Back in Nov of 2008 I checked out Zenwalk 5.2 and a recent LXF contained Zenwalk 6.0 - so let’s see what has changed.  It loads up with the usual Kernel messages going past on the screen.  The first screen for the installation hasn’t changed one bit from Zenwalk 5.2.

[caption id=“attachment_2299” align=“alignleft” width=“150” caption=“Zenwalk 6.0 - setup ncurses screen”] [/caption]

Once again, as before, I chose autoinstall.  Once again, the installation was sparse, but very, very informative.  I don’t think I mentioned this last time, but it appears that Zenwalk 6.0 (maybe earlier versions as awell)  uses the xfs file system instead of the more usual ext3.  (Or, recently, ext4)  According to the wikipedia article I linked to, XFS is very good for large files and is one of the oldest file systems for *nix systems.  Just like last time, the installation had information on every single package as it was installed.  Just as last time I want to say that this installation was very, very simple.  I don’t see why anyone new to Linux (but not a total computer noob) would have any problems installing it.  Sure, it’s very short on eye candy - but who cares?  You should only ever see the installation screen once.  Just as before, I am convinced that Zenwalk is a very good introduction to a Slackware-type distribution thanks to this ease of installation.

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Lovers on the Boardwalk”] [/caption]

A few weeks ago I took yet another stroll on Brighton Beach’s Boardwalk.  This famous boardwalk goes from Brighton Beach past Coney Island all the way to Seagate.  This time around I took some iconic photos from the area.  In other words, these are exactly the types of photos you would see included in any survey of boardwalk photos. Here’s the GPS track of where I went in a static PNG and then as a Google Map so you can zoom in and scroll around.

I missed the release by a couple of days, but as is my tradition, here is the release notice:

Ladies and gentlemen of the Royal Explorers Club! Your attention please. It falls to me to be the host of our proceedings to-day, as we celebrate a great achievement in the annals of this hallowed organization – the discovery of what is truly a magnificent specimen among all FOSSdom. When Dr. Brattlesworth and I began this safari more than six months ago, we knew full well the many snares, toils, and dangers that awaited us along the hundreds of miles of tracking our quarry across the plains. But we also maintained a steadfast belief that by living with the land, and becoming part of the larger ecosystem where this incredible animal takes refuge, we could record for posterity the way of life of that marvelous creature – the Leonidas!

I recently posted the photos I took during Dina’s Graduation Party. I then posted the link to Dina’s wall on Facebook.  Check out the spike in my views:

[caption id=“attachment_2307” align=“alignnone” width=“416” caption=“My Daily Views on Flickr”] [/caption]

That’s 1037 views in one day!  Thanks guys!

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Dina, a new graduate!”] [/caption]

A few weeks ago I attended Dina’s Bachelor’s Graduation.  After having attended my own as well as Daniel’s, I had some idea of what to expect, but this was the first college graduation I had attended outside of Cornell.  (Not counting my dad’s graduation when I was young)  I have have come to believe that all college graduations are the same everywhere.  It is a bit odd that Stony Brook used red gowns instead of black ones.  The was also my first long outing with my GPS unit.  Here’s where I ran around that day. First as a static PNG:

This is going to be the first time I look at a fresh install of Ubuntu in a long while.  I first installed Ubuntu quite a while ago and then I just kept distro upgrading from there on.  Then I installed Crunch Bang Linux on my laptop.  So now I will be testing the installation.  This may end up being a pretty short review because not much has changed from the previous Ubuntu, or so I hear.  The biggest new change is the notification system.  I’ll be sure to check that out.

A few days ago, I saw the heavy boots story on digg and shared it with Dan.  To quickly sum up, in case the web page dissapears into the great bit bucket in the sky, a physics major was told by his philosophy TA that the astronauts on the moon didn’t float away because they had heavy boots on.  That prompted Dan to share this post with me again.  After leaving a Dr Horrible reference, I started thinking about this.  And I came to see Final Fantasy as one of the largest exercises in suspension of disbelief.  The most egregious aspect is with the weapons.  Because of what is often a very tedious menu screen, I usually do not sell back all of the old, useless weapons back to the shop when I buy new ones.  So, technically, my characters are running around a HUGE world map trying to save the world, while at the same time lugging around hundreds of pounds of useless weapons.  Quite ridiculous, no?  On top of this they may have as many as 99 tents, 99 sleeping bags, and pretty much 99 of any item.  Think back to the smallest you could ever fold a sleeping bag.  Now, imagine going hiking through the woods with 99 of them split up over, at most, four of you.  So, it’s 25 each for three of you and 24 for some lucky bastard - probably the girl in the short skirt with the large breasts who’s always complaining of back problems.  This is where gameplay mechanics start to mess with your mind too much if you dn’t suspend your disbelief.  Because sleeping bags are not prophelactics, you can use them over and over.  But the game makes you discard one each time you use it.  Of course, within the game thsi makes sense because you’d otherwise be able to heal up to full every time you were in the map screen.  I never questioned it as a kid.  I was just glad to have a tent or sleeping bag to heal my characters.  But when you think about it, it doesn’t make very much sense.  This, of course, naturally leads to the other problem with SquareEnix jRPGs - passage of time.  For obvious reasons (mostly related to grinding), time doesn’t pass in these games unless you’re at a milestone moment.  So while there’s a meteorite coming towards earth or some jerk has decided to use earth magic or magical-people magic to destroy the world tomorrow, you can sleep in an inn over and over.  And while the game never explicitly states you stayed in the inn overnight (except when it’s part of advancing the story - clever, clever they were in those old SNES RPGs) it does often imply it, with transition effects that seem to suggest you were there overnight.

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Box”] [/caption]

[caption id="" align=“alignleft” width=“240” caption=“Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens on its box”] [/caption]

Recently I got my fifth lens, the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II, Canon’s entry-level nifty fifty lens.  This is the cheapest lens Canon makes and, build-wise, it shows.  Unlike the other lenses I own (even the kit lens), the 50mm is very plastic-looking and plastic-feeling.

SimplyMepis is a Debian-based distro developed by Warren Woodford who believed that Mandrake Linux was too hard for new users.  (Mandrake, now Mandriva, was the Ubuntu of its time).  I’ve heard him interviewed a few times on The Linux Link Tech Show and he seems to be of the realist (as opposed to idealist) school of Linux distro maintainers.  He believes users should be able to listen to MP3s, use Adobe Flash, and so on.  SimplyMepis 8.0 is based on Debian 5 stable, which I recently reviewed.  So let’s load her up into VirtualBox and see how it goes.

I recently finally moved over to my 64bit computer. I’ve been using Fedora 10 64-bit for at least two weeks now. I was having a lot of trouble with migrating my Tomboy data over from the 32-bit install. It wouldn’t start up and the error message was not as helpful as it could have been. Eventually I dug around and found out I had to delete all the addin* files/folders in my .tomboy folder. After that everything worked fine.