WWdN: In Exile

Geek in Review: Rockin' the Linuxburbs

It almost seems anti-climactic to release the Geek in Review, since I've been talking about it for several days, but it's up Wil Wheaton's Geek in Review: Rockin' the Linuxburbs:

Eventually, I hosed the installation with careless use of conflicting software installs and other silly uses of sudo that shouldn't have been available to a noob like myself, and I found myself using an HD install of Knoppix, which lead to a pure Debian install (from the tiny network install CD, which is really cool) before landing in my current distribution of choice, Ubuntu (which is an ancient African word that means "can't install Debian.")

While Linux is still not entirely ready for people like my parents, it's really matured over the years, and in many cases it "just works" (unless you get reckless with sudo, like I did yesterday) without a lot of hassles and tweaking of configuration files and compiling from source (not that there's anything wrong with that.)

In fact, Linux has grown up so much and so well, today I can devote an entire column to some of the cooler media players available to Linux users, rather than the once-obligatory HOW TO on getting your printer to work, or mounting and unmounting a CD-ROM device with just five lines of shell script.

I looked at just a few players, because I wanted to give a broad overview, rather than an in-depth look at each one (that would have made the column way too long) and I came to the unsurprising conclusion that Amarok absolutely blows everything -- including iTunes -- away.

I'm really interested in feedback on this; if it's entertaining and informative, I'll do more Linux columns . . . to be honest, I'm not sure if it's that good an idea; there are a lot of really well-written articles out there already, and I don't exactly what I could say that hasn't been said before.

black air and seven seas

I'm putting the finishing touches on today's GiR, and I'm listening to last.fm while I work.

Usually, I tell it to pick a station from my neighborhood, so I can find new music, but when I'm on deadline, I prefer music that I know, which can slip into the background as necessary, and is unlikely to send me down some "similar artist" rabbit hole that's both distracting and expensive (not that there's anything wrong with the occasional trip like that; it's how I discovered The Legends, after all.)

So this morning I told it to just play the station it built for me based upon my scrobbling and tagging. Wow; it's like I'm listening to my own library on shuffle. It's like it was reading my mind, man. It played Boingo and The Whitest Boy Alive, and then played Girl Anachronism! It's creepy how perfect it is.

If you've been reading my blog long enough to know that we share musical interests, or you're just curious about the tunes this particular young person enjoys, you can tune in:



It also recommended music for me, but I'm saving that for later.

10d10t

I've written a few times about how I love technology, and how technology, which is supposed to make our lives easier and less stressful, often does exactly the opposite.

Today, I almost wrote about how much I hate technology, but I couldn't do it; it's not technology's fault that I'm a fucking idiot.

I'm not a Windows guy, for all the reasons people who aren't Windows users cite, but rather than waste everyone's time with another variation on the same old rant, I'll just say that I don't like the way Windows works, and I don't trust Microsoft.

For a long time, I've been a Mac guy, which usually means my computers look great, run smoothly and reliably, and I can't play any really good games. In fact, my Powerbook G4, which desperately needs to be upgraded, has been my primary computer for almost two years.

Both of these operating systems have their attendant risks for fucking idiots: a fucking idiot Windows user can find himself unwittingly part of a botnet, (which is pretty much the least of the fucking idiot Windows user's problems) while fucking idiot Mac users could wake up one day to find themselves just like the "I'm a Mac" douche on those hilarious commercials that make Windows a lot more likable than it deserves to be.

Earlier this morning, I was a rare kind of fucking idiot: the fucking Linux idiot.

Now, there's one kind of fucking Linux idiot who I am not, and who I really loathe: the guy who has turned his passion for the operating system into a crusade, and as a result screams with evangelical furor at anyone who has the great misfortune of being anywhere near him when someone mentions that an Xbox 360 is kind of cool, or jokes about how they had to restart their machine thanks to the blue screen of death. (A note to those guys: you're not doing us any favors, you know. The average user -- hell, even fairly competent users like me -- don't care that we're free to recompile the Ham radio stuff out of our kernels. What we do care about is how reliable our operating system is, and how easy it is to use. It's taken Linux -- oh, I'm sorry, GNU/Linux -- years to get there, and now that it's finally arrived, maybe you could lay off the shrieking for a bit, and just calmly hand out a live cd instead, mmkay?)

