Found this article on rootprompt. Worth checking out if you are or ever will be burning CDs on a linux box.

Don't fear the command line. The command line is your friend. Which reminds me Neal Stephenson wrote a book called In the Beginning...was the Command Line. Top read...really.

Ari Fleischer is a real tool. I'll let him prove it himself:

"We will not reward North Korea for bad behaviour. What we seek is North Korea's irrevocable and verifiable dismantlement of its nuclear weapons programme..." White House spokesman Ari Fleischer

Obviously the Administration� still thinks it's playing mummy & daddy with the rest of the world. Reward? Bad Behaviour? That's bad parenting Ari...[ya bunch of bloody mesh-backs].

Nice one Administration�. Way to start another fucking war.

Coooool. Another satellite is falling. Looks like this babies path is mainly equatorial, and there's a high percentage of open sea around the equator. Still 1400kg of space junk travelling really fast [no data on actual speed ;)] is bound spread pretty far and leave a few marks somewhere.

Had to post this for memories sake. Wish I had the CMS side of deepthought working so I could upload a picture of it. It would be nice to have a session on that.

Download the Transmeta CMS Upgrade. Reports on the forum state that there's a big improvement in processing power. What I installed seemed to be version 1, while they were talking about version 2, but it's all I found on the HP site. Maybe there's a slight improvement. I noticed Task Manager idles on 8% now, even with IE open.

I saw a segment about weblogging on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, which is a PBS production Australians get via SBS, the best public channel available down here [I'm not really into TV, but SBS deserves a plug - and needs all the advertising it can get]. There's been a few main-stream-media attempts so far at summing up blogs, but none of them have really been that good. You can't explain all that blogs currently are and have the potential to become in 5 mins.

They did however state the obvious: that blogs are 'like online diaries', which I'm starting to disagree with...blogs are much more and much different from diaries. Although it's been the easiest way to explain what a blog is to the popular culture [the same way personal computers are compared to cars] I think the online diary is a bad metaphor for blogs. For a start, diaries are private, whereas blogs are public. That's a fundamental difference that [so far] has been overlooked. Sure, you may get a lot of blogs that read like diaries, but a lot of things seem similar on the surface. Blog are personal publishing, pure and simple [Having said that, aren't diaries personal publishing too - damn].

The segment also mentioned the contact blog allows between authors and readers. This is a big plus for blogs, as is the linkage that occurs between blogs.

[getting tired and loosing enthusiasim that only 1/2 an hour ago seemed as strong as an ox]

Also mentioned was an example of how the blogsphere kept alive a story about a US politician [Trent Lott] that eventually got him push out of his job by his own party. Apparently he was a Southerner who was racist or something.

[Too tired now]

Have a looksee here, and here [I like how movabletype is referred to as a "...decentralized web-based personal publishing system..."].

I'm going to include the ability to make menus in deepthought. DB schema now includes the tables dtmenu and dtmenuitem.

A new service brought to the world by vigilant.tv. From the invisiblog.com homepage

invisiblog.com lets you publish a weblog using GPG and the Mixmaster anonymous remailer network. You don't ever have to reveal your identity - not even to us. You don't have to trust us, because we'll never know who you are.

What a great idea.

Started to create the DB schema. And decided to use Magie RSS Parser. It's some sort of start. Horay!!! Now I have to think about the UI.

Thanks to TablePCBuzz.com and it's discussion groups, I've been able to get the recovery CDs working and have reinstalled a fresh version of XP on my TC1000. Now I'm going to document a few things as I reconfigure it. I'm going to try dual booting XP and Debian Linux. Have a shared FAT32 partition that both OSes can store files on, and eventually upgrade the 802.11b wireless card to 802.11g. Anyways, first of the rank is streamlining Windows XP. I still have to pick up the latest copy of Debian as I don't have a fast enough connection to download the packages I want.

