Vista Experiment Dual booting XP, Part 3

So I successfully have a system that dual boots XP SP3 and Ubuntu 8.10. It took a bit of fiddling and research on how to properly configure the GRUB bootloader to recognize where XP's partition was and that it was something bootable.

Like anything Ubuntu related, I found the correct answer through the Ubuntu Forums. It's threads like this one that make Ubuntu Forums such a worthwhile resource. Not only is the user base pro active and helpful, it's large enough that about 95% of any problems you come across running Ubuntu have already been posted and solved. Even when I transitioned to 8.10 a few weeks early I found that there was already a great deal of posting about how to get just about everything working even with beta software.

At the end of the day computers are far too useful to be held down by only one OS. There are things that are easily done in linux that just don't work as well in Windows. On the other hand, Linux, no matter what the distribution, can produce real headaches and lots of time configuring and rebooting to diagnose a problem--and most of the time its something like a proprietary video driver that you wouldn't have to spend but a few seconds on in Windows to get it functioning.

I've been part of the linux community since about 1999 and have participated in varying degrees. Just recently I've become involved in posting on the forums when I can help diagnose a problem, but most of my experience is that of the end-user. I can't stress enough how happy I am with how the linux community has developed and I feel like the OS is finally getting to a point of maturity that would allow it to be used by just about any average user. It's still going to remain the choice of true enthusiasts though, because its free and legal and ultimately incredibly scalable.

The relative ease of installing and dual booting XP was a pleasant surprise, and I'm actually impressed at the boot time of the tidied up repack of SP3 that I ended up loading. I'm looking forward to getting Photoshop up and running and finally getting to stretch the legs of the graphics card I bought a few months ago. I don't think I'll be able to run super-current games, but I look forward to installing some classics that I used to play (Black & White, anyone?) and see what I can throw at it before it breaks.

Also, this really wouldn't have happened if not for this article over at APCmag, which gave me the courage to go ahead and take the plunge and commit to the install. They're actually got a whole series of articles about dual booting. If you're a Windows user that wants to see what this whole linux thing is, or a linux user that's a little unsure when it comes to partition tables, it's really never been a more straight-forward process to dual boot your PC.

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Vista Experiment, Part 2: Epic Fail

So none of the Vista disks I have want to load on my system. At all. Therefore, I switched to XP Professional SP3, which is installing now.

The only thing thats kind of a drag about the install is that I had to disconnect my IDE hard drive because Windows doesn't take kindly to being installed on a second disk unless it gets to write on the Master Boot Record of the main drive. Needless to say, it will be a bit easier to make changes to Grub once I install, without having to use a live cd to get let back into your OS.

Currently formating the 50gb I left free on my new SATA drive to, wretch, NTFS via the XP good ole' text based installer. XP is what I have to use at work, and I'm really only installing it because I have the extra space now. Worst case scenario is that I lose the 50 or so gb that I'v written on the first partition of the new disk, but I find that to be not very likely.

Just a couple of notes on the install so far:

I'd almost forgotten how far Linux distros have come in the last few years in terms of ease of use. Windows seems incredibly painful just even getting it off its feet, and this is software that you have to pay for.

The fact that Vista just said "No," to my hardware doesn't do much to reaffirm my faith in Microsoft. I'm hopeful that Windows 7 will buck the trend started by Vista. I thought MS was all about hardware compatibility anyway. Or at least that's the impression I get from the fanboys, however few of them are left.

It's funny too that my failed Vista install happened today, hot on the heels of this article at PCWorld, about how XP is refusing to fall by wayside behind Vista.

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Vista Experiment, Part 1

Well to start off, the name of the this post is a bit of a misnomer since I haven't been able to successfully get it up and running on my computer yet. I'm trying one more disk before I go tried and true with XP. So far, three different versions of Vista have failed to even boot for me, BSOD'ing after the initial load from the disk.

Granted, if this had happend with a linux distro, I'd probably been able to scour forums and find at least something relevant to whatever issue was causing the system to lock up before it even got interesting. So I'm just waiting on the next discs to arrive, and I'm thinking I might just go the complete opposite direction and load another linux distribution onto the extra partition I've left on my new 500gb SATA drive. I'd forgotten that non-ancient harddrives run whisper quiet compared to the grinding cacophony that comes out of my older hardware.

