Into the Void

Read the Feed

Posted by Void on 11/18/2005

I was babbling about the early days, before the web and search engines. Remember Archie and Gopher servers? And WAIS and Veronica? It was *still* hard to find what you wanted.
The first search engine I came across, I mean the first *spider* type, was Lycos at CMU. Except back then there was no fancy news page, just a picture of a hairy spider and a box to type the search term in. But still, what a thrill that was!
You newbies don’t know how good you’ve got it… ;-)
I don’t even bother to read news portals any more unless for some reason I want to kill time. It’s far faster to subscribe to newsfeeds and read them in a news aggregator. You can even subscribe to lots of special-interest site feeds so that you don’t have to wade through pages of irrelevant information. If something looks useful, then click and read the article.
There are some nice RSS apps – news aggregators – that run on the Windows desktop. I will look into RSS apps for Linux. Is there a Linux Firefox? That might do it. The Windows version allows you to create “live bookmarks” that contain all the items in the RSS file.
I prefer to use a speedy :-) stand-alone news aggregator called AmphetaDesk. They don’t have a linux version, but you can download the source and try to compile it yourself. akregator is a news aggregator for Linux. It’s on SourceForge, which is a great place to download useful, sometimes intriguing open-source applications.

This is what Amphetadesk looks like in use. I can blow through the headlines for specialized topics on what, 90 web pages? in less than ten minutes, then click on anything I want to read more about. Tell me this isn’t way easier than watching fifteen minutes of house fires and muggings just to find out whether the rest of the world still exists.
If you get an RSS reader, you can download my .opml file, which contains all of my subscriptions, and your reader will import them.
Most websites using Content Management Systems (CMS) of some sort – including blogging software like WordPress – offer feeds. Look for the little orange button.
Now that we’ve talked about RSS feeds, let’s move on and talk about how to create the Extensible Markup Language (XML) file that comprises an RSS feed.

Categories: Science. Tags: Content Management Systems, Linux, Open source, XML.

And the Wisdom to Know the Difference…

Posted by Void on 11/16/2005

The Internet is big. No, really BIG. It is possible to look online for a recipe, follow a link to the history of the recipe and the culture of the people who created the recipe. Before you know it, dinnertime is a distant memory, bedtime is long past, and tomorrow morning is shining right into your tired, bloodshot eyes.

The problem is one of information overload. Information, you see, doesn’t create wisdom. Wisdom comes from choosing which information is useful for the task at hand, whether that task is cooking dinner or writing an essay on the funerary practices of the Fore tribe in New Guinea. Or both.

When I first had net access – and Al Gore hadn’t invented the Internet yet – information was limited and it was sometimes difficult to locate it. There were several types of indexing, with special command-line programs to access them. Gopher was the very apt name of a commonly-used program used to dig into the information indexes. When you eventually found what you wanted, you’d then have to launch a separate application to handle the File Transfer Protocol (FTP).

When I finally gained access again, a fledgling HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP), in conjunction with the Graphical User Interface (GUI) of the MAC and of Microsoft Windows, provided easy access to related information, and yes, I got lost surfing more times than I can count.

Here it is several years later, and I hardly ever surf aimlessly. I also have given up on wordy but rather content-sparse general news outlets, including TV, newspapers, radio and even the big online news portals. Frankly, most news articles can be absorbed from the title and first paragraph. So how do I surf for titles and first paragraphs?

Well, in the last couple of years it is becoming more common for on-line resources to provide Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. An RSS feed is a text file that contains, at minimum, titles and summaries of recent articles on the main site. RSS feeds play an important part driving traffic to the information provider.

In future articles I will be exploring new tools for presenting information on the web, and their attendant issues. It is my hope that in clarifying the issues for myself, I will help clarify them for others.

Categories: Science. Tags: File Transfer Protocol, ftp, Graphical user interface, GUI, HTTP, HyperText Transport Protocol, Microsoft.

