Me and My OS

Okay, about once every 12-18 months I get this urge. It's an urge to ditch all things Microsoft. If I had $3500 laying around, I would get a Mac. Today, however, I don't. Linux is the next best option.

Linux has come a long way since I first installed it in high school. Back then a graphical installation was something rare. Today, there are so many flavors of Linux and pre-packaged installations that anyone can install it.

I have tried to "go Linux" many times before. The same things always stop me. I can't give up some of my applications. Photoshop, a good RAW converter, Poker, World of Warcraft, etc.. For the most part, there are Linux equivalents out there for almost anything you would want to do. This page has many great applications listed. But, there is no substitute for some applications.

Many people have these "must have" programs that they can't live without. There is still hope for those users. First, dual boot Linux and Windows. Just go into Windows for those rare things you need to do in a Windows app. Well, that's not ideal, because sometimes it's an application that is used everyday. WINE has come a long way since it first came about in 1993. However, 13 years later they are still not to a version 1.0 yet. Thelatest version is 0.9.24, released 2 days ago.

WINE can now allow Photoshop CS, World of Warcraft, Online Poker, and more to be run in Linux. It takes some tweaking, but blogs and forums across the net attest that it is possible.

So, is it worth it to spend all the time and energy trying to do in Linux what I already to on Windows? Absolutely. The viruses, spyware, Windows bugs, Explorer.exe crashing, blue screens, etc. all make me want to get away - far far away. The scripting possibilities and automating of everyday tasks attracts me too.

Well, I embark. Not on my "main" machine, but my secondary machine. If I can get everything running smoothly on it, I might finally escape the clutches of M$. Or, I spend 3 weeks trying to get it to work and then end up back on Windows for another 12-18 months. We'll see. Wish me luck or send me an e-mail with helpful links or software that I might not know about on Linux.

Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments II - The Domino Effect

The guys from EepyBird are back, with 251 bottles of Diet Coke and over 1,500 Mentos mints. In Experiment #137, they did a mint-powered version of the Bellagio fountains. This time, it's one giant Coke & Mentos chain reaction that has to be seen to be believed.

My Idea For a Backup

First of all, I need to say that if anyone knows of something like this that already exists, please e-mail me! I'd love to start using it. But, I don't think anything like this exists. If I had the brains, time, and motivation then maybe I would try to create it myself.

I am amazed by the bit torrent network. Downloads have never gone so fast. Linux distributions have picked up on this as well as many other companies. Blizzard uses this method of distribution for it's patches of World of Warcraft. It is beautiful because of the bandwidth savings by letting "peers" and "seeders" share the bandwidth load. I think the uses of this technology are widely overlooked and underused.

Why not utilize the same kind of peer to peer network for backups? I give up X amount of space on my hard drive in exchange for X amount of data to be backed up (plus a fee). I create my own encryption key (using some easy to use tool provided by the company offering the peer to peer backup), choose what I want backed up, point the program to a space on my hard drive where it can use for storage, and then hit the go button. It would take my encrypted files and distribute them across the peer to peer network of other users of the network.

Now, I know, there are a lot a questions to be answered and a lot of holes in my simplified idea in the paragraph above, so before you flame me in the comments, know that I know that. However, the basic idea of taking your backup and distributing it over a peer to peer network, is one I have never seen addressed.

So, ideas? Questions? Comments? Links to existing services I don't know about? Please, comment or e-mail me!

Happy Birthday Zach!

Enjoy one of the most famous moments in history for the song Happy Birthday. Click here to watch/listen to Strong Bad Sings! Towards the end it talks about a special offer where Strongmad forgets the words to his favorite songs. Pay attention to the Cheat playing the piano.

Happy birthday!

Microsoft Windows 1.0 Commerical

This is really funny!

Carbonite - 12 hours after install

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am a little paranoid about backups. After nearly losing an entire wedding photo shoot due to a Windows mishap, I will never be the same. That was about 5 years ago. Some call me crazy, but at least I know my data is safe. Well, sort of.

