My site got pounded today like a beach on a windy day when I appeared on Linux Toda y.  So I decided to install WP Super Cache.  This should display cached pages to anyone who isn’t commenting so hopefully it will help my site deal with a lot more traffic.  The traffic was so bad I couldn’t even SSH into the box.  Hopefully now it won’t be so bad.  So if anything appears wonky - please bear with me while I work out the bugs.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday I went to see Mike Burbiglia on his Broadway show “Sleepwalk with Me”.  I wasn’t going to blog about it originally, but during the performance he mentioned that he gets Google alerts about himself. He used to Google himself, but then he set it up to get Google to do it for him.  Since I know that Google indexes my blog, I thought I’d blog about the performance.

About a month ago my wife asked me to get rid of the extra POS Linux and BSD computers I was using for my renderfarm.  They quite a bit of an eyesore and so I agreed.  Unfortunately, in the the group of computers I got rid of was my first ever Linux computer.  It ran Fedora Core 1 and ran the server that ran this website until I upgraded computers and moved to FreeBSD.  So it will be missed - I don’t usually attach too much emotion to objects – especially computers.  I didn’t care too much when I got rid of my old Dell.  But since that computer was what allowed me to get into Linux and learn all about libre software – which I had no idea about before.  All I have left now from that era is the computer now known as luigi and functioning as my print and file server.

If you use Fedora and you want to be able to do useful things like play MP3s or DVDs you need to add an external repository like FreshRPMs or Livna.  This is because MP3 playback is covered by patents in the United States, libdecss may be illegal to distribute, and a license agreement is required to playback DVDs.  Ever since I tried Debian, I liked their way of doing things.  The nonfree packages are in the official repos; they’re just disabled by default.

Recently Microsoft screwed themselves over.  We have MS Money 2006 from back when I was still getting into Linux and hadn’t convinced my wife completely about how much better it was than Windows.  Recently we switched to back to a credit card where we previously used to download the transactions from within MS Money.  When my wife went to do this, she was informed that MS Money only allows you to do this for two years.  After that if you want to keep doing it you have to buy another copy of Money.  So when she found this out, did she buy a new copy of MS Money?  NO!  She was extremely pissed that this important feature would expire.  So she want to MoneyDance.

As I mentioned in my post Micro-blogging:  One Month Later, I hadn’t really used Pownce much at all.  Even now, 4 months later, I haven’t touched it.  In fact, ever since that post in August, I only used it once to transfer a file to my brother.  I thought there wasn’t much room on the net for so many micro-blogging services.  Most people, including CNN’s Rick Sanchez, use Twitter.  And if you’re hard-core into libre software, there’s Identica.  So I didn’t see why anyone would use Pownce.  On top of that, Pownce was supposed to make money by getting people to pay for extra services.  I just didn’t see any value in what they were charging for.  So, I wasn’t too surprised when I got an email last Monday that Pownce was going to close shop.

This week was my last week with cable television.  I’ve had it since I was around 12 years old or so.  Now I’ve been on my own for a few years now and I noticed two things.  One, I don’t watch much cable television.  Just a few programs here and there.  Two, it’s pretty expensive!  It was $50 per month for just a few programs here and there.  And now, it’s no longer necessary.

Windows Antivirus product Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 is blocking access to Google.com.  What’s so insidious about google?  Do they know something we don’t?  I discovered this problem when my wife wanted to get on Google.  I then spent the next 15 or so minutes trying to figure out what was going on.  Found someone in Britain with a similar problem, but no solutions yet.  Hopefully this is fixed very soon or they’ll have a ton of angry former customers.

Today’s distro has been described as the Ubuntu of the BSD world. PC-BSD is an easy to use version of FreeBSD. FreeBSD is the behemoth in the BSD world and would probably have a much larger desktop presence if the BSDs hadn’t run into copyright and other proprietary problems right around when most of the GNU toolset was complete and Linus was releasing the Linux kernel. At least, that’s what most people claim. However, given the animosity (although that’s almost too strong a word) between the Free Software Foundation and the supporters of the BSD license.

Linux Format Magazine already has a review.

And here’s the release announcement:

DATELINE: 2008-11-25

KEY FINGERPRINT: 61A8 ABE0 91FF 9FBB F4B0 7709 BF22 6FCC 4EBF C273

LOCATION: GEOSYNC ORBIT, FEDORA SPACE STATION VIA GLOBAL IRC NETWORK

BROADCASTING: FREEDOM FRIENDS FEATURES FIRST

(Cue J. Strauss' "Blue Danube.")

THIS IS FEDORA SPACE OPERATIONS ANNOUNCING with great pleasure the
successful launch of the new ship, Fedora 10: "Cambridge."

Strapped into the pilot seats are the latest GNOME (2.24) and KDE (4.1),
accompanied on their amazing journey by an all star crew of glitch free
audio, better printing and webcam support, and a new faster graphical
startup.

Also on this ride are wireless connection sharing and the next evolution
in PackageKit, hooking through your multimedia applications to help
install supporting software (codecs).

For developers and system administrators on this mission, we have built
in appliance tools, Eclipse 3.4, NetBeans IDE, improved virtualization
management with remote installation and storage capabilities, RPM 4.6,
and new security auditing toolsets.

Please remember to polarize viewports to properly enjoy Cambridge's
brand new graphics theme, "Solar," shining on the desktop. Also on this
flight is a new lightweight desktop environment, LXDE, joining the more
recent desktop envionment crew member, Sugar (from the starship OLPC
XO), and the venerable GNOME, KDE, and XFCE.

We are now leaving drydock for a 13-month mission of innovation and
exploration. Crew members and guests are invited to the forward lounge
to use, study, modify, and redistribute.

Get your copy of Fedora 10 today:

http://get.fedoraproject.org/

Join the many thousands of Fedora particpants and contributors:

http://join.fedoraproject.org/

If you missed the official launch, attend a Fedora 10 Launch Party near
you:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents/ReleaseParty