The Linksys Wireless-G Music Bridge streaming music device arrived and I just set it up.

I decided to set up the Linksys Wireless-G Music Bridge model WMB54G streaming music device and see if it worked. It does work right out of the box on the IBM Thinkcentre PC running windows XP. It also can use optical connected digital audio. Thus pleased with this device, I will keep it. Rather than try to clear off my current USB external hard drives, I will buy a new 500 GB LaCie USB external hard drive for just music on the PC. Then I will set the iTunes up to use this external drive for its store library.

The IP 4300 printer works with the Debian computer

I did get the Debian computer to print a test page to the Canon IP 4300 and may be able to print with duplex as well but I am all out of black ink right now.

I am taking back the memory and Linksys streaming music device

I am taking these back to the store for a refund.

The Keyboard Monitor switch is hooked up now.

I have the monitor switch hooked up now. So I can easily the monitor between the Sun machine and the IBM machine.

The memory arrived in the mail and was Desktop RAM not laptop RAM.

So I must have made a mistake because the RAM turned out to be Desktop RAM and I needed laptop RAM. So I must take this RAM back to the store and make an exchange. The RAM chips are still on sale until Thursday. I may though take back the RAM and not do an exchange because I need to pay down debit. I may also take back the LinkSys stream music network device and also get credit for that. The LinkSys device has still not arrived in the mail.

Keyboard, monitor switch.

I have a one PS/2 and Monitor switch I am going to reconnect this evening to run the 17 " ProView monitor with both the Sun Solaris machine and the IBM Thinkcentre. I will cable that up just now.

I am updating Fink

I ran Fink Commander self update just now. This is the first update since Leopard was installed. I am wondering if I should wipe out Fink and get a fresh version. Perl would not upgrade because it would not compile.

1 GB memory upgrade may be this evening.

I think Memory upgrades are rather trouble-less events. I have not had any trouble with them except on old 386's with very used memory. But I suppose there could be issues. I am upgrading my Macbook from 1 GB with two 512 MB PC 5300 chips to 2 GB with two 1 GB chips. These two 1 GB chips should come in the mail in the next few hours. To be on the safe side I will connect the Leopard TimeMachine external backup drive now and make sure it runs a few times before I put the new memory in the machine. I will also follow instructions exactly as I found them at the Apple support pages for installing new RAM into a Macbook. Basically this means taking the battery out and then unscrewing one little metal frame with philips 00 screws. Then I take out the old memory and put in the new. I can then may be sell the old memory.

I bought ink this evening but the buying has to stop now.

I need to stop buying computer stuff now. I have no money and too much debit. That said so there.

I burned the two more 8 GB DVD's.

I have the Desktop of the eMac backed up from the external 250 GB hard drive now to DVD. I do want to burn two more copies of what I have done for the eMac so far. I also have one more DVD to burn for that computer's Desktop folder backups. I will make six copies of that DVD too. So for the above what is required is ten 4 GB DVD's and and two more 8 GB DVD's.

The year end back up continues

I am having less issues with the Finder going into the "not responding" state. I did burn two 8 GB DVD's that backed up all the Desktop copies for 2007. I have two more to burn and I am all out of 8 GB DVD's. I do not plan to buy more of these right now. I did order 100 4 GB blank DVD's for 20 dollars to continue this process.

To continue to clear the hard drive I have deleted all the twenty some CD's of Debian 4.0. I have burned some of these to CD and what I deleted was the original downloads. If I have too I could download these again. I have also not had to use these as my last Debian install was done with a net install disk. I do not have too many other files I can just delete. I have about 51 GB free space now. I need about 85 at present to hold my iTunes library for streaming. If I can meet this goal with this drive I will not need a new drive.

Year end back ups started.

Well needing to clear one of the 250 GB hard drives off of files I began to back up the backups on that hard drive. I started with the Desktop folders for the eMac2 and that took two DVD's for the folders from year end 2006 and all through 2007 except the last year end copy of the Desktop. I still must make one year end Desktop folder. This will be tonight's task. I used 4.7 GB DVD's and made four copies of each DVD. I want to keep three copies here and send two copies to one family member and one extra copy to another family member. So in all I need six copies. So I need to make two more copies of these two DVD's. For now I deleted the two DVD burn folders which were mounted on the desktop. Tonight I will make four 8 GB DVD's of all the 2007 Desktop folders and the year end 2006 folder.

I will want to buy more blank DVD's at the boxing day sales.

I learned to unlock the burn folders after the first burn and it was this locked aspect which was giving me a lot of trouble in the past with burning DVD's and the Finder going into non-response.

iTunes on the Windows box.

I have been having more luck now getting all my music onto iTunes on the PC. I am moving along with this. Also my iTunes is fully backed up on the eMac which holds the master library. The back up took seventeen 4.7 GB DVD's. I have about six of these now transfered to the IBM PC iTunes. Now I feel challenged to transfer them to the Debian side and see what I can use for Debian music. It might be time to convert an old external drive to being a music library. The Macbook has only a smaller part for the library for syncing the Nano. I did order the music bridge and will try it out and if it does not work I will return it. It cost 46$ CND in the end taxes and shipping.

