ZeroCalm.com - Never Satisfied

Is Your Hard Drive, CPU, RAM, and PSU Safe?

2006-05-19T10:54:00.000-04:00

Is Your Hard Drive, CPU, RAM, and PSU Safe?: "Testing and checking your components early on is a great way to avoid disaster later. In this feature, we show you how to check and test the hard drive, CPU, RAM, and PSU."

Story of My Life

2006-05-10T17:09:00.000-04:00

A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost . He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but don't know where I am."

The woman below replied, "You're in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You're between 40 and 41degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude."

"You must be an engineer," said the balloonist.

"I am," replied the woman, "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I've no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help at all. If anything, you've delayed my trip."

The woman below responded, "You must be in Management."

"I am," replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?"

"Well," said the woman, "you don't know where you are or where you're going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise which you've no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my fault."

Registry Edits for Windows XP

2006-04-10T08:50:00.000-04:00

Registry Edits for Windows XP: "This site contains 383 registry tweaks/vbs scripts for windows XP. Includes removing/deleting sticky keys, setting RDP port number, tons of modifications to start menu behavior, and about 380 more."

How To Solder

2006-04-10T08:50:00.000-04:00

How To Solder: "Nice tutorial for DIY-ers or noobs on the proper techniques of soldering."

Making GNOME look like OSX

2006-04-07T07:50:00.000-04:00

Making GNOME look like OSX: "f you've always admired the Apple OS X desktop theme and layout but aren't ready to drop a load of cash on an Apple machine (or if you want to stick with free software), this article will show you how to make GNOME look and feel more like OS X, with some limitations."

Getting rid of common annoyances in Windows Xp

2006-02-16T13:37:00.000-05:00

Getting rid of common annoyances in Windows Xp: "hate little popups in windows xp, this shows you how to get rid of them"

Additionally, the author provides how-to's for the following:

Get rid of the Tour prompt
Get rid of the MSN Passport creation prompt
Restore my Desktop icons!
Copy the I386 source folder to your HD and change the source path
Delete Temporary Internet Files (and make the temporary storage space smaller)
Configure IE to download more than 2 concurrent files
Configure a larger number for the grouping of Taskbar buttons
Get rid of the Hibernation support
Customize Windows Explorer views and buttons
Add the Quick Launch toolbar
Add a shortcut to Control Panel and the Administrative Tools to the Quick Launch toolbar
Add a shortcut to Command Prompt to the Desktop and to the Quick Launch toolbar
Add a Command Prompt option to the default Explorer right click context menu
Install the Microsoft Powertoys suite
Add Local Area Connection icons to your system tray
Disable the Memory Dump file creation
Disable the Error Reporting option
Enable the Auto Update option
Disable the Fast User Switching mode and the Welcome Screen (Workgroup only)
Disable the administrative shares
Set the location of the My Documents folder
Configure local user options
Configure local user options - extended
Configure the Pagefile (virtual memory) location
Configure Remote Desktop access
Create a Send To Notepad and Send To MAPI shortcuts
Enable EFS Encryption by right-click
Restore the W2K-style search window
Install the ISO Burner PowerToy
Install the new Windows Server 2003 RDP 5.2 client

Download of the Day: TTCS OSSWIN CD

2006-02-15T09:56:00.000-05:00

Download of the Day: TTCS OSSWIN CD: "Windows only: The TTCS OSSWIN CD is a huge collection of valuable open source software for your home and office.

The CD is available to download as an ISO via BitTorrent. However, even cooler, they've put together a web-based interface, allowing you to browse the offerings and download programs from the source without downloading the entire CD.

Granted, you could always do this, but you can't always browse such a nicely organized list of excellent open source software. Many of the programs on the TTCS OSSWIN CD have been mentioned here before, and what hasn't certainly has some potential.

Google Working on Desktop Linux

2006-02-02T12:19:00.000-05:00

Google Working on Desktop Linux: "paulmac84 writes 'The Register reports that Google is working on a version of Ubuntu, known internally as Goobuntu. Google has confirmed it is working on a desktop linux project, but declined to supply further details, including what the project is for. Is Google about to release this as an alternative to Windows?'"

