Tellico: Keep your collections in Order

Those who know me, will know I am hardcore in the gnome camp, and will only rarely have good things to say about kde (generally, they are just to not come off as a complete zealot ;-) ) but Tellico is a great idea. Basically, it is a collection organizer. But a collection of what, you ask. Anything. Cards, movies, music, doesnt matter. Will definately be checking this one out.

Music: Belle & Sebastian

Been a while since I did a music post, but my love for these guys has just grown too much too fast to not throw some thoughts down.

How to describe B&S... Think 50s-ish vocals, acoustic guitar, driving acoustic bass, and then anything from surf guitar or an oboe, to a full string section. The orchestration is one of my favorite things about this band, the Beatles are the only group I can think of that comes close when it comes to using classic instraments in a contemporary song.

And thats not even mentioning the writing. My favorite artists include some of the best songwriters of all time (from the commonly recognised Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Paul Simon to the lesser known Jeff Mangum, Tom Gabel, or Wil Oldhelm). The writing is witty, intelligent, and has a habit of referencing great artists ("Your obsessions get you known throughout the school for being strange/Making life-size models of the velvet underground in clay" or "Don't look back/Like Dylan in the movies").

Last but not least, is musical creativity. If you are the average fan of music, you have your genre or two, and dozen or so artists that you listen to on the way home from work, or throw on as background noise during a dinner party. If that is the case, then hearing something new takes work, as you havent fully developed a sense of musical appreciation. On the other hand, if you love music, enjoy getting into new genres, and have a list of "favorites" numbering over 30, then a band that sounds nothing like anyone else, and where every song on an album sounds different, then musical creativity is something truely wonderful and precious. Bob Dylan isnt known for his self-titled debut, where he sang traditional folk tunes in a traditional folk style. He is known for Bringin' It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde, where he went wildly into uncharted territory, both lyrically and musically, and changed popular music for ever.

So, to wrap it up, Belle and Sebastian are a combination of stellar orchestration and musicianship, great songwriting, and creativity. It may take some work to get into (mostly cause of the vocals), but it is well worth it.

I would suggest starting with "If you're feeling sinister", their first Jeepster release, and currently my favorite. Follow that up with "Tigermilk", their debut, and then pick up "Push Barman to Open Old Wounds", which is a collection of their singles and EPs (if you are an EP kinda person, the "I'm Waking Up to Us" EP is probably my favorite.)

I'll end this with the lyrics to the song that made me sit up and listen, The State That I Am In (on Tigermilk), which is a wonderful song about starting from a relatively pure place, not nessicarily doing anything bad, but walking down some dark paths, comming back full circle with the knowledge that only experience brings.

I was surprised, I was happy for a day in 1975.
I was puzzled by a dream, stayed with me all day in 1995.
My brother had confessed that he was gay, it took the heat off me for a while.
He stood up with a sailor friend, made it known upon my sisters wedding day.
I got married in a rush to save a kid from being deported now she’s in love.
I was so touched, I was moved to kick the crutches from my crippled friend.

She was not impressed, that I cured her on the sabbath, so I went to confess.
When she saw the funny side, we introduced my child bride to whisky and gin.
The priest in the booth had a photographic memory for all he had heard.
He took all of my sins, and he wrote a pocket novel called "The state I am in".
So I gave myself to god, there was a pregnant pause before he said ok.
Now I spend my day turning tables round in marks & spencer’s.
They don’t seem to mind.

I gave myself to sin
I gave myself to providence
And I’ve been there and back again
The state that I am in

Oh love of mine, would you condescend to help me, cause I’m stupid and blind.
Desperation is the devil’s work, it is the folly of a boys empty mind.
Now I’m feeling dangerous, riding on city buses for a hobby is sad.
Lead me to a living end, I promised that I’d entertain my crippled friend.
My crippled friend.

I gave myself to sin
I gave myself to providence
And I’ve been there and back again
The state that I am in

Java Platform Management Beans

Ok, this one is for the java devs.

Basically, mustang (java 2 version 6.0) is gonna be one cool cat. Not only has it been benching at 400% the performance of 5.5, been undergoing some serious gui toolkit tweaking, and generally making all us java devs real excited, but now we are getting some serious diagnostic tools. Enter java.lang.management.*

New Gnomejournal

http://www.gnomejournal.org/

New issue of gnome journal, which I have alwas found to be at the least, worth the read. I enjoyed the HIG stuff, but the highlight of the month is most definately Deskbar.

