Mexico 2

I'm not allowed to use my computer and I don't have internet access where I'm staying. At least things are going well and we'll have some results regarding Christian's condition. Yes, one of the things we're doing while here is perform tests on Christian to see if we can find out why he's been sick so much.

We hope that we'll find something here and that in addition, the fact that we're in a new house where we've removed the carpet, we'll have a healthier child.

-P

Mexico 1

I am taking some vacation and I'm currently in Mexico. It's interesting how technology reaches a place but that doesn't mean that the place has "advanced." I'm not going to say that Mexico is a backwards country because there's been a lot of great technological advancements that have come from Mexicans.

Anyway, I'm enjoying my time without the "ball and chain" that is my MacBook. I must admit I miss it and I feel that I could better organize my stay here, visit family, etc if I had it and internet access. However, I'm going to avoid that. I'm actually using a VAIO with internet access so I can post this. And since it's using a Mexican keyboard layout, it's harder to type this out quickly.

I will update this as anything interesting happens. Time to go spend time with family.

-P

Tablets and iPhone

I want an iPhone. Why? Because of the geek factor and the fact that there's a lot of potential in the little guy, however I am going to wait until the 2nd rev. I know a lot of new stuff can and will come via firmware, but I am pretty sure that the hardware is going to improve too. Also wouldn't it be neat if you could get attachments or other hardware to interface with it?

I know that Motorola, Nokia and pals have products that they want to compete with the iPhone, but I haven't seen any that I would consider... yet. That said, I think that Apple has done something that the cell phone industry needed. Opening their eyes to their true potential (revenue, technological, etc) and at the same time making the customers aware that there's much more to be expected in the future.

Now what does this have to do with tablets? Well, I think some interesting things are going to happen in this space. Rumors abound about Apple's "iTablet", "iText", iGuessAgain which would incorporate some of the iPhone's technology. Dell has finally entered the tablet market with a multitouch screen, and I'm sure there's going to be more to follow! Anyway, the whole point is that I'm excited that this technology is finally starting to come around. This coupled with Microsoft's Surface computing table and... well, what's a geek to do?

Buy...

-P

symbolic links

Something that people might run into this and get confused, or worse, panic at the posibility of losing data.

I was trying to explain the issue but it'll be easier to just write the syntax out and explain it there.

ls -l
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 user1 group1 68 Dec 12 11:47 dir1

ln -s dir1 dir2

Here you create the symlink from one directory and no problem here.

ls -l
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 user1 group1 68 Dec 12 11:47 dir1
lrwxr-xr-x 1 user1 group1 4 Dec 12 11:48 dir2 -> dir1

Next:

ls -l
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 user1 group1 68 Dec 12 11:47 dir1
drwxr-xr-x 2 user1 group1 68 Dec 12 11:49 dir2

ln -s dir1 dir2

Oops! Does this replace dir2?

ls -l
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 user1 group1 68 Dec 12 11:47 dir1
drwxr-xr-x 3 user1 group1 102 Dec 12 11:50 dir2

ls -l dir2/
total 8
lrwxr-xr-x 1 user1 group1 4 Dec 12 11:50 dir1 -> dir1

Nope! It just creates a symbolic link inside the 2nd directory!

So don't worry! Remember to delete the symbolic link just use rm

-P

New House

We're in the process of buying, updating and moving into a new house. It's in the same street where I live now, about two blocks up. We're excited and are trying to get the bathroom looking nicer than it is now. It's really tough as most people know. While the work is going on, we're painting and decorating; making the house into a home.

Once we're finally moved in... I plan on going high tech! Yes, I am going to go green too. I'll change the lightbulbs a few at a time. I plan on automating the lights, however this seems to be a bigger issue than I thought since I can't seem to find ways of automating things cheaply. I'll have to research this a bit more.

I'd like to eventually add solar panels or a wind turbine at the back. They're not cheap, but I think you get an incentive from the gov or a discount or something. I'm going to take a look at this further. (Looks like £5000 for solar water heating panels and £2000 for a wind turbine from B&Q...)

I'll have to look at other things I can do.

--
Patrick

More podcasts

Amazing. Today I found the Gimp podcast at Meet the Gimp (http://www.meetthegimp.org) and I mentioned how great it would be if someone did one on InkScape and guess what!? I found one!