Annual year end backups; getting ready for the end of the year.

I usually make end of the year back ups. I am starting to think of this today. I am learning not to keep external hard drives plugged in all the time but have been doing this with the new Time Machine software on my Macbook with Leopard and a LaCie 160 pocket drive. I will disconnect it now and put it inside its waterproof and dust proof case for a few days.

I am doing things with iTunes.

I have been thinking of buying a Linksys Wireless music streaming network device. It is only because one is on sale now that this has really come up. I am aware that music on computers is expensive and getting a music hard drive might have to happen from this too. The costs would be immense. This would mean I would not need a new iPod. I could use the Harmon Kardon Bridge to my stereo for just the Nano. The new iPod costs too much, It is math of these things as I try to match my iTunes library file size with the newer iPods. Instead, I think the music Bridge would be a good device, if it works. It is only Windows compatible. This means I would need to use my new IBM Thinkcentre.

I have so far started to use the Thinkcentre windows side to sync my Blackberry. Now I will also use it for iTunes and the Wireless Music Bridge. Since I have started to use iTunes on Windows I have had nothing but headaches loading all my music. This past hour I decided to delete everything on that iTunes.

I am also backing up my eMac iTunes to some 4.7 GB DVD's but this has been headache prone too. Right now I am starting again; having ruined three DVD's trying. First, I am downloading a bunch of podcasts. When those are updated, I will back up the iTunes on the eMac.

I also have been using iTunes on the IBM to get my songs from the library of music to my Blackberry. This was the initial reason to put iTunes there. This worked but the Blackberry is troublesome for listening to music while traveling around on the bus. It turns off and on and stuff. I have still have not learned all the buttons or the lock screen function beyond using it once only.

I backed up this blog.

I copied the web pages to word doc files for the months of 2006 and 2007 that had not already been backed up. I then changed the by-line on the top of this blog to reflect the new machines I have now and iPods I have sold off.

We did not get to those paypal and amazon problems with the neighbour.

I did not in the end help my neighbour set up paypal or order books through amazon. Instead I helped her learn to turn on and off her email and helped her read her email for the whole year and replay to some very old email.

I am now home and was playing some computer games and now am back to transferring songs to my new cell phone, the Blackberry.

I am helping a neighbour with Paypal and amazon

I am helping a neighbour with the Internet this evening. We are setting up a paypal account for her and helping her order some books.

How to get iTunes into the Blackberry.

First step as I said two hours ago was to update WinXP on the desktop. After that was done. I installed iTunes. I learned iTunes music store now sells Canadian TV shows. I explored these a little using my eMac iTunes because that computer is right beside the IBM computer on my office desk. I then installed the Backberry software from the CD that came with the Blackberry Pearl 2. I then used back up iTunes DVD's to import my music to iTunes. Then using Roxio media manager I copied iTunes music into the Roxio and then copied to the SD micro card on the Blackberry. I am now listening to Auto Rickshaw a band I have worked with as a volunteer. I am thinking I will only listen to folk based music on the Blackberry as a counter to its placement in culture as a corporate object rather than say a pop object or folk object. So the Blackberry is corp tool rather than a hacker, rocker, nomad, or solo tool.

Desktop PC.

I decided to run my Blackberry off of the new IBM computer while running WinXP. I think I have a tool in Debian for this too but I am not sure. One joke I have heard it case you're interested is to call a Blackberry a crackberry. Certainly there are addicts in my city along with Blackberry users. I am concerned as well to help these addicts more than I would help Blackberry owners and I do help people by volunteering in social services.

But I have not been using the WinXP Operating system much on the IBM desktop so I am having to spend an hour or two downloading updates from Microsoft now. The reason I am needing to use the Desktop PC rather than the Macbook WinXP is that the Macbook Win XP partition is almost full and I need to save that for my SAS install. I use SAS at work and need to have a home copy to learn on and have a school license for SAS.

Email, contacts, address books between Palms, Blackberries, and computers.

Here is what happened after the switch devices function of the Blackberry Desktop Manager did not work to add phone numbers to my address book on the new Blackberry. I tried repeatedly to import an ASCII file exported from the Palm Desktop. It just would not work. So I went to the Blackberry support pages and found I would have to use Outlook Express. My Outlook Express was full of some old email import and had a lot of email addresses which if your email address book looks like mine is hundred of email addresses with out names or phones numbers or even real addresses. So I did manage to import the Palm cell phone address book into Outlook but first deleted all the contacts in Outlook. I then matched up very carefully the columns in the coma delimited file from the Palm. Then the Blackberry Desktop manager did import the Outlook address book alright. I have some mixing of cell phone, fax and home numbers but at least I have some kind of copy of the Palm address book now on the Blackberry. I do not need this until the end of the month so there is time to fix it and add more names and numbers.

I could not find my Palm hotsync cable.

