Finally there's something I can refer to while building dt. I've found most of this information just from looking around the usual places, but it's always good to have one of the leaders in the field spell it out.

Anyways, here's the permalink to Dave's post.

I'm surprised it's not on the DayPop Top 40 yet. It might be a little techinical for most [it's not actually a technical document, but...].

And there's no comments on it either. Maybe Dave's being shunned. Or maybe it's a timezone thing. There's way too many maybes in this post already, so I'm outta here.

I've been meaning to work out the keyboard shortcut for changing languages for a while. Now I have. Left Alt + Shift. Chant it baby. Left Alt + Shift. Left Alt + Shift. Left Alt + Shift. Left Alt + Shift. Left Alt + Shift. Left Alt + Shift. I wonder if there's a shortcut to switch the Japanese Language to ???? input?

Get an old Ghettoblaster, rip out the guts and replace it with a 'puter with wireless access and enough disk space to store heaps of...content. What a great idea.

Sony� has come good again with a new version of the Playstation 2 called the PSX. New features include DVD/RW, 120 GB Hard Drive. Bundled with the product will be a service to download and watch video content via the web. Could this be a step closer to video on demand? It also comes with a satellite broadcast tuner, USB 2.0, MemoryStick� slot and all the other mod-cons you'd expect from the latest Sony� product. There's more information about it here, here, here & here [PDF].

Just to repeat what I've seen on many blogs today. There was an earthquake in the Tohoku region at around 6:24pm yesterday. Hope everyone is ok.

Here's a new item - Strong earthquake rattles Tohoku region.

I'm stuck at the moment. There too many 'little things' to do to tidy up the code I written so far. It's not impossible, just daunting. I really should document what I've done so far and plan the next steps, which I think I'll have to do to stem any frustrations and further time delays. Also, I want to stick to my original plan to finalise the basics [users, blogs, posts, comments & categories] before moving on to the bells and whistles [aggregator, UI modification, options out your ass]. I'll hit the documentation trail and see where it leads me.

By now most people [who care about such things] would have heard about the court action SCO is taking against IBM, and threatening to take against big companies using Linux. It would seem that SCO is being pushed by some force, because all the threats its making are baseless and will only isolate the company from it's customers. The Linux community has always known that Microsoft will do anything it can to try win the current OS wars. Looks like they're stooping pretty low again.

Microsoft has already tried some really stupid things, which just goes to show how out of touch they are with not only their customers, but their opponents. Their prized server OS, while scoring big with the initial releases [NT4], is really starting to suffer from overbloat [W2K, XP/2003], both in functionality and price, and is starting to rapidly dwindled into server room obsurity. "See that old box over there?...It's running Windows�"

Seems now Microsoft is up to it's old, well documented, tricks again. Bruce Perens has an article on news.com that sums it up pretty well.

Give it another year or so and Linux will replace Windows� on the desktop. Personally I think [or maybe I would like to think that] Microsoft peaked a long time ago, and all we've been seeing these last few years are rantings and ravings. Like when some drunk is being thrown out of bar. Sometimes you can still hear them outside, screaming their head off, trying to get back in.

All things going according to plan, my 7500 should be delivered this afternoon. 2 weeks [ahhh...this blog has proved it's worth simply by the ease at which I can now remember dates] after I reported it broken and DELL service has come through. According to the service guy I spoke to, the hinge and LCD have both been replaced. Horay!!! I'd better not jinx myself. I'll post again when I actually get it back in my hands.

Update: Got it back at about 5:30pm. LCD has been replaced and is clear as. Hinge is fixed and the motion of opening the screen is nice and tight. Feels like a new laptop. Horay!!! Well done DELL. You can mark down the service of my 7500 as a total success. I'm stoked.

The Mozilla Firebird Project has another version release. From the press release page;

Mozilla Firebird is a redesign of the Mozilla browser component, similar to Galeon, K-Meleon and Camino�, but written using the XUL user interface language and designed to be cross-platform.

There's a page up explaining Why You Should Switch to the Mozilla Firebird browser. switch...wouldn't have been my choice of words.

Anyways, get it here.

Saw him last night at the Horden. He was old school, but still rocked. In the promo video clip he said something like - I'm not the best, not the worst, but the first. That about sums it up. He's not a real technical DJ by any means. Great producer though. Knows how to make tunes go together and all that. I'll give it 5 stars. It was a bit of a must see for me anyways.

It's time to do some updates again. I've done a fair amount of work on the deepthought codebase [not documented of course...doh!] which I need to upload to r0nin.org and tonight I'll do more. Also tonight I have to complete another theme for cyber-thief.com and upload that. Really need to get Weave site up and running so I can put it behind me.