Look, I love Linux. I love and believe in the philosophy of free as in speech, and you just can't beat free as in beer. I love the wide variety of desktop environments and software suites I can choose from, and I love the inherent security that comes with an intelligently-configured Linux system. However, this morning, I ran into one of Linux's greatest and most dangerous strengths: it will do whatever you tell it to do, even if you tell it to do something incredibly stupid, like change the permissions on your home directory in such a way as to make the directory unreadable.

Ah, sudo, why hast thou forsaken me?

Yeah, this happened on the morning when I was about to get to work on this week's GiR about media players for Linux. I run Ubuntu Linux, which is based on Debian, and is about as close to idiot-proof as you can get in Linux. In fact, this is the distro that's so easy to install, configure, and run, I keep some Ubuntu live CDs in my car, and usually have at least one in my backpack when I go to a convention, just in case someone is interested in giving Linux a try.

I'll spare you the details, but I managed to essentially lock my keys in my car with the windows up while it was pouring rain and the car was running. Short of breaking a window (reinstalling) I didn't know what I could do, so I had a temper tantrum -- until I recalled how my entire experience with Ubuntu began: it's on a CD, which can also be used to correct 10d10t errors like this one.

I shutdown, booted from the CD, mounted /dev/hda2 to /home and repaired all the permissions on /home/wil. The whole thing took less than ten minutes, and now my machine is happily humming away again.

Okay. Back to work.

UPDATE: Yeah, it should be ID 10 T instead of the title I have up there. I'm leaving it, though, as a bright shining monument to what an idiot I can be.

sounds like . . .

For this week's GiR (Heh. GIR! Yeah!) I'm looking at some Linux audio players, like Rhythmbox, AmaroK, Banshee, and XMMS.

For most of today, I've been bashing my face against the wall trying to get iTunes 7 to mount as a DAAP share in any of them, but apparently Apple broke something in the standards with 7, so the standards-compliant players can't mount the share, though iTunes seems to mount the Rhythmbox-based share without any trouble at all, which is really nifty and fun. (incidentally, if anyone reading this has been able to mount iTunes 7 shares without a whole bunch of manual-editing of config files, let me know and I'll thank you in my article; I know there are lots of complicated samba and ftp workarounds, but I'm trying to show how easy and cool these audio players are, not how much fun it is to edit things in vim.)

So I'm sitting here playing with lots of musical tools, including last.fm, which is like a more social version of Pandora. I really like last.fm, which is remarkably good at finding playlists of music you're going to like, based upon the stuff you've told it you like to listen to. It works seamlessly with Airfoil, too, so you can turn it up, man.

While goofing off with last.fm, I saw that I can make a constantly-updated playlist of what I'm listening to, because, apparently, people care about this sort of thing:

It's remarkable to me the sort of information we can share with complete strangers in this Brave New World of life on the Intarweebs, including stuff like this. It's equal parts cool and kind of creepy, don't you think?

Anyway, if you're wondering what I'm listening to at the moment, now you know. Now get off my lawn.

you can count on me

Ryan and I sat in the car and waited for a break in traffic to make a left.

"Do you have any plans for the weekend?" I said.

"Yeah," he said, "I'm going to go see three hundred and twenty-three movies."

I looked at him.

"How are you going to see that many movies in one weekend?"

A Wheaton moving truck lumbered by.

"Look!" I said, "it's totally me!"

"It totally is." He said. We've had this exchange almost as often as the one where I point to the truck that's loaded with Hay and say, "Hey!"

"So I'm not seeing three hundred and twenty-three movies," he said. "I'm seeing 300, and I'm also seeing 23."

"Oh." I said. "So . . . you're seeing a number of movies, then."

"A number of numbered movies," he said.

"And the number of the numbered movies is two."

"Yes." He said. "Well, two, and three hundred, and twenty-three."

"Can I count on that?" I said.

We were quiet for a moment.

"We're such nerds," Ryan said.

"Totally."

He held up his hand. "High five."

"High five," I said, as I delivered it.

go go gadget beatbox

Today is one of those days where I'm drawn to weird things. Listening to Ruby Vroom first thing in the morning will do that to you, I guess.

Witness:



I will not fall for a banana in my tailpipe, and I will get you, Gadget. Next time. Next. Time.

