter, respectively.  Both bring joy and happiness into my life.  It’s amazing to watch Emma every day and just see how she’s learning, and wondering how she will develop, or what her next big discovery will be.  Although we don’t see Heather as much as we’d like, she’s still a big part of our family and it’s always wonderful when she’s with us.  Even better is watching her and Emma interact.

 

John (aka the big hippie bastard )

A family friend who’s been around for us both and is always happy to lend an ear when I need to bitch about something geeky, which saves Beth from hearing me babble about geek-speak.

 

2010 is shaping up to be a great year.  It’s possible this may be the final post on endperform.org as we know it.  I’ve got some ideas cooking in my brain for the site, so don’t be surprised if things change around here.

Ubuntu Networking and Linux Packaging

I think my Macbook / Mac OS X has spoiled me as far as interfaces go. I’ve tried about three times now to mess around with Linux in a dual-boot fashion on the desktop, and each time I find something that frustrates me a little bit. At the moment, I’ve gone back to virtualizing Linux within Windows 7 to mess around with some different distributions. I can’t seem to come to rest on one. I thought I had with Ubuntu, but this latest issue with DNS resolution is driving me nuts. At work, it goes along well and then all of the sudden it takes almost a full minute or two for a DNS address to resolve. I’ve gone through bug reports, tried every workaround mentioned and still no joy. I’m a bit worried I’m going to run into the same sort of situation when using another distribution, so I’m hesitant to try to rebuild the work box.

One thing I really, really like about OS X is the software packaging. For most applications, you download either a .DMG (disk image) or a compressed file, open it and drag the app into your Applications (or other) folder, and you’re off and running. Everything is essentially self-contained, which is nice. I remember a discussion about Linux software distribution and packaging, and someone brought up this point. While it would be nice for Linux, could you imagine having a few copies of GTK being distributed with each application? That being said, GTK could always be installed by default, but that would defeat the purpose of self-contained packages, especially if a piece of software depends on one particular version of GTK (or any other library, for that matter). I don’t foresee any one packaging scheme becoming default across the board, as there’s always going to be a group that feels that their way is the right way and they’re going to do it like they want to. To me, this is Linux’s biggest problem as far as getting commercially supported software developed for it. While there are some companies who are distributing software for Linux (I can think of a couple of games), a majority still remains.

Linux Zealotry: Come on, Really?

I started taking a look at the Ubuntu Forums again lately, trying to resolve an issue with networking on my Karmic box at work, and I got a reminder of why I don’t go there much anymore. Linux zealots, but not just any type, the “hey, I ditched Windows for Ubuntu and now everything but Linux sucks lol” type. Now, I’m not saying every Ubuntu user, or every new convert is like this, but it would seem that the number of these types of people are growing. I used to subscribe to this sort of mentality, but over the past two years I’ve broadened my horizons, so to speak, and have come to realize it’s not about what OS is best in general, it’s all about what OS is best for YOU. Use what works. I use Windows, Linux and OSX to varying degrees and they all provide different things for my computing experience.

The other issue I see a lot is the hatred of something someone doesn’t really understand or even know that much about. I give you this particular post in a thread asking about running Mac OS X virtualized. The comment:

Who cares if its illegal, now folowing a guide it might work, but i have never had it work for me though i did run my PC as a hackinto** oops hackincrap for 2 days. Mac os X is way too simplified and basically only for idiots, i mean who would pay $2000 for $500 hardware just because it runs mac os?

So apparently all OSX users are idiots. I responded, and outlined things I could do with OSX that Linux could also do, and never got a response. Two days is not nearly enough time to get to know OSX, and I didn’t buy Apple just for OSX. I ran OSX on the Dell laptop my Macbook replaced, and I have to say my Macbook feels more solid and well-built. Everyone likes to target Apple products since they seem to be overpriced, but they do not take into account the total cost of ownership, the durability or usability. I have a generation 1 iPod, that if I found a Firewire cable I bet would start right back up.

It’s okay to be passionate about something, but have all of the facts before calling someone an idiot, saying something doesn’t work, or trashing something. Just use what works for you.

Geek Ramblings for 11/12/2009

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – Infinity Ward Fail
If you’ve been reading any gaming news lately, you know the big deal for the PC version is that there are no dedicated servers. IW shot themselves in the foot here. You cannot choose a favorite server (there are none), cheaters are a lot harder to deal with, no mods, no admins, and from what I’ve been reading, it’s overall a pretty laggy experience. The last PC Call of Duty I played was CoD2. I have CoD Modern Warfare for the PS3, but haven’t logged much time at all on it. Buyer beware for CoD MW2, though. The single player is short, and the multiplayer experience is iffy.

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
I’m running Ubuntu 9.10 both at home and at work, and so far it’s been a pretty decent experience. I’ve had some trouble with networking on the work machine, but found the fixes over at the Ubuntu Forums. I have to admit I hardly go there any more as it just seems overwhelmed with a lot of newcomers’ questions. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s just not something I want to wade through, so generally I wander over, search, and then leave. I may get back into being more active, but I’m just not sure yet.

endperform.org future
I’m still trying to figure out where to go with the site. Part of me wants to move the blog elsewhere and do something else with the frontpage, part of me wants to whip up a podcast, and a third part of me wants to just leave things as they are. I’m torn, but I’ll figure out where it’s going to go soon.

Site Stuff

The site’s been rather quiet lately as I’ve been trying to figure out what direction I want to go with it. I’m still around, but keep an eye out, there might be some changes coming.