I do not know about all this chasing after technology. I am in a panic looking for my hotsync cable for my palm. My office is fairly disorganized so finding my cable if it is not where I left it or not in the few places I keep cables is not a very good thing. When I find it I am ready on the WinXP side of the Macbook to sync the Palm Treo 600 with the Palm Desktop then transfer everything to the Blackberry. I believe the Blackberry software the Blackberry Desktop Manager can do the transfer with out the Palm Desktop. But both devices need to be connected at the same time.

As I proof read this entry I tried one more time to look around where I usually leave my cables and saw the tell tale end that fits in the Palm. So I have now found the cable and will log off the Macbook Leopard and log into Win XP and try to transfer my contacts and and calendar to my Blackberry which arrived yesterday.

I am already using the Blackberry Facebook application and have downloaded 250 KB so far on the Blackberry of my 4 MB monthly limit. But for now I am ready to sync the two devices. First, I will back up the Palm to the eMac.

Getting ready for the Blackberry.

This Blackberry will be costly for the service almost 70$ a month. But I did buy the MicroSD card just now which was about 51$. It is a 2 GB Kingston MicroSD card. It also has an adapter to allow it to fit in the standard SD slots. I have one USB memory card reader, which I paid 30$ for a year or two ago. I also have an SD card reader on my Brother printer. I will not take the MicroSD card out of the package, in case I need to return it and back out of the Blackberry purchase.

Memory for the Debian Computer would not cost too, too much.

Upgrading the Debian PC to 4 GB would be about 400$ but just upgrading it to 2GB would only be 100$ because I would not need to take out the 1 GB in there now. It takes PC2700 DDR RAM.

Archiving and moving to Linux.

I archived some folders on my Macbook. I am limited on hard disk space and need to clean up the laptop a bit more.

I opened some backup folders in Linux and copied my Old Computer folder and some Mac backups while archiving these to the Linux desktop home folder. I also updated the Linux computer today. I tried out Kate for my dtd file and also opened a school project written in C# with Kate and used the highlighting. Right now the Linux computer is turned off to save power.

I am buying a Blackberry 8130 cell phone/pda.

I decided that I wanted the Pearl model Blackberry a few months ago, in fact, it may have been last winter I decided that it would be a good phone. It is model 8130. I regret not getting a full keyboard as this was the feature I used to buy PDA cell phones by. I had bought a Palm Tungsten W and then Palm Treo 600 based on the little thumb keyboards and had avoided the Blackberry's which, in fact, were making the thumb keyboards famous. But the 8130 has what's called a SureType keyboard and they have a copyright on that name. It has a camera, GPS service, email, web browsing, cell phone functions, and music. It also uses microSD cards. This means I now have to buy these type of flash memories. There is a sale this evening at Futureshop so I may try to buy those memories this evening along with two CD's I am buying family for Christmas.

One laptop per child

Giving one of this laptops to a child in the developing world(including Afghanistan) makes rational economic sense for buying a laptop for the kids in your life too. Where else does 399$ US buy you a kid proof laptop for younger kids? You could buy a used older laptop I suppose. For the 399$ your kid gets a designed for kids laptop and then another one is donated to a kid in a developing country. Sure they need water and food more than a laptop. But buy someone a meal they eat for one day. Teach them to grow a meal they eat for life. The laptop can be seen as a tool for building communities. Visit www.laptop.org

Memory upgrades.

It will cost about 200$ to buy 2 GB of Kingston PC5300 laptop RAM from Futureshop to upgrade the memory in my Macbook. I have not yet priced the 4 GB of RAM I need for my new desktop to bring it up to Maximum. I may need to reinstall Debian or find some way of repartitioning the hard drive because I want to adjust the swap space on the hard drive. Right now I have 2 GB of swap space and if the desktop can be upgrade to 4 GB RAM I will need to upgrade the swap space to 8 GB of Swap space. Swap space is space on the hard drive that is used like RAM for moment by moment memory needs. It is recommended that swap space be set to double the real RAM size. I think this used to be called Virtual Memory on early to middle aged Macs.

KPhoto

I did get KPhoto to upload photos from my SonyT20 camera. The camera connects as a USB device. I simply used the file browser in Gnome to copy and paste the photos into KPhoto. Or was it import from a folder they were copied and pasted too? So the photos can get into the computer. I have not tried printing them yet and Canon do not have Linux drivers for the printer I own.

Second Life viewer on Linux

I have been using the Second Life viewer successfully under Linux a few times now. It is almost like a new game and very responsive.

Leopard updated this morning

Leopard on the Macbook updated itself this morning. The IBM computer took some getting used to. I am still using Apple keyboard short cuts. I need to relearn or readapt to PC short keyboard cuts I found I could run Second Life under Linux. I also learned to use the Konqueror browser. I do need firefox for some web pages but so far can not install firefox under Debian using the Synaptic package manager. I also have not found K package yet I did just now while writing this post install KDM and may have KDE working soon enough. In fact, as I proof read this I was asked by the computer which default window manager I wanted to use and I selected KDM. I am restarting now and will see what happens.  I did not yet get KDE. I also in this install run/download installed numerous K packages. I also just got a DVD to play apparently violating some law perhaps concerning copyright. I downloaded some package that was a library for decoding DVD's. When I did this K package popped up. So with all of the above I am getting there with Debian Etch.

