Rockbox: Open Data for your iPod

For the last year or so, I’ve been trying out various different methods for working with my iPod nano without relying on iTunes. (iTunes is slow and bloated, at least running under Windows, doesn’t run on Linux, and relies on proprietary DRM so it makes it very difficult for me to move music files between my laptop at work and my desktop at home or play them on other devices).

I recently went back to a project called Rockbox, which I used to run on an Archos Jukebox.

But now Rockbox runs on many iPod models, including my Nano.

It’s well worth checking out if you have lots of mp3 files and you move between machines. It can be installed from a Windows, Mac OS, or Linux host computer, and it relies on just treating the ipod as a drive when connected to PCs - you can move files on and off, with no need to rebuild any iTunesDB on the device, or having iTunes obfuscate all the file names and bury them in random directories.

Did you miss me?

Turns out my hosting provider had a multi-day DNS problem last week, so OpenParenthesis was closed from Thursday am through late Saturday.

(My wife’s site came back faster - its DNS service was restored by Friday afternoon, but that’s still long enough for email to start bouncing to clients).
What’s the average blogger to do?

Either

• you host with one of the blogging services (blogger, wordpress.com, etc), in which case you are more-or-less at their mercy, and you’re down when they are, or
• you host with an independant hosting facility, in which case you’re at their mercy, or
• you run your own server at home, in which case you’re at the mercy of the cable company, telco, or whatever else connects you to the ‘net.

In any case, if you’re just another toiler in the vineyard of the blogosphere, and not a blog superstar, how do you cost-effectively get reasonable uptime?

How do you get them to listen to puny old you while the clients who really spend $$$ are complaining?
If you’ve got recommendations for solid hosting facilities (PHP and MySQL a must, Rails perhaps) let ‘em rip.

AT&C1&D0&H3&K4&N0

Do you remember Bulletin Board Systems?

My first intro to “online communities” came not from AOL, CompuServe, or Apple’s eWorld but from local bulletin board systems, first in the Boston area circa 1991-1992 and then in the Seattle area circa 1992-1996.

(more…)

Random Kubuntu / KDE tip: Device Names on Dekstop

Having recently installed Kubuntu, I’m reacquainting myself with KDE.

Configuring your desktop (right click on the desktop and choose “Configure Desktop … ” or go to the K-Menu -> System Settings -> Desktop) gives you the option (in the behavior pane, under the Device Icons tab) to show device icons for various kinds of devices, mounted and unmounted.

Because I like having my mounted drives on the desktop, I went in a checked “Mounted Hard Disk Volume” to get my hard drive partitions (windows, shared, and Linux root) to show up.

That works, but they show up with names like “39 GB Media” and “9 GB Media.” I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember volumes by their size, and kept having to open and close volumes to know what they were.

But, I found a simple workaround, which works without having to think about disk labels and whether the partitions are ext3, NTFS, or FAT32.

(more…)

Do You Ubuntu?

After reading a number of stories about Mac users switching to Ubuntu (Mark Pilgrim, Cory Doctorow, Bryan Lund and Chris Fisher), running into my cousin (Micah Anderson - he’s the one on the left) at my sister’s wedding, and being overwhelmed at the sheer volume of Ubuntu stickers, splash screens, and swag at Oscon 2006 (where the Ubuntu folks were second only to the ubiquitous Mac PowerBooks), I finally got around to setting up my Optaros-supplied Dell Latitude 810 to dual boot Ubuntu and Windows XP.

I have to say I’m very impressed. While it has been more than a couple of years since I’ve set up a dual boot system (I used to dual boot Yellow Dog Linux and Mac OS on early PPC Macs, then OpenBSD and Windows on intel), so it isn’t really fair for me to compare my Ubuntu experience with other distros, this was a fairly simple install, once I got past an initial partitioning scare.
(more…)