Sub Ubi

I wrote some scripts to reorganize the index for the book our research group is nigh upon finishing (as in, it is about to go to print). I spent the afternoon revising the literature review. This will continue for several days, along with the other revision that is ongoing.

I declared it to be “Finishing Season” not because I thought I’d manage to finish this all this week, but because I thought by declaring it (to myself, and to six other people in the world) that it would, in some way, inspire me to keep focused. Typically, when Geoff declares “finishing season,” it seems to mean he’s going to get a lot of things done. Hm.

It worked today… we’ll see how tomorrow goes.

That’s it.

I’m tired of it.

This week, something gets done. I think I’ll just crush through what remains, and see if I can’t get a complete draft by the end of the week. It might be too much to ask, but I’ve got to try something to kick my own ass into being done.

To do:

• Finish revision of “chapter two.”
• Revise/cut down existing lit review.
• Draft discussion.
• Draft future work.

Yeah, it will be steep. There is text in existence for everything at this point, but… in varying states of goodness. I’ll finish the “chapter two” revision tomorrow, and move on from there.

I can tell that too many things are causing stress in my life when I lose the ability to sleep.

One thing I really like about the x86 architecture is the availability of so many cool virtualization technologies.

At work, I run Debian. I don’t even have a graphical interface configured; all the machine does is provide a place to store files, host databases, execute long-running processes—it’s a server, essentially. However, it is a 2.4 GHz Penium 4 with 512MB of RAM, which makes it a fast enough machine for doing reasonably interesting stuff with.

For example, the release of VMWare’s Player application opens up a number of opportunities. While it cannot create a virtual machine image, it can play an existing image. This means I can do a number of interesting things, and letting others take part/play along is no longer a difficult thing.

1. The CSCS group is interested in Linux. I’d love to provide a VMWare image that lets them load a Linux image on a Windows machine, without them having to actually build the machine.
2. Similarly, the CSCS group expressed an interest in learning some things about Linux security. I’d rather they were doing such experiments on a VM, and not a machine that I use for my research.
3. I’d like to experiment with different *NIXes, but I can’t afford the time to be nuking a machine (constantly) to install them. Having a VM allows me to easily install (say) Ubuntu. Or Suse.
4. It would be incredibly useful to have a Windows machine around, as I occasionally encounter something for a handheld device, small robotics platform, etc., that only comes as a Windows executable. However, I don’t have any desire to actually use Windows every day, nor do I want to replace my rock-solid Debian server. A VM would, however, make my life easy.
5. Related, it would be great to have a Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows 98 installation so that the Transterpreter could easily be installed and tested on a clean machine every time we made a new release. Also, there were some genuine difficulties handling environment variables under XP, and neither Christian nor I had one—we both have Linux machines next to our desks. Makes it kinda difficult to guarantee portability of a binary installer for an OS you don’t actually have or use.
6. Occasionally, I’d like to be able to play a game or two—nothing cutting edge, mind you, just some old games I grew up with. These are rarely available for the Mac, and almost always available for Windows. A VM running Windows 98 would be perfect in these situations.

OK, so the last item isn’t exactly work related, but it is at least honest. Point is, having a machine where I can store a number of 5-10GB disk images would be great. The Linux images could easily be provided to students for them to download and experiment with, and the Windows images would make it so much easier to occasionally boot “Windows-in-a-Window” to use an old or specialized piece of software that, otherwise, would be a real pain.

I’d love to wait until Apple releases an Intel box to build a machine that does this. The thought of being able to run OSX in a dual-boot configuration with Debian or Ubuntu, and therefore be able to run VMWare on the Linux side, is really quite exciting. It is even possible that VMWare will release an OSX port of their virtualization software, meaning I can possibly use OSX as a VM host for Linux and Windows. That, really, would be wonderful.

In the meantime, I have to wonder if it is worth building a small machine that can do all of these things (so I can take the machine with me after I leave Kent), or if I just want to ask the department for a drive and another gig of RAM to give it a go, and do some cool stuff related to my work and teaching.