I found Ubuntu to have the best Linux distro for balance of user-friendly/feature-rich is a solid Linux, and I am excited to see Google commit resources to Linux.

Google's web apps bleed simplicity; hopefully Google will take over user-interface design for some of the existing OSS projects that run on Linux, making them easier for the average user to use.

How about great Google standalone applications such as Picasa and Google Earth being ported to Linux? For you Windows/Mac junkies, GoogleOS might finally/eventually make Linux a serious desktop OS competitor; this could drive the cost of your favorite OS down substantially.

Look for GoogleOS to take over more development of OpenOffice and improve it's ability to work with MS Office file formats. I don't see GoogleOS ever targeting businesses, but if they do, Google will have to find a way to compete with MS Sharepoint to really have a competitive office software platform. They would also have to make a Linux email client like Evolution as capable as Outlook, and make it talk to MS Exchange servers. By the way, OpenOffice and Evolution are available for Windows now and is free; you don't have to pay for or pirate MS Office anymore.

Cafe101 in Warren, NJ - Website Launch!

2006-01-05T15:55:00.000-05:00

Recently, a future family member purchased the Jack Cooper's Celebrity Deli in Warren, NJ and has since overhauled the place to launch a B.Y.O.B. cafe, Cafe101.

Cafe101's food is outstanding, the prices are low, the staff is friendly, the atmosphere is intimate, and there's no cork fee!

I highly recommend the Cafe101 wings, or any one of their panini sandwiches. How can you not like a grilled sandwich?

This is a great place to take a friend or a date and a bottle of wine (or three). Also, if you happen to work in or near Warren, be sure to ask about catering. Most people who give Cafe101's food a try end up going back again and again.

The menu and directions are available at the Cafe101 website, thecafe101.com.

The Info:

Cafe101
101 Town Center Drive
Suite 101
Warren, NJ 07059
908-757-3354
info@thecafe101.com
http://www.thecafe101.com

Nero Alternatives

2005-11-18T13:42:00.000-05:00

Windows XP has built-in CD burning capabilities, but lacks the extra features of Nero that many have come to rely upon. I am always on the lookout for free alternatives to the greats such as Nero, and a story at digg.com provided the following choices:

DeepBurner (Free Edition)
CDBurnerXP Pro

2 out of 3 ain't bad

2005-10-09T22:13:00.000-04:00

Ok, so my first post since god knows when (or you if you decide to go back and check the date) and I start off with a Meatloaf lyric. I'd apologize, but I'd rather not. Seeing as how the Eagles completely ruined my sports euphoria weekend, I'm allowed to be kind of bitter. Why sports euphoria you ask? What's that? You didn't? Well I'm gonna tell you anyway, cause this is my column, and I want to.

It started Friday night, attending my first Flyers game in over 2 years. What a game! Most of the rule changes have actually made the coolest sport on ice even better. Yes, I said most, but that's a different story. The players can skate now, they still hit occasionally, and there is actually more scoring. The best part of the night was finally getting to watch my favorite player on the ice in person. Peter Forseberg is the best player in the world right now. He is amazing to watch. He can pass with his eyes closed, skates circles around the opposition, and when he takes a hit, he actually bounces back up and rejoins the play. Which is more than can be said for the Debbies. With all the things that hockey has changed in the past year, a couple things have stayed the same, the Devils are still babies, and the Flyers still ROCK!

After such a great night on Friday, Saturday surely couldn't have been any better. Until the Nits took on the Buckeyes in Happy Valley. In one of the best football games I have ever seen, Penn State hung on to a 17-10 lead and beat the number 6 team in the nation, and vault to number 8 in the polls. This weekend keeps getting better!

Then, the inevitable happened. The Eagles finally had the breakdown I had been anticipating since the Oakland game. They got destroyed by the Cowboys. The ONE team in the league that the eagles are not allowed to have a bad game against. I'd have been ok if they hadn't come back against KC and did against Dallas instead. But not this, not this way. Andy proved that most of that weight he lost must have been from his brain. The Eagles came in today without much semblence of a gameplan. And they could not adjust to what Parcels was throwing at them. This was a clear case of Philly being outcoached, cause they definetly have the better team. I don't know what happened, I don't want to look into to much to know what happened, I just want them to fix it, and come back and destroy the cowgirls on Nov. 9th.