Kosmic Konsciousness

Posted by Void on 11/16/2005

I’ve been listening to Ken Wilber’s Kosmic Konsciousness on SoundsTrue the last couple of days, and am trying to sort out levels and lines.
This isn’t what he wanted me to get out of it at all.
It is my understanding that a spirit can be limited by the vessel it finds itself under some circumstances. It says something important about my unrealistic expectations that everyone can evolve. Some just can’t, they don’t have the proper structures for it. I just have to figure out exactly what that all means in terms of human potential. Can it be true that large numbers of humans don’t have the potential for enlightenment? When do we accept that we’ve gone as far as we can? Isn’t it a sort of surrender to settle into complacence, when we can’t know whether we’ve hit the glass ceiling, vs. whether we are merely at a plateau?
It also comes back to a previous conversation I had about animal intelligence. Some animals may happen to have brain structures that give them better reasoning skills, or the higher emotions, or perhaps an unusual capacity for understanding human language. Imagine owning a veritable Da Vinci among dogs. Would he get bored easily?
It convinces me all over again that intelligence is a continuum. All types, even the ones where I personally have severe deficiencies.
While humans are unmistakably at the top of the food chain, it is likely that there are animals that are more highly evolved in other lines. For instance, can you conceptualize a chair as a pattern of echoes rather than as a visual construct? Can you describe a chair by duplicating the sound reflections off that chair? Dolphins can and do. But they won’t be building any libraries any time soon.

Categories: Books, Knowledge. Tags: Integral theory, Integral thought, Ken Wilber, Neuropsychology.

Internet Connection Speed Test

Posted by Void on 11/10/2005

Eat your heart out, DSL users. I just upgraded my Comcast Internet service, and data roars down into my computer. Before the upgrade it was at around 4000kbps.

Results of the Speakeasy.net Speed Test.
See larger picture.

I’m not terribly pleased with the stability of Windows XP Professional. I guess I’ll have to add another Gig of RAM and think about upgrading the video card. There’s enough cache RAM in the processor, I think, at least for my evil purposes. My evil purposes being engineering apps like Altera Quartus II.

I’m not going to go into the politics of buying… uhhh, renting… internet from a monopoly. And yes, I do think it’s overpriced. I’d feel much better about it if I thought they’d bring fiber into my working-class neighborhood sometime soon. I would feel better about it if I knew they’d stop charging me to help them upgrade to fiber once they have it all in place.
The only drawback to the Comcast upgrade, besides the part about them being the only game in town, is that I had to subscribe to basic cable to get it. Now Mr. X can surf dozens of channels of garbage instead of only six or eight. And I’m not allowed to use the clicker, either. I guess it’s a guy thing.

Update 11/10:
We have Verizon DSL at work and the speed test clocks it at 1500kbps.

Categories: Comp Sci, Smart Phones, Technology, Web, Web. Tags: Altera Corporation, Comcast Corporation, DSL, Internet, Internet service, RAM, Windows XP Professional.

Still Reluctant

Posted by Void on 11/06/2005

Update 11/6:

My buddy Jim gave me some good hints on getting the Wifi card running on the laptop under Linux. He has his own Wifi tale of terror. Plus he pointed out that I can compile the driver, drop it into the file system, then use modprobe to tell Linux to look for it. Great!
XP is up and running. I am in the process of re-installing software. It refused to upgrade Windows 2000 Professional to Windows XP Professional so I had to install XP in a different directory, which happened to be the default directory for XP. It didn’t bring in any of the settings. I was afraid it would clobber user Application Data so I created a new user and am copying settings from the 2000 user to the XP user, like Eudora mailboxes. What a pain in the @55.
Now the computer is dual-boot, which isn’t at all what I wanted. During the install, XP warned me I couldn’t do a dual-boot system in the same partition. WTF? Of course, if I *wanted* a dual-boot system, XP probably would have shredded the existing file system. Sometime in the next week I’ll figure out what to change to uninstall 2000.
On the plus side, I backed up a lot of data to CD/DVD before starting, and then I cloned the hard drive. Just in case. I’ll install it in the other computer, which is currently doing a fine impression of a doorstop, if XP doesn’t implode in the next week. Then I can use *that* to recover the data from the original hard drive from that computer, which is currently doing an impression of a paperweight.
I’d have to change mobo drivers, among other things, to use it in the other computer. Might require a repair installation of Windows 2000. Did I mention that this whole process is a pain in the @55?

Plus I started using a Microsoft ~~wireless keyboard and mouse~~ Wireless Optical Desktop Pro last week. The mouse is huge and is shaped to provide an easy, solid handhold. Unfortunately, that means that it’s hard to shift it around in my hand as I use it. Reorienting the mouse as you work is a way to prevent Repetitive Stress Injuries (RSIs), and this mouse forces me to use it in a way that is guaranteed to make my hand ache. Which it did. Well, I’m aware of it now. Maybe I can rig something up with an old mouse shell and this ones guts.
Update 11/10:
Mr. X, who has hands the size of catcher’s mitts, has no problem using the wireless mouse.

Categories: Comp Sci, Software, Technology. Tags: Computing, Internet, Linux, Microsoft Corporation, Microsoft Windows, Multi boot, re-installing software, Software, WiFi, Windows, Windows XP.