If I follow these instructions I have to have a USB floppy drive to install Debian on my TC1000. Seeing as I'm saving big-time for this 日本 adventure, I can't really justify the AU$100 for it [Yes...a USB floppy really costs that much in Australia]. I know it's not a home loan or anything, $100 is $100. That'll convert to a large amount of ししも.

That being the case, I've not given up, but have just looked elsewhere. There are a few CD-based distributions that I've been able to boot, but what I'm presently stoked with is VNCing to my development server in full screen mode. Linux through VNC [1024x768, 16bit, full screen mode] runs so much faster [and therefore is so much more enjoyable to use] than the base install of WindowsXP�.

My development server is a mini-ATX / Via 800MHz / 512MB RAM / 60GB HB little workhorse. Hardly takes up any room and is almost smaller than my Inspiron 7500. So that's the solution so far until I hit Akihabara and find me a cheaper USB floppy.

So, after the phone call that changed DELL's attitude towards my repairs, which ended up with me supposedly getting everything fixed under warranty, the technical support dude was dispatched within 2 working days. He is here now and has decided that he can't fix it [DELL issued him with the wrong parts and he can't get a screw off], so my 7500 is going to have to be sent offsite for repairs. @#$%!!! The technician is organizing it all now. Should be able to get a courier pick it up. He says it will take at least a week to get back to me, probably two. @#$%!!! At least I'll have it fixed, and I should get a new LCD to boot. That's cool, seeing as the old girl is a few weeks away from running out of warrantly. Be like having a new PC. Well...a new PIII 650 / 256MB RAM / 30GB HD PC. But hey...I'll have a new 1400x1050 LCD. That's something. Blast my positive outlook on life.

On my daily browse of freshmeat I came across a series of projects that have been updated recently. The group that is releasing the software is called HeroineWarrior or maybe Heroine Virtual, which is what is copyrighted at the bottom of the page. Anyways, they have a handfull of products that look really interesting. I'm leeching them now to evaluate. The products are:

• Cinelerra - Movie Studio in a box.
• libmpg3 - MPEG access for editing.
• X-Movie - Watch uncompressed movies on a box.
• Mix 2000 - Soundcard volume controls for guys who like soundcard volume controls.

There's a few other apps these guys do. Worth checking out and remembering [aka blogworthy].

So, after the Phone Call that changed DELL's attitude towards my repairs, which ended up with me getting everything fixed under warranty, the technical support dude was dispatched within 2 working days. He is here now and has decided that he can't fix it [he was issued with the wrong replacements parts and a incorrect description of the problem], so my 7500 is going to have to be sent offsite for repairs. @#$%!!!

The technician is organizing it all now. Should be able to get a courier to pick it up. He says it will take at least a week to get back to me, probably two. @#$%!!!

At least I'll have it fixed. Blast my positive outlook on life.

Status descriptions I've been contemplating. Private | Public | Draft | Published I think the latter is winning.

So far this image of XP hasn't been that friendly with switching languages. I've changed a setting [can't remember] and rebooted. Have the language bar hanging transparently on the desktop. Wrote the title of this post, so it's so far so good style. More later after testing.

Especially now they've come of age and most browsers are supporting them. I've made a few changes to the layout of some of the UI. Mainly with the listing the blogs. All very confusing, but all very easy. Complexity and simplicity riding hand in hand. Yeah...anyways, this is more of the standardisation of the UI.

Spoken to DELL again. Tables have turned a little bit now. Before they thought I had broken the hinge and were going to charge me $300+ and take at least 3 weeks. Now they think it's a warranty thing and are going to fix everything for free and have someone local call me to make an appointment in 2 business days. Go figure. Lucky too, because my warranty period was for 3 years [1095 days] and I've already had the notebook for over 1000 days. Reminds me of that perfect situation where you buy something expensive, and just before the warrantly expires, you get it serviced/fixed so it's in [close to] mint condition again. Trumps!!!

I won't ramble. Check these;

• Web Dawn - What's it all about?
• If you haven't yet realised this is coming, you've had your head in the sand...for the last 20+ years
• Just want the doctor ordered. More deep thinking about weblogs. Horay!!!
• Into extending the MetaWeblog API? Me too. As is this guy. Nice read. This follows from a recent post by Diego Doval reviewing blogging APIs
• Paul Graham has a new article called Hackers and Painters

I really have to finish dt's aggregator.

Title says it all really, but here's a bit of the site's intro to help me remember.

