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.