Oh, where to begin? For those of you who are mac users, (or have iLust like myself), you are probably familiar with Quicksilver. I have alwas been so envious of that and spotlight, and have bitched at great length about how apple users seem to be the only ones who write system extensions of any value whatsoever. I believe I will have to change that now, it seems to be only windows that is without such massive productivity enhancers.

Filesystems (ext3, reiser, xfs, jfs) comparison on Debian Etch

Found a really great (and incredably in depth) comparison here.

For those who can't be bothered to RTFA, their conclusions for home systems is (kinda suprisingly) XFS.

"It uses the maximum capacity of your server hard disk(s)

It is the quickest FS to create, mount and unmount

It is the quickest FS for operations on large files (>500Mb)

This FS gets a good second place for operations on a large number of small to moderate-size files and directories

It constitutes a good CPU vs time compromise for large directory listing or file search

It is not the least CPU demanding FS but its use of system ressources is quite acceptable for older generation hardware"

XFS was a gift to us (the free software community) from our good friends at SGI. It is an incredably robust filesystem, although ironically, XFS is not the default on any major distro (to my knowledge, its been awhile since I used some of them). In fact, it's not even an option for most.

However, my money is still on Reiser5 for the Most Awsomest FS Of All Time Award.

Why Windows is less secure than Linux

ran accross this today

Now, this does not nessicarily mean that windows is less secure (the argument posted on that blog really isnt being objective.) What it does mean is that internally, windows is exponentially more complex then linux. that can be a good or bad thing, for example, adobe photoshop is far more complex then ms paint, but it also does so much more. however, the goal when designing massive apps (such as ps) is to cut down on complexity whenever possible. The example shown on the blog gives us a good indication on why apache is the most used webserver, and IIS has such a horrendous name.

Narnia: The Mediocre LoTR for Kids

Before I even start, I would like to make three things perfectly clear:

1) I love C.S. Lewis. I have issues with many christians, but this is a man who not only had a heart for god, but walked beside him. I find his writings on spirituality to be superior to Pauls various letters to various places (yeah, I know, that is uber-sacriligious). But one of the best ways (that I know of) to know that you are seated in front of a good pastor is if he quotes Lewis. So yeah, I'm a bit of a fan of the source material.

2) The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, while being the most popular of the Narnia series, is (by a significant margin), my least favorite. I found it to be the worst written, and the most shallow of the bunch. From a purely fictional story perspective, my favorite is The Silver Chair. From a Christian perspective, nothing matches up to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

3) I have, in the last year or so, had a complete and total re-arrangement of my priorities in life, and movies ended up near the bottom of the pile. They used to be one of the major driving forces in my life, but nowadays it is *very* rare that a movie will move me.

Ok, that being said, on to the actual movie...

I heard about this flick about a year before it came out, heard that WETA was involved (a definate plus, I'm a fan of their work), and was completely and totally indifferent. I found that to actually be a tad odd at the time, I was a LoTR zealot in that time period, and those two series stand at about shoulder to shoulder for me (for different reasons of course). But while hearing about it, I couldnt care less if I ever saw it or not.

Fast forward eight or nine months when the post-opening hype started. The special effects looked lovely, the actors looked well chosen, and it looked like it was going to be a really good movie. Again, complete and total lack of interest. This time I didnt notice, having just finished radiation therapy I couldnt really muster up the will to care about anything as silly as a movie.

Fast forward four or five weeks after it opened. My best friend had seen it, and she declaired I must see it too. While watching it, I had a few gripes, but for the most part really minor stuff. What I didnt really know was why I wasnt enjoying myself more. I mean, I love the story, the movie itself was really well done, but I would rather have spent the time talking to my friend (the way our time is usually spent), then sit there watching a movie.

Now that I have had a bit of time to think about it (and to figure out that something was wierd in my reactions to this flick), I'm pretty sure I've figured it out. There are certain stories which exist in me in a way that is beyond what was written. It doesnt have to do with good or bad or anything like that, I mean, I love LoTR as much and I adored the movie adaptation (the first movie anyways, but thats a topic for another blog ;-) the difference is in the impression it left in me. When I was a child reading LoTR, I was immersed in a world more real (and more interesting for that matter) then my own. When I read Narnia, I was in a world far more vivid then anything in real life. LoTR is a literal story about literal things. Narnia is an allegory to the christian experience. LoTR is about detail and texture, Narnia is about symbolism and feeling.

