I bought a copy of Linux Journal. It is the January issue It seems that more of the articles and book reviews are about topics I am aware of now. I also bought the December issue of Linux Magazine. I am now of the mind that Linux is the next big thing.

I started to use webmin on my eMac. The newist software on my Thinkpad is MATLAB. The newist on my eMac is the Palm desktop and an update of webmin.

I was out shopping for a new handheld computer yesterday. I also was looking on the web for an external USB connected hard drive to back up email and other files. The on-line photo ordering service worked great and we have our first twenty prints now for 5$. I think an iPod would be good for backups but still cheaper would be the external hard drive and then eventual purchase of a Palm Tungsten C or E for MP3's and video as well as word and excel files. I have not really looked at open source handhelds although as I understand it Palm make their source code available. I have also studied some palm programming and have some codeing for palm software on this machine my thinkpad. I have also been looking at getting a new thinkpad but don't really need one. I did finally buy some new track point caps for this machine.

My Debian 3 install on the duron is not stable. I have managed to update my fedora core 3 machine and also the updated the NT on the same machine.

I got some more rechargable batteries for things like flashlights and cameras and CD players. I boughtan AC battery recharger last week.

I used mailman just now to clean out 277 spam emails from one of the email lists I manage as a volunteer with the Industrial Workers of the World. I am also the volunteer web master for this union locally. In another volunteer gig or two I also do web mastering as a volunteer. I have started to use dreamweaver regularly now. I also have some paid web master work. In my newist volunteer job I use a little technology but not a lot there may be some web mastering there too in the future.

Today is a memorial day for the women killed in Montreal. One of these women was a CUPE member. I remember them now in spirit. I remember my first summer job in computing when I shared the summer job hires list with a women. Also two other women I knew from my family friends also worked at the offices in the Senior Sciences building. Via a la femme de scientific et de ordinaire.

I successfully installed Debian 3 r2 with KDE on the Duron box. It is so nice. Now I will see about using it more. Right now the user can not start X windows only root. My laptop is still running well and I resisted buying a new IBM TP. I also resisted buying an iPod Photo. I did buy a Macinstosh Quadra 660 AV for a friend. I asked my local Mac store if they can sell me some old Macintosh monitors. I need some more black ink for my Epson 820 and will see if I can buy some at school today. My eMac is still functioning well. I used www.digilab.ca to order some prints from my digital camera and digital photo collection.

My regularly scheduled back ups happen later today. I did manage to install Fedora Core 3. I also was sucsessful at installing Debian 3 r2 again on a 486 laptop. I had messed up the laptop using deselect trying to get X windows working the last time on that IBM 360SC. I am offering a friend this computer as a command line machine for web surfing at high speed using Lynx and vi for his needs. I have told him to get a copy of Linux for dummies quick reference first before I give him the computer. I paid 2$ for this book at our school bookstore and will look for another copy or two or three later today for giving away in my computer help work.

I have been doing school work on the win XP computer using MATLAB and also open office and also SAS. I have also been doing web mastering using Dreamweaver now.

I chatted with my dad briefly about installing MATLAB 7.0.1 on a Mac computer. The minimum on the Mac side is a Mac running system 10.3.2. My dad is getting himself a Powerbook.

I was able to stay home and continue downloading the Fedora core 3. Now that is almost done.

I am reading a computer/numerical analysis classic Numerical Recipes, by Press et al.. This is to study for my numerical analysis course exam coming up mid December.

I am downloading Fedora core 3. Each disk will take about 1.5 hours to down load. There are up to eight disks total. I can download two at a time so it could take 6 hours. I only have about four hours to do this this afternoon. I may have to run some of the downloads over night, tonight.

I tried chatting at yahoo web designers room just now. It was not bad no big flames and an interesting discussion. various topics included

• aligning graphics,
• web safe colours,
• Firefox versions,
• selling web mastering,
• Universal Accessible design,
• how to learn web mastering,
• and access to political web sites.

I took back the Apple video adapter as it did not work with my eMac computer and TV.

I am going to be getting an apple video adapter, today, so I can send a video signal to my TV. This is so we can watch photos on the TV as slide shows. This is the cheaper alterative to the iPod Photo.

That's it for computer spending although last week I got myself a USB memory key at 512MB for 60$.

I am still planning on studying SAS for a certification exam in early January late December and my plans to study datamining with SAS continue.

I am uninstalling RSSowl. I am going to check out Internet telephony with www.skype.com. I am also going to try out gaim on my winXP laptop. Cygwin is updated and I should have tex now on this laptop.

I may spend sometime reinstalling Debian 3.0 r 2 on the 486 laptop this morning. I also will be doing some work on the WinXP laptop, maybe chatting at yahoo with gaim and maybe trying out Internet telephony. I will also, of course, be using Open Office for school work.