So Vista, you're losing the challenge of making me ignore all the bad hype. The only reason I have to run Windows anyway is that I want to have issue-free installs of the newest Adobe Products on my desktop, because doing graphics-anything on my laptop really sucks.

Also, after spending a few days getting acquainted with our editing comp at the office, I desperately want to bring some sanity to its heavily disorganized workflow. Multiple User Accounts on one machine running OS X = bad.

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Wine in Ubuntu is the best!

Wine allowed me to install a certain proprietary piece of windows only software (starts with an eff and ends in an assssh) to get some crucial web development work done yesterday when I was home sick. It didn't work with the most current version, which means that I'll have to go back and redo some stuff with the 8-core screamer at the Mito office, but I made some major progress with the software none the less.

If you're not a linux user, that means that there's no reason for you to know about Wine, but essentially it provides a layer of functionality to your linux setup--the ability to run windows programs seemlessly. Mac users know that this has been possible since the OS 9 days, but it requires a layer of processor hogging OS emulation, and hasn't really been a viable option until the recent releases of vmware Fusion and Parallels 4 (3 was ok too). On the mac tip, I use vmware Fusion and love it!

The main problem with emulating the entire OS is that it really is a burden on your processor and your ram comsumption, in addition to requiring booting or unfreezing before you can start using it. Also, it requires a copy of Windows to install on top of the copy of vmware or Paralells you purchased. Wine acts as an Windows API layer over X in Linux, bypassing the need to purchase an OS that you don't really want.

In the past, Wine has been somewhat a piece of vaporware, due to the uber-nerd L337 skillz to get it up and running. I had bad luck ever getting it to run back in the glory days of RedHat 6, 7 and 8, but now with the ease of apt-get in Ubuntu, Wine is preconfigured and precompiled via automatic updates. It's still a little shakey, but I've successfully been able to run quite a few programs that I thought would be doomed to a Windows partition.

Oh, and on the computer front, the 500gb harddrive I ordered on sunday should be here by the weekend (fingers crossed). At only $60 it was a steal! I'm looking forward towards giving Vista the ole' college try with 100gb partition. I'll post my travails in the Windows world once I start tinkering.

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To Trash Or Not To Trash: What to do with 5 years of Music

or, 1200 words about hard drives, videos and way too much music

So I've reached a bit of a crossroads: my storage demands are being stretched to their limits, and every one of my HDs is beginning to fill up. I'm a bit strapped for cash at the moment, so simply upgrading to a bigger and badder HD isn't an option thats really on the table, and the temptation to just delete all that music that I don't listen to anymore is becoming more and more of a palatable option. And anyway, its not like any of this stuff is *that* important. I mean its just media, right?

In a time when we are becoming increasingly defined by our tastes and consumption of mass media (just look at anyone's facebook or myspace profiles--most offer a laundry list of music and movies that are they're favorites), what does it mean if you simply don't care enough to keep all of those old files anymore? Maybe its just because I'm behind the times in terms of drive storage: 120gb internal on both my laptop and desktop, then 200gb and 80gb externals, it seems like a little over 500 gb is paltry compared to the multi-terabyte rigs that are en vouge. I'm no stranger to multi-gigabyte project workflows (I work with digital video) and the necessity for massive amounts of storage, but it just seems like 500gb is still a lot of data for me as a personal user.

So here's how my data usage breaks down: about 30 gb on each computer is music, some of which overlaps between the two systems; OS and software take up about 40-50gb on my laptop and about 20-30 on my desktop; most of the rest of the space is taken up by video, mostly mp4 or avi, leaving about 15gb free on my laptop (this changes alot though because I use it for work and need at least that much free space) and less than 10gb on my desktop. The externals hold video and music exclusively, and are as full as the internal drives on both of my computers.

Essentially, I would only have to pay about $100 for a decent 500gb hard drive, but I just have this nagging feeling that I'm wasting money to do that primarily because I really don't listen to all of my music anymore, nor by any means do I watch all of my videos.

It turns out that most of my videos on my HD are now streaming on my Netflix Player, too. I think the real reason for not deleting my movies is because they are all high quality dvd rips that I made myself, over years of buying and borrowing. I have a dvd player and hundreds of dvds, but I prefer to upscale them through my computer via the ripped files. Still, I don't think that I could ever have enough space to do what I wanted to properly without running into a database problem and crashing the drive.

