John's blog

War, public complacency and Katrina

Sat, 3 Sep 2005 18:11:09 +0000

You all witnessed how long it took for the National Guard to get into New Orleans in large numbers. The National Guard takes time to muster as people are diverted from their daily lives and then organized -- it makes sense that they would take days to respond. You can argue that they should have been pre-deployed. I live in California, and I would hope that we'd have a standing force of National Guard ready if we had pre-warning of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake coming. Yet, there is no doubt that active military can move faster than National Guard simply because they are already actively deployed.

His Hepatitis C

Fri, 2 Sep 2005 06:43:04 +0000

A very good friend of mine recently found out that his liver is shot and that he has been living with Hepatitis C for twenty years.

I'll let his bolg ( HepCboy.com ) speak for itself. Yet, I'll just add that he is a completely self-made man who has spent the greater part of the last 15 years building an economic and emotional foundation for his family.

He is also a DSL user and has financially helped the Damn Small Linux project with an interest free loan. An act that is very typical of his nature.

GA$

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 07:44:11 +0000

So I read somewhere that the Ford Model T got 25 mpg, and that today's average fuel economy is only 21 mpg. Nearly 100 years have gone by and we are doing worse than we were.

With that in mind, I thought I'd post some interesting links:
250 mpg hacked hybrid
How to make your own Biodiesel

I don't have the time to make my own Biodiesel, and there's no way I'd fork down the cash for one of the new hybrids, but I am seriously considering getting me a used subcompact to log the miles on.

Is that a cluster in your pocket?

Mon, 29 Aug 2005 06:17:19 +0000

We are finally in the age of inexpensive embedded hardware. Any geek with
a few hundred dollars to spend can start hacking embedded applications on a
shoestring.

One low cost system that has been getting a lot of attention recently is
the Gumstix ultra tiny computer.
Check out the screen shot of the cluster which could fit inside your
pocket.

Being as deeply involved in DSL I am sticking to x86 hardware, and
embedded x86 systems are finally getting affordable. Nano-itx should bring out all kinds of cool innovations. We still need an affordable PC104 platform for the masses.

Ebox II - can boot DSL

Tue, 21 Jun 2005 07:07:40 +0000

I bought a couple of Ebox IIs to see how they would boot DSL. They run on a Vortex86 200MHz All-in-One Single Board Computer with 128MB onboard DRAM.

I was really impressed with how small these things were, and they were able to boot DSL from either USB or from IDE. Really, it was a marvel to have DSL run on such tiny hardware.

Unfortunately, X and all the gui apps ran a little too slow for practical use, but I can see such a unit having all sorts of nifty local server applications.

Blogs are blogs

Sun, 19 Jun 2005 02:17:02 +0000

I am going to start trimming help questions in here. If you need help go to the IRC channel or, better yet, go to the forums.

kicking a small chemical addiction today

Sun, 19 Jun 2005 02:10:18 +0000

It may be trivial to those of you who've been tide to something stronger/more dangerous, but today I am kicking caffeine out of my system.

It was getting ridiculous, to the point where I need 12 cups of coffee a day just to keep from getting a splitting headache. So, today I quite. I had my last cup 18 hours ago. I am doing all right so far, I'm just taking Tylenol for the headache and I've been wanting to sleep a lot.

the dangers of running a fanless computer

Sat, 26 Mar 2005 04:19:02 +0000

As many here have seen, I built a cheap mini-itx box using hardware parts and one of the fanless 5000 boards. I find myself using it all the time these days. You guys know these are not the snappiest systems, but they do run DSL nicely.

I'm using my plexiglass computer most of the time. Just yesterday my Mother-in-Law (actually a very nice lady!) was over her and wanted to check her email. I asked her what she thought when she was done. She said, "That was strange, I am use to being able to hear the computer turning on .... It was almost eerie."

I asked my daughter...

Mon, 7 Mar 2005 09:42:19 +0000

(she is four)

Me:
Do you like Linux?

