home server

Disk failures (Dec23) which led to a new disk, and rebuild. Ongoing issues led to cannibalisation of my home desktop to provide parts (case/mobo/cpu/ram) and reinstall the server from scratch. I still am getting issues if I push the drives too hard, but is now usable for my home server use.

home desktop

…was cannibalised for the server, and so I started using my iMac for desktop use…

iMac

Stopped returning from sleep mode reliably (would instead power up all fans to max without giving me monitor) for a few days before then failing to power up properly at all. (no power chime, disk activity or monitor,  but I’d get the power LED pulsing, and after a minute or so, fans at full speed…

so I decided it was time to build a new desktop!

new home desktop

Using the case from the server, I bought a new mobo/cpu/ram/SSD HD combo. However, the mobo does not recognise my PCI-E video card (power to the PCI-E slot on a microATX?) … so until that is resolved a little better, it’s sitting awaiting attention.

I can, in theory, use the onboard video, but then I have a shiny external card (with its own RAM) that goes unused…

iPhones

Yeah, seriously, my phone(s) gets to play too.

Vodafone offered me a new phone at a great deal, and I accepted. They sent it through along with the new SIM it needs. I got it, but the SIM wasn’t in the package. I went to the vodafone shop, and they gave me a new SIM and activated it for me… uh oh

This made my old phone not work, and I’m not wanting to use the new phone till I can backup the current state of the old phone, and then restore it to the new one. But I can’t do that, because iMac.

Technically, the new phone works and gets on the network – and I could start using it.

…But I suspect that if I do that (eg, receive SMSs), then I have a discontinuity of use between the old one and the new one that will cause issues later on. ie, when I eventually backup the old and restore it to the new, then I’ll lose any history in my ‘new’ use. I’d rather a clean changeover (and I do not want to use “someone else’s computer” (aka: iCloud) for this), so until I have a functioning and up-to-date iTunes, I can’t use my new phone, and the activated SIM means I can’t use my old phone either…

Powerbook G4

So, I pull out my old Powerbook G4, which has a broken Ubuntu install on it. One OSX disk later, and it’s back to a clean Tiger install. But research suggests that for the iPhone 4s, I need the latest iTunes, and that it will only run on Leopard. Leopard will run on the G4, I just need a install disk. The one I have wasn’t liked by the Powerbook’s combo drive (as I recall), but I decide to test it anyway…

Putting the disk into the drive = system crash!

The disk didn’t even spin up before the system crashed totally, and now nothing will eject the disk (not even open firmware), and the system profiler says that I no longer have an optical drive attached (maybe something in hardware died, and that would explain the crash)

So…

tl;dr

• server: been rebuilt, is OK if I don’t stress the filesystems…
• linux desktop: been rebuilt, I can proceed forward if I use the onboard video… and if nothing else goes wrong…
• iMac desktop: power issues of some form, so goodbye iTunes there…
• iPhone 3Gs: old one has a deactivated SIM, but I can’t back it up without iTunes somewhere…
• iPhone 4s: works, but I’m unwilling to start using it until I can restore contacts, SMS, etc, from the old one, and so have a clean changeover.
• Powerbook laptop: optical drive failure, so cannot get a Leopard install to get iTunes…

PS: I had a windows desktop machine too… it blew a power supply a couple of months ago, so hasn’t been included in this 6 weeks of hell summary

Next step?

Well, I have been saying for a while that I need a new media center/HTPC, and I wasn’t thinking about building up something from scratch… sometime later this year.  I’ve also thought for a while that for my occasional Mac usage, moving to an Intel Mac was likely to happen, though I’d not seen any great need as yet. But now I’m toying with the idea of killing two birds with one stone, and buying a mac mini. It’ll run xmbc/boxee, and also solve my iTunes dilemma. It wont be a third monitor in my computer room any more, but I guess I can deal with that…

[12] deliberately non-plural

The wikipedia article on Geek Pride day lists a “manifesto” of sorts, or a “geek code”(see below) for Geek Pride Day…

…here it is:

Rights:

1. The right to be even geekier.
2. The right to not leave your house.
3. The right to not like football or any other sport.
4. The right to associate with other nerds.
5. The right to have few friends (or none at all).
6. The right to have as many geeky friends as you want.
7. The right to be out of style.
8. The right to be overweight and near-sighted.
9. The right to show off your geekiness.
10. The right to take over the world.