So ultimately, the movies stay with a few exceptions here and there for things I know I just don't need to have lying around.

Now my music is another beast entirely. I was 13 years old when Napster came out and it was one of the single defining moments in my growth as a music listener. Suddenly, every song, album, and band were at my disposal to download at about 5kbps, at least until my family got cable internet. By the time I was a senior in high school, I had discovered newsgroups as well, and now my music collection was in two main parts: the single song folder of MP3s culled from Napster, Bearshare, iMesh, Gnutella, Limewire, Kazza and every other fad piece of software (most of which came packed with spyware & malware) that defined the early years of P2P filesharing; and a meticulously well kept folder heiarchy of bands and albums made by hand before iTunes made it easy for you. That was when things were easy, when I only had one computer and one ipod (which I still have, btw), and generally listened to music in 2 main locations: my car and my computer. It also must be noted that I had lots and lots of CDs, mostly burned, which have since been abandoned at my parents house, where they will probably stay forever.

Then I moved away to college and my music collection started the chrysalis its still currently in. I was forced to pick and choose from about 80gb of music because that's exactly how big the HD on my first powerbook was. I ended up with only the newest and most beloved of my music collection, leaving behind the archives of my music that so defined me as a teen.

As I went through college, my music tasted changed more rapidly then they ever had before, and I eventually made the switch and started to collect vinyl--both new any used. Now my vinyl collection is well into the hundreds and its the primary way that I listen to music besides my ipod. Ipods are another part of the story, too: all in all, I think I've had about 5 different iPods over the past decade, most of which either crashed or were stolen. But averaging about 20gb, they were perpetually full and used constantly. I also DJ'ed parties using my computer for about a year, so having everything that I wanted to play stored on my computer was essential.

The problem was that eventually I ran out of space. I started deleting frantically so my computer to slink along on a day to day basis until I justified needing an external drive for editing at school. I went big, and thats the 200gb HD I use at the heart of my media center. But what happened was that I couldn't save anything and it eventually led to the fragmenting of my music over multiple computers and hard drives. I eventually went back to my parents house and collected the internal HD with all the music on it, so some of that was thrown into the mix too.

So as it stands, I feel like I have multiple copies of my music in a couple different places but I don't have the time or energy to sort through it all and try and compile it into a single location. At some point in the near future, I'm doomed to add a 500gb (or larger) HD to my collection of storage devices, thus confusing things even more. On the bright side, the some file system improvements in linux now allow me to merge folders, copying only new files and not asking me the dreaded question, "keep or replace," for entire directories.

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I think my commitment to nerd-dom might be complete

Because I've been "thanked" in a post on ubuntuforumns.org, a site for Ubuntu users to solve all the little quirks that drive linux users nuts. And pretty much all I've been doing with my free time is web development.

The website I'm building for a local new media venture goes live in about a week, and there's lots to get done before then. Unfortunately I can't link to anything until we do go live, but its shaping up to be clean & classy. Pretty much the only thing I have left to do is build and implement a flash player for our hd content. Embedding Vimeos works ok, but I need a packaged deal-y before I can sign off on my work.

Also, a new version of my personal site went up last night, and pretty happy with how that's looking--it's really turning into a showcase for all teh cool new tricks I've learned recently. So check it out samuelbreed.com

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Firing People Sucks

So up until yesterday I had never had to fire anyone.

I've been working in management positions for a few years now, and although I've been through some firings, I've never had to do it myself. Or involving someone I work with almost every day. I'll avoid going into detail, but don't show up drunk and late and expect to keep your job.

I've been working on the website a little more, and now my blog will live at blog.samuelbreed.com forever, and I should have a css version up this evening.

In other news, the new Macbooks are looking good, and I figure I'll be ready for a replacement in about another 6 months or so. Better start saving now...

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New Moniter, Super Exciting

Amy's parents gifted me with a new flatscreen monitor today! It's nice to finally have a non-ancient monitor in my little home office, as I'm beginning to spend more and more time sitting at my desk. My personal workflow is finally getting the kinks worked out of it, and soon enough I'll have a new graphics card in the desktop, opening up the possibility multiple displays. It's not a current card, but I'm living on the cheap these days, and I'm tired of hiccuping video on an amply powered computer.

