Yeah, well…

I have been swallowed up into the abyss of mid-term exams, extra-curricular activities, having two labs this term, normal homework, dinners, work, fixing up my computer, and reading. In other words, college has caught up with me.

Last weekend, I killed my bandwidth allowances by downloading Gentoo ISOs and installing Linux on my machine. Because my computer is so uncool as to not have an XP install CD (although I can buy one at our bookstore for $5), I downloaded BootIt NG and used it to resize my NTFS partition in a non-destructive manner. Then began the Gentoo fun. It took my computer all weekend to compile what I needed to run Linux the way I wanted, including XFree 4.3 and KDE 1.3. Whoo. I got a lot of homework done that weekend, since the alternative was to sit and watch the individual GCC commands scroll on my monitor. I still have to boot into Windows to do some school stuff, because I haven’t tried Wine yet (I’m afraid of that app, given the un-fun I had with it back in RedHat 7). So I had no really usable computer until about Tuesday. Now all that’s left is fine-tuning the kernel, getting more fonts installed for OpenOffice.org (OO.org is getting much sexier these days, too, even if the font selections are miserable), and getting other, smaller apps installed (like Wine, and trying to find an offline blog publishing app). I’m also getting a “Problems and Solutions” page for Gentoo up, since I feel majorly happy I got my PCMCIA’d FireWire external 80GB drive working successfully, and wouldn’t wish that confusing hell on anyone.

About Wednesday, I started working on a new layout for this here site. I don’t like it quite yet. There are still some kinks in the CSS, particularly for those running at low resolutions, and for the Mandrake/Book Review layout style. Those may just need to be revamped anyway. Actually, I think I’ll just scrap the whole damned thing and start over.

Speaking of some buggy shit, a negress can’t go away for a week without shit breaking around here. I have no damn idea what happened to cause BlogWorks to break, nor could I fix it (because nothing had changed!). I ended up having to do a re-install of the system Friday night, in the midst of NSBE’s Senior Weekend. Good news about Blogworks XML: this guy may be taking over development. Yay! If I can get my act together and work on this bit of code for the commenting that I’ve been wanting to do (particularly after an incident a couple of weeks ago at another site reminded me of the lack of control I have over commenting here), I might give it to him and see if he wants to incorporate it into the next version of BlogWorks. Of course, I’m not working off the 1.30 Preview, because I have no particular interest in running my normal blog off of alpha software I’d be testing myself, but I may throw up a second installation for testing 1.30 Preview to see what I can do to contribute.

I’m currently using Bloglines to track RSS feeds, but I’m not feeling it. Of course, when my alternatives are AmphetaDesk (bad user interface), the various Mozilla extensions, BottomFeeder (buggy when I used it a year ago), or a Java-based RSS to NNTP server on which development seems to have halted and which won’t work on my computer, I’ll stick with Bloglines for a while. I’d be a happy camper if that NNTP server worked, though.

Am I completely silly for hoping all the snow today may stop professors from being able to come in tomorrow morning…? A three-day weekend (and a postponement of the two major exams I have tomorrow) would be wonderful.

7 Comments

Jason Brome

1/25/2004 at 21:10

Development hasn’t completed halted on nntp//rss, it’s just been a busy year for other stuff 🙁

However, I do have a forthcoming beta of a new release, and would be happy to help you get it up and running on your machine – drop me an email if you’re interested.

Michael

1/25/2004 at 22:02

lol

i have been thinking of (i DLed the ISOs today) of installing Linux. My Comp 120 class has taught me lots so i fell comfortable with a dual boot. I was wondering why you have chosen gentoo over slackware, mandrake, red hat, bsd, etc and if u ALREADY know of any cool comparison sites i could check out. I DLed mandrake, but my friend wants me to use slackware, and “Clippy Clipperson” (http://clippingdale.com/) uses Red Hat. So…holla @ me wit sum Nfo. And this guy n my class has just Nstalled gentoo and kept cummN 2 class whining about all his troubles with compiling and the like. Te extraño.

Lissa

1/25/2004 at 22:48

nntp//rss

My apologies on the hasty assumption that development had stopped. It was hard to tell from the nntp//rss website…

Lissa

1/25/2004 at 22:59

Why Gentoo?

I essentially chose Gentoo because I wanted the experience of compiling Linux practically from source, with the availability of the option of copping out with binaries, should things fall through. I would have probably just thrown Mandrake 9.0 on my laptop had it actually booted from the setup disk, which prompted me to sort of “custom make” my installation with Gentoo.

I didn’t want a (relatively) bloated Mandrake/RedHat installation, and now find myself knowing precisely what is installed on my system, where it is, etc., and know that it is all optimized for my processor. That’s not to knock Mandrake/RedHat, by any means. I love me some Mandrake, as you may recall. And it’s not that I had no trouble installing Gentoo. I’ll be putting that section of the site up soon, and you’ll probably think I was insane for doing that shit in the middle of a school term on a normal (not long) weekend. But you know me. It ain’t worth doin’ on a computer if it’s easy.