Only hardware issues so far with new IBM desktop.

The Debian Net install process is just downloading software as it is in the Select and install software phase right now. I updated the Windows XP first and ran Norton. The only issue I had was finding a caddy or really a piece of metal to hold the Western Digital 200 GB second hard drive. The drive is installed and formatted now. There are 30 seconds remaining in this phase. I will update more later.

Leopard is taking a little getting used to.

I have now been using Leopard for about 12 hours. I used it all day today from about 1 PM until now.

The Visual Studio project is done now.

I have a version of the Windows software installer now and just figured out one would make an installer as a sub part of an application. This was done as an exercise for school. I should touch it up a little bit now but I have one version now I can email to our instructor before Wednesday.

The Leopard install is complete now

Leopard is up and running on the Macbook. I have about 5 GB free space on the hard drive now.

The Leopard install has begun

I have placed the Leopard install disk in the Macbook and rebooted and then followed instructions. Everything seems fine as the installer checks the inegrity of the DVD disk. Is this a sexual metaphor "put the disk in"? Then what is integrity checking all about or choosing a hard drive to upgrade? May be gendered interpretations fall short? But may be they are right on!

One last task before install of Leopard is dragging out but that's because I am not working on it right now.

I decided I had better get some school homework done before installing Leopard. Allowing some waiting time is also allowing some build up of excitment here. All the backs up are now done. But I have some school work that I can only do at home on the Macbook. I could complete it at school too on lab computers. But it is much more convenient to complete it at home. It is almost done now. It really is not difficult because the teacher has made a step by step guide to the homework. Only the last step is not given and I have completed that once in the lab where we learned this a few weeks ago. The assignment is to make an installer project in C# using Visual Studio. Then we must add a license agreement. I am almost done the step by step part and when this is done I will log off WinXP on the Macbook and install Leopard.

Then Monday I install Debian 4.0 r1 on an IBM M50 desktop which should arrive that day. I have Monday off of work. I will post details of the Linux install after the Leopard install is done but I am right now also preparing for the Linux install but won't give details right now.

You should back up your computer before installing an upgrade or new OS.

Following the advice to back up my computer before the upgrade to Mac OS 10.5 I am backing up my Macbook.

So far I have burned four DVD's of the Desktop folder as of last night. I burned two of these DVD's on Kodak DVD's and two on Memorex DVD's. I also did this with four disks for the documents folder. All other folders than documents and desktop were considered two large for DVD back up.

I also used one external 250 LaCie USB hard drive to copy these two folders once. I also used my eMac and the LaCie back up software on the eMac to back up the user folder on the Macbook to a second LaCie 250 USB external drive attached to the eMac. These two computers are connected to a router in common which keeps them networked together.

Another step is still in progress and that is to use the LaCie backup software on the Macbook to back up many different folders like the systems folder, the users folder, the library, and the applications folder to a third smaller 160 GB LaCie USB external drive. So far backing up the applications folder this way has not worked so a copy of it was copied to the drive.

Windows XP is also installed on the Macbook so a copy of the major folders was made to the first USB external drive mentioned above and then this was copied to the third drive as well. Some Windows folders on the Macbook could not be copied due to permissions issues.

The last step will be to use the LaCie back up software to make one more copy of the user folder to the third drive. Then the backups will be considered completed.

Installing Leopard on the Macbook.

I will make a series of posts now about intsalling Leopard on my Macbook. I paid 109 dollars plus tax for this Mac OS 10.5 last night.

The community group web site will not close.

So the people in charge of the community group project decided not to close their web site after all. May be there is more paid work in web mastering? I at one time made a goal to earn just a little money making web sites. This I have now done.

Apple updates.

I just updated iTunes to version 4.5 and Quicktime.

New computer ordered.

I am happy to buy an IBM computer now that IBM have settled with thier workers in Italy. They held a strike in the on-line game of Second Life. I ordered a Pentium 4, 3 Ghz hyper threaded certified used desktop. It has Gigabyte ethernet, an 80 GB hard drive and a CD burner with DVD playing ability. I also ordered a Western Digital 250 GB hard drive to have a second harddrive for installing Debian 4.0. So again I will have a dual boot Debian Linux/ Windows XP box.

ProView 17" monitor works with Solaris machine.

I paid only 40$ for a 17 inch monitor. It is an old style CRT monitor not an LCD. But it works fine with the Solaris computer so I now have that machine looked after. The monitor is brand new though. I am still tempted to buy an IBM desktop or Thinkpad to run Debian 4. These certified used IBM machines are fairly cheap right now.

Pain staking hand editing of Moving Type(MT) main index file worked.

I started a new blog for accounting the explorations I do through my Second Life avatar Peter Krogstad. This morning I created an edit in a Moving Type(MT) template. I used Moving Type for the new blog and put it in my cybercitizen web site here
http://cyborgcitizen.org/pkrogstad/index.html.