Also this morning I will be marking statistics assignments and if I get those graded I will read some stuff on SAS to prepare for the basic programmer certification exam in early Janaury. I settled down my course choices for winter and am fairly certain I will study date warehouseing using SAS and may also study statistical computing in the winter term using either SAS or R.

It is Rememberance day in Canada today. I will remember my grandfather an Air Commander in the RCAF and a brother of his who died fighting in Italy and my grandfather a Estonian freedom fighter. Also some of my family were shot by Stalinists. As well I will remember two other soliders both of whom are alive at this moment. One is a fellow I grew up with who has fought mostly in the Middle East with the Canadian forces. He was a military doctor. As well I know someone through the Internet who is presently in hospital from wounds suffered in Iraq and is fighting for his life in that hospital.

I will also pause today to reflect on my own committments to peace and justice and the fact that wars have brought us technology. I will think of Alan Turing and the development of computers and also think of arms sales. I will reflect as well on the horror of war and think back on my peace movement activities of the past thirty or more years.

I am being hired to work on my teaching assistant's union local's web site. The national union are hosting it. They have a content managment system for web sites they host. I am going to recommend that our local also use the content management system and not straight html. The content managment system can be used with html and also wiki formating. This morning I read about half of the basic manual for using the content management system. So far I have put in about 1 hour on this job. I will be paid to do this web work so this is my second web mastering job that is a waged job.

To use CVS in my new work on a sourceforge project I have installed Fink on my eMac and also Cygwin on my Thinkpad. These were both needed for other work on both machines. I also bought a copy of MATLAB release 14 for my MATH3806 course and installed it also on my eMac. I have also updated real player because of a security problem. I also used gaim on my IBM Fedora Core 1 linux box to chat at yahoo rooms.

Hi fellow coders,

If you write computer code you may need to learn CVS. Here is a very useful info page about this.

http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=14033&group_id=1

You can ignore this if you want or save the link for some other day when you want to learn about writing code on open source projects. The learning curve for CVS is steep but the link can be read fairly easily to see what CVS does for the modern developer.

stay in touch if you want I haven't heard from some of you in a long time hope you're ok.

I joined the Linux chat room at Yahoo and the users there gave me a tip on chatting in rooms on Linux. They suggested I use Gaim. I tried it out and got it to work. I then chated with an old guiatrist friend and tried to instruct him in installing a second hard drive in his computer. He was too distracted with construction going on in his apartment to pay attention. I shut down all my computers at about 2 PM and went to sleep and then woke up at midnight.

I booted up my FC1 box today. My yum headers need updating.

I updated the .net on this computer to 1.1, I updated iTunes on my eMac and my Thinkpad.

I inspected a NEC versa 50Mhz laptop and said to my friend that without a hard drive it was useless or too expensive to bring in to operational use. He got it free at a church computer sale.

I surfed sourceforge a bit and volunteered to do some documentation on a JAVA tile role play game. I will wait to hear more from that sourceforge team.

I got my copy of MATLAB and it might only work well on the eMac and will probably not work on my Linux computer because it needs a faster processor. It might work on the laptop.

I investigated the new Apple iPod photo device. It might be nice to have one for family photos. I wonder if the Palm Tungsten T5 would be good at that work. I kind of liked the thumb keyboard Palms but they don't seem to be for sale anymore at the major electronic stores or cell phone providers.

I will be doing my monthly backups on Sunday night. I have paper, ink, and blank CD's to do this back up.

My three main systems are working fine tonight. My network is up and running. I should start designing a new web site. I need to do some more research first on similar web sites.

I created a number of folders in my shared documents folder on my WinXP laptop. Each folder is labeled so that files from the Fedora machine or eMac or laptop will be stored in that folder thus allowing some recording of where the files are from in other words the machine they were created on or where they were last worked on. Since these files are either word processing files or html files I am not using anything like a CVS system with them. I started to use Gftp and am going to try the Monzilla version of Netscape Composer now for web pages.

I now have two paying web master jobs. One is for a health group network and the other is for my teaching assistant union.

I am using Map Quest to download little maps to my PDA these days.

I found this web site for pdf's http://pdf.textfiles.com/. I downloaded some articles on hacking including a book in German.

I attempted to install WinXPP on the duron and may have some success. I left it undone this morning.

I bought some more ink for my Espon 440, yesterday. I bought cheapo ink costing about 15$ for both black and colour. I might print a 169 page US Army field manual(FM-100-6) on information warfare. I need to print some school work this morning. I might take my laptop to school and try out the libraries wireless network.

Here is an interesting old web site http://www.virtus.com/. Yes, there are old web sites out there. It concerns VRML and the VRML hype. It offers products for Mac and PC's. I have a book they put out and a CD rom of the software. The thing is many people thought this was a great thing in 1995 and now the web site is basically doing nothing. I was able to download one piece of software from there and no I didn't email them for support. Many pages are non-functioning and basically you could use this as an example of a one time cutting edge web site now not maintained.