So now that my weekend was pulled back down to normalcy, I can prepare for another big one ahead. The Flyers welcome back old friends Mark Recchi and John Leclair on Friday, and the Lions play the one team I hate just as much if not more than the Cowboys...the Michigan Wolverines.

ZeroCalm.com Feeds Posted

2005-09-26T11:37:00.000-04:00

As promised, I have finally gotten around to posting my Bloglines.com News & Blog Feeds on ZeroCalm.com's front page. Take a gander over to the of the page. You'll see that I've posted links to both the site and to the RSS feed for each listed feed.

In getting this done, I wrote my first useful Perl/Regex script without support from the gurus at my office. The script parses and rewrites my exported Bloglines subscriptions into the format you see on the left.

Motorola Q Sexiness

2005-09-11T16:35:00.000-04:00

The Motorola Q phone is slated for a first quarter 2006 release. This is a very sexy phone/PDA. I can't have both a phone and a PDA, because I would definately lose one, so I've been looking for a good combo like this one for a while. However, in looking at the specs, I noticed that Motorola continues to stick to the 1.3 MP camera. I have the same 1.3 MP camera in my v710, and the pictures that it takes are absolutely horrible. Disgusting. I think I'll wait for a less useless camera before I pick one of these up.

Free Geek TV

2005-09-12T18:30:00.000-04:00

An article was posted over at Slashdot.org highlighting a web page that has indexed liks to free geek-related TV (not really) shows you can download and watch on your computer. I've watched a few of them before, but I intend to watch more - some of which I didn't even know about.

How to Buy a Flat-Screen TV

2005-08-30T08:34:00.000-04:00

I recently got engaged and my fiance and I are set to close on a townhouse next month. Next big step in my life? You guessed it... buying a flat-screen TV. The last time I looked into this, I was angered by the complexity and vast array of technologies in modern flat-panels, as well as the unbeliveabke marketing gimmicks associated with selling them, so I did what any victim of ADD does in this situation... gives up. That's why I was happy to find and share this introductory article on the subject at PCWorld.com.

The introductory article above does not really cover DLP televisions, which seem to by far provide the best bang for your buck when you get to 42+ inches. Here are some DLP links.

I also found the "Picture" section of this BestBuy page to be useful.

Stop Using Internet Explorer! Get Firefox!

2005-08-31T11:32:00.000-04:00

I am tired of explaining why you should stop using Internet Explorer, so here are a few simple links for you readers that are hard of hearing, or just continue to be lazy and ignorant. Yes, this post is very biased, but not a single person that I've convinced to switch has failed to thank me or praise Firefox.

http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20041230.html
http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/713878
http://www.getfirefox.com
http://www.spreadfirefox.com
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/switch
http://switch2firefox.com/

ARSTechnica's August Ars System Guide

2005-08-31T09:51:00.000-04:00

ArsTechnica is a wonderful technology and hardware review site. They periodically publish their system guides, in which they aim to build three computers, component-by-component. They build a "God Box" that even people like me can't justify buying but still enjoy drooling over, a "Hot Rod Box", which is more up my alley, and a "Budget Box" that would satisfy most sane computer users and even many gaming enthusiasts. Here is the main link to their Ars August 2005 System Guide.

Eventually, I'll get around to including my blogroll (list of links to sites that I visit frequently) over there on the left side of my blog, but feel free to check it out now.

The Return of ZeroCalm.com and ZeroCalm.com Forums

2005-08-12T15:56:00.000-04:00

In my best Professor Farnsworth voice: "Good News, Everybody!"

ZeroCalm is back. This time, we are doing it right. ZeroCalm.com is now hosted on an ungodly amount of pipe over at Choopa.com. Please do me a favor and check them out. I highly recommend their services if you are looking for a serious hosting provider with some serious bandwidth.

