Day: October 2, 2002

As much as I’d love to blog my Red Hat install linearly, Matt is also thinking about weblog standards this evening:

Weblogging Standard? You know what we need in Roller, MoveableType, Radio, Blogger, etc. is a “standard” for our data stores. How sweet would it be to be able to move your site from Roller to Radio without writing an import/export tool. The quick and dirty solution is to write a bunch of import tools for Roller, but the best idea is to unite the weblogging community into creating a common database schema, or whatever it may be.

I know there are migration tools for going back and forth to different apps, but only certain apps and only in certain directions.  Having a single standard WSB (Weblog Standards Base?) would be a bonus.  It would make less work for people like Sam Ruby, who does all kinds of script-fu in order to work in radio and have his posts show up at intertwingly.net much easier. 

What are the thoughts of the weblog community on this?

Matt Raible:

Installing Red Hat, Part 2. As you might’ve guessed, the first 2 CD’s installed in about a 1/2 hour and know I’m waiting for disc3 to complete. 200 MB left, ~50KB/s. The GUI interface for installing has smooth fonts like Quartz Extreme on OS X and Clear Type on Windows XP. It’s interesting on these Red Hat downloads – this is my 3rd or 4th one and there’s definitely an art to it. I usually surf through the mirrors list with SmartFTP open (on Windows) and copy the ftp urls. SmartFTP detects an FTP url on the clipboard, prompts you to connect, and away you go. Yesterday and today, I’m about 1 for 10 on those servers that actually let me get through. But you can’t stop there, you have to find the fastest server you can. Last night, I had good luck with a couple servers from Australia. The fastest one I ever found was ftp.orst.edu – I downloaded one CD in less than a couple hours! I couldn’t believe it – maybe someone forgot to turn on my bandwidth constrictor. 472 out of 646.

This is great, dualing installs!  It’s a good thing I burned and checked CD3.  I have just finished formatting (am I paranoid for always checking for bad blocks?) and the installation has begun.  The two Matts agree on fonts.

Red Hat Install

My first impression is: Those are the sharpest fonts I’ve ever seen under Linux, and this is during the installation.  Everything is cleaner and more refined.  I checked out CD’s 1-3 using the CD checker, which I think is a great idea.  Hopefully I won’t need CD’s 4 and 5.  Selecting groups and packages are much easier.  Instead of having to go package by package after selecting the groups you want, you can just click on ‘details’ and select the packages you need.  That right there feels a lot like Windows’ Add/Remove control panel.  The icons are cute too.

Some of their defaults are a little screwy.  Under ‘text based internet’ in the Custom installation, Lynx and Pine are not selected.  How the hell else would I surf and read mail while sshing in?  🙂

Too bad I don’t get to play solitare during the install… Well I can, but I have to do a little KVM switching…

[… more to come …]

ZipZap Update

Just about every Radio Shack in the DC Metro area is out of those stupid little cars, but somre are expecting new shipments tomorrow.

I can also see a big modding community growing quickly.  I wonder if the Lexan bodies I had for slot cars back in the day will fit this chassis.  The plastic bodies on these things are kinda heavy.

As a sidenote, I love the ball bearing sets available on the Kyosho Mini-Z’s. 

ZipZapUpdateUpdate: The Kyosho cars are great, but they weigh in at about $100US.  You can get your foot in the door with a decent Tamiya or similar 1/10 scale RC race for about twice that.  For spending that kind of money, I would really suggest going 1/10.  They’re far more tweakable, and you can sink far more money tricking them out.  I had a Tamiya TA-02 Opel Calibra (no longer made) that was extremely fast along with an F-1 (here’s something similar) and a Mini Cooper.  I blew waaay too much money on these badboys.

Also, I installed a stiffer suspension in my eclipse, and it seems to handle a little better.  Repeat after me: I will not hand wind a motor…

Greg Klebus:

I’ve got my shiny brand new SV25 server.

The rest of his post includes some notes about keeping power consumption and noise down.  For instance, he’s chosen a Via C3 866Mhz chip.

Once he gets his new server up and running, he’ll be switching his blog to http://greg.klebus.com/blog/.  As soon as the new blog goes live, I’ll switch my link over, as it’s generated on the fly from my subscriptions.  I’ll be interested to see what other cool fun stuff he does once he has a dedicated box to play with.

If you code Java and aren’t reading his blog, shame on you.

Matt Raible:

Installing Red Hat, Part 1. I decided to start installing Red Hat 8.0 with disc’s 1 and 2 – and hopefully 1) I won’t need disc3, or 2) it’ll be done downloading by the time I do. The coolest part so far – they actually have a test at the beginning so you can test your CDs. What a lifesaver – I’ve installed Linux many times and found out on disc2 that my CD or iso image was bad.

I’ll probably start installing RH8.0 this evening.

Rob Fahrni: Pet peeve #8,910,023:

Touching a .h file that causes the entire world to rebuild.

Mark Pilgrim: There are four lights:

One year ago today, my (now former) manager told me to shut down my weblog and remove all traces of it from my server. He tried to convince me that the Internet was too small to mix the professional and the personal.

ZipZap RC Cars

These things are crack.  They’re “micro-rc” cars.  They’re called ZipZaps and you can get them for $19.95 at Radio Shack.  Of course, you also have to get The Fast and the Furious street tuner kit.  Well, you don’t have to, but I did.  I’ll have to save a video clip for another day, but here are some pictures of my tricked-out rig.  Yep, that’s the green eclipse from TF&TF.

If anyone in the DC metro area wants to race, my car is a 49Mhz model, so get a 27Mhz model and drop me an email.