Now, with that in mind, how could I ever enjoy a film adaptation? It seems washed out and souless, while the books were vibrant and full of life. I'll re-iterate yet again (I have friends who will read this that loved the movie), It was a good film. The story however was one that cannot be told for me in any other way then it was origionally, without losing what made me love it in the first place.

All that was left for me was a decent fantasy story for young children.

Intelligent Design vs. Evolution: A Study in Apples vs. Oranges

As a christian with a great deal of respect for science, I find ID mildly offense.

Religious belief and science are two completely and totally different ways of looking at, and understanding the world. Science cannot explain the many times I have felt the hand of God in my life, just as religion cannot explain to me why water becomes a solid in low temperatures. ID is not science, because it is dealing with things which, by definition, can *never* be measured. Religion has everything to do with subjective experience and introspection, science is the exact opposit.

That being said, to use science to try and disprove religion is just as silly and foolish as trying to fit religion into science. I dont care if you come to me with footage of the big bang, all that it will mean to me as a christian is that my understanding of genesis is flawed, and in the grand scheme of things, that barely matters to me. Just like someone looking at the world through the scientific method wont care if you show him the undeniable impact of the all-mighty on a persons life. It is the acceptance of something through faith rather then objective proof, which is (or should be anyways) completely off the radar of the scientific process.

So should evolution or creation be taught in schools? In my opinion, religion has no place being taught by an institution that has anything remotely like a seperation of church and state. Being so highly subjective, the only way to fairly teach religion in a public school is to teach the tenants of EVERY religion. It is the responsability of the parents to teach children things like morality, and religion, and trying to dump this on the schools is nothing short of a shirking of responsability. Society is not responsable for teaching children wrong from right, although todays parents seem to expect it. The younger generations are a shining example of where such criminal negligence has gotten us.

On the flipside, as much as forcing a particular belief-set to be taught as fact (or a lowest common denomenator belief-set in the case of ID) is repugnant to any believer in freedom of religion, it is just as bad to turn science into the state religion. Science is very clear on the difference between fact and theory, and as a nominal creationist (in that I believe in creation, not that I put creation forward as a scientific theory), I can say that treating the theory of evolution as anything less then fact can get you in hot water, fast, with a large segment of the evolutionist population.

And I am *insanely* moderate in this particular belief.

I am willing to acknowledge that I have no idea on the factual validity of genisis, only that it contains what I need to know about the start of things. The lord created the heavens and the earth, and all that is in them. Does that mean he spoke, and poof, there it was? Does it mean that he took seven days? Does it mean that he kicked started the evolutionary process over millions of years? I have my opinions, but quite frankly, I have better things to do with my time then contemplate this, let alone argue about it. All that matters is that God is the one responsable, and for someone who is looking at the world through a religious viewpoint rather then a scientific one, that is the important part.

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries. "

"An alliance or coalition between Government and religion cannot be too carefully guarded against......Every new and successful example therefore of a PERFECT SEPARATION between ecclesiastical and civil matters is of importance........religion and government will exist in greater purity, without (rather) than with the aid of government. "

- James Madison, Father of the American Constitution

Breezy DRI fix

FINALLY found this. Will try it out when i get home. Basically, theres a bad libdri.a in breezy, but a good one in hoary. someone tried copying the hoary version over, and it pretty much seems to work for everyone. linkage

How I got 3d accel for the ati drivers in ubuntu

Had a bitch of a time, until i found some guide that suggested doing this. since then, ive had no problems. make sure that you "sudo apt-get install build-essential kernel-headers" if you havnt already. (note: at the moment, dri is broken in breezy, so even a correct install of the ati drivers wont give 3d acceleration. currently doing a massive update, hopefully it was fixed)

1. Download the binary installer off of ati.com. run it with "sudo ./ati-driver-installer-8.16.20-i386.run" do an automatic install. (note to breezy users: breezy uses gcc 4 which isnt what the kernel was compiled with. make sure gcc 3.4 is installed, and before doing the previous command, do "export CC=gcc-3.4" or the installer wont compile the driver, even though the gui says its successful)

2. Do "sudo modprobe fglrx" to load the driver into the kernel. If theres no output, it was successful (hopefully). to check, type "sudo lsmod | grep fglrx". if you see something like "fglrx 258664 0", the driver was loaded successfully.