Responsibilities:

1. Be a geek, no matter what.
2. Try to be nerdier than anyone else.
3. If there is a discussion about something geeky, you must give your opinion.
4. To save and protect all geeky material.
5. Do everything you can to show off geeky stuff as a “museum of geekiness.”
6. Don’t be a generalized geek. You must specialize in something.
7. Attend every nerdy movie on opening night and buy every geeky book before anyone else.
8. Wait in line on every opening night. If you can go in costume or at least with a related T-shirt, all the better.
9. Don’t waste your time on anything not related to geekdom.
10. Try to take over the world!

So, I have a problem with this. Not all of it, and mostly the ‘responsibilities’ section…

But I get ahead of myself. Here is where I disagree with the rights…

Right #5. The right to have few friends (or none at all).

So, in response to this, some images.

[Thanks to http://www.buzzfeed.com/scott/nerd-venn-diagram for what seems to be the original Geek Venn diagram, and http://www.surelyyourenotserious.com/blog/?p=920 for the spectrum diagram]

So back to it.

Whilst Right #5 states that a geek may have no friends – which is fine as a choice, but it also implies that geeks may have no friends due to a lack of social grace. …and that, imho, doesn’t sync with the very definition of a geek. (don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against nerds by the definitions given here. I have nerdy friends and geeky friends, and I have nerdy moments and geeky moments. But it’s to be a geek that I aspire, and take pride in)

Nonetheless, it’s a relatively minor issue and harder to defend (but lets me include pretty pictures

Moving on to the responsibilities. Overall, they mix ‘geek’ and ‘nerd’ in annoying and inconsistent ways…

2. Try to be nerdier than anyone else.

Surely being a geek is largely about individuality. I don’t mind competitive behaviour, but I object to it being a responsibility. You cannot mandate competitiveness.

3. If there is a discussion about something geeky, you must give your opinion.

MUST?! No. Really not. To be allowed to care passionately and state your case, sure. But I object to “must” here.

4. To save and protect all geeky material.

Even though I myself am a hoarder and packrat, I think to call it a *responsibility* is too wide reaching. Also, “all”?? See point #6

5. Do everything you can to show off geeky stuff as a “museum of geekiness.”

Again, why is SHOWING OFF now a responsibility? Be passionate, sure. But sometimes collecting is a private endeavour. This links back to #3.

6. Don’t be a generalized geek. You must specialize in something.

This… I kind of agree with. Kind of. But still think it’s a bit strong for a RESPONSIBILITY…

Also, this contradicts several other responsibilities listed herein. According to this I have to specialise, but according to #4 and #7, #8, I have to care about ALL and EVERY geeky thing…

7. Attend every nerdy movie on opening night and buy every geeky book before anyone else.

Is this a competition again? sheesh. See point #6

For the record, it’s possible to be a geek without caring about movies or books!

8. Wait in line on every opening night. If you can go in costume or at least with a related T-shirt, all the better.

EVERY? See points #6 and #7. *sigh*

9. Don’t waste your time on anything not related to geekdom.

Limitations is not the geek way. Defining some things as being not geek and therefore a waste of time – is a limitation!

Damn the man. Do what you want.

And another thing…

In accordance with responsibility #6 (and yes, I recognise the irony of citing responsibility #6 which I myself object to), isn’t “Geek Pride” kind of, well, GENERIC?