I got my backups completed with no issues All my computers are running fine except the IBM Thinkpad 360SC which I might tinker with a little now. I need to load PCMCIA drivers during a Debian install to get it working right.

I used MATHLAB running at the school lab. I got my graded programming assignment done. I think it was perfect work. I have to go into school and use MATLAB tomorrow. I might get some help with buying a copy of MATLAB from the Math Works. I might also rent a copy of Minitab.

I am starting my back up process now having spent the last four hours at this computer. I will first spend an hour reading books before starting the back up process.

I just downloaded an RSS reader called RSSOwl. The web page at source forge for this page is here http://sourceforge.net/projects/rssowl/. I am going to try this out to test my own blogs in RSS feeds.

I am preparing to do my monthly back up at 00:01 am Friday morning, 04/10/01/00:01. I will burn a CD of the WinXP laptop My Documents folder and back up the email. I will also back up my blogs by printing them in hardcopy.

I updated my WinXP laptop with WinXP service pack 2. It took awhile. I have been learning to shut down my high speed modem and rounter and switch over night now.

I updated windows media player to version 10. I installed Visual Statistics 2.0 from a statistics textbook. I investigated MiniTab 14 and getting a copy. I also updated my kernal both my single processor kernal and my smp kernal on my Fedora 1 core. I also updated the Update software and that was what was causing my update problems. I have not yet installed Fedora 2 on the IBM PC server 325. I tried printing my Palm datebook and it is very nice. I should be doing backs ups this Friday early in the morning. I still have one more CD from a textbook to open on this windows laptop. I might practice some SAS work with this textbook and its data sets. I got my SAS renewed for another year. I have been doing some reading on datamining and also hacking both criminal hacking and hacking in a work a-holoic sense. I have put 6.5 new hours in to my web site job and will try to put another three hours in before I meet with the employer on Monday so they can pay me 120$ on Monday.

I updated iTunes and also Yahoo messenger. I used the Launch radio service a bit. I started some open office files for my computer crime paper. I downloaded a pdf how to for open office and MySQL.

I replaced the ink cartridges in my Epson 820. Last week I replaced the cartridges in my Epson 440.

My computers both crashed a bit this week. The IBM laptop running XP crashed leaving only Maple 7 running with the desktop icons and task bar gone. The eMac is not worse for wear though with only Explorer crashing although the screen has been flikering a bit and getting some views of wrong resolution settings when awaking from sleep. This eMac may be worth 550$ at the local Apple store on a trade in.

I carried my laptop and about six books and three notes books yesterday. I was going around between school, home and a volunteer organisation. I was so beat when I came home and stayed up about 25 hours. I have seen a smaller thinner Targus laptop bag at the school computer store I want. But my laptop bags are fine now and I don't need a replacement. Still, I carried too much I should have not brought my portable floppy or portable zip disk. It was just too much weight.

I got dselect to work on the duron computer. I installed a lot of extras and optional, debian components.

I used Audacity on my eMac to record a friend playing guitar.

I did my usual lengthy emails and some short emails to professors. I bought a copy of Linux for Dummies Quick Reference. I also got a copy of the Computers of Star Trek. I took back the Data Munging with Perl book and also the NAG library guide book that was almost 30 years old. I used the computers at school yesterday and used MATLAB for the first time to do some numerical analysis homework. I got 2 hours done on that course since Saturday morning and 3 hours done on law courses.

I plan to do 16 hours of school work today, Sunday and Monday. 4 or less of these hours will be done on the school of mathematics and statistics workstations in the school's lab. I will make a first attempt to work in the lab today. I got some basic instructions on how to print using the school's printer yesterday from a school computer support person, who I stopped in the hallway. But, I hope also this weekend to reinstall Fedora. This time I will install Fedora core 2 on the IBM PC server, and need to burn the iso install disks for that but have downloaded the ISO images at this point.

R came over on September 4th, and I showed him all the software I had on my laptop. I also installed two games and gave R older games that won't work on my newer system. R likes computer games but I am no longer such a big fan of these games.

My computers are working fine. I have been using my Epson 820 fine now. I printed some lengthy 60 pages documents two of them. One an Ontario Appeals Court case concerning marijuana law the other a Law Commission of Canada paper looking at what constitutes a crime.

My friend got a blogspot blog so she can enter commments on my blog.

I might be borrowing an Apple II or GS computer to try out the game neuromancer.

I might really like a palm W computer or Palm Treo. But a Palm Tungston W would be fine, as this would allow me to use a thumb keyboard.