I used the witty name for the blog Just a Second Life Avatar's Blog. I made a table banner with 40 little Second Life screen pictures of my avatar. This was what took the hand coding. It was tough uploading too. I made a goal to completing this before going out today and I am now done. So I achieved this goal. I worked very hard.

I spent the day at work coding in SAS.

I am happy to report I have been paid to code. I have a job and my duties this week became coding in SAS. I spent almost every minute at work today writing a SAS program. I have proven to be very good at assisting my boss with his database work too. I credit this to clear communication as a nagging goal.

I also have been able to become an obsessive documenter. I wrote a lot of comments in my code today explaining each and every step in SAS comment lines. Being a blogger of my own daily life and other mundane topics has improved my skills in this regard.

Second Life progress update.

I have been studying inside Second Life with the help of Tracy Kennedy and Joanna Robinson. Tracy is writing her Ph.D. with Barry Wellman at the University of Toronto and Joanna is a research associate at Simon Fraser. I joined them at a virtual campus last fall. I have since joined them at a meeting of the Communications, Information and Technology section of the American Sociology Association and wrote a paper on facebook and privacy for that event. I just posted it Thursday night at www.webpagex.org.

I have now learned more about Second Life by reading books. I read just a little of the Offical Guide to Second Life and with that created another account and avatar and went through orientation island again where I better learned to fly. This has really helped me out. I moved my house or should I say my offices to a PG sim and it is more pleasant to see on screen now. I find I am spending more time on-line there now in this virtual reality world that is like photoshop for 3 dimensional stuff. It has cost me close to 400 dollars now in about 1.5 years of use.

I am going to open a blog now for this virtual world and report my progress there. I will post the new blog address here when it is set up.

Closing a web site for a community group I am associated with and worked for on this web site.

Well I had a job as a web master for about 14 months. I did only a few pages at that web site and will be closing it now after October ends. I will send in my last invoice and create a page to keep in place to announce the closing. I will may be now that I am thinking of it move the hosting to a single page at NCF. I have never closed a web site before. I read a little about eGovernment last night. I am mostly working in government these days.

Backups continuing.

I made some backups on my eMac at the beginning of the month and now mid-month. I am no longer backing up blogs with hard copy.

Starting to think my eMac is going to replaced with an iMac.

My eMac is a key tool for using old Pre Mac OS X software. I was thinking I would get an iMac to replace it but am now thinking instead I will wait and save up for a new stand alone monitor and use this for the Solaris computer and also get a Linux desktop computer. I would keep the eMac but also move to more use of Linux desktops. A new monitor will cost about 300$ and that new PC could be anything from an IBM Pentium IV to a more modern dual Intel. I will wait a few years and replace my Macbook with a Macbook Pro.

I am properly "by the book" reconditioning my Macbook battery.

I wonder if when I tried to buy an extra Macbook battery about half a year ago, I helped Apple discovery the flaw in the Macbook battery. They issued a firmware update or software update for that which I applied to my Macbook. They had also issued a firmware update earlier for the fan in the Macbook. At any rate I only have one battery and I am running my Macbook on battery power now and when it sleeps I will leave it off for five or more hours then re-power it. The Macbook might be off line from about 3 am until about 8 or 10 am. I will now update a few blogs and make sure to unplug the Macbook from digital audio and also external monitor so I can move it around this morning when I clean and move furniture. I am also buying a Pelican 1080 case for this Macbook before I carry it on my bike. That way it can be in an accident and if a car runs over it it will be safe.

All computers are working well.

My eMac and Macbook are both working fine. My Compaq Debian system is ok but I don't use it much at all. My Sun Ultra 5 is not being used either and it is now without a monitor. I have an 8 GB Nano which I paid full price for but they are now on sale at half that price. I also have a 30 GB iPod video but I am trying to sell it. My Palm Treo 600 is still working fine too.

The book Windows Vista for Dummies arrived in 3 days from Amzon.ca and in two business days.

Wow that was the fastest on-line order yet with the book I ordered for my partner's friend arriving in two business days. It took only one day to travel after being shipped.

BackUps begun for month end and quarter end time.

I was forced to move my main previous computers back up folder off the eMac onto one of the LaCie drives. This reminded me to back up the two computers. I will start this process now but really for the Macbook I will wait until some school work is done. But blogs and the eMac will be backed up now.

The computer was delivered and my friend gave me an Obusforme backpack for my work.

I helped my friend unpack the computer and guided her through plugging it in and turning it on and off. She will be using Open Office and soon be reading the two books, The Internet for Dummies and Windows Vista for Dummies. These books are coming in the mail from Amazon.ca. She bought a computer desk from Staples Business Depot. With the desk she got a free Obusforme backpack and this is a back support backpack. She gave this to me as she does not use backpacks.

I am learning facebook application development.

I downloaded some API's for facebook development. I read a little about Faceboook Query Language.

I bought a computer and printer for my partner's friend.