Meet Screencasters... (http://screencasters.heathenx.org)

-P

Miro and Podcasting

MythTV is great. I've finally started to get things working and we're going to move so my plan is to finish shortly after the move.

However, not everything can be found on TV. Yes, you can download your favorite shows from through Bittorrent but I was thinking more along the lines of Podcasts.

There's quite a few of them and I've been using Miro (use to be called Democracy) to subscribe to a few of them. The ones that I JUST found and think is great is called "Meet The GIMP" (http://meetthegimp.org/) and deals with the Open Source application GIMP. Finally someone has started to show how to use GIMP. I've wanted to learn how to use it but since I'm not really a great graphics artist I haven't spend a lot of time playing with the application's features to see how they work. However, this RSS feed got me interested!

Now if they only had one for InkScape, I think I'd be all set!

-P

Sickness Sucks

It's amazing that I am once again writing about being sick. It's been a while since my last post and I just thought I'd write something quickly. Both my son and I were sick again. I was actually sick for a longer period of time (and I'm still not completely over it.)

However, I've been reading quite a bit about modern medicine and some of the new medications and advancements coming down the line. I've also watched a video from TED (http://www.ted.com) about regenerative medicine. It's a speech given by Alan Russell and it's quite amazing to watch. (http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/142)

I also saw a few other videos including one of Jennifer Lin ( http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/46) a pianist that... well can compose "on the fly" and is quite amazing.

Enjoy.

Kids and illness

I hate being sick. I especially hate it when my son or daughter get sick. It's worse when my 5 year-old son gets sick because of his age. He started with a cough. We went to the doctor and they gave him antibiotics, which I think was the right thing to do in this case. I thought he'd get better, but today I found out that he's been throwing up. I don't think it's the antibiotics because he's had the same one before.

Well, hearing he's throwing up is one thing... seeing him throwing up when he has practically nothing in his stomach and he's in pain is another. I feel helpless.

Now my daughter is also starting to get sick. She has flu like symptoms and it's the right season for it, so I'm not surprised. As long as hers doesn't get worse I think she'll be fine. She'll probably get to miss a day or two of school, which is fine too since she's a bright kid. At least her I can give something for the symptoms.

Still...

Did I mention I hate it when my kids are sick?

-P

MythTV strikes again

Not everyone has heard of MythTV, however I am surprised how MOST geeks (and I mean it in the nicest way possible - I'm one of you) have.

For those that don't know what it is: MythTV is an Open Sourced application that with the correct hardware, will record TV shows. http://www.mythtv.org/

It's a really neat application that I have been keeping an eye on for a while now and I'm in the process of deploying an installation at home.

The main issue is hardware compatibility with Linux. The Linux TV team is doing a great job of getting hardware to be compatible and developing those drivers that aren't being made by the people that know the hardware the best... the hardware manufacturers.

However, I vow to get this box up and running soon and I'll post a screen capture for you.

-P

16 hour work days

I had a 16 hour work day on Thursday. You want to know the sad bit? I use to have those more often and I miss them! Yes, that's right. I actually enjoyed working for such a long period of time. I know I'm not alone, but I also know there's a lot of people out there that don't enjoy working those long hours.

However, at the end, when I got home. I felt that I had accomplished something and that it wasn't a complete waste of time.

Now what other industries are there were people have to work for such long periods of time? I'm guessing Doctors.

The other day I read something interesting about how most people in other industries don't go home to continue "working" - a lot of people in the tech industry will go home and sit at their computer. They may update their website or their blog or test some code or something like that... However, you won't see a neurosurgeon go home to test something on their cat.

Well, it's time to go to bed.

-P

First post!

The purpose of this Blog is to remind me of items, blogs, posts, links and tips that I find useful in not only at work, but also at home.

I've been doing so many things during my career that it's sometimes is impossible to keep track of everything. How do you do it when the world's knowledge doubles ever five years (that's a current estimate.) Granted, I don't know it all, but I feel that I know a lot.

I have friends that know a lot too and I'm constantly amazed and what I don't know and I learn every day. Yes, every day I learn something new.

Anyway, I digress, as I mentioned: this blog will help me remember the things I've learned and have to store outside my head! :)

-P