I have a lot of news to post about recent major events in my life. Expect posts soon. In the meantime, check out the new ZeroCalm.com Forums.

Open Source Software Index

2005-06-20T10:37:00.000-04:00

Want to give open source software (free!) a try, but don't want to switch away from Windows? Much of the popular software that runs on top of the Linux operating system also runs on top of Windows. Additionally, there's a lot of great open source software (free!) that runs on Windows and not Linux.

I still enjoy playing HL2, Counter-Strike, and Doom3 with minimal fuss, so even I still have a WindowsXP box, but the games and WindowsXP are the only software that I pay for that you'll find on my system.

Check out what is available for free:

http://www.theopencd.org

http://www.xtort.net/faves.php

Win32 SAPPS - Stand Alone Apps

Web Development Tips

2005-06-07T15:31:00.000-04:00

A good friend of mine recently took an IT job and was tasked with redesigning the company's web site. He asked me what software to use. I decided to give him a bit of advice and some development resources. I feel fully qualified to dispel this information, considering I have not done any web development in ages and my software development skills are rusty at best.

Web Development Software

If your company can afford it, Macromedia Dreamweaver is my web development tool of choice.

If 'free' is more in line with your spending power, a GUI HTML editor, like the one that comes in the Mozilla Suite, or the standalone Nvu will do nicely.

If you have a lot of time on your hands, or prefer the flexibility of a clean slate and absolute control, you'll probably want a text editor with syntax highlighting that 'understands' or can be made to understand (the syntax) of HTML, Javascript, Perl, PHP, etc. I personally like Scite, Emacs, vim, or TextPad.

Development Platform

Now you need a system that you can develop and server your test site with. One of the coolest tools I've seen released recently is XAMPP from apachefriends.org.

If you've ever set up and maintain a webserver with fully-patched individual packages of Apache + MySQL + OpenSSL + Perl + PHP + CGI on either Windows or Linux, you'll know that it's a task that few enjoy, and that seems unecessarily complicated.

XAMPP is free, open-source, and succeeds in making installing ALL of these applications and making them work together a breeze; simply install one complete package. It is a wonderful project about which I can't possibly praise enough.

Do Some Research

Identify the websites of your company's competitors and websites in similar and support industries to get a sense of website layouts and capabilities. Create and organize a portfolio that you will later use to help your employer understand and convey what they need from your re-design, and help you to present your ideas.

Compare your current website to those of your competitors. Identify and list potential improvements and current advantages. Come up with two to three ways to address or accentuate each in the redesign; let your employer make the call, but be ready to steer their decision based on the time, money, and difficulty that each solution entails.

Find user interface design and web site design guidelines and how-tos. They are all over the place and also go by names like top ten tips for or ten commandments of . Read and digest as many of these as possible for two reasons. First of all, you will no doubt design a better site if you do. Second, you will be able to talk the talk and give your employer a sense of confidence, even if it's a false one.

Figure out if what your company's current hosting provider's capabilities are, and whether or not they will be sufficient to address the needs of the redesigned site to avoid any suprises. If you design in PHP, and your provider doesn't have PHP installed, or even an older version, you may be wasting a lot of time or will need to arrange for a domain transfer to a new provider.

Tie the Research Together and Look like a Star

Compile your portfolio and new-found knowledge, create meeting agendas, and organize meetings with the staff from the marketing, sales, and operations departments that have the decision making power as well as the project sponsor(s).

Meet with the appropriate individuals to find out how the site could best help drive and/or support the business, so that your redesign can specifically address and support those needs. A facelift is nice, but if you are going to allocate funds to a site redesign, why not find a way to cover the cost of the facelift as a result of the process? Why not get a return on your investment? Why expend any resources if you do not expect some signifigant tangible or intangible return on your investment?

Be sure to meet with the marketing and sales folk to see what current and futrure efforts your site could help support.

Meet to discuss the finalized plan with the project sponsor and review your performance thusfar.