Blogthings – Who Were You In High School?

Posted by Void on 11/04/2005

I’m not so sure about this. I hung out at the computer lab, all right, but I was definitely not an A scholar. I didn’t do homework, I cut just about every class to go to the computer lab. This was 1973-74, btw. There weren’t any home computers yet.

Brainy Kid

In high school, you were acing AP classes or hanging out in the computer lab.

You may have been a bit of a geek back then, but now you’re a total success!

Who Were You In High School?

Categories: Philosophy & psychology. Tags: Advanced Placement, Computer lab, Education, geek, Geekess, Internet, Internet culture, Stereotypes.

The Reluctant Geekess

Posted by Void on 11/04/2005

I’ve been dragging my feet as far as the soon-to-be Linux Laptop goes. There are a couple of issues that I haven’t quite resolved.

First, Knoppix came up in the GUI. It didn’t seem to support the wireless card. But it communicated with it, which is better than Windows 98 did.

I found what might be the ADM8211 chipset driver on SourceForge, then promptly lost the info again. I’m unclear on how to integrate a new driver. Do I have to recompile the kernal – which I’ve never done – or can I simply compile it as a stand-alone driver that I drop into place somewhere in the file system? Maybe a reference goes in what in uCLinux is called (I think) /etc/.rc? That file has startup info for things like ipconfig. I can prevent it from coming up in the GUI by entering a run-level command in /etc/inittab.

RH 5.2 used to come up with the command line and if I wanted to play with the GUI I’d type startx. I did it for my Senior Project, upgraded a trash computer and used it for software development from the command line. I have the notes here somewhere… The *first* gotcha was that I was trying to use an unsupported CD. You get the idea. But eventually it all cooperated.

Anyway, I’m told that Fedora changes too fast, still requires too much babysitting. Apparently Centos 4.2 uses the source code from Red Hat Enterprise Linux. That might work.

The laptop has no way to cut a new CD. Oh, wait, that’s vinyl talk. *Burn* a new CD. So if an install CD is needed, I would have to transfer the image – a .iso maybe? – to a Windows computer to burn it. I would have to get to the other computer by dial-up modem through one of the free services. Egads!

I am aware that some OSs allow you to update the kernel on the fly. The name of the capability escapes me. Preemptible kernel, is it?

I’m going to attempt to upgrade the Windows 2000 computer to Windows XP this weekend. Believe me, Windows 2000 is solid as a rock, Which is probably why Microsoft is no longer selling it. In XP Home which I use at work (go figure), I had to disable a lot of unnecessary things to stop it from hanging when I opened a couple of windows. Who needs shadows under the cursor, 3D everything, and font smoothing? It made a big difference. The only reason I’m upgrading to XP Professional (not Home) – actually it’s a lateral move – is because I bought a USB printer with a card reader and it turns out I had already boffed up those drivers trying to install an internal 9-in-1 card reader. I removed some of the boffed-up stuff from the registry, but haven’t tried to reinstall the printer. Obviously I’m not particularly confident it will work. To that end, I have already backed up all the really necessary stuff, except email which I will backup last thing before I do the install.

I know what I have to do, the questions are mostly things I can work out through trial-and-error. I’m confident that I will eventually get the laptop running Linux AND this computer running Windows XP. I must make a couple of decisions and then “Just Do It”.

Categories: Comp Sci, Operating System. Tags: ADM8211 chipset driver, Centos, Computing, Fedora, Internet, Linux, Software, Software development, wireless card.

Halloween

Posted by Void on 11/01/2005

Halloween, in case you aren’t a history freak, is a remnant of pre-Christian rituals – a night when the spirits came back to walk among us, and a chance to make up for the wrongs we committed against them when they were alive. “All Hallows E’en”. It seems that the urban folks were converted to Christianity but that more isolated country folk – farmers and the like – maintained their pagan rituals in conjunction with the new religion. In some cases, the local church created a festival for some saint to coincide with the Pagan festival in order to try to absorb it. The Christmas tree and the Easter bunny and Easter eggs are prime examples of co-opted Pagan imagery.
We talk about this at our Solstice celebrations.
The point of religion is to give us the illusion of control over a world that we don’t understand. Rituals, magic, prayer, all of them are based on faith rather than on empiricism and an understanding of cause and effect.
Anyway, while you are out having fun, you are also helping to keep the Old Gods alive. Good job!
I highly recommend Sir George Frazer’s “The Golden Bough”. The original 12-volume set is a vast compendium of folk rituals, categorized, compared to similar rituals, and with commentary on their original meanings. The single-volume abridged version omits Frazer’s vast bibliography.