3. Back up your xorg.conf (something like "sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.bak"). now do "sudo perl -pi -e 's/Driver.*ati/Driver \"fglrx\"\nOption \"UseInternalAGPGART\" \"no/' /etc/X11/xorg.conf". this will change the device section of the config file to use the new driver.

if that doesnt work (or you dont trust my leet regex skillz), open the xorg.conf (sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf), scroll to the Device section, and change the driver from "ati" (or whatever it is currently) to fglrx, and add "Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "No"" so it looks something like this:

Section "Device"
 Identifier "ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon 9600 (RV350 AS)"
 Driver  "fglrx"
        Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "no"
 BusID  "PCI:2:0:0"
EndSection

(if your identifier or busid is different it doesnt matter)

4. this is what took me FOREVER to find. copy these lines and paste them into a terminal. turns out that some things just dont know where to look for the accelerated opengl driver, and x is one of them. these commands will copy the driver to every place that things would be looking for it.

cd /lib/modules/fglrx sudo
sudo cp fglrx.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/
sudo cp fglrx.`uname -r`.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/
sudo mkdir /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/video
sudo cp fglrx.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/video
sudo cp fglrx.`uname -r`.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/video
sudo cp fglrx.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/video
sudo cp fglrx.`uname -r`.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/video
sudo mkdir /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/video/fglrx
sudo sudo cp fglrx.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/video/fglrx
sudo cp fglrx.`uname -r`.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/video/fglrx
sudo mkdir /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/misc
sudo cp fglrx.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/misc
sudo cp fglrx.`uname -r`.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/misc
sudo mkdir /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/misc/video
sudo cp fglrx.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/misc/video
sudo cp fglrx.`uname -r`.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/misc/video
sudo mkdir /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/misc/fglrx
sudo cp fglrx.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/misc/fglrx
sudo cp fglrx.`uname -r`.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/misc/fglrx

5. restart the xserver. you can do this gracefully with "sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop". that command will drop you to the command line. login, and type "sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start" to return to the graphical login. either that, or ctrl-alt-backspace will kill X, and gdm will restart automatically.

6. open a terminal, and run glxgears. if those gears arent spinning blindingly fast, something is wrong. either there is a different problem then the ones i encountered, or i havnt typed this up properly. in either case, feel free to ask me for help.

any suggestions/critisms/flames are welcome. i apologize for the lack of capitalizations, crappy grammer, etc. sometime in the near future ill clean all this up, if anything is unclear, feel free to drop me a line.

Gnome 2.12 pwnz j00

heres a screenie of my desktop after a dist-upgrade to breezy

Mental Giants on slsk

This is what I love about the internet. unimark enters the room convinced the application sucks, the people who wrote it are retards, and noone knows more about anything then him. SeeSchloss tries to help, and Schee is a bot that SeeSchloss is writing.