My home server has been up for about 2 months now with 21 days since the last reboot and its still going strong. Another few months and I'll upgrade the ram again and possibly an SATA hard drive in the months to come, since I'm starting to run out of disk space.

Still raining in Boulder, so I'm going to spend the afternoon getting some work done & possibly writing.

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Support Your Local Library

I usually take the care to misspell library on nearly every occasion to (libary being the favorite), but I've decided to take the high road and not do that in my headline.

This week I picked up a great book at the Boulder Public Library, and its really an invaluable resource to me. I tend to buy a lot of books, and although they're mostly used, it still has the tendency to be financially straining. So I've sort of created a cycle to my reading that involves alternating phases of exclusively using the library and exclusively buying my books. There is some overlap, but for the past year or so its worked itself out to be a fairly predictable transition.

One of the best reasons for going to the library is to check out books that you wouldn't normally consider buying, but are still worth a read. Mostly trashy fiction and super serious dense non-fiction--both of which I thoroughly enjoy reading, and the latter of which I'm reading now.

Every Man A Speculator by Steve Fraser is a comprehensive (and I mean comprehensive, complete with thick appendices) history of America's relationship with Wall Street, as sort of a lay man's guide to the most complexly historical parts of our economy. Given the nature of the news the past few weeks, this was an easy choice and is a surprisingly light read. Well, light only in the figurative sense; it's an easy 600 pages.

So generally I'm pretty open with my casual reading regardless of whether or not I'm purchasing. I'll read anything, nearly. Just keep it interesting and keep it moving is the motto I stick to, and I came across this subject via one of my favorite sources of news and cultural commentary, NPR.

I wouldn't say that I'm addicted to NPR, nor have I drank the cool-aide and donated to them or anything, but it does make great background noise for most of my workday. The author, Steve Frase, was on the interview program Fresh Air this past wednesday and lets say he was interesting enough to prompt me to take a walk to the library on my lunch break and pick up one of his books. This isn't his newest title, that one was checked out, but this was one of the books mentioned on Fresh Air.

And remember, kids: knowledge is power!

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Day Off

Spent most of today being punished for going out last night, but was interesting productive as well. I worked on my bitchin linux server for most of the day and am pretty satisfied with what I was able to accomplish. Not only did I get my BOINC client up and running, but I got awm and conky to work finally. And I increased my screen resolution for increased productivity (even if it means ctrl-+'ing every time I open a new tab in firefox).



All suitably nerdy, esp. with the screenshot.

I bought a few more used books today from bookworm, as per usual. Find of the day would have to be Joyce Images by Bob Cato and Greg Vitiello--dozens of great pictures of James Joyce and neat forward by Anthony Burgess.

I attempted to make some nice hi-res scans, but my scanner software was refusing to behave, so I had to settle for slightly lower quality than I wanted. I plan on posting some more of these, but only when I can get a bit better quality out of my scanner, because it can definitely do it.

Also I got a Norton Critical (my favorite edition of pretty much anything) of Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad and Voltaire's hilarious Candide, a nice paperback Great Gatsby from the 70s and a copy of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man which has lots of juicy crit in it. Nothing new, per se, except the Conrad, but all great editions of books that I tend to read ad nauseum.

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Sometimes, it takes a while: LOTR extendo edition box sets review

So LOTR is old news in 2008, unless you're talking about The Hobbit. But I finally purchased the Extended Edition DVDS (second hand and at a severely reduced price, of course) and after a hell of marathon viewing, watched all of the features and good deal of the special features. I'm already like 16 hours in and I don't know if I can hang on for the commentary tracks unfortunately.

As far as each of the features extended scenes go, I'm all for it. I always hated it when people bitched about how long the theatrical cuts of these movies, because it really takes all the meat off the bones when you're doing an adaptation and have to cut it down. The bits and pieces that weren't in the original edits are generally seamlessly integrated, and often explicate continuity across the films of the series.

Aside from the deleted scenes, the thing that sticks out about these movies is just how damn good they are. Well made movies have so much more staying power than their b and c-movie counterparts. Thank god that Troy happened in response to the Lord of the Rings trilogy instead of in place of it. The care and technical perfection that went into the final product is astounding--and its really well documented in the special features discs. As below the line memeber of the film industry, I know how much work it takes to make something look as good as these films look, and I can't imagine the endurance it took for a production on such a grand scale as this. I think its safe to say that shooting three films concurrently is feat saved for the most badass of badddassss crews and production team.