Gmail + Fluid = Win

For the past few years, I’ve been going back and forth on what to do about an email client. I’ve tried mutt, Thunderbird, straight up Gmail and webmail for my domain emails, Mail.app with IMAP, and I find myself coming back to one solution, which I think is what I’m going to stick with, which is Gmail + Fluid. First, mostly everyone knows what Gmail is: Google’s webmail. Fluid is a Mac application along the lines of Mozilla’s Prism, in that it allows you to create an “application” from a web page. I’ve used this functionality to create a Gmail app. Added bonus? The dock icon will show an unread count if you have any new email, which is a nice little bonus feature. As far as the mail itself goes, Gmail collects my (obviously) gmail.com email, and I also have it collecting my endperform.org mail and adding a tag to it for sorting purposes. Gmail allows you to send as an email address you own, so no one would really know I’m using Gmail for my domain mail unless they are looking at headers.

Fluid is free, and is available at fluidapp.com.

The Flood: Helping a friend.

This past Sunday I saw first-hand what the floods have done to portions of the Atlanta suburban areas as I answered a call for assistance from some friends of mine whom had family affected by the flooding. I ventured into Austell, about 6 miles from my home and right into the flood zone. The waters had since receeded, however, you could tell where the water level was just by the brown coating on the trees. I arrived to the house to find a pair of dumpsters and a whole lot of volunteers working their collective butts off to get this place gutted and cleaned up. When I arrived I was put to work cleaning up some insulation and other related things, dumping them into the dumpster. The day rolled on, and throughout the day other people stopped by with food for the workers, and Red Cross vehicles would pass by once in a while. Thankfully the weather was sunny, if a little hot, but it’s better than the downpour of rain the day before.

You never really know how a natural disaster can affect someone until you see first-hand what happens. I’ve seen some devistation in my time due to my involvement with the local fire department back in Pennsylvania, but nothing to this level. I’m just happy I could help out. If you get the chance to help someone out, I say take it. You might get sore from the work, but it will make you feel better knowing you’re helping out someone in need.

Geeking Out: DragonCon, Mac and more

DragonCon 2009
I had the chance to finally attend DragonCon for the first time, if only for a day. Saturday was the chosen day, because it was the weekend, and because that was the day of the Adam Savage panel, which is the main reason I wanted to go this year. The biggest thing that sticks out in my mind is the lines. It took about two and a half hours to get a badge due to essentially a cluster of a registration area. There were two sections, cash and credit, but these were not broken out until near the front of the line. On top of that, there were only a total of three cashiers and about 7 to 10 registration staff. In my mind, there should have been more cashiers to balance things out, but that’s just my observation. The other line was the line for the Adam Savage panel, which ended up outside and stretching down the block. Thankfully the weather wasn’t full-blown hot, but it was warm enough to be uncomfortable. About an hour later we were let inside to sit and wait longer. The wait was worth it, and I ended up in the third row. Adam shared 100 of his wishes and explained a bit about them, then went on to take questions from the audience. In person he’s great to listen to, and I really enjoyed it. Other enjoyable parts of the con were seeing friends, checking out the vendor areas and of course the costumes. We had caught the end of the parade, thanks to the evilly long registration lines, but it was still a decent site. Everything from Star Trek to Ghostbusters was represented.

As the Apple Ripens…
Snow Leopard is performing quite well on my Macbook. The upgrade process itself took about an hour, and after that it’s been smooth sailing. The only issue I had was due to my own fault. I moved some applications from their default locations, so when the upgrade occurred, I ended up with two copies of some programs (I like keeping things somewhat organized). Performance-wise, there is a definite difference between Leopard and Snow Leopard. Finder is much more responsive, startup and shutdown are a lot quicker, and overall the OS is running fine.

iTunes and iPhone OS 3.1 are out as of yesterday and I’ve performed upgrades to these latest versions. So far, so good, but I haven’t used them enough to really dig deep into them and see what happens.

Memories of Mac and My Dad

I’m posting this today in memory of my dad. It’ll be three years on Monday, but I wanted to get this posted while it was still in my head. It’s one of my fondest memories of dad.

The Macbooks weren’t my first brush with Apple computers, or OS X even. Back in 2001, I bought one of the cool iMacs that had recently come out. You know, the big ole CRT models. It had a whopping 450mHz G4(?) processor and 512MB of RAM, if I remember right. At any rate, it was my first attempt at switching, and unfortunately it failed. At the time, there wasn’t a lot of decent software that I knew of out for the Mac, and the 10.0 of Mac OS was sluggish to say the least. Long story short, I eventually decommissioned the machine and put it in a corner and went back to Windows and Linux.

That wasn’t the end of the line for the Mac, though. It’s true, I lived with my parents for a while after getting out of school and working in the real world. My dad had asked about a computer, and I knew I had the Mac sitting in a corner. He basically wanted something to play with and try to learn about computers with. The Mac was perfect for that, and since I knew he wasn’t gonna get a virus (I put OS 9 back on it), it meant little-to-no work for me. I sat it on his desk downstairs, ran a network cable to it and got it set up. I loaded some games on it, and showed him a few game websites and he was set. The smile on his face is something I still think back on and remember. He absolultely loved the idea that he could get on and play Bingo at any time he wanted. He also found a few other sites, and I had bought him a CD filled with a few more Mac games. Eventually I showed him some the word processor and spreadsheet apps, and I can remember nights of him organizing things and typing things up. Sadly, he passed in 2006, and with it went the Mac. My mom is not a computer person at all, so I came and picked it back up. Last I knew of it, I gave it to my friend Eric back in PA.