I officially kicked Microsoft out of my home office this week, using Windows XP for the last time to copy over our previous tax files. Now I have no need for XP and have fired up the MacMini running OS X 10.4 as my main machine. I do still have Winodws on a computer here but its my company laptop and I don’t have much choice there. My home laptop is running Ubuntu Edgy Eft at the moment and will soon be ugpraded to Feisty Fawn.

I am liking what I’ve seen so far of OS X. I spent some time today setting up automounts in NetInfo Manager. I was happy to see NetInfo Manager is an LDAP front-end, which as you know appeals to the LDAP geek in me. Now the Mac is smart enough to mount remote partitions only when I need them, without me doing anything but accessing their directories. Easy.

The second part of the equation was the sweet 22″ widescreen flat-panel LCD I picked up from Staples last week. It is capable of 1600×1050 resolution and looks absolutely beautiful at that size. It provides analog and DVI with HDCP inputs so I can use it with all my machines, old and new. My old CRT monitor wasn’t up for the larger resolutions and hurt my eyes with the ones it could show.

I’m greatly looking forward to learning more of the ins and outs of OS X: one that combines the ease of use of the Mac with the power of UNIX. Yeah, boy.

There’s a certain charm to running a full-blown operating system on one’s PDA, like running Linux on the Sharp Zaurus. The charm has its costs, though: full-blown operating systems eat batteries like they’re going out of style. Thus my Zaurus (or “Z”) has been an interesting toy but one not as useful as it could be because it must never stray too far from a battery charger.

This week I found the missing piece to making my Z useful: a combination USB Hotsync/Charge cable. This $6 cable allows me to sync my Z to my laptop when I’m on the road and to charge it without having to drag along the docking station and transformer. All I do it plug the cable into my laptop and it charges via the USB voltage. One cable does it all!

I spent a moment today fixing up the graphs created by my home weather station. They’re now using RRD graphs and show the entire history of measurements.

Check ’em out here.

Everyone I know is reminding me of RTP 2.0 occuring at Tyler’s Taproom in Durham tonight from 7-9 PM. I’ve got nothing better to do so I’ll go hobnob with the local geeks and vulture capitalists.

Hey, its free food and drinks, right? How can ya go wrong?

Being that I had a laptop around that needed an OS, I figured I’d try out Ubuntu, the Debian-based Linux distribution, on a regular basis.

Boy do I love it! It seems to be speedier than the Fedora systems that I’m used to using. Ubuntu’s UI is Gnome-based and has been designed with simplicity in mind. There’s a KDE-based version of Ubuntu, too, if you’re a KDE person.

I’m also quite pleased with Ubuntu’s use of the apt package manager. I only started tolerating Red Hat RPMs with the use of yum, but yum has its own quirks and can be described as a hack to a hack.

My main beef with Debian was the difficulty of installing it. Ubuntu seems to polish that up considerably – it even runs on a live CD. Not only that, but you can install the complete OS from that one CD. Amazing.

If you’ve been meaning to check out Linux, you can’t go wrong by downloading Ubuntu. You might never go back!

I’ve had a Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 for probably four years now. It’s mostly been a doorstop because Sharp broke its ability to synchronize with Linux and stopped software development on it long ago. I’ve been keeping it around as Geek Bling though I found my older, less sophisticated Palm Pilot IIIxe far more useful. Today I decided I had nothing to lose by giving an alternate OS a spin, so I successfully flashed OpenZaurus onto my Z.

Wow! Why didn’t I do that years ago? OpenZaurus (OZ) is phenomenal. It’s light-years ahead of Sharp’s tired old ROM. It’s snappier and smaller, too. The calendar PIM app doesn’t blow up when I switch to a monthy view, as Sharp’s did. The WiFi can handle WPA keys, unlike Sharp’s. Also I have the ability to play oggs and mp3s, something the old Sharp could do only occasionally without blowing up. And hey, it’s been updated within the past 10 months. What’s not to like?

I still don’t have a good sync solution for Linux, but mostly I don’t need it now. With built-in SSH daemon and client tools, I can connect to just about anything I want. The PIM databases are XML, making them easy to manipulate. OpenZaurus is definitely the way to go.

Now all I have to do it pull my Opera web browser over to it and I’ll be all set. Perhaps I’ll retire my old, taped-together Palm Pilot after all.

I’ve decided that this year I’m going to do something great. I’ve decided to do at least one of the following things:

• Become Cisco certified, either in IOS or security (IDS)
• Become a certified DBA, probably in PostgreSQL, but maybe MySQL too.
• Write a book on Asterisk

I should be able to accomplish at least one by the end of the year. Right now I’m leaning towards the DBA training as I have the most experience with databases. Also DBA skills are in high demand, both from employers as well as for my own personal, web-based projects I occasionally come up with. And working with SQL is just plain fun!

I’ll let you know how this progresses.

Today is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo One fire that killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee as they sat on the launchpad during a simulated launch. Also, tomorrow is the 21st anniversary of the Challenger explosion.

Its a reminder that space is still a dangerous business, even after 40 years. I’m glad there are men and women still willing to risk it.

I’ve added gphoto2 to my Linksys NSLU2 (a.k.a. “the Slug”) running Openslug. I’ve also used gphoto2 to control my Nikon D50 camera. Thus, I have a networked digital camera which I can manipulate from anywhere on the network. The one thing I can’t do is adjust the zoom on my D50 (or pan or tilt for that matter), but nearly everything else can be controlled remotely.

So . . . my idea of building a Linux-powered balloon is one step closer to reality. I’m not about to hang my $600 camera off a balloon that hasn’t been thoroughly tested, of course, but I now have a few key pieces with which I can take aerial photos.

I also added a USB 2.0 hub to the mix, allowing for other periphials to be tacked on. This is where I’ll add my USB GPS for location and altitude info. I am also considering a USB barometer which will provide even more accurate altitude information. I also need something to transmit telemetry: perhaps a packet-radio link hooked to a small amateur-radio HT. I could add a self-contained APRS unit to the payload but I’d really like to have the Slug be able to feed the telemetry.

Eventually I’d like to explore means of making the balloon neutrally-buoyant. That way I could hold an altitude and have more control. That would be good for photographing the landscape or cities.

Perhaps I’ll start a wiki on this and let others contribute. Anyone interested?