That's all I'm going to say about the movies, because by now if you haven't seen them I doubt you'd be reading this or know what the internets is.

Peter Jackson's other movies (that aren't King Kong) are simultaneously great, twisted and weird, and are all worth checking out. Meet the Feebles is one of the single most derogatory piece of anything with puppets in it. Dead Alive is a gory suspense-zombie-comedy with perhaps the most over-the-top violence ever. The lesser Jacksons are worth it too, but less notable.

And yay for another uninteresting post without pictures!

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Google Chrome Is Out!

Google released its browser today, Google Chrome. Its only available for windows currently, but mac and linux versions are apparently being developed. Now, I don't run windows because I don't want/need to. Using it at work is enough for my tastes. So, in the mean time, I'm running vmware fusion to emulate xp sp2. The nice thing about fusion is that it features "unity mode" which allows you to interact with windows applications as if they were running natively in os x.

I've been using chrome for about and hour and it seems pretty tight for a beta release. I've encountered a little weirdness with getting certain pages not loading properly (imdb, wikipedia-both of which I use constantly), but that's potentially because of the software emulation, not necessarily the browser. 

Although its quite impressive that google was able keep this under wraps until the day before it was released. Its a bit difficult to make an accurate comparison to Firefox 3, but at this point it would be hard to get me to switch from using firefox as my full time browser. Safari 3 is marginally faster than firefox at certain things (although I've never found them), but that hasn't converted me yet. I'll just have to see the benchmarks when they come out. 79 on the acid 3 test is pretty impressive! 

Hands down it'll be nice to see how Chrome will improve during the beta cycle.

On a personal note, I've been ridiculously busy working on Kris Koester's shoot this past week. Things have been going smoothely & I've definitely learned a ton being best boy grip. The downside is that I'm incredibly exhausted. Not tired, because I haven't been sleeping well, but just worn out from flipping my bodyclock on its head for 36 hours. On a the upside, the shoot is nearly halfway done. Here's a picture from the set this morning.

Hopefully I'll be able to post the trailer when its up (possibly the whole thing). Its a pretty good script, and the crew, cast and camera (courtesy of Uptown6) are all fantastic. 

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The Venture Bros. Season 3 Finale

I got around to watching the season finale of Venture Bros. last night, and there were loads of surprises. Another season ending cliff-hanger and a two part episode capped of the third season of Cartoon Network's flagship Adult Swim program. It featured all the usual players (as opposed to some of the episodes from this season which left some of my favorite characters), including the Moppets, 21 & 24, and the OSI Guys.



I was really looking forward to season 3 earlier this year, and now that its over I'm excited for season 4! Its nice to see a good show actually stay on the air long enough for things to get interesting, especially on Adult Swim, who's known for unexpectedly short runs of good shows and frequent programming changes.

That said, most shows on Adult Swim don't usually make it past a fourth season, but hopefully Venture Bros. will buck this trend, or at least have a badass final season.

This week's episode introduced a few new elements that I really enjoyed. First, "The Cleaner" comes to rescue Brock, Rusty and the boys is like a murderous Mr. Clean, and supposedly leaves "a lemon-y fresh scent."

Oh, and he melts peoples faces off with acid-based cleaning supplies.

Also making its debut in the season finale was the Monarch's new super weapon, the "Death's Head Panoply," which is essentially golden armor the monarch wears (which he can't really move in) that releases a deadly shower of clone-killing lasers. Unfortunately, the Monarch hasn't successfully tested it yet.



I was pretty impressed with this season on the whole, and will definitely purchase the DVD (or BluRay?) when it's released later this year.

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Tattoos at ComicCon

From BoingBoing:

A photo essay over at Wired shows off some really nerdy / really cool tattoos that some nerd dudes were showing off at Comic-Con.

I think that comic books can be great source material for tattoos, but its a pretty serious commitment to something so specific. One of my friends is planning a sleeve based on Garth Ennis' fantastic comic book series Preacher. It's super gory and has a number of fantastic artist throughout the run of the series.

A Preacher tatt would be way more rad than anything in the Wired photo essay.

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