Monthly Archives: March 2004

The evolution of Linux.Ars

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Linux.Ars has grown quite a bit since I originally came up with the idea many months ago. At that time, I roped Jorge into helping me with it as we discussed and planned future community involvement. When work got too busy for me to manage the weekly commitment, Jorge stepped up to the plate and knocked that ball out of the park. (No Proto, you are wrong. It was my baby. Jorge was just the nanny.

Since then, the community involvement has grown tremendously, even though Jorge has backed away from it recently. Hopefully we’ll both manage to contribute some content to it periodically. I’ve been working behind the scenes to establish a more permanent presence of Linux-related content on Ars Technica, which I hope will be hammered out during our next business meeting next weekend.

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(Almost) A week with Fedora

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So, last week I decided that it was time to reinstall Linux on my laptop. Being the glutton for punishment that I am, I followed the advice of #linux and installed Fedora instead of Debian.

I have to say that, despite my misgiving, I was impressed with Fedora. Right out of the box, everything worked. Wireless, XFree86, cups, you name it. And it looked damn good. Nice, crisp anti-aliased fonts.

I played with it for several days, I was able to use Red-Carpet to install Mono and all the dependancies in order to get MonoDevelop to run. Heck, I even had Mono CVS building smoothly.

Despite some frustrations with yum/red-carpet/up2date not being what I’m used to with apt-get, I was content.

And then my hard drive died.

Do you realize how hard it is to find a decent replacement laptop hard drive on a Sunday? It’s bloody difficult, I’ll tell you right now. You would think that, living as close to Chicago as I do, that there would be one store selling higher-end hardware. I had my eye on a top-of-the-line 7200rpm hitachi drive, but the only regional store that I could find that sold it, CDW, is closed on sundays.

Instead, I opted for a 5400rpm Hitachi drive with an 8Mb cache. So far, it feels considerably faster than the standard 4200rpm drive that came with the laptop.

Facing a complete reinstall, I decided that, although Fedora is nice as an easy-to-get-running desktop, it isn’t right for me. I like the power that I feel when I run `apt-get -t experimental upgrade`.

Now I’m back to Debian, running Kernel 2.6.4 and GNOME 2.6 and quite happy. Long live Debian.

Where in the world is…

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I’ve been rather lax in posting lately. Work has been busy lately. It seems like we’ve been signing up new clients left and right which may potentially double our current traffic. Add that to an active development cycle and my days are pretty full. My side business has been brisk as well. I’ve got two different web services that I’m in the middle of building and a client with challenging needs using both. I’m practically writing code from the time I wake up til the time I go to bed.

Next month I’ll be at Penguicon where I’ll be running a panel on Mono, the open-source runtime that supports C# and the .NET framework. I’m also trying to finish my Mono article for Ars Technica. I’m trying to get it finished in time to be published before Penguincon, but there is a lot of material to cover and little time to do it in.

Spring is finally here and that means it’s time to get off my ass and get some work done around the house. Cleaning the garage, fertilizing the lawn, and tilling the garden are all on my immediate TODO list. It’s starting to warm up but it’s rainy and gray. There are still puddles of standing water in the field behind the house. I probably shouldn’t complain, though. It could be snowing.

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Weekend Bliss and Sleepnessless

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I had a business meeting with a client up in Milwaukee on Saturday, so Dena and I jumped in the jeep and headed up north. We headed over to my friend Nate’s penthouse overlooking downtown Milwaukee. We hung out for a bit while we waited for the meeting (which ended up being delayed a few hours). Eventually we left to meet up at the office for our meeting, which was short but productive. My favorite kind of meeting. While we were there I was given a gift* of a Treo 600 smartphone. The only catch is that, after I learn how to use it, I have to teach my client, Rick, how to use it. No big deal and I get to dump my crappy phone in the process.

Afterwards, Nate, Rick, and I met up for drinks with our significant others at Aqua. After a couple rounds, Rick and his lady left for a previously scheduled dinner, but not before arranging for reservations for dinner for us, Nate, and his wife. We sat down and enjoyed a very nice dinner. I tried a Kobe steak for the first time, which was pretty good. We were just finishing our meal and preparing to say no to dessert when the manager came over to our table, set down a plate containing a flourless chocolate cake and homemade cheesecake and told us that Rick had taken care of the bill for us, and the dessert was on the house. We were all a bit taken back at Rick’s generosity. It’s one thing to find a client that’s not afraid to spend money to get results; it’s another thing entirely to find one that’s also this thoughtful.

We got home around midnight and played with the dog for a bit. I was hoping to sleep in, but the dog had to go out around 5am, and Dena woke up shortly after. We managed to take a few hour nap later in the morning, but we probably feel worse now than if we’d just stayed awake. We’re taking it easy the rest of the day, watching movies and playing with the Treo.

* bribe