---

0:28:33 [unimark] nicotine sucks, i'v ebeen using it for a week and it just doesn't work
20:28:38 [SeeSchloss] anyway unimark, I suggest fixing your network configuration
20:28:38 [xsvenx] hrm... works fine for me
20:28:56 [Xero] yeah
20:28:56 [SeeSchloss] your port 2234 is not even filtered, it's *closed*
20:28:56 [Xero] if you don't have your ports forwarding
20:29:14 [Xero] oh shit
20:29:14 [Xero] the bot didn't catch it!
20:29:18 [Xero] why can't i browse?
20:29:22 [Xero] doesn't that work
20:29:33 [SeeSchloss] oh, no
20:29:33 [Xero] how do i route?
20:29:40 [Xero] damn
20:29:45 [Xero] i forgot the commands already
20:29:58 [unimark] ports are forwarded, it still sucks ass
20:30:01 [SeeSchloss] ports, man, how do I route *ports*
20:30:04 [Schee] The ports are 2234-2239, you can see how to route them at http://testic.demon.co.uk/slsk-howto/
20:30:33 [SeeSchloss] unimark: maybe they are forwarded, but your nicotine does not listen on port 2234
20:30:47 [unimark] i know how to forward ports, but it still doesn't connect
20:30:47 [Schee] The ports are 2234-2239, you can see how to forward them at http://testic.demon.co.uk/slsk-howto/
20:30:52 [SeeSchloss] I SAID YOUR PORT 2234 IS CLOSED
20:30:57 [SeeSchloss] do you understand better ?
20:30:57 [Xero] ok
20:31:04 [unimark] i have nicotine set to listen on 2241 to 45, and those ports areforwarded on my router
20:31:04 [Xero] i think he's trying to say that he portscanned you
20:31:17 [unimark] okay listen i'm a network admin, and i know how to forward a port.
20:31:24 [Schee] Is the record broken ?
20:31:44 [unimark] the program itself is sucky. i can't download an entire folder. half the time it doesn't even connect to people on my buddy list.
20:31:44 [Xero] wait he didn't scan 2241 or 2245 though
20:31:44 [unimark] this is a useless client
20:31:55 [SeeSchloss] haha that was funny from Schee
20:32:03 [SeeSchloss] anyway, the point is the server thinks you're using port 2234
20:32:33 [SeeSchloss] (even though it wasn't because it's the second time someone says he's a network admin)
20:32:40 [unimark] so setting the listening port to something else doesn't do shit? wow. thats a great functionality decision.
20:32:55 [unimark] did lemurs write this program?
20:32:59 [Xero] haha what
20:33:33 [Xero] unimark's IP: 68.196.253.187 Port: 2234
[unimark] diggity dicks
20:34:54 [Xero] what now
20:35:17 [SeeSchloss] magic, the server has now understood
20:35:42 [Xero] indeed it has
20:35:54 [Xero] however a pingless port scan on his ip still shows 2241 as filtered
20:35:54 [unimark] still doesn't download folders
20:35:54 [Xero] aka not responding
20:36:04 [Xero] and 2234 is shown as closed
20:36:04 [Xero] which is curious
20:36:22 [Xero] as all other ports in that area are filtered
20:36:22 [SeeSchloss] I won't say anything
20:36:32 [Xero] 2234 through 2240 are all "closed"
20:36:32 [unimark] plz don't bruteforce my router
20:36:40 [Xero] 2233 and 2241 are filtered.
20:36:46 [SeeSchloss] (but you know what I think, Xero)
20:36:46 [Google-Ninja] you mean DOS
20:36:50 [Xero] indeed
20:37:04 [Xero] i am not dosing your router
20:37:08 [unimark] dose me instead
20:37:08 [Xero] 2233/tcp filtered unknown
20:37:08 [Xero] 2234/tcp closed unknown
20:37:08 [Xero] 2235/tcp closed unknown
20:37:08 [Xero] 2236/tcp closed unknown
20:37:08 [Xero] 2237/tcp closed unknown
20:37:08 [Xero] 2238/tcp closed unknown
20:37:08 [Xero] 2239/tcp closed unknown
20:37:08 [Xero] 2240/tcp closed unknown
20:37:09 [Xero] 2241/tcp filtered ivsd
20:37:23 [Xero] that explains it better.
20:37:23 [SeeSchloss] once again, this man is a network admin
20:37:31 [Google-Ninja] mcse?
20:37:43 [Xero] well i think even a network admin could figure that one out.
20:37:43 [unimark] hah. no.
(20:40:30) hyuga.citan@gmail.com/Gaim: hehe
(20:41:35) hyuga.citan@gmail.com/Gaim: 20:38:04 [Xero] why is 2241 filtered then?
20:38:25 [Xero] it seems like the forward going to the box you're on now is busted
20:38:34 [unimark] how so
20:38:45 [Xero] because it wouldn't show up as filtered if it was forwarded properly
20:39:04 [unimark] define "forwarded properly" mr ping scan
20:39:23 [Xero] i didn't use a ping scan
20:39:23 [SeeSchloss] okay listen he's a network admin, and he knows how to forward a port.
20:39:28 [Xero] that was a pingless syn stealth scan
20:39:33 [Xero] haven't you ever used nmap ?
20:39:34 [newg] i've found what someone is claiming to be satellite anthem icarus from the new boc album
20:39:36 [newg] http://s16.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=2AKAUFQ9H2PC030AQ1ZYOXL7A4
20:39:40 [SeeSchloss] it doesn't matter if the port is obviously not forwarded, he knows how to forward a port
20:39:44 [unimark] your nmap is strong