I got the Epson 820 working again but could not print colour photos yet. I also got some city hall files filed away in a new file cabinet. I was able to hard copy print my blogs for the month of August. Hard copy is a form of computer security. I have been funded in my computer security studies by IBM giving me a computer security book. I have just now been reading about transnational private security companies and criminological studies implications of the expansion of private security. I have been keeping extensive study notes on my school work blog. I emailed a local linux novice email list yesterday.

Grief needs to be expressed for children heading back to school who didn't make it this year. The crimes in a school terroism incident are chilling me right now. My tears of rage are shed for these poor victims. My going back to school is great this year but some people somewhere in the world will now never have a chance to study because they have been murdered by terrorists. This is sad and the worlds armys should put down there weapons once and for all. I guess, Russia will never survive her military excursions.

Today I should be getting my Epson 820 functioning again. I should also be getting some recycled paper for my school work for the whole year.

I got a tripod both for my web cam a simple small globe D-Link web cam and this tripod will also help me with my Canon SureShot 100.

I have watched one demo on MATHLAB at the mathworks web site and should be using this software at school this fall.

I am starting my back up process.

Networking my home computers is working pretty good right now. They are all ethernet connected to a D-Link DI 704 printer server/gateway box. I can print things on my windows computer from my Linux computer. I can also add files from both the Mac and the Linux computer to the WinXP laptop. This is good because the scanner seems to work on the Mac and not too well with the laptop. Also I have photoshop 4.0 LE on the Mac.

I am getting 5000 sheets of recycled paper for my printers. I am also getting a few ink cartridges for my Mac Epson Colour Stylus Photo 820 printer. Also I am getting some photo paper and some more filing supplies and crates. All these supplies are going to be ordered on-line from Staples.

I have three computers working fine now. I will be doing backups in a couple of days. I should be getting 5000 sheets of recycled paper, ink and photo paper soon.

I am studying computer crime this morning. I worked on my paper on computer crime on my Linux computer using Open Office. I read from three books early this morning.

This following program written in C++ is for exercise #4 in chapter 3 of Ross's Simulation 2d. By the way I looked up how to write into this blog, the less than and greater than signs in the program where the include statement is. These weren't showing up as the blog thought they were an html tag.
//
// A C++ program for integrating a continuous random variable (1-x^2)^(3/2) between 0-1 and finding its expected value or mean.//

#include <iostream>
int Kvalue;
float Svalue;
int Seed;
float x;
int countK;
float Expected;



int main()

{


std::cout << "Enter integer for random seed: ";
std::cin >> Seed;
void srand(unsigned int Seed);


std::cout << "Enter integer for length of Simulation: ";
std::cin >> Kvalue;
countK=0;
Svalue = 0;
while (Kvalue >= countK)

{

x= (float) ( rand() / (RAND_MAX + 1 ) );
Svalue= Svalue + pow((1-x*x),(3/2));


countK++;
}

Expected= Svalue/Kvalue;
std::cout << "Expected Value = ";
std::cout << Expected;
std::cout << "Svalue = ";
std::cout << Svalue;
std::cout << "Kvalue = ";
std::cout << Kvalue;
return 0;

}

I am using my Win XP laptop to do bibliographic work this morning. I will go out again this morning and pick up the Diconix printer from the shippers.

I got samba installed on the IBM PC server and used a printer, my Epson 440 connected to my laptop with WinXP to print a Gedit highlighted version of my two C++ programs. This is for hardcopy in my hard copy binder. The binder is for this blog and other computer notes.

I started working through the simulation exercises in chapter 3 of Ross's Simulation. Here is the C++ program for simulating the random variable exp(exp(x)) between 0-1.

//
// A C++ program For integrating a continous random variable exp(exp(X)) between 0-1 and finding its expected value or mean.//
#include
int Kvalue;
float Svalue;
int Seed;
float U;
int countK;
float Expected;



int main()
{

std::cout << "Enter integer for random seed: ";
std::cin >> Seed;
void srand(unsigned int Seed);


std::cout << "Enter integer for length of Simulation: ";
std::cin >> Kvalue;
countK=0;
Svalue = 0;
while (Kvalue >= countK)
{

U= (float) ( rand() / (RAND_MAX + 1 ) );
Svalue= Svalue + exp(exp(U));


countK++;
}

Expected= Svalue/Kvalue;
std::cout << "Expected Value = ";
std::cout << Expected;
std::cout << "Svalue = ";
std::cout << Svalue;
std::cout << "Kvalue = ";
std::cout << Kvalue;
return 0;
}

I reviewed some of Morris, Mary E. S. & Massie Paul. Cyber Careers (Mountain View, CA: Sun Microsystems, 1998). I reviewed the developing one's self chapter. I did some inch pebbles for this past week in my private journal.

After my WinXp disk formated the hard drive in the Duron computer I attempted to install Debian 3.0 r.2 which worked but then I made a mess with tasksel.

This blog is now at logbook.crystalcomputing.net.