You need to demonstrate that you:

1) are more than just an IT guy
2) understand the overarching business case
3) can break down and address a very complex task
4) can lead the staff toward making an educated collective desision

Learn to 'Steal'

Why step on Al Gore's toes and re-invent the Internet?

igrep.com
webmonkey.wired.com
hotscripts.com
php.resourceindex.com
www.php-scripts.com
www.scriptarchive.com
cgi.resourceindex.com
www.cgiscript.net

Conclusion

Suprise your employer with your ability to understand the business case, organize the staff, and conduct effective and efficient meetings with trageted agendas. With a little luck, your job won't be outsourced to Calcutta.

Dilbert Goodness

2005-05-31T16:33:00.000-04:00

Some great recent Dilbert posts:
2005366220526

2005052441528

2005052209279

2073246050531

By the way, if you are using an RSS reader like Bloglines, the unofficial Dilbert RSS feed is:
http://www.tapestrycomics.com/dilbert.xml

Speaking of Bloglines, feel free to check out the feeds I like to read:
Devi0s's Feeds

OS Reinstallation - MS Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux

2005-05-15T04:28:00.000-04:00

I have a system with two 120 GB hard drives in it. For some reason, when I had last re-installed WindowsXP, I ended up with an H: drive, instead of a C: drive. Although I was mostly able to function that way, poorly coded installers for Comcast's Rhapsody, the Microsoft Visio Viewer, and a few other useful applications would not install, so I decided that I'd re-install Windows, and dual-boot Ubuntu Linix, a Linux distro that has been getting rave reviews that I have been meaning to test out.

I wanted to document the experience for my readers. Though the operating system install process has improved drastically since the days of Windows 95/98/NT4 and Redhat Linux 7.3/8/9, I still don't think that either camp has simplified the process enough for the average user; any special case install, or mildly unusual software still requires basic system troubleshooting skills, a solid understanding of system administration and the basics workings of how hardware and the operating system that is being installed. It's a shame that no one has this quite right yet.

As always, when dual-booting Windows and Linux, Windows MUST be installed first. Though I am only installing Windows XP, if you are installing multiple versions of Windows, you must install 95/98/ME before NT4/2K/XP/2K3, then install *nix.

The first thing you should do is figure out what hardware is in your system, so you can figure out what drivers you will need. A good way to do this is to use a LiveCD Linux Distro (a Linux operating system that boots and runs off of a CD and RAM that does not alter data on the HDD). Since we will be installing Ubuntu later, I recommend their LiveCD, but Knoppix or a RedHat Fedora Recovery CD will also do nicely. Boot off of the CD and run the command 'lspci -v | more' after you finish booting. This will give you a detailed list of all the devices in your system.

Another way to figure out what hardware you have and, in turn, what drivers you need, is to 1) go to the website of the vendor of your computer, and search for driver and utility downloads for your product, or if you built your own system, go to the website for the vendors of each of your components (namely the vendors of your motherboard, your motherboard's northbridge chipset, your motherboard's southbridge chipset, and any add-in controller cards like video, network, sound, Serial ATA, SCSI, Firewire, USB2, etc.) If you are a system builder, be very careful where you get drivers for any on-board (on-motherboard) hardware; you should get these from your motherboard manufacturer's site instead of directly from the component vendor if there's an option to do so.

IMPORTANT: I ran into serious problems getting USB2 working in Windows. These problems would have been avoided via careful reading and better preparation. I'll explain my goof later in the article in more detail, but had I paid attention to the disclaimer when installing my motherboard chipset drivers, I would not have had this problem. Here's how it could have been avoided, and what you should ALWAYS do to save yourself nightmares:

After you've downloaded all of your Winodws XP Pro drivers, do yourself a major favor and download the latest Windows XP Pro service pack (SP2 at the time this article was written) OFFLINE and DirectX OFFLINE installation packages. Microsoft does everything they can to bury these packages, as they prefer that you use Windows Update to get only the parts of DirectX and SP2 that you need for your setup, instead of downloading the massive installer files that cover every possible setup. Get the offline packages here:

DirectX:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/info.aspx?na=90&p=&SrcDisplayLang=en&SrcCategoryId=&SrcFamilyId=9226a611-62fe-4f61-aba1-914185249413&genscs=&u=http%3a%2f%2fdownload.microsoft.com%2fdownload%2f8%2f1%2fe%2f81ed90eb-dd87-4a23-aedc-298a9603b4e4%2fdirectx_9c_redist.exe

