Another WWDC three thousand plus miles away 
I’m happy with the new laptops and Snow Leopard stuff (30$!); sad about the severe lack of Steve; angry about the fact that upgrading my phone at some point in the future might be a very expensive operation; and completely confused about what UI book the Safari team was reading when they came up with the blue widget in the following image (which, by the way, is not a progress bar):
There are lots of pictures at Flickr. There are some below, interspersed throughout the words, too…
Say what?!
On Saturday, just after 10PM, Delta flight 6372 from JFK to BTV landed on the tarmac in Burlington, and I was able to breathe a sigh of relief! I was finally home, after my first solo trip, my first trip across the Atlantic, and my first UDS.
I was in Barcelona attending the Ubuntu Developer Summit for the next release, Karmic Koala (that’s 9.10, for those of you counting)… talking (mostly listening, actually) about GNOME, fast boot, X, mobile stuff (Android and Moblin), NM, prettiness, and who knows what else! I met lots of awesome people, saw lots of awesome sights and ate lots of awesome food (sometimes). I don’t think it’s possible to properly describe the last week, so I’m just going to write bulleted bits to the best of my ability, separated into UDS-things and Barcelona-things.
UDS
Barcelona
I probably have a lot more things to say, but I can’t keep writing in this post! Too many words! I’ll probably tell more stories as the days go on or something…
Transportation
I walked a lot more than I usually do during the trip; I also rode the metro to many different places around the city. I totaled the distances of the walking and public-transit parts of my trip with Google Earth last night (approximations, of course), and discovered that I’d walked about 41 km (26 miles), and ridden (on the ubiquitous trams and metro) somewhere in the vicinity of 101 km (63 miles). I took notes while I was measuring, too, detailing the trips of each day to the best of my ability.
I was just thinking about how I’m going to make the move to FreeBSD+ZFS for Jayne, and decided to write down a few things I want to fix with my computers and stuff this summer. That turned into a rather extensive set of instructions for getting Jayne transitioned, so I figured I’d post it here so I don’t lose it! I’m not sure why the lists look so crappy, but whatever.
Kaylee and Simon
Jayne
The last day of Sophomore year (for me) just ended; instead of thinking any more about that, I thought I’d write about a handful of material(ish) possessions of mine that came at small monetary cost (to me or my family), but have since proved to be worth it time and time again. Most things don’t stand out in this regard; they integrate themselves into my life, but they aren’t something that I actively remember and enjoy every second of. These three, however, are things which have a value far greater than their price for the entertainment and experiences I’ve derived from them:
Firstly, our Firefly box set. At the time, it was a somewhat off-the-cuff purchase. Dad, Amy, and I had seen an episode or two on TV, had heard about it on the internet, and were awaiting the movie, but had no emotional attachment to the show. Now, a few years later, I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve watched and rewatched these fourteen episodes, nor can I possibly estimate the enjoyment I’ve received both during and between these watchings. Mom commented long ago, while the three of us were quite quietly caught up in the world of Malcolm Reynolds and Co., that those four DVDs were possibly the best 40$ she’d ever spent. I can’t say I disagree. (Indeed; all three of my main computers at the moment are named after Firefly characters!)
Next, the Orange Box. I know this is a strange one, because I’m not a gamer; in fact, I only just finished playing through Half-Life 2 and the two episodes for the first time within the last week or so. However, this collection is more or less my only connection to the gaming world that many of my friends and colleagues so adore; I was introduced to it about a year ago by Mike and Nate, who insisted I play Portal. I sat, for five or six hours, without moving from the chair once, and finished the game – my first introduction to gaming post-PacMan, WASD+Mouse, and probably my single most enjoyable computing experience until Half-Life 2. Now, the story of Gordon and Alyx echoes in my head quite constantly (possibly because I only finished episode two a few days ago, but I hope it stays this way), and provides me yet another world in which to construct thoughts (both in my head, and in my occasional screwing around with the Source SDK, which I hope to soon resume after a few-month hiatus). In any case, this is another 40$ very well placed.