I read chapter 1 in Hermanns, Holger. Interactive Markov Chains: And the Quest for Quantified Quality (Berlin: Springer, 2002). This statistics book describes a method for modeling the performance of complex systems in particular this could apply to computer systems.

I was able to download a copy of Windows XP professional with SP1 because the mathematics and statistics department has an agreement with the MSDN Academic Alliance. I needed this because the WinXP laptop I have did not come with a WinXP CD. I can now maybe try to make this laptop dual boot. The WinXP CD will be for a system recovery if the installation fails. I am now going to burn the ISO image.

This program inspired from chapter 3 of Ross, Sheldon. Simulation 2d (San Diego: Academic, 1997) will calculate the average value of X^2 between x=1-10 for a discrete version of x squared.

//
// A C++ program For Integrating a random variable (X^2) and finding its expected value or mean.//
#include
int Kvalue;
int Svalue;
int Seed;
int U;
int countK;
float Expected;



int main()
{

std::cout << "Enter integer for random seed: ";
std::cin >> Seed;
void srand(unsigned int Seed);
std::cout << "Enter integer for length of Integral: ";
std::cin >> Kvalue;
countK=0;
Svalue = 0;
while (Kvalue >= countK)

{

U= 1 + (int) ( 10.0 * rand() / (RAND_MAX + 1.0) );
Svalue= Svalue + U * U;


countK++;
}

Expected= Svalue/Kvalue;
std::cout << "Expected Value = ";
std::cout << Expected;
std::cout << "Svalue = ";
std::cout << Svalue;
std::cout << "Kvalue = ";
std::cout << Kvalue;
return 0;
}

I did not do any programming yesterday, but took part in a sys admin discussion. I also did some requests for school supplies meaning printer ink and paper. I also offered some computer support to my sister who needs a computer for school. I contacted the local Mac shop www.themacgroup.ca to see about getting a quote on an eMac for her. I also asked them about the availability of an old clamshell ibook they have for sale for 600$.

Although I did not do any programming I did set up some music gear and record my wife and myself playing music using Audacity. So far this is trouble free software and I am having some good newbie experiences with this recording software.

I am reading this book today and yesterday: Ross, Sheldon. Simulation 2d (San Diego: Academic, 1997). I am trying to make the computer program from chapter 3 for integrating a random variable run a number of times in a loop using a psuedorandom number generator. The book has an example in BASIC. I am trying to write a similar program in C++. I have been searching the web for C++ syntax and so forth. It is not complete yet. I have the below code done so far but I am not returning a random number the right way yet.

Here is my code adopted from a simple C++ IO program from a basic learning C++ book using Quincy as my developer environment and of course gcc.

//
// A Simple C++ program For Integrating a random variable (X^2) and finding its expected value or mean.//
#include




int main()
{
int Kvalue;
float Svalue;
int Seed;
float U;
int countK;
float Expected;

std::cout << "Enter integer for random seed: ";
std::cin >> Seed;
void srand(unsigned int Seed);


std::cout << "Enter integer for length of Integral: ";
std::cin >> Kvalue;
countK=0;
Svalue = 0;
while (Kvalue >= countK)
{

float rand(U);
Svalue= Svalue + U*U;
countK++;
}

Expected= Svalue/Kvalue;
std::cout << "Expected Value = ";
std::cout << Expected;
std::cout << "Svalue = ";
std::cout << Svalue;
std::cout << "Kvalue = ";
std::cout << Kvalue;
return 0;
}

I just read in Cross, David. Data Munging with Perl (Greenwich, CT: Manning, 2001) that Unix measures time elapsed since Thursday, January 1st 1970. It measures it in seconds. Try this command on a Unix box or Macintosh running OSX.

perl -e "print time";

for user friendly time

perl -e "print scalar localtime";

When was a billion seconds?

perl -e "print scalar localtime(1_000_000_000)";

that's all btw this date is very close to September 11, 2001. Does this mean that Unix is involved in terrorism?

I bought a friend a used Apple Colour Style Writer 2400. Apple spec page here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=112500. It was about 4 CND plus heavy shipping costs.

I bought our first air conditioner today. It has a computer inside and it has a remote control. I have installed two air conditioners this summer for elders. I will install ours next Tuesday evening. It has 10,000 BTU's and uses 980 watts of power.

In about 20 minutes I will print out my three blogs in hard copy for the last month's entries. I will also burn a CD of the My Documents folder on my laptop. This is my regularly scheduled back up process. I will start to prepare the laptop to do this now with plugging in the right cables and getting the paper ready for the printer. Today there was a fire alarm in our building and I evacuated the back up CD's. But it was a false alarm.