It's a public holiday, Anzac Day, here, so none of the shops are open. Of course, XP is a fucking hog for resources. My tablet has it's RAM maxed out at 786MB, although 24MB of that goes to the software side of running the Transmeta Crusoe Processor. The processor is running at 1GHz, although from reading the discussion groups, it appears the processor runs at different speeds. I have to find a utility that reports speed, etc. So with a fresh install of XP, nothing else installed on it, no users created, nothing changed, the resources being used are the following [taken from Task Manager]: CPU Usage: Avg 10% - I'm assuming that's Task Manager using that. Processes: 29 PF Usage: 154MB Physical Memory: Total - 761312 Available - 574564 System Cache - 145860 Kernel Memory Total - 60676 Paged - 52000 Nopaged - 8656 Commit Charge: 153M / 1818M Now I'm going to remove a few unwanted services, change the UI to the W2K look and feel and see what happens.

I spent the whole working day on the net today looking for Tablet PC information. Found heaps. Finally someone who had loaded Linux on the TC1000. A guy who has put a How To on upgrading from 802.11b to 802.11g. Another on how to fix the crappy recovery disks that come with the TC1000. I'm trying that now. Have burnt a CD with a Win98 image on it and the contents of the 1st recovery CD. Have booted the Tablet and started the recovery, but it's stalled on 11% entire process. Not good. I'm seriously thinking about just dumping XP all together and loading Debian. May as well give it a try ;) Update: The Recovery CD seems to be working, just with a shitty interface that informs you of very little, really slowly. Update: It took almost 3 hours to install from the recovery CDs. Maybe the boot image I got from Korea didn't have the CDROM caching drivers installed. I'll try burning another with a different boot image.

So, after another brief look around I've found 2 links that may be of use with my Tc1000 Linux conversion. Linux Tablet PC - Debian GNU/Linux on the Compaq Tablet TC1000 and Tc1000-linux -- Linux on the Compaq TC1000 Tablet PC, which is hosted by handhelds.org.

Update: Wow...I've just had a 5 hour TC1000 information session that's blown my mind. The TablePCBuzz discussion forums for HP/Compaq have heaps of information [and a couple of creepy Microsoft lurkers digging for info]. Getting the pen working in Linux, replacing the internal 802.11b wireless card with a 802.11g card ripped out of a Linksys WRT54G Router. Photoshop issues. Heaps. Life is good.

Last November I purchased a Compaq TC1000 Tablet PC. Main reasoning for shelling out $3500AUS was because I needed a mobile computer. I already have a notebook - a DELL Inspiron 7500 - which I really like. It's my main workstation, but really, it's a desktop replacement and not realistically mobile [walking with it for more than 5 minutes causes your arm to loosen from it's shoulder socket]. So I thought I'd kill a few birds with one stone.

I wanted mobililty, and sure enough, I've got it. The TC1000 is light, durable and fit's in any of my backpacks [It even fits in the side pocket of my DELL notebook bag, just in case I have to take them both somewhere].

I liked the idea of the tablet PC. I've always like using the tablet interface. I have friends who are graphic designers and therefore require such hardware, and I've always enjoyed having a draw.

I've always wanted to support Transmeta. I like the idea of their chips using a software abstraction layer, saving a bit of heat and lasting a little longer, so I thought I'd give them a go.

And even though I'm on this personal push to move away from Windows�, I wanted to have a XP box. It's kind of required by my profession that I know as much as possible about all the OSes out there, especially Windows�, because it's still the most popular OS.

Anyways, all in all, I'd pretty much justified the purchase to myself. And I must say, even with some major disappointments [XP runs like a dog - applications seem to run ok once loaded, but doing anything directly in the OS is shameful. This is mainly due to XP being so heavy - Microsoft have to add so many features to stay competitive in the OS market] I'm glad I have it.

But...Now that I've had time to think about it, I so wish there was a Linux distribution for tablet computing. I've had a brief look, but nothing in depth yet [no time at present]. If I can't find one, I'm thinking about maybe starting one. Although, I haven't really thought that much about it yet ;)

It's all happening. The world is no longer satisfied with one major blog application company and a bunch of smaller companies making great software. MovableType is joining the ranks of Blogger by aquiring funding and opening a ASP called TypePad. I don't want to make it sound too much like the Google/Blogger deal, as they've gotten there funding from Joi Ito's venture company. Much more low key. All seems like a cool deal. Inspiring to say the least. Good work.