Finally, my Arduino. I’ve progressed on to breadboard- or PCB-mounted ATmega designs at this point, but this is where I got started again. About a decade ago (what!?!), Dad and I spent great deals of time playing around with Parallax’s Basic Stamp, making various small devices, teaching me how to program with the then-obvious choice of language, and providing a platform for a young me to experiment. Robb convinced me to pick up electronics again last semester so we could build guitar-related stuff; while this particular reason didn’t come to fruition, I invested a significant amount of money getting together anything I would need to complete any sort of small electronic project. I chose to grab an Arduino Diecimila while I was at it, so I had a microcontroller to tie things together. Since then, I’ve spent loads of time learning the ins and outs of the platform, building small things (and designing larger things), and in general trying to get acquainted with the internet’s favorite microcontroller. More importantly than my own work, though, I’ve helped a countless number of people here at RPI on various little Arduino-based projects, providing experience, parts, or programmers – most significantly, Connor, with his various IED projects (one of which is turning into a summer job!). All for 20$.
It’s been a long time (20 days) since my last post – in that time:
It turns out it’s really hard to take photos of snow, on a tripod, with an old manual-focus Nikon micro lens… especially when it’s well above freezing and all the snow is melting. Oh, well!
I don’t write about music much (nor make lists of things, here, much), but I figured I’d share the six most obviously perfect albums, in case any of the few of you here hadn’t listened to one of them…
This started as Robb and others poking fun at me for calling Boston’s Boston a perfect album… so I set out to find a small set of albums that I was OK with calling perfect, instead, so they wouldn’t make quite so much fun of me…
“Perfect” means… every song is one you wouldn’t mind running into at any point, but also the album as a whole works together… and makes sense. And stuff. I don’t have words for music, really…
All but one of the albums are from before I was born, and the remaining one is still 14 years old… this is mostly because of my musical taste, of course, but I think (unfortunately) that the production of “epic” music is probably declining… you can blame it on the studios, artists, society, whatever… I don’t know what it is, for sure, but I’d certainly love it if someone repaired the situation!
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Boston – Boston (1976)
This album was the soundtrack for most of my high school career; it remains the most consistently complete and perfect album I’ve ever heard. Some (Robb/Gino) call it overproduced, among other things… |
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Radiohead – The Bends (1995)
I was only recently introduced to this album (and Radiohead in general) by Robb/DJ/Savannah last year. The first half makes for great music the first time through; the second half takes a few plays, but eventually it’s hard to hear just one song and stop without completing the album… |
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The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
For a long time before I knew any music, I had a single CD of Beatles songs. It turned out most of them were from Sgt. Pepper; hearing them in context made them all the better! |
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Pink Floyd – The Wall (1979)
The longest album on the list, at 80 minutes, The Wall is one that’s been with me for quite a while now. You also can’t claim to have listened to it until you’ve listened to it through nice headphones… there’s a whole additional… album, if you listen right. |
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The Beatles – Rubber Soul (1965)
A significant part of Rubber Soul was the soundtrack for freshman year at RPI; it’s also my favorite Beatles album, now, despite the fact that it’s comprised of some of their more ignored-but-still-approachable songs. |
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Genesis – Invisible Touch (1986)
I was introduced to Genesis by Dad, who has a bunch of albums on CD, including this one. Besides Domino, this album feels short and to the point, which probably contributes a bit to its “perfection”. Not complaining about Domino, either, because it’s definitely the best song! |
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Just after Thanksgiving, I ordered an Asus Eee PC 901 from Amazon. I had a few reasons for this rather large purchase: first and foremost, I want to work on Wayland with Robb, but need an Intel graphics card (we’re planning on making this our RCOS project for next semester); it’s fun to tell people I bought a new computer just to obtain a crappy graphics card; in addition, Kaylee’s starting to show signs of age (being a year and a half old, and stuffed in my backpack and banged around daily… college life is not easy on a laptop, just ask Robb’s, or Anthony’s…), so I thought I should take a little stress off that machine; also, a little tiny laptop makes more sense in the classroom, gets out of the way more, and it’s just plain adorable.
The machine I got is the Linux version, of course (more about that later). Intel Atom at 1.6 GHz, 1024×600, 9″ matte display, keyboard about the size of my fingers, 20 GB SSD, 6-cell battery (lasts about 5 hours, though without wireless it’s more like 8, and without X, 9), 802.11n, bluetooth, etc.