So on May 25 I celebrate TOWEL DAY. A day for Hitchhiker and Douglas Adams fans to celebrate this specific fandom. A geek fandom. In fact, a specialised geek fandom…

So don’t celebrate Geek Pride Day. Celebrate your geek pride by celebrating your passion when, how, and with whom you choose in a manner appropriate for your geekiness. Here are some ideas:

• March 14: Pi day (3.14) – for Math geeks
• May 4: Star Wars “May the forth be with you” day.
• May 25: Towel Day (2 weeks after the death of Bop Ad), and also Star Wars day (the day the original Star Wars was released. Apparently also it’s a Discworld (of Terry Pratchett) day: The Glorious 25 May
• July 22: Pi day (22/7 = a closer approximation to π  than 3.14)
• September 19: Talk Like a Pirate Day

And… Don’t Panic if you disagree. I’m open to discussion, clarification, and reinspecting my opinions

PS: “Geek Code”? I think that is more correctly this old gem http://www.geekcode.com – for which I have a collection of old codes somewhere, and in fact I’d support it’s re-emergance as a part of the Geek Pride Day, since that would help expand awareness of different elements of geek nature

So. Why can’t we have a voting machine to do this?You choose your preferred policy on a range of issues (healthcare, tax, immigration, environment, education, defence, etc), and at the end it says “you have chosen the . Is this correct?”

And it can even fill in preferences for you (Dear USA. Get preferential voting and the bare minimum. Till then, I cannot respect your so-called ‘democracy’).

Yes, this is far from perfect and full of flaws[12], but really, if Subway can have lunch voting machines (I’d love to see the stats on bread choices in fact), then why is there so much drama about getting one for government?

[12] by far, the biggest issue I can see is showing a lack of bias in determining the party that best matches the selected choices and relative priorities between them. Is this a solved problem? I don’t know.

256 colour support is there. It’s in the code. It works. It’s nice. And it’s… not only not enabled by default, there is no clear and simple way of enabling it even if you WANTED TO.

I was going to blog more about this, but the following IRC fragment I think says it all. Any questions?

<nemo> it'd be sure nice for a distro to set itself up with no self-crippling
        for ancient stuff that, frankly, nobody is using anymore
<nemo> (or if they do, then it's being used by people savvy enough (probably)
        to work out the compatibility issues themselves
<nemo> ubuntu does a good step, I think, but probably not enough
<nemo> 256colours should be the GLOBAL DEFAULT these days
<Screwtape> Every time somebody suggests that, they get shouted down by people
        who say things like 'BUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I SSH TO MY
        FreeBSD/OpenBSD/Solaris/Dragonfly/Xenix MACHINE!'
<Screwtape> We can't even figure out whether backspace should be ^H or ^?  
<nemo> [a] don't use this distro then
<Screwtape> It's hardly global domination if everybody stops using it.  
<nemo> it's hardly global domination if we're compromising ourselves for the
        compatibility of those who DON'T use it
<nemo> [b] have a nifty 'set_maximum_compatibility' script, which backwardsify
        everything

...

<nemo> so, what else has potential, but is held back by... historical compatibility?
<nemo> and by 'potential', I mean "it's there on your system now, just waiting for
        you to apply the correct settings'
<nemo> I am identifying terminal colours, and default prompts
<nemo> (terminal colours, and all the terminals, applications (screen, elinks, etc),
        etc that go with.
<Screwtape> I.. can't think of anything else off the top of my head, sadly.  
<Screwtape> Or perhaps luckily.
...

In fairness, it’s not like it’s not been noticed before:

...
<nemo> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=121800
<nemo> 2003... status new
<nemo> wtf
<nemo> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=115750
<nemo> amuses me that my no-X11 server has terminfo for 'gnome' and 'gnome-256color',
        but my ubuntu desktop does not
...

And in case anyone wants to bring their terminal into the 21st century with 256colours instead of 8 (“tput colors” will tell you what yours can do), Screwtape has a nice little writeup here:

...
<Screwtape> http://screwtape.jottit.com/automatic_%24term_selection <-- Here's my
        automatic $TERM hack.

…

PS: As a final note: Shortly after this conversation, Screwtape filed the following debian bug report for vim’s syntax handling of sh scripts:  vim-runtime: sh syntax highlighting should default to POSIX.

…

PPS: Originally blogged to: http://blog.thorx.net/2009/10/linux-ui-crippling-itself. Please consider leaving comments at the blog rather than facebook or other social media side that this post may be propagated to. Thankyou