I started this "mini-site" in 2001 when I documented for the Airport community how to fix internal power supply failures. Since then, I have been asked to help Airport users with other issues such as how to retrofit extender antennas, add ventilation, resolve configuration issues, etc. Many people have contributed to this site, and I have attempted to credit them where possible

My 7500 broken hinge problem has turned into a broken-hinge-and-LCD-color-distortion problem. #&$%!!! There was an Incident that happened while I was not at home, and it looks like this Incident has caused the LCD problem [stupid hobbits]. So, no doubt, the repair time is going to be blown out to months. Apparently it's going to take 3-4 weeks to get me the hinge part. Then that has to be fixed by a DELL technician if I want the LCD fixed under warranty. #&$%!!!

The positive twist is I'll rack up heaps of hours on the TC1000, which will be good. Downside is I won't be doing any high-end workstation tasks for a while. I may not even be able to take the 7500 to ニセコ initially, which would really suck. Might have to get it shipped at a later date.

Everything is gonna be aright, but I'll have to see what I can do to speed the whole process up.

Is that really a word? I'm not going to mention how [but it was the act of stupid stupid stupid hobbits], but now the screen on my 7500 is discoloured. There was an Incident and I think the Incident might have fucked some of the cabling. I'm toying with going into shuutdown mode on YT until I get it fixed. It's still under warranty, but it's just the down time that's going to kill me. Still, the up side is that it would force me to get use to the tablet, which I really gotta put some time into. Fuck!!!

I'm going to stay in Kutchan soon so I thought I might start looking for some sites that will be of interest to me while I'm there. For starters there this weather site. Looks like rain today [>50% chance] in Kutchan with maybe a bit of sun creepying in tomorrow. A high of 15�C. I can deal with that.

BTW, that link belongs to a site called Weather Web Hokkaido.

Ardour is a multichannel hard disk recorder (HDR) and digital audio workstation (DAW). It is capable of simultaneous recording 24 or more channels of 32 bit audio at 48kHz. Ardour is intended to function as a "professional" HDR system, replacing dedicated hardware solutions such as the Mackie HDR, the Tascam 2424 and more traditional tape systems like the Alesis ADAT series. It is also intended to provide the same or better functionality as proprietary software DAWs such as ProTools, Samplitude, Logic Audio, Nuendo and Cubase VST/SX (we acknowledge these and all other names as trademarks of their respective owners). It supports MIDI Machine Control, and so can be controlled from any MMC controller, such as the Mackie Digital 8 Bus mixer and many other modern digital mixers.

And more specifically about the release...

Ardour is now in feature freeze mode. First releases of Ardour in binary package and source tarball form will be made in mid June as release candidates. The first official release will occur in late July or early August.

All the reviews warned me about it and I painstakingly tried to avoid it with care and consideration, but yesterday, after almost three years of faithful service, it finally happened. On a routine closing of the Dell Inspiron 7500 screen, the hinge snapped. The 'puter still works, but is a challenge to open and close the screen, so really, I just turned my laptop into a desktop.

There's got to be people with a similar problem. Wonder how they dealt with it. I'll Google the issue later and see what I dig up.

Update: Found this [scroll down to Thursday, 14 November 2002] which raises my hopes. Will order the part and sit out the waiting period. If all things come up trumps, I'll still have a notebook.

There's a tread over at /. about a new product from Intel. A Personal Server. Small as a deck of cards, half the weight of an Ipaq, wireless access. No plug, no cables, just sit it next to a wireless enabled 'puter and connect.

Erik and Mark Baard also have a entry about it. No doubt more will follow, I'll update later.

Update: This from Rebecca McKinney - in brief;

...The basic premise of the personal server is to use the existing infrastructure of lcd screens and carry only your server with you. Utilizing wireless technology such as 802.11 and Bluetooth in conjunction with high-performance, low-power processors you would be able to carry around a device about the size of a deck of cards that would address mobile computing. You would be able to communicate with other compatible devices such as atm screens, kiosks at airports and other computers to access your own personal information...the personal server...

It looks like I'm going to be spending the whole 2003/2004 season in ニセコ boarding my ass off and living happily. Life is good.

Doc Searls has posted another great article called 'The New Advertising Business'. The brief copy from his own site is trumps:

Simply put, companies like Google and Overture are blowing away everything the old advertising business holds dear. Beautiful images. Attention-grabbing graphics. Awards. Strategy. Even old conventions like branding � a term Procter & Gamble borrowed from the cattle industry, back when they created mass media advertising in the dawn of commercial radio more than 70 years ago. They're blowing it away by connecting users and advertisers and helping both offer something valuable to each other.

OSNews has a nice piece about some of the more radical, but sensible, things you could do with your own Linux distibution. Rather than staying with [and fighting it out with] the pack, get out there and do something new, different & useful.