Here's the press release from SixApart and Joi Ito notification.

Palm has release some new models. The Zire 71 and the Tungsten C. The Zire looks quite appealing...digital camera, mp3 & video playback. Ahh...what the hell, seeing as I'm currently into reposting content [for the sake of test-data], here's what Palm has to say about the Zire... 1 Built-in Hidden Camera Point and shoot for instant digital pictures. One slide reveals the camera.

12 Writing Area Enter data quickly using your stylus and Graffiti� 2 writing software. They're keen on describing buttons. Anyways, Horay!!! new toys.

Ran pass this interesting post on Doc's site. When people like this start saying "The Next Big Thing", should we sit up, rub our eyes and read on?

See for yourself [globealive.com]

GlobeAlive BETA is the first search engine to list live people, rather than websites, as search results. Hundreds of experts, business owners and conversationalists are standing by to converse with you by chat or offline messaging on all topics from computers to cooking. Try it or add yourself to the listings!

The Open Source Applications Foundation has release the 0.1 version of Chandler. From their release page:

The purpose of releasing version 0.1 Chandler source code is to provide an architectural and technical overview of Chandler, give the community a chance to review a skeletal framework and tentative APIs, and to provide more details about future Chandler plans including a few cool features to give a glimpse of what is possible. In general, this is a chance to show that OSAF is "for real".

Here's Mitch Kapor's announcement re the release. And Joi Ito has already got it running and seems to like it. He comments mostly on how it's written in Python.

I'm becoming more curious about Python.

Discovered this about a year ago and have just come across an example of it in my file system. Making form controls dynamically size with the browser window can be done using CSS. Set the width property/attribute to a percentage. Simple eh? You can either set it via a STYLE attrribute of the HTML tag, or implement it via a CSS class. Trumps. NOTE: There are some browser issues related with this. I noticed that IE 5+ does dynamically resize, but has the tendancy to adjust the size of the control by a few pixels when the control gets the focus. Doh!!!

Dave Winer has posted a link to his Wiki Wiki Blogroll Editor. I would have thought the interface would require a little more complexity that this, but hey...if this sort of interface works for all those Userland customers, cool. Makes things simpler for me as a all-in-one-shop developer. I like simple [easy to code] interfaces [that work].

I wonder if there's a performance hit if your blogroll gets really big. Maybe that's just a issue for us non-DSL countries that have greedy telecommunications companies in charge.

Forgive me - couldn't miss the opportunity to have a dig at bigpond's owner for their customer relations mushroom strategy.

I've made some changes/updates to Deepthought and will upload them tonight, time permitting. Just some simple but vital additions to how posts are viewed. Also fixed up a bug in the prodcution of RSS files.

Next in line for development will be more security features, some additions to the dt_blog table [yep, more properties], a blogroll and menu system and I want to start the Aggregator. I was going to wait for this until most of the blogging side of Deepthought was complete, but I really need an aggregator ;) Also hot on the list are the XMP-RPC interface and pings. So much to do, bla bla bla...

LANDO: So you see, since we're a small operation, we don't fall into the...uh...jurisdiction of the Empire.

LEIA: So you're part of the mining guild then?

LANDO: No, not actually. Our operation is small enough not to be noticed...which is advantageous for everybody since our customers are anxious to avoid attracting attention to themselves.

HAN: Aren't you afraid the Empire's going to find out about this little operation and shut you down?

LANDO: That's always been a danger looming like a shadow over everything we've built here. But things have developed that will insure security. I've just made a deal that will keep the Empire out of here forever.

I'm back in Sussex Street again for another stint at working, saving, compiling & exercise. Not much time left. Need to decide, choose, negotiate, sell, buy, borrow, pack, store, cull, discard, out with the past, in with the furture. I've missed having Reitoei around. Logging on to the latest version of deepthought and tweaking. Sorting through the MB of data congregating on it's ATA. I love the flashing light of the network switch and long for them to be on a 802.11 device. Viva la SWT.