I updated a web site I created and maintain as a volunteer at city hall. It is for an accessibility committee that advises the Mayor and city counsel and hears about accessibility issues concerning the city. The web site is at http://accessibility-ottawa.ncf.ca. Tonight I added the new committee members names and took the retiring committee members names off the member's web page. I also added more links and took off dead links on the web sites' links page. One interesting site that concerns accessibility and the web I added was http://www.w3.org/WAI/. This w3 site is the world wide web consortium's web space.

I defraged my laptop today. Later tonight on Sunday, I will back up the My Documents folder on that laptop. I will also hard copy print my three blogs for the month of July in the wee hours of Sunday morning.

I opened Xcode on the eMac but did not really write anything just looked at help screens a little. I did the same thing with Active Perl on the laptop.

I am trying to buy an old Kodak Diconix printer on ebay and I am buying on ebay a Power Mac 5200CD and Apple 2400 printer both for a friend.

Here are some technical books in various fields I am reading at the moment:

Taylor, Dave. Macworld Creating Cool Web Pages with HTML (Foster City, CA: IDG, 1995).

This book is great for simple reference to basic HTML. I have been using it for about 8 years. I use it about once a month like now when I need to look up the code for a definitons list like this one you're reading showing titles of books and a brief comment about each book. For more serious HTML references with more depth, I use Ian Graham's, The HTML Source Book: A Complete Guide to HTML 3.0 (New York, NY: Wiley, 1996).

Schwartz Randal L. & Christiansen, Tom. Learing Perl, 2d (Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly, 1993 & 1997).

I have tried to read this book before. I am volunteering as a recording secretary and administration secretary for two of my unions and a community group, so would like some help with report writing and quick editing of word processed documents. PERL promises this help. The problem is... I have not been able to learn much about PERL by reading about it alone. Oh well, I try again and borrowed this book today.

Schwartz, Alan. Managing Mailing Lists (Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly, 1998).

This book I bought to read for advice on managing... actually moderating mailing lists. I have present responsiblity as a volunteer for moderating two community group's email lists. These are real life organizations that use mailings lists. I have one of my own yahoo mailing lists too for geography studies discussions but it is only used once or twice a year, so it is sort of a dead list. It also has no real life affiliation. Some people confuse email mailing lists with mass marketing postal mailing lists but if you don't know yet what an Internet email mailing list is then it is easy to see why you might not know there's a difference. In fact, one can use an email mailing list for marketing but I don't think one could use a fund raising postal mailing list or mass market postal mailing list for discussions. I haven't read much of this book but I bought it just last week.

Gulbransen, David. The Complete Idiot's Guide to XML (Indianapolis, IN: QUE, 2000).

Instead of Y2K the year 2000 brought us this book. I started reading this book in the winter of 2003. I have been slowly writing a dtd or two. I have opened about three or four editors for writing XML on all three platforms Linux, Mac and Windos. All these XML editors seem to need a dtd to already exist. I read the whole book last year and am reading it again this year to reference for writing my dtd's. I have been using xemacs on my WinXP laptop most recently to work on one of my dtd's but plan to go back to Gedit next for this work.

Spector, David H.M. Building Linux Clusters (Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly, 2000).

Again Y2K didn't happen, I recorded my first movie off TV which was Y2K the movie and this book came out that year. Actually I had a friend record it as at that point, December 31, 1999, I could not work a VCR. I can now program and work a variety of VCR's. I can even install Red Hat 6.2 as a super computer on IBM hardware and this book and its accompanying CDROM made this happen. Reading this a couple of years ago I learned basic networking and SCSI with the help of other networking books since, and the web to learn SCSI facts. I find this a great book but apparently the publisher has appologised for publishing it. I could not get the web interface working on the supercomputer software maybe it was flawed or something. Contact me if you read or used this book just to share notes. I was reading this book recently to understand networking with more than one router.

Cross, David. Data Munging with PERL (Greenwich, CT: Manning, 2001).

Computer books seem to still to be written only by people named Dave or David and this book comes out a year after Y2K. I just got it today at the library and might stay up all night so I have time to read it before having to go work somewhere.

Bhasin, Shweta & Bhatia, Vikram. Web Security Basics (Cincinnati, OH: Premier, 2003).

Finally it is 2003 and this book is for Intermediate and Advanced users and it is not written by a Dave or a David. Other than that I haven't read it yet.

Well those are the technical books directly in computer science that I am reading. I will post some books on more social computer topics later as well as some technical books I am reading in statistics, GIS, GI science, hydrology, technology and disabilities, and finally some politics and techno-culture books. I mean cyberculture but don't want to use that word really.

Another busy day working as a tutor/student/teaching assistant ends and I feel great.

I have overloaded my Thinkpad 360 after trying to get X working. Now I don't know what to delete to get space on the hard drive. Dselect won't do much at all. I don't seem to be able to reinstall Debian 3 either.

I had my laptop running my new web cam and watched it using Yahoo Messenger on another machine in the living room. Right now I am doing tech support for a friend.