(via netscape)

Geek in Review: John Scalzi

I hoped to write about some geeky boardgames this week, but I just didn't have time to purchase and seriously play enough new ones to make it worthwhile, so instead, I did a column about John Scalzi, who many of you already know is an author I really admire and respect.

I didn't realize it at the time, but apparently I'm one of those readers who authors love: if I like one thing an author writes, I'm pretty much guaranteed to exclusively read that author's entire catalogue until it's finished or I encounter more than one work that lets me down (I'm looking in your direction, Piers Anthony.) When I picked up The Caves of Steel, it started an Asimov phase that lasted for well over a year before I grudgingly admitted to myself that I was never going to be able to finish his collected works, and there was probably a whole other world out there that I was missing out on (I'm looking in your direction, World of Warcraft obsessives . . . and now I am ducking and fleeing from you. Hey, at least I've got chicken.)

Eventually, I achieved escape velocity from Wheaton's Author Singularity, and became a much more well-rounded bibliophile. I recently flew too close to the Alan Moore Nebula and went in for a closer look at Supernova Warren Ellis Sigma, but still managed to dock at Starbase Vanity Fair and Deep Space The Onion at least twice a month. Right around the end of December, I got too close to John Scalzi's event horizon, and I've been happily stuck here ever since.

Silly wordplay that is probably only amusing to me aside, John Scalzi is an author -- who does much more than SF -- that I've recently grown very fond of, not just because he writes great stories that appeal to the geek in me, but also because he's a very accessible, humble, real, unpretentious guy who truly loves what he does. I don't think it's a coincidence that his writing, whether on his blog or in his fiction or non-fiction books, is equally accessible and unpretentious.

Oh, it's also really fucking good, and today I'm going to share a little about some of Scalzi's work, and a little bit about the man himself, who I don't know well enough to call "friend," but as well as one can know someone from reading his blog and trading a couple of e-mails, where I try my best (and frequently fail) to not sound like the eponymous host of The Chris Farley Show.

Shorter version: Scalzi is a hell of a writer, and an awesome guy. I promise you that you'll love [i]Old Man's War[/i] and [i]The Android's Dream[/i]. Longer version: Wil Wheaton's Geek in Review: John Scalzi.

The geekwire is SFW today, though the usual caveats apply. In fact, they are so usual, I'm not going to bother issuing them anymore after today. FREEDOM!

surreal spam from the third mind (?)

I just got this e-mail spam, which reads like a William Burroughs cut-up.:

Subject: I laughed so hard at the balding jagoff driving I thought he was going to follow me home and.
From: Guzman L. Theresa
thoughtfully
"We ask that the media respect her privacy as well as those of her family and friends at this time," Rudolph was quoted as saying.
Sugarland is bland garbage, Rascal Flatts does a good Take That!
It's like a meditative state. but mostly because I didn't have anything
interesting to say. "I'm a good father," Federline has said.

One ticket to Interzone, please. The radioman is on, and the radioman is speaking.

life sure does come at you fast

The blog Indexed features humorous and thought-provoking insights on daily life, expressed as points and curves on a graph, venn diagrams, or other mathematical functions, drawn on index cards. This one, titled "Life sure does come at you fast" is a pretty accurate representation of a certain pop star.

(via netscape)

paper boats

I've found that I must have something that's just for me, that just makes me happy, that I do specifically to take care of myself, before I can spend any time or energy on doing things for other people. This includes simple responsibilities as varied as meeting writing deadlines and washing my clothes.

It doesn't matter what I do for myself: it could be tending a garden, or maintaining an aquarium, or walking 3 miles a day (or 1 mile a day, or fifteen minutes) but the point is, I deserve it, it's just for me, and I refuse to feel guilty while I'm doing it. Anne does the same thing.

Once you're taking care of yourself, you can take care of other things and other people . . . and you can surprise yourself by discovering what you are really capable of doing.

You're not your job, whatever you determine it is at the moment: (Mother, Father, Husband, Wife, Crazy Cat Lady, Tony Orlando and Dawn Fan Club President, Cardboard Box Spaceship Designer, etc.) When you take care of yourself, and give yourself something that is just for you (have I made that clear?) you'll figure out rather quickly who you are and how you define yourself, because you get to know yourself again.

I've walked this road before, and I'm sure I'll walk it again. Here's the map: take it.