So! What have I found?
I love the keyboard. I wasn’t expecting to so quickly adapt, but it’s just fine for me! I’m writing this post on it, I write code on it, typing is no problem whatsoever. The small screen is no problem, either – it’s led to me thinking a bit about how I use a computer, and I’ll show you what’s come of that later… it’s plenty bright, too. The wireless card is extremely strong (comparable to, or perhaps better than the Thinkpad T61, worlds better than my MacBook Pro)… the camera is acceptable but I really don’t care about little integrated webcams. The build quality is perfectly acceptable, it’s no aluminum MBP, but it’s not as flimsy as, say, the poor parts of the T61 (everyone I know with a T61 has parts flaking off… unsurprisingly, if you play with it for a minute). The design is … poor, but not as poor as your run-of-the-mill laptop. To be honest, the Dell Mini 9 design is far superior, just in terms of jutting bits and the overall material consistency. For some reason, Carol prefers the Eee’s design over the Mini, but she also has a sunshine-yellow, cursive-font Amarok… (just teasing!)… here’s what it looks like, and it’s a reasonably adequate explanation of the feel of the design of the Eee, if the Mini 9 is iTunes: (and mind you, we still love Carol, just like we still love the Eee!)
The SSD is awesome, though it could have been significantly more awesome. It turns out Asus ships different SSDs in Europe vs. America; Europeans get transfer speeds of ~80MB/s, which is only slightly slower than Jayne’s epic hard drives. However, my Eee (and many of the other American Eees) only gets ~30MB/s, which is closer to the speed of the T61’s hard drive. Nothing horrible, but certainly nothing to write home about, either. None of these speeds compare at all to the >200MB/s that people are getting with the new Intel SSDs, but those cost twice as much as an Eee by themselves! (someday, someday, I keep promising myself… two years, perhaps, with my Nehalem laptop 
) In any case, it’s really really nice to be able to swing the machine around without worrying about moving disks, especially with it being so small and light! (it’s really too bad that there’s still fans… and more unfortunate yet that the Atom runs warm…)
The trackpad is no problem, though I of course have the same problems with it as I do on my MacBook Pro: I cannot obtain an acceleration that I can deal with. I wish there were a magical “match OS X’s mouse acceleration” button, but there’s not… perhaps there will be in Wayland’s input system. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
The Xandros install that ships with the machine is a piece of crap. Whoever thought that shipping Xandros was a good idea… needs to talk to whoever wrote the epic Ubuntu-based launcher that ships on the Mini 9. Anyway… after taking ten minutes to determine whether I had accidentally ordered a Windows XP Eee, Robb and I spent a few more minutes laughing quite hard on the floor in our room before grabbing an external CD drive and installing Ubuntu.
I’ve since hacked up my Ubuntu install quite a much: instead of a full GNOME, I’m using awesome, a tiling window manager, scriptable with Lua. This way, windows take up the full size of my display, always… I have nine “tags”, which I currently use purely as virtual desktops, but which actually carry a bit more recombinational power that I have yet to learn to make use of. I keep Pidgin on the last tag, Thunderbird on the second-to-last, Firefox on the middle one, and tend to work on the beginning tags, heading right. This has worked well for me so far, though I think it’s rather unconventionally simple compared to the crazy flexible way most awesome users work.
I’ve constructed a tiny kernel that has just what I need, and massively edited boot and shutdown scripts. Boot is between ten and fifteen seconds now. Halt/reboot is like three, as it’s basically just a sync and power down. I’d be able to do five second boot if I had one of the 80MB/s SSDs, but … I don’t!
There’s a bunch of buttons built into this silver line between the keyboard and the hinge – I’ve got them set up to a) play the Jayne song, from Firefly b) xkill c&d) turn on and off the VGA port, auto-detect its resolution, and (if turning it on), set the background to a plain color, for “presentation mode”. They’re pretty cool, even if I don’t usually like extra buttons. I use GNOME-Do for most other launching tasks…
The new hostname is Simon, of course, what with the Eee being a PC (so it must be male), but rather effeminate, and fitting in with my recent Firefly naming scheme…