I downloaded R for the fedora computer.

I helped a friend install drivers for his sound card, and his CD burner. I also set up the software for his printer. He paid me a package of smokes for this help.

I got X Windows working on my Thinkpad 360SC. I used a XF86Config file posted to the web and it worked.

I attended Linux in the Wild a local Linux group BBQ.

I still did not upgrade my palm. I used it fair amount yesterday. I am trying out a medical calculator and a 14 day trial of PDA stats.

I bought a palm belt clip case. I have considered upgrading my palm to a Tungsten W or E model.

This blog has a new interface. I had to choose edit html to write this. This interface is much better and saves me two clicks.

I discovered a new calendar view on my Palm. I recharged the palm fully. I read an article about palms from http://www.wiredwoman.com. I also read an article about palms from the Globe and Mail from 2001. I used my new palm belt clip case tonight. I did not take my palm out of the case while out.

I picked up my Epson 820 photo colour stylus printer, which had been out on loan. I bought basic office supplies yesterday. I got floppy labels at a very good price. I thought of making html files of our books and selling them copied to floppy with labels. The router is working fine. I have been using my laptop for two days now as my main machine. I booted up my Fedora machine and copied some code from a almost forty year old book. I used Gedit to copy the code. The code is Fortran IV. The program I was copying was MM1A or matrix math.

I had broken the reset button off on my D-Link DI704 router. I placed a long tool into the reset button hole on the router and tried to reset. I am not sure this worked.

I used the TCP/IP panel in the Macintosh to manually set the Mac's connection to the router as 192.168.0.2 and was able to get into the router using a web browser by setting the web address as 192.168.0.2 the last IP address of the router. I then ran the router's wizard and got the router working again. I then reset the settings on the Macintosh.

I had reinstalled Fedora core 1 on the IBM PC server and then once the router was properly set up I could get on-line with the IBM linux system.

So I have three working systems. One the Laptop running win XP, two the eMac running Panther and lastly but not least the IBM PC server 325 running Fedora 1 core.

I sold my router to a friend. I did get a gateway with print server but botched the configuration and then broke the reset button with too much force. I didn't quite get the print server working. I would like now to get a wireless router.

I was getting impatient not having a Linux x windows desktop so reinstalled fedora core 1 on the IBM PC rather than fix the problems with the previous install. But since I don't have a working router now I have to use PPPoe for all my computers at present and don't know how to configure this on the Linux side so am not on-line with this Linux box right now.

I failed once again to install Linux in the duron computer. I think it is time to buy a new hard drive for that machine. I should pick up a 20GB or 10GB drive for it.

I made a web page for my Thinkpad 360SC and Linux. I put this new web page on my www.crystalcomputing.net web site. I also sent my cheque in for the domain registration and URL forwarding for my computer ethics web site.

I can use my laptop on my coffee table, while sittting on the couch. From couch potatoe to couch commando. I am just putting all my computer law papers together to create a book using Open Office.

I stopped all my instant message programs from starting up on the boot up of my IBM T30 computer. My boot up was so slow. I suspect it is either, these messenger programs or the virus scan or maybe some unknown spy ware.

I am using Microsoft Publisher 97 to do some work today and tomorrow. I got this software for a donation to the National Capital Freenet in late 1999.

I am taking the Bell and Howell video camera back to the department store today for a refund. It only takes 3 minutes of video and did not state that in the product advertisment. If they do not take it back I believe I have an action in small claims court.

I bought a video camera from the Hudson's Bay Company. I was not going to get a video camera but they dropped the price 300$. But that was not enough because the camera although a Bell and Howell branded camera is a little on the cheap side. I need to learn this about major department stores. Anyways I now have a battery operated web cam. I could have for the same money perhaps bought a netcam. But this camera I got is also small and will work well as a mobile surveillance system for my trips around town. I probably don't know enough people to use this for video conferencing. For that I can use Yahoo or Netmeeting, but I can't use iChat with this webcam.

I sold a Thinkpad power supply just now. I sold it to a fellow member of the OCLUG.

I am able to network my home computers now. I was able to use ftp on the 360SC Thinkpad and log into the eMac computer. I was also able to see the share folder on the T30 Thinkpad from my eMac.

I am now starting to create an FAQ for Linux beginners for our OCLUG web site FAQ's.

I have just been learning R. It works fine in WinXP and also works without graphics on the Thinkpad 360 running Debian 3. I was able to read the preface and work through part of the beginners sample.

I installed R on the IBM TP T 30 under WinXP. I also installed xemacs and configured xemacs to run ESS and run directly to R. I tried the demo(graphics) command in R and it worked with this set up. I can now use xemacs on the WinXP laptop.

I was asked to help my dad network his two Mandrake laptops. I found ifconfig in the sbin directory. We ran ifconfig which gave us the present 192.168.0.X IP addesses for his laptops. Then he could ssh to the other laptop.