Windows XP Service Pack 2:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/info.aspx?na=90&p=&SrcDisplayLang=en&SrcCategoryId=&SrcFamilyId=049c9dbe-3b8e-4f30-8245-9e368d3cdb5a&genscs=&u=http%3a%2f%2fdownload.microsoft.com%2fdownload%2f1%2f6%2f5%2f165b076b-aaa9-443d-84f0-73cf11fdcdf8%2fWindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe

Now that you have all your drivers, the latest Windows Service Pack, and DirectX in one place, organize them as you wish and rip them to a CD. Make a copy of the CD and file it away somewhere in case you are unlucky enough to have to re-install again in the near future. I wouldn't mention this if this hasn't happened to me on multiple occasions. Murphy is an ugly beast...

Now that we are ready to rock on the install, we should cover a partitioning scheme. In my setup:

HD0 is the Master drive on the primary ide channel.
HD1 is the Slave drive on the primary ide channel.

HD0:
partition1: (primary, bootable, mount pt. = 'C:\', 122GB, NTFS)
HD1:
partition1: (primary, bootable, mount pt. = '/boot', 200MB, ext3)
partition2: (primary, mount pt. = '/', 70GB, ReiserFS)
partition5: (extended, no moint point, 2GB, swap)
partition6: (extended, mount pt. = '/fat32-store' and 'D:\', 50GB, Fat32)

Windows XP Pro setup (boot from the Windows XP Pro CD) will used to create the (HD0,1) partition, then Windows will be installed to that partition (HD0,1). During setup, Windows XP Pro will automatically install it's own bootloader to the Master Boot Record (the first addressable sector) of HD0, whether you like it or not. Don't worry - we'll replace that later.

After Windows is installed, reboot your system and follow the Windows post-install setup procedures until you get to your desktop.

Once you get to your desktop, install the latest Service Pack from the CD you created. Once you've installed the latest Service Pack, reboot. IMPORTANT CONTRADICTION: On some systems, mostly on laptops or media center systems, you MUST install "system management" software (drivers) IMMEDIATELY after completing the OS install.

After you reboot, install DirectX from the CD. Once you've installed the latest DirectX, reboot.

If you are lucky enough that your network card is already detected, select Windows Update from the Start Menu, do a custom installation, install all available updates, and reboot. Otherwise, install your chipset drivers from the CD, reboot, then install any network card drivers that didn't come with the chipset drivers, then reboot again, THEN select Windows Update from the Start Menu, do a custom installation, install all available updates, and reboot again.

After you've installed all available Windows Updates (might take more than one site vist, install, and reboot cycle), install any remaining drivers from your CD, rebooting each time you are told to do so.

After following the above directions, and rebooting about 10 times in the process, your Windows XP Pro installation is complete. Congradulations. Now you have to install and update all of the applications that you use. Many of these installations will require a reboot as well. Have fun. You might want to do the Ubuntu install next just in case you screw up and wipe out your Windows partition and have to go through the above again. Install all of your applications after you get both Operating Systems working, and get all of your hardware working in each Operating System, to avaoid wating time.

Before I move on to installing Ubuntu, I promised I'd tell you where I screwed up. I have an ASUS 87N8X Deluxe Rev. 2.0 motherboard. It has an NVidia NForce2 chipset; both the northbridge and southbrige chipset are NVidia. The mobo also has a USB 2.0 controller, two on-board network cards, an ieee1394 (Firewire) controller, a Serial-ATA RAID controller, an IDE controller, and more. All of these drivers, with the exception of the 3Com network card, come packaged in one file that you can download from NVidia. If you read the fine-print for the file, you'll see that you must install Service Pack 2 BEFORE you install the NVidia software, or there will be absolutely no way to get USB 2.0 working. Not only did I not read the fine print; I failed to make a driver CD. I was forced to make a CD, because my network cards do not work until I install the NVidia software, and you can't download WindowsXP Service Packs without a network card. This is a Catch-22 situation.