I bought a Compaq SRN5110NX desktop computer for 349$ plus tax. At the same time I bought a Canon Pixma MP210 printer, copier, and scanner for 29$. Combining these with my Sony 17" wide screen TV/Monitor makes a whole system. I bought these last Sunday and brought them home on the bus using a hand truck. I spent this week setting the computer up. I installed Adobe Reader, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, iTunes, and Open Office. Yesterday I ordered books for this friend. I ordered The Internet for Dummies and Windows Vista for Dummies. This system is for a friend. She has worked in the past in the government and studied computer programming at Algonquin college.

The avatar Hover Jetcity has completed orientation island now.

My newest avatar has now completed orientation island in Second Life.

Second Second Life character started up in the orientation island.

I logged in for about an hour in orientation island relearning stuff there. My new character is called Hover Jetcity and he like all other characters initially created logged in to find himself at orientation island. I did not do well at flying or complete the appearance exercises yet. I did complete the search and communication exercises. I may go back in tonight.

My Second Life offices have been moved.

I sold all my land. I used the average price of 7.7 Linden dollars per sq. m. and my neighbour bought all 6 512 sq. m. parcels. He paid a total of about 25000 L$ and this bought me 2560 sq. m. in a new Mainland sim. I also cashed some L$ in to cover my higher monthly costs in September's land fees payment. I am now back down to the 15 US$ per month land fees tier. I have moved my offices and set up the cubicles but still need to arrange things a bit and put the little computers on the desks. I had experience building for sale signs and moving things and placing things into inventory and then taking them out again. I met a few people and my old neighbour became a friend. I learned a little of doing land deals.

A monitor for the Sun Ultra 5.

I booted the Sun Ultra 5 to see if I could identify the video card and screen resolution but instead tried to install a printer and crashed the Solaris. I turned off the computer and am focusing on Debian now and WinXP.

I am using bittorrent to download and upload Debian Linux 4.0 r 1.

I had been meaning to get to this for a few days now. I am just about to get my Compaq Pentium 1 laptop out and see how my Debian install is on that machine. But I also am bittorrent sharing Debian 4.0 r 1 disks 1 to 21 and three update CD's and a KDE CD.

Vista deleted and WinXP used to install SAS.

I deleted Vista because it would not allow me to install SAS. So I reinstalled WinXP and and then SAS. I also installed Flash and Adobe Reader on WinXP.

My first land sale in Second Life and now I am selling all my land.

Second life has cost me a lot of money in the past year and few months. I sold my first piece of land. After making a for sale sign my land sold in less than an hour. The buyer agreed to buy my other 512 sq. m. parcels today. I set them all for sale to only this person and now I am homeless in Second Life. I put my house away and all my custom furniture. I did spend some time investigating some other land and may try to find a new home after the sale. I might save my Linden dollars for this or cash the Linden dollars out. The first sale paid for most of my land fees this month. The land fees are covered now for today's payment. My next payment will be a month from now and that will be a membership payment rather than land fee. I may try to optimize and save enough Linden dollars to cover my membership fees next month and then any land fees and spend the rest on new land for my house and custom furniture

I have not been using the Sun or Linux computers much.

I got to thinking recently that I would buy a new monitor as the 17 inch Sony is not compatible with the Sun Ultra 5 video card. I should not buy a new monitor though as I can not afford one.

Ink supplies bought this month on credit.

Using my futureshop credit card I bought ink for my Brother MFC420cn printer and my Canon IP Pixma 4300 duplex printer. I printed some course notes last night. I also now own a Sony T20 sub compact camera. I am not happy with the pictures it takes. I will try it out some more and then perhaps return it. I already tried out a Nikon D40 with two lens and returned the camera and lens with no damage for a full refund.

New accounts at school.

I attended some introduction sessions to computer accounts at school at the SITE building and the Tefler school of management yesterday. I started a web page at SITE and also have web space at Tefler. I am now in doubt about which I will use more for my University of Ottawa web pages. Dreamweaver works with SITE.

Open Office means Neo Office.

I am upgrading my Neo Office software on my eMac today. I also downloaded and I think installed Neo Office on the Macbook this week or last weekend. I donated 2 dollars to Neo Office development too.

I am doing my very first secure erase using...Mac OS X Disk Utility!

I decided to do a secure erase of my new 160 GB portable drive. I had copied some of the Macbook hard drive to the new drive but instead figured I might loose this drive so it would be better for music as music is not my data and is in a sense public data by the time it gets to me. Not that I have downloaded illegal music but public in the sense of it not being private data about me or my life or relations or our finances. I might rethink this but for now I am doing a 35 pass zero write of the hard drive and this will take approximately 60 hours.

I did buy an Optoma projector but then returned it.

I returned the Optoma projector I bought and just this past week. For 100$ more I could buy a better model Optoma projector with better native resolution and better digital connections and this was the model I originally wanted. This model is on sale for today and five more days after today.

I have not used the Sun Computer much but have spent one hour or so with it exploring.