Flock is a new web browser that appears to be based on the Firefox codebase. Among other things, it comes with a little weblogging tool. At this point, it doesn’t seem to allow me to assign categories, but it does use tags… another weblogging tool/fad/thing I simply haven’t taken the time out of my real work to integrate or learn more about. (I use tags on del.icio.us, but don’t see why I want to tag everything I do?)

Regardless, I thought I’d try posting from the built-in tool, and see what happens.

Pulled from Don Hopkins’s weblog:

RMS Essay: Come Celebrate the Joy of Programming, with the World's Most Unbureaucratic Computers.:

I also quickly manifested a lack of proper reverence for authority. The whole center had been denied access to the IBM computer in the building, and we had to use slow telephone connections to the Cambridge Scientific Center. One day an IBM executive came to tell us about the work various IBM scientific centers were doing, and finished with, “Of course you all know the important work being done here.” I asked him, “If our work is so important, why can’t we use the computer in this building any more?” After the meeting, my friends told me they had wanted to say such a thing but were afraid of reprisals! Why? Certainly nothing happened to me as a result. They seem to have learned the habit of cowering before authority even when not actually threatened. How very nice for authority. I decided not to learn this particular lesson.

I think that sums up some things for me, too. Believe what you say, and say what you believe. No-one is better than you because of their clothes, possessions, or position in life—and certainly not because they think they’re better than you.

I see too much of this in students; every student should learn to raise hell, and then learn when it’s best not to. They’ll all go further for it.

Carrie sent me this piece of poetry that she wrote just now:

On bedrock OS,
Gossamer applications.
Word has crashed again.

Sad, sad Microsoft Word running on OS X…

I don’t understand why CDBaby and Magnatune don’t team up.

CDBaby is an online record store that sells albums by independent musicians; the musicians take a significant percentage of the sale, unlike traditional CD sales through retail vendors.

Magnatune provides a similar service; they market and license music by some excellent artists, at incredible prices (read: my student loans have come due), and in a variety of open formats. For example, when I purchased the Bach cello suites, I was able to download MP3s and WAV files of the audio, both DRM-free.

I think the CD is dying; the only reason I’d consider buying a CD anymore is to get a high-quality version of one or more tracks without DRM. But in truth, I don’t want the CD, I just want the music; and, as a result, I’m just not likely to buy the music if my only option is to go out and buy or order a CD.

So when are CDBaby and Magnatune going to get together? CDBaby has a huge catalogue, and Magnatune is slowly growing into a bastion of good practices in the online music retail business. Can something be done to benefit CDBaby, Magnatune, and the artists?

How does one archive email?

Sending everything to Gmail isn’t really an option; they might pack up shop any day of the week. Sticking with one client isn’t an option, because most of them are awful. I mean, I don’t want to save things with Thunderbird, or Pine, or MH, or Apple’s Mail.app, or any other tool that binds my data in a particular folder structure, place, etc. I don’t want something to export my mail as HTML, as that leaves me with readable, searchable mail that is not actually well-structured enough to be processed automatically.

I think I would settle for one of two kinds of tool:

1. An IMAP/POP to XML email archiver. I’d be happy if all my email ended up in a mess of XML documents; those I could easily manipulate in a variety of ways (Scheme scripts, XSLT) to process and display in a number of ways.
2. A Postgres or MySQL datastore. Perhaps an SQLite file would be better; in any case, if the tables are well documented, I can (again) process it any way I want.

Surprisingly, there doesn’t seem to be a tool that does this. Nothing that is affordable ($20-75), cross-platform (Mac/Windows/Linux), capable of running on the local client or as a service, and most importantly, that leaves my data in an open, manipulable format. Zoe is interesting and all, but it is a nightmare to use; I never have any idea what it is doing, and that scares me.

Perhaps I’ll do a bit more research; it seems like a simple, fundamental service that would matter to a lot of people, but it simply doesn’t exist.

I have a second Gmail account that I’ve never really used. I thought about using it to dump all of my email to for search and archive purposes. You know—ever email I receive, simply bounce a copy to Gmail. Something like that.

So, I logged into the account, just to see what was there. And do you know what was there? An email from GREENWOODS! (VAXen usernames indicate peeps from Kenyon.) Granted, it was from three months ago, but what can you do? I finally got the message.

Her weblog is something I’ll have to add to my aggregator now. Hi, Tzu!