Thankfully, I have two systems in my house and was able to make a CD after-the-fact and re-install, but not everyone has this mistake-friendly environment. I was very, very, annoyed with myself for making this mistake, and very annoyed that the install process still requires making a driver CD, which is typically well beyond the skillsets of the average user.

On to Ubuntu Linux. When you install a Linux distribution, you are not just installing the Linux operating system and hardware drivers. You are also installing GNU utilities and whatevrt applications your favorite flavor of Linux distro decides to include on their installer CD. Additionally, most of the hardware drivers are included and will just work when you install the OS.

After Windows is installed, pop in the Ubuntu installer CD, reboot, and boot from the installer CD. At the initial boot menu, simply press enter. You have the option to do a minimal server installation, but what fun is that?

The installer will ask you some questions, but typically automatically highlights the correct answer for you. The only thing you will need to do is manually partition your drives, to set up HD1 as discussed above. Set up your /boot, swap, and /fat32-store partitions first, and specify their size, then set up your / partition, assigning it whatever space is left. Make sure you leave about 6-10GB of space for the / partition - this is the equivalent of your C:\ drive in Windows, so if you start to enjoy the Linux world, you will need plenty of space to store all of your files.

Note that Linux can not write files to NTFS, and that Windows can not write files to ext3 or ReiserFS. Both operating systems can write to fat32, so put all the files you want to see in Linux AND Windows in your /fat32-store partition, like your music, pictures, and documents.

While you are partitioning, make sure that only /, /boot, and /fat32-store will be formatted before you move on. You do NOT want to format C:\ on HD0; you will lose your Windows XP setup.

Next, Ubuntu will automatically detect that Windows XP is installed! If Ubuntu does detect Windows XP, as it should, Ubuntu will tell you it is safe to replace the Windows XP bootloader code on the MBR of HD0 with it's own bootloader code that will allow you to select Ubuntu or Windows when you power your system on. I can't begin to tell everyone how neat this feature is - dual booting used to be much more complicated to configure, though I am told that Debian Linux has done things this way for some time now.

You will need to create a user account - it will ask you for a screename and a real name and a password. Do not forget your password. However, do not write it down. Find some way to memorize it. I personally like using thre first letter of each word in a few lines of a song I've memorized. Throw a replacement symbol in there and capitalize a few of the letters too and you'll wind up with a very secure password. Don't forget that passwords should be at least 8-10 characters in length whenever possible.

At this point Ubuntu will want to reboot your system. After it reboots, it will fetch application packages from the web and install them. A short 20 minutes later, on a high-speed connection, and you'll have a fully-cuntional Linux system! On top of that, you'll have an office suite, an instant messaging program, multimedia apps, and more! It even comes with an update manager that notifies you when updates are available for ALL of the software on your system, not just the Operating System files.

I should mention that after my Ubuntu install, when I tried to launch the update manager, I was told that I had broken packages. Notwithstanding, I was also told exactly how to fix them, and the fix took less than three minutes. I am very, very impressed with the Ubuntu installation.

Document Conversion

2005-03-22T17:22:00.000-05:00

This was posted in irc.freenode.net in the ##linux channel by Samus_Aran:

the best converter of word to text that I found was: catdoc -d8859-1 -w -a %file% 2>/dev/null

for PDF to HTML the best I found is: pdftohtml -i -hidden -stdout %file% 2>/dev/null

for PDF to text, do the above conversion to HTML, and then convert to text with: vilistextum --no-title --no-alt --shrink-lines 1 --palm - - 2>/dev/null

Stripping Redhat's Intro to Bash Article - Part II

2005-03-15T14:15:00.000-05:00

I posted a previous article in which I stipped all of the cool commands out of a Red Hat magazine article to server as a reference for people who can generally figure out the commands without reading pages of documentation.

Part II of the article has been released, and for those that like the explainations, I recommend that you check it out. This article focuses on Perl. Because I do not know perl as well as I'd like to, I've ripped some of the explainations out this time as well. Remember, this blog is about me, not the readers. So there.

find /tmp/library -print0 | xargs -0 perl -p -i -e 's/XFree86/x.org/g'

-p tells Perl to execute the script on each and every input line, and print the $_
variable.

