Kasperian Moving Parts

T61, Suspend, and You

Sunday October 28, 2007

So, along with my glowing accolades of a few days ago, I’ll offer a little painful reality. The T61, as I said, is a heck of a nice little machine. Fast, smooth, quiet, and the works. However, there are a few things that have proven to be not so nice: most notably that which is absolutely necessary in a laptop: suspend and resume. I’ve spent far more time than I’d like searching the ‘net for hints/suggestions/hints/etc., but I’ve not quite found any full, working solutions. It would seem that the problem stems from the fact that I’m using nvidia’s binary driver (100.14.23)… or at least that’s not helping. Also, it would appear that OpenSUSE 10.3, which I’m running on the Read more…

Life in General, Usability

3d Desktop : Does it make sense?

Saturday October 27, 2007

Okay, first off, the ScribeFire Firefox extension is pretty cool. It would be a good thing for some Open Usability folks to help out, but the extension itself seems pretty functional. One large thing, though, is that there is no “New” button for Posts. This functionality seems to be accomplished via the “Clear Content” button, which is very non-intuitive. “Clear Content” is typically associated with a destructive operation which removes something. “New” is a creative operation, which will also technically “clear the content” in the editing fields, but the mindset is a very different one. An interesting usability issue, to be sure. =:) Secondly, this YouTube – 3d desktop video prompted an impromptu debate in #kde4-devel with zorg_the_false, which was Read more…

Google

GMail Now Does IMAP!

Since I have several times been rather loud in my… we’ll call it “encouragement”… for Google to provide IMAP access to their hosted GMail mail, it’s only fair that I’m equally loud in my gratitude and accolades now that they’ve done just that!! Woot!! Although they don’t explicitly list KMail as a supported client on their setup page, it, of course, works just fine. And I’m ecstatic that I can now get rid of one more layer of technical complexity (okay, it’s a stupid, ugly, storage-duplicating hack, just like everybody else has had to do) in my email setup. Again, Woot!!! Google: you have made a big step just now in not doing evil. Thank you!!! Please give everyone involved Read more…

Linux

Truecrypt versus LUKS Speed Test

Friday October 26, 2007

I did a small performance test yesterday and was very surprised by the results. I wanted to see which encrypted filesystem was faster betweeen Truecrypt and LUKS. I created 2 20-gig files, one with Truecrypt and the other with LUKS encryption. Then I mounted the encrypted files and copied a 180 meg file 10 times, synced, and then reported the time taken. Here’s the results: Truecrypt test: time (for f in $(seq 1 10); do; cp bigfile truecrypt-mnt/bigfile-$f; done;) 0.22s user 26.30s system 15% cpu 2:47.06 total LUKS test: time (for f in $(seq 1 10); do; cp bigfile luks-mnt/bigfile-$f; done;) 0.20s user 8.40s system 15% cpu 55.169 total Wow. Now, granted, this is a simple enough test, but does Read more…

KPilot, Life in General, Linux

Thinkpad T61 and a Blond ‘fro

Thursday October 25, 2007

Technology had several glorious victories at my desk today. First, I was fortunate enough to get a very nice dual-head GeForce Nvidia card installed on my 4-way AMD 64-bit cpu server at work. It goes very nicely with the two beautiful 1600×1280 monitors that are now hooked up via twinview. This is by far the coolest working environment I’ve ever had (okay, ever seen). Secondly, I got my new work laptop today, and it is hella sweet. It’s a Thinkpad T61, and I think I’m in love. About my only complaint is that the thing must weigh 50 pounds, but what can you expect with these specs, I guess. Sweet, sweet, sweet laptop. Oh, also, it’s by far the smoothest Read more…

KPilot, Work Stuff

VMware, Day 3

Wednesday October 24, 2007

This place is SO amazingly, refreshingly, awesomely, mind-bogglingly, ground-breakingly (yes, that’s a new word), life-changingly (write that one down), career rejuvenatingly, totally, totally cool. I am seeing the world through new eyes, truly. I am in awe. I am absolutely having the time of my life. Maybe some of it is due to the “having been hitting one’s head against the cement wall for so long, anything else feels downright wonderful” syndrome, but I think it’s more than that. VMware actually gets Open Source. The movement, the power, the people, the world-wide community, the whole thing. For the last three days, I’ve constantly been thinking how refreshing it is to not have to fight my employer every step of the Read more…

Life in General, Linux, Work Stuff

Movin’ on Up (Sing it with me, Weezie!)

Friday October 19, 2007

Today was my last day with my (before today) current employer. It has been a really, really, really bizarre and surreal day. 2 weeks for that matter. I caught myself several times shocked that I wasn’t more overwhelmed by the huge transition that we’re now embarking on again. And I think the fact that I wasn’t more worked up about it was all the more jarring. Maybe it’s because I just went through this whole thing only 2 years before, so now I’m a hardened expert. Or maybe it’s because I’m just at peace with where God is moving us. Or maybe it’s because I’m thrilled like I never have been before about my new job. Or maybe I’m just Read more…

Google, Linux

Using Gmail for mailto: links

Thursday October 18, 2007

Blame it on Seb, but I’ve been using Gmail’s web interface lately. This is partly because I’m in the middle of another life-changing job transition (but this one I’m really excited about, aside from the great white sharks and the triangle of death), partly because I like change (and after having used nothing but kmail for a few years now, I’m ready for a change if for nothing other than to see how we in KDE PIM land can do things better), and partly because I’m trying to keep less personal data on my work laptop. I have been using Google’s Apps For Your Domain for the last year or so, and I like it much good. However, one thing Read more…

Life in General

Great White Sharks And You

My darling daughter was quick to fill me in on a bit of news garnered by some educational television programming the other day: I’m apparently relocating my little brood to The Red Triangle. �Oh good. �And here I was, just saying to myself: “Boy, Self, this is REALLY cool! �You finally get a chance to move back to California beaches again and can enjoy some good surf!” �Hm. �It’s always nice to find out you’re moving to a triangle of death. I had no idea that there was such a thing as the Red Triangle, but apparently it’s named that because it’s the highest concentration of Great White shark attacks in the world. �Oh good. This tidbit of news prompted Read more…