I explored what in Mac OS X terms would be called the Dock. I opened up each section on the bottom rectangle. I visited sun.com a lot to learn Solaris and tried unsuccessfully to update the OS.

I am presently thinking of buying Silicon Graphics monitor for 20$. But with more spending I could try to put together a Silicon graphics workstation for a cartoonist friend who knows a little of how to use such a workstation. This means more money but also leaves the problem of suitable Sun Monitor unaddressed.

The Sun workstation is up and running but needs to be updated still.

I have a CDE desktop now but need to update the software. I think I still have Sun OS 5.10 but tried to install Solaris 10. I will set it to update this morning before I go to work for the day.

The solaris install is progressing nicely

The Solaris install is coming along fine in the office while I study in the living room.

I found out how to change the boot device and am installing Solaris 10 now on the Sun Ultra Sparc 5.

I was able to study on the Sun web site how to change the boot device in Solaris and then logged into this government surplus machine and started to install Solaris 10 on my 40$ Sun Ultra 5 machine. It has a Sun Space 400 Mhz processor with 256 MB RAM. But I am going to install another 256 MB of RAM so brought up the swap to 1024 MB in size. The machine has a 20 GB hard drive. It is my first Sun Solaris Machine.

I spoke too soon the Ultra 5 stilll has its OS from its old install.

The Sun Ultra was not whipped clean as the seller said it was. So when it starts up it boots its old OS Solaris 5 and tries to contact the network it was installed in before I bought it. Now I have to open the box and change the hard drive or find another way of booting it. Ah research. I might see if a new hard drive would be pricey.

The Sun Ultra 5 boots off the CD and shows up on the monitor.

I am happy as the Sun Ultra 5 I have has a SVGA card in it. Thus I don't need a monitor specifically for the Sun. I tried booting off the Solaris CD #1 and the machine started to boot and warned that it had no input device. The keyboard and mouse should be arriving in the mail this week. The brand new type 6 Sun keyboard and mouse cost more than the computer.

I found an article on open souce software projects from a social perspective.

I found this article but have not read it yet.

Barcellini, Flore et al. A study of Online Discussions in an Open-Source Software Community: Reconstructing Thematic Coherence and Argumentation from Quotation Practices in van den Besselaar, Peter, et. al. eds. Communities and Technologies 2005 (Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer, 2005) at 301-320.

This would help me with working on my masters thesis with management professor John C. Nash who has this as one of his study topics although he focuses more on forecasting in the field of scientific software. I am going to hear him talk tomorrow on his topic, Tuesday evening at the local Linux users group meeting for August.

I bought a CD/DVD cabinet and now my software is neater.

I put away all my home made dvd's and cd's into my new cabinet. My office is looking neater now.

My Second Life land is growing.

After researching Reuters Second Life news blog through my Reuters 3.0 HUD news viewer and finding out that land prices are falling on the main land, I updated my land tier fees to the 25$/ month level so I could buy an adjoining lot that blocked my view of the water and clear green fields in front of the neighbouring and busy S and M dungeons. The dungeon has a green field behind it facing my land and it is a pleasant experience to see and one can walk freely there. I now have a proper and pleasant view for my Crystal Computing Web Design offices. The neighbours house had blocked this view, so I tore down my neighbour's house after buying his lot. This means I unrezed his house into my inventory("take" the object command), as he sold me the house with the land. I also quickly returned all the litter that had been left at his place and restricted building on the land and scripts so it won't be littered again.

I have now 6 lots of 512 sq meters each or 3072 sq m. Meaning I must pay the 4096 sq m price now of 25$/month. My next payment is in 10 days. The purchase cost me 5000 L$(Linden dollars) and I needed to purchase 2000 L$ to complete the transaction. If I keep paying this amount I can add two more 512 sq m lots.

Burning printable CD's of Solaris 10.

I took 6 CD's out of the spindle of 30 blank CD's. I printed a sheet of paper with 6 small labels of what each CD is. I will now cut these labels out of the paper and slip each label in with the corresponding CD in the CD sleeve. This is a temporary measure until I actually print the CD label. This will keep track of what is on each CD as I am burning the CD's first.

I am copying the CD images from a DVD back up disk to my Macbook to do the burning.

I bought my first purchase at Best Buy yesterday.

I finally shopped at Best Buy yesterday. I bought 30 printable blank CD's. I will try to print and burn my Solaris 10 CD set. I have a Canon Pixma IP 4300 printer which can print on CD's so I will try that out.

Use of facebook and Second Life push email back a bit.

I used Second Life a bit more this past month. I also used facebook about everyday thus pushing email back a bit as a daily activity.

I might buy a Sun keyboard and mouse today.

I am looking into buying a Sun Keyboard and mouse today. These would be from the same local seller of government surplus equipment.

I now have a Sun Ultra 5 and some 512 MB of Ultra 5 RAM.

I bought a Sun Ultra 5 government surplus machine for 40$ CND.

Solaris progress.