Kelsey:
No.

Me:
Do you like Windows?

Kelsey:
No.

Me:
What do you like?

Kelsey:
Princesses

mini-itx store changes

Fri, 18 Feb 2005 16:52:34 +0000

We are streamlining the product base in the mini-itx store. Dropping the more esoteric (read expensive) mini-itx boards like the TC 10000. Very few people buy them and when they do it always turns out that there is difficulty obtaining them from the supplier. Instead we are just going to carry the Epia 5000, ME 6000, and the V10000. We will also carry a few of the Nano boards when they finally come out.

With the cases, we are also doing the same thing. We are dropping the Morex 2699 even though it was inexpensive, I think people didn't want them because they look like a VCR. We are also dropping the Castronic cases, they are very nice cases, small and well made, but no one ever ordered them, no doubt it is because of price.

the newbie flood -- explained

Sat, 5 Feb 2005 20:02:12 +0000

The newbie flood is happening because the project is in two magazines this month -- CPU Magazine and Linux Magazine. A lot of the folks who read CPU Magazine are not that familiar with Linux.

It seems to be happening in the forum, here, the IRC channel, and what you guys aren't seeing is what's happening in my inbox. I am getting a lot of questions like, "How did you make Damn Small Linux?". How do I answer that? Or the even more frustrating, "why don't you add Gaim?" type emails.

I am grateful that our community project is getting so much attention. The newbie flood is a small price to pay for what we gain, but it does put a little strain. I think what happens when a project like this gets a lot of exposure the passing crowd swells up and then diminishes to a more natural state, but we end up retaining a few out of the group who become valuable contributors. So, it is really a good thing in the long run.

US vs European Linux Magazines

Tue, 1 Feb 2005 17:31:13 +0000

Am I the only one who thinks that the Linux magazines coming out of Europe and the UK are more user oriented than the magazines out of the US?

It seems that the three Linux magazines her (Linux World, Linux Journal, and Linux Magazine) are much more server/corporate oriented than there counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic. I bet a US based Linux magazine which did not spend 70-90% of its volume discussing LAMP issues and corporate integration would do very well.

flat screens + mini-itx

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 07:40:08 +0000

One project I want to do when I have a little break is to get either an Epia 5000 or maybe an ME 6000 and attach it to the back of a flat-screen. It should be relatively simple to do.

The idea behind it is to have the board chug along behind the screen invisible, silent and slim. I imagine that something like that would make a very good net cruiser, or a living room computer where silence is more important than CPU horsepower. If I end up building it I'll be sure to put up some pics.

Linspire the company

Mon, 17 Jan 2005 21:22:52 +0000

Linspire has broke a lot of ground when it comes to getting Linux into the main stream. I've been doing research on ISPs, and the few major providers that actually support Linux tend to only support Linspire. As a non-Linspire user, I find it a bit frustrating, yet I also find it very interesting.

Also under their belt:
The first to sell whitebox machines at Walmart
The first to come out with cheap Linux-powered tablet PCs
They also have a $500 laptop at Walmart which apparently sells so well that it is constantly out of stock.

There is a lot of criticism out there about Linspire's interaction with the Linux community at large, and also justifiable criticism of forcing newbies to run as root (are they still doing this?), but I don't think there has been a single other company that has pushed Linux harder into the world of the average consumer than Linspire. For better or for worse, they are the FACE of Linux to many.

Open Source Development and Money

Fri, 31 Dec 2004 06:11:02 +0000

Funding is a problem that plagues many small Linux projects which are not catering to the mass First World markets. This is a universal struggle, for any software project that doesn't have a proverbial pot of gold payoff. Greed is a much stronger motivator than generosity -- this isn't meant to be a knock on humanity, I believe it is part of human instinct. We are wired for self-preservation.

As far as funding goes, the DSL project couldn't even afford its own hosting on the amount pulled in the 'damn small donation fund' -- that's despite its enormously popularity. I've really had to think out of the box to keep this thing going and in the black.