$_ is a magical variable that many things use if not given another value. In this case, when using the -p operator, it is set to be the entire current line of input.

seq 1 10 | perl -p -e '$_ = "prefix: $_"'

perl -p -e 's/:.*//' /etc/passwd

s/:.*// is regular expression substitution

process /etc/password, removing everything after (and including) the first colon
because we didn't use perl -i, this only prints to the screen - not the file. code class="command">-i is in-place, and would make the changes to the file.

find /tmp/library -print0 | xargs -0 perl -p -i -e 's/XFree86/x.org/g'

perl -n -e '@fields = split /:/; print "$fields[0]\n"' /etc/passwd

You can not only access the entire line via $_ but you can also access each field through the @F array. This works for any line/file delimited by a common character.

perl -n -e '@fields = split /:/; print "$fields[0]\n"' /etc/passwd

perl -l -a -n -e 'print $F[6]' /var/log/httpd/access_log

What are my website's most popular pages?
cat /var/log/httpd/access_log | perl -l -a -n -e 'print $F[6]' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | tail -10

Who is attacking my web server?
cat /var/log/httpd/access_log | perl -l -a -n -e 'print $F[0]' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | tail -10

You need to make changes to a large number of files in-place.
find -type f -name '*.txt' | xargs perl -p -i -e 's/PLACEHOLDER/new_value/g'

You suspect there may be multiple users with the same numeric uid in /etc/passwd.
perl -F: -l -a -n -e 'print $F[2]' /etc/passwd | sort | uniq -d

You want to know how much data your webserver transferred today.
cat /var/log/httpd/access_log | perl -l -a -n -e '$n += $F[9]; } END { print $n'

the -n operator has Perl do this for you:

while (<>) {
  # perl's magic to split $_ into @F

  # code specified by -e goes here
}

let's perform the substitution manually:

while (<>) {
  # perl's magic to split $_ into @F

  $n += $F[9]; } END { print $n
}

Adjusting formatting and we have...

while (<>) {
  # perl's magic to split $_ into @F

  $n += $F[9];
}

END {
  print $n
}

You have a logfile that has timestamps in epoch time but your brain doesn't read Unix epoch time.
cat /tmp/weirdlog | perl -l -a -n -e 'print scalar(localtime $F[0]), " @F[1..$#F]"'

The other construct is " @F[1..$#F]". This is basically the same as "@F" except we only get entries 1, 2, 3, etc, through $#F. $#F is Perl's way of saying :the last valid index in the @F array." Another way of accomplishing this would be:

cat /tmp/weirdlog | perl -l -a -n -e '$F[0] = scalar localtime $F[0]; print "@F"'

the use of cat protects us... even with -i, Perl can only change files in place if they were on the command line and not if they were streamed to it via stdin).

Devi0s vs. The Ugly PHP Program - And the winner is...

2005-03-14T11:35:00.000-05:00

I am gonna give myself the win on this one, but I am not happy with my performance. I am somewhat happy with the results, but there is still much about the mycal.js file and PHP form submission behavior that I do not quite understand that is going to cost me more than a few nights of working on the irc.freenode.net #php channel, and learning javascript...

In any case, to bring my readers up to speed, I made (what I am calling) "QuickerJournal" out of an old PHP program, "QuickJournal". QuickJournal fits the niche of fast, web-based, brain-dump recorder. Such a tool is useful for those inflicted with a slight case of ADD compimented nicely by a busy life, like me.

My previous article on this issue may be found here:
http://www.zerocalm.com/2005/03/need-some-php-help-please.html

My public self-diagnosis and notes while working through the code debugging and program update is recorded here:
http://www.phpdevshed.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=178

My post with my final working code:
http://www.phpdevshed.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=427#427

I am pleased to say that the new code meets my needs, and the needs of the original author:

"I have always wanted a quick and simple no nonsense journal or notes-taker application - Quickjournal is all that - Multi-user, date driven jotter - Leave is open and just dump data into it. It can be used as a journal, guestbook, jotter, diary, brain dump, bookmark store etc"