I did make 4 CD's now out of 6. I have no more blank CD's so this project will wait until payday. The Sun purchase is also waiting until payday. The memory purchase was a mistake and I did it with daily spending cash. I have also burned one copy of two of the DVD back up for the Solaris CD iso images. I had trouble with the second DVD and crashed my Macbook in the middle of a blog post but managed to restore the firefox session and recover my post. I also wrote it out in pen and ink which helped me edit the post too. So in this morning's tasks that I can complete, I have one more DVD to burn, the Lacie back up software back up of the Macbook and then I need to delete some of these iso images and the DVD burn folder.

Deleting and backing up.

I deleted odd month labeled back up files, on the Macbook external LaCie hard drive. I am backing up the iso disks now from the Solaris 10 to the external LaCie hard drive. I also copied these iso files to a DVD burn folder for similar archival purposes. After I delete everything by emptying the trash, I will back up the Macbook using LaCie backup software.

I will then burn the CD's for Solaris. Then I will burn the archive DVD backup twice. I will then delete the CD's from the Desktop folder they were downloaded too. I will also then delete the DVD burn folder. While I wait for these processes I will read more of The Unofficial Tourist's Guide to Second Life

Solaris 10 downloaded.

I downloaded Solaris 10 an operating system for Sun computers. I now have 6 iso disks to burn to CD's and will save the iso disks on an external hard drive and as files on a DVD. I may need these for a Sun Ultra 5 computer next weekend.

I bought the unoffical tourists guide to Second Life at Chapters this evening.

I went to Chapters bookstore and bought The Unofficial Tourist's Guide to Second Life for 11 dollars and change. I read the first three chapters now.

Also for 10 dollars and tax I bought an Ikea keyboard shelf and installed it on my Jerker computer desk in my office. My eMac is on this desk. I also keep my Sony monitor there but this monitor is only used as a TV right now. May be I will have a sun computer hooked up to it soon and need space on the desk for a second keyboard.

I won 512 MB of Sun Ultra 5 ram on ebay.

I won some RAM on ebay for a Sun Ultra 5. I might buy one of these computers locally for 40$. The RAM has cost 6 dollars and 21 dollars shipping so far.

I deleted Debian 4.0 iso disks 1-6 which I was sharing.

I was running out of hard drive space on my eMac so I deleted the iso disks of Debian 4.0 that I was sharing on bittorrent. I may purchase an HP Visualize or Sun machine to run Debian 4.0 with my Sony TV monitor.

Recording audio on DVD.

I have a Yamaha tape deck which I am outputting to my Toshiba DVD recorder. I am recording tapes of the audio book, Chaos By James Gleick

I have used computer speakers so others in the room can hear my Macbook.

The speakers on my Macbook are not loud enough for others to hear web broadcasted video. So I have plugged the Macbook into cheap computer speakers someone gave me five or six years ago. I almost gave these away to The Anti Poverty Project.

I am giving away things.

I sold my iPod and gave away my PSP. So for mobile music I now have only my laptop and my Treo.

I backed up my Macbook.

I copied and pasted copies of the Desktop and Documents folders to one of my LaCie external drives. I also used the LaCie backup software again on the Macbook.

I did some photo printing with the Macbook and IP90 Canon printer.

The prints are looking quite sharp and well done with the Canon IP90 printer.

Starting Gaim

The commands work but I could not simply copy and paste them. I will need to research how to run a script on the X11 terminal window.

I got Gaim working fine under X11 and KDE Desktop on my Macbook.

Now I don't have to boot into WinXP to chat at Yahoo. I won't have sound this way but I can quickly come in and out of Yahoo chat now and go to my Macbook desktop I think I will make a terminal script now to copy and paste and go to Gaim quickly. I think I will type it here:

Gaim start up script for Macbook and X11 terminal

cd /sw/bin
./Kdesktop
./gaim

I unistalled the trial version of Photoshop CS3

The trial version of Photoshop CS3 expired so I trashed it having not used it much.

I am tinkering with my Compaq this weekend and have basically upgraded to Sarge from Woody.

I had a nice install of woody and the computer was working fine. When I switched apt to the Internet for updates the update process started to install Sarge and I let it do that. Now two problems usually happened with Sarge. One I lost the network card which does not happen now. Two lilo stops which does happen now so I boot from floppy ok. I end up in Gnome which I don't want.

Mav unit will cost about 350$ and I can not afford it now.

The Mav unit costs about 300$ dollars plus 40 shipping in US dollars. I would also want a wrist keyboard for another 150$. So all together this would be 500$. On second thought I don't need these and could do better spending 75$ on a 500 Mhz Xeon workstation to run Linux.

Our neighbour gave us a 17 inch computer monitor which I will now give away.

I thought I would never buy an LCD computer monitor. I turned my nose up at these a few years ago. In fact, people are giving away their old monitors like our neighbour did today. She gave us a Samsung 753DF. I am trying to give this monitor away. I own a wide screen 17 inch LCD monitor that can also play TV. I use it mostly for TV in my office at my desk but am considering buying a used refurbished HP Visualize workstation. I would use the workstation with the Sony LCD monitor.