In addition, the Gentoo method of installing packages (Portage) is a fascinating idea not unlike the Debian package idea (from what little I know of it).

I didn’t, however, do a lot of research before installing a Linux distribution. I didn’t research Slackware, or Debian, or BSD. I know every little about them, other than the basic generalities. In the process of finding Compaq Evo N800w Linux sites (and reading our on-campus NNTP groups), I ran across a mention of someone having the most luck with Gentoo with my laptop, so I read the Gentoo site, liked what I saw, downloaded the two LiveCDs, and installed. So you could easily call my decision uninformed. [8)]

I don’t already know of any comparison sites, but I could dig some up for you…

Luke

1/26/2004 at 00:04

Snow and school

Hehe, get off of school for snow. That’s a good one. They say the only time there was a school wide shut down was the blizzard in 1992 (or there abouts). And somehow I don’t think we’ll get off of school for anything short of a blizzard through the area…let’s hope we don’t get one of those because that would suck…

Lissa

1/26/2004 at 00:46

Snow and School

Geez, Luke, thanks. For rizzle, guy. Just kill all my hope. Hmph.

Wait, what about ice?

Dulin

1/26/2004 at 10:57

Computer stuff… yeah… Dulin is lost… We got snow down here… school is closed for three whole inches… good luck on the exams…

Jason Brome

1/25/2004 at 21:10

Development hasn’t completed halted on nntp//rss, it’s just been a busy year for other stuff 🙁

However, I do have a forthcoming beta of a new release, and would be happy to help you get it up and running on your machine – drop me an email if you’re interested.
Michael

1/25/2004 at 22:02

lol

i have been thinking of (i DLed the ISOs today) of installing Linux. My Comp 120 class has taught me lots so i fell comfortable with a dual boot. I was wondering why you have chosen gentoo over slackware, mandrake, red hat, bsd, etc and if u ALREADY know of any cool comparison sites i could check out. I DLed mandrake, but my friend wants me to use slackware, and “Clippy Clipperson” (http://clippingdale.com/) uses Red Hat. So…holla @ me wit sum Nfo. And this guy n my class has just Nstalled gentoo and kept cummN 2 class whining about all his troubles with compiling and the like. Te extraño.
Lissa

1/25/2004 at 22:48

nntp//rss

My apologies on the hasty assumption that development had stopped. It was hard to tell from the nntp//rss website…
Lissa

1/25/2004 at 22:59

Why Gentoo?

I essentially chose Gentoo because I wanted the experience of compiling Linux practically from source, with the availability of the option of copping out with binaries, should things fall through. I would have probably just thrown Mandrake 9.0 on my laptop had it actually booted from the setup disk, which prompted me to sort of “custom make” my installation with Gentoo.

I didn’t want a (relatively) bloated Mandrake/RedHat installation, and now find myself knowing precisely what is installed on my system, where it is, etc., and know that it is all optimized for my processor. That’s not to knock Mandrake/RedHat, by any means. I love me some Mandrake, as you may recall. And it’s not that I had no trouble installing Gentoo. I’ll be putting that section of the site up soon, and you’ll probably think I was insane for doing that shit in the middle of a school term on a normal (not long) weekend. But you know me. It ain’t worth doin’ on a computer if it’s easy.

In addition, the Gentoo method of installing packages (Portage) is a fascinating idea not unlike the Debian package idea (from what little I know of it).

I didn’t, however, do a lot of research before installing a Linux distribution. I didn’t research Slackware, or Debian, or BSD. I know every little about them, other than the basic generalities. In the process of finding Compaq Evo N800w Linux sites (and reading our on-campus NNTP groups), I ran across a mention of someone having the most luck with Gentoo with my laptop, so I read the Gentoo site, liked what I saw, downloaded the two LiveCDs, and installed. So you could easily call my decision uninformed. [8)]

I don’t already know of any comparison sites, but I could dig some up for you…
Luke

1/26/2004 at 00:04

Snow and school

Hehe, get off of school for snow. That’s a good one. They say the only time there was a school wide shut down was the blizzard in 1992 (or there abouts). And somehow I don’t think we’ll get off of school for anything short of a blizzard through the area…let’s hope we don’t get one of those because that would suck…
Lissa

1/26/2004 at 00:46

Snow and School

Geez, Luke, thanks. For rizzle, guy. Just kill all my hope. Hmph.

Wait, what about ice?
Dulin

1/26/2004 at 10:57

Computer stuff… yeah… Dulin is lost… We got snow down here… school is closed for three whole inches… good luck on the exams…