Check this shit out. The Administration� has placed a former executive of DoubleClick, the all seeing, all click-recording, Internet advertising giant, in charge of privacy for the Department of Homeland Security. Talk about a @#$%&*! joke. Talk about the buddy system. Talk about a world gone mad. Or don't talk at all, because you're being watched. And what you say [or even what you don't say] will be held against you.

Donald Rumsfeld is a royal tool. I have to repost some of these comments from k5 because I don't want to forget what a @#&$ he really is. And the collective memory of 21st century citizens is about as long a commercial break. Anyways, here are some comments DR made in public...and people didn't laugh him off the stage. Remember, this guy is the United States Secretary of Defense.

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.
-Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

The Situation
Things will not be necessarily continuous.
The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous
Ought not to be characterized as a pause.
There will be some things that people will see.
There will be some things that people won't see.
And life goes on.
-Oct. 12, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing

The Digital Revolution
Oh my goodness gracious,
What you can buy off the Internet
In terms of overhead photography!

A trained ape can know an awful lot
Of what is going on in this world,
Just by punching on his mouse
For a relatively modest cost!
-June 9, 2001, following European trip

Clarity
I think what you'll find,
I think what you'll find is,
Whatever it is we do substantively,
There will be near-perfect clarity
As to what it is.

And it will be known,
And it will be known to the Congress,
And it will be known to you,
Probably before we decide it,
But it will be known.
-Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense news briefing

A Confession
Once in a while,
I'm standing here, doing something.
And I think,
"What in the world am I doing here?"
It's a big surprise.
-May 16, 2001, interview with the New York Times

Here's a DaveNet article regarding Microsoft's support for RSS. Wonder if they'll try and change the format. Kindof like waiting to see if Saddam will use Weapons Of Mass Destruction�. In both cases history says yes, but you just don't want to think about what would happen. I want to believe they won't.

I love hearing about big-company-executives having a go at competitors. Larry Ellison has made some comments....Linux will wipe Microsoft out of the data center. Of course, many people have known and believed this for years, which is one of the main reasons why Linux is where it is today. But good on him for getting it out there...and good on Oracle for supporting Linux [and allowing Linux to provide a perfect platform for Oracle to base it's future products on]. Some quotes from the news posts:

• "[Microsoft has] already been killed by one open-source product. Slaughtered, wiped out, taken from market dominance to irrelevance," Ellison said, speaking of the Apache Web server's displacement of Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) technology.
• "It will take many years, but [Microsoft] will eventually have to compete. It'll be a whole new world for them. I'm looking forward to it,"
• "The computer industry is finally moving from a cottage industry to an industrial industry. We're moving at breakneck pace toward the 19th century,"

If only the corporate world was this exciting everyday.

Here's the updated roadmap. In short, they're going to split Mozilla into Phoenix [the lightweight browser] & Minotaur [a new lightweight mail reader].

From Daring Fireball comes this great interview. Brent Simmons worked for UserLand before starting his own company that produces the most popular news aggregator for the Mac.

I dig how his companies website is a blog. Just like r0nin.org, but with an actual product. ;)

Got sydneysino.com and cyber-thief.com created at rose. And I think they sorted the email issue out for me. Still didn't work on first testing ;) Have upload a copy of PostNuke and set up the database for Weaves site.

I can't remember where I first found this link to RSSBandit. It's a good app to use for re-engineering a RSS Aggregator because it simple and straight to the point.

There's another protest in Sydney today. In between my house and my office there are a pack of people with signs and banners who are against the War On Iraq II� and who want to do something about it. There are twice as many police on the streets today than there were at the last protest, Students Against The War�. It got a little out of hand last time, so a statement has to be made [I'm guessing]. Gock luck to both teams out there today. Play fair and may the best team win.

Props go out to Rose Hosting for answering email queries in record time. Need a new domain name set up? Bang...it's done. I've had a few hosting companies over the years, and so far, these guys are the best.