I was able to install R version 1.8 on the Thinkpad 360SC. It seemed to work. But also installing it on the eMac showed that when demo(graphic) was used as a command version 1.9 of R ran screens of charts and pictures that of course just did not show up on the old 486.

I am buying some more ink for the Epson Photo Stylus 700 this week. I was able to print my essay on the Epson colour stylus 440 ok. It seems I now need to print at best quality to get perfectly readable text. I think this is perhaps the age of the printer causing it to degrade but it could also be the quality of the ink I am using.

I posted two emails to the OCLUG, this weekend and Monday. Both emails were status reports rather than problems described.

I didn't use my computers much yesterday. I was out of the house for about 5 hours yesterday and didn't use anything but my own Palm when out. At home I printed a 12 page essay and used email. I also downloaded some work related files from two different employers.

I tried to install Debian 3.0.23 twice yesterday on the Duron box but failed both times. I can get the base system installed but task selection and dselect failed. On the second attempt the initialisation of the root directory partition failed.

I did not use my computers while my guests were over. After they left I immediately used my eMac.

My email activity today has helped me orgainse much volunteer work and made my life much better.

I forgot to turn the projector on at the beginning of my in class presentation. I have sent this presentation as an email attachment to geographers in Australia and also the USA.

Blog error.

I may need to use R for statistics. R is available for GNU. Therefore I need to get a GNU machine working.

I have installed the base system and I think a few compilers on the Thinkpad 360SC. So I have a functioning basic Linux system now.

Xandros is now available as a free download. This was mentioned on the Ottawa Canada Linux users Group email list today by someone from Xandros. I will download it later.

Today I have to use a data projector at school. I will play a slide show from Open Office on my laptop and show my presentation on GIS and emergency response in class tonight. I have also printed the slides on paper using a laser printer at the school's library. I printed on both sides of the page. I chatted with Heather Cross our library help person. She has a sociology MA and a Law and sociology BA from Carleton.

I used my Palm, my eMac and my Thinkpad T30 yesterday. I did some email, some web pages with composer and wrote an essay. I also used my blogs and family reported reading my blogs and I had an email discussion about blogs. I backed up my palm. I printed some work related stuff. I, in fact, used two printers yesterday and today with no errors using the set default printer appropriately. I watched my supervisor use a computer at school to print something from a textbook CD. I chatted ever so briefly with my brother usng iChat. I used and managed email lists.

I was unable to install Debian 3.0 so far on the Thinkpad 360SC.

I did manage to make my May back up CD of my laptop. I did not back up email or favorite/bookmark web pages though. I lost all my netscape email after I configured netscape to use Norton Internnet Security. What's that they say about badley configured security software is more dangerous than no security software?

These are the computer related books I borrowed on Thursday night after my LAWS4701 class taught by Chris McNaught.

Wall, David, ed. Crime and the Internet (London, Routledge, 2001).

This book suggests that neither a big crime or no crime has occurred because of the Internet. Rather a lot of minor small crimes have occurred and we still aren't sure what, where, why, who, when and how the Internet is existing and changing existence. It is a collection of papers about Internet crime by criminologists from the UK. I have not read much of it yet.

Grabosky, Peter & Smith, Russell G. & Dempsey, Gillian. Electronic Theft: Unlawful Acquisition in Cyberspace (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

This book examines cybercrime but in particular theft using computers.

Zylinska, Joanna ed. The Cyborg Experiments: The Extensions of the Body in the Media Age (London: Continuum, 2002).

I don't know what this book is about yet.

Gray, Chris Hables. cyborg citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age (New York: Routledge, 2001).

This book examines briefly all kinds of cyborgs but the main theme is the politics of the cyborg age in particular participatory politics. So this book is both maybe a green politics book and also in the subfield of political science studies that I place my own political science studies. I am tempted to read more of this book but also tempted not too.

I am installing Debian 3.0 on my Thinkpad 360SC. I am doing it as a network install. I got this Thinkpad a 8MB memory upgrade. It now has 20MB of memory.

I did it I got www.cyb.org to point to this blog. I will know pay the fee to get the adds off this blog.

The back up on CD failed on the winxp laptop. Also after installing Norton Anti-Virus firewall I lost all my netscape mail for the past few months which is a pain.

I hard copy backed up my two blogspot blogs but these are only in rough reading copies for carrying around with me. In a minute to two I will burn the my documents folder of this PC to CD for the month's end back up of same folder. It is about 3 years of laptop computing in that folder involving two different laptops.

I am frustrated with Linux. It is not worth all this trouble to have an open software that is free to use. Although I have in the past been frustrated with Windows too. I would say only the Mac is not frustrating at the same level. Maybe it just because I try to do so much with computers and own too many of them.