I say "soft of", because at this moment if my house caught fire and burned to the ground, I would be in a sorry state. There would be a LOT of stuff gone. I'm not talking about physical things, but 1's and 0's. Cameras, furniture, computers, toys - those can all be replaced. But the photo of my daughter with purple lip gloss smeared all over her and the bathroom can never be replaced. I took all steps to guard against hardware and software failure (I have RAID 5 setup on one computer and all my photos also stored on an IDE drive in another computer - automatically synchronizing in real time), but I have very little "off-site" storage. If something happened that took out my computers at home (burglary/fire), I'd be crying.

So, how does one protect against the dozens, or even hundreds in my case, of gigabytes of precious data? I'm hoping it is online backup. A service that backs up my data in real time to a server...somewhere. These services have been around for a long time, but only now are they affordable for everyone.

Carbonite is an online backup company. They backup all your precious data on their servers (encrypted of course) and continue to keep that backup up to date from a tiny little app that sits on your desktop. The best part about it is that it is for "unlimited" backup - for $5/mo. (or $50/year)! Whoa!

I am very skeptical, so I am trying it. They have a 15 day trial and I'm going to see if I can get that extended, because by my calculations it should take about 60 days for my data to be backed up. This initial backup takes a LONG time, but the subsequent updates each day will happen much faster. In the last 12 hours I have uploaded 1GB of data - I have 123GB left. Maybe it will speed up, but I doubt it. Carbonite tries to be unnoticed. Their goal is for you to set it up and never have to think about it again. This is great, but I'd like to see a feature that allows me to bump up it's bandwidth priority.

I will continue to post updates about this service as I go. If it really is what it says it is, then I think anyone with a PC and broadband should sign up. $5/mo. is a VERY small price to pay for knowing that your data is secure. Is it the ideal solution for everyone? No, but it's better than doing nothing.

I still have yet to see implemented my idea for remote/online backups...but that's another blog entry.

I Tried IE7 and...

Less than 5 minutes after I opened it for the first time... I'm going back to Firefox. Click here to download a real browser. IE is worse now than ever before. Don't download IE7.

Closed

Last Saturday we took the girls down to riverfront park with a couple friends. The girls had a lot of fun playing on the play equipment. There was a slide that Lily just sat down at the top of and wouldn't come down for about 10 minutes. Anyway, we thought that the carousel was open until 9pm so we were going to do that after playing outside. Well, the girls were very disapointed when we saw the big "closed" sign in the window. They closed early for maintenance. Try to explain that one to an excited 3 year old...not fun times. I did manage to get this picture of the girls and their friend Scott :)

A Funny Song

I like Weird Al. I have for a long time. Every now and then one of his songs really strikes me funny - even more than usual. With his latest album (Straight Outta Lynwood), he released one of these wonderful songs that just struck me right. The title of this song is Don't Download This Song. Ironically, you CAN LEGALLY download this song! Here is the link:

http://www.dontdownloadthissong.com

In this masterpiece, Weird Al speaks out as an artist against pirating music...kind of. In a way that only Weird Al can express, he uses sarcasm to show how blown out of perspective downloading mp3s has become today. Here are a couple of excerpts that give a taste of the song:

But deep in your heart you know the guilt would drive you mad
And the shame would leave a permanent scar
'Cause you start out stealing songs and then you're robbing liquor stores
And sellin' crack and runnin' over school kids with your car

So don't download this song
The record store's where you belong
Go and buy the CD like you know that you should
Oh, don't download this song

It doesn't matter if you're a grandma or a seven year old girl
They'll treat you like the evil hard-bitten criminal scum you are

For all the lyrics, visit XVR27's Weird Al Homepage:

http://www.com-www.com/weirdal/dontdownloadthissong.html

Other songs on the album I recommend are: White And Nerdy, Canadian Idiot, Confessions Part III, Weasel Stomping Day, and Trapped In The Drive Thru. This is one to not buy through iTunes though, because the CD has extras. It has animated music videos for several songs.