Do You Believe in Magic?

I’ve long said that I needed to sort my music. After many years of collecting music on different operating systems, and never bothering to sort it. Upon learning about libmagic, I decided I finally have the opportunity to sort it all. I wrote a little program that takes a source and destination directory. It starts recursively reading a directory, and attempts to recognize each file in it by it’s mime type. For example, my MP3s come out as audo/mpeg. I take this information and store it in the destination directory. All my images and videos get sorted, programs, etc. It’s pretty quick, and did over 14 gigs of stuff in about half an hour. I’m going to be releasing the source soon, as I think it’s a pretty handy tool. I’ve only tested it under linux, as I’m not sure about libmagic on any other platforms.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from everybody at Vectec!

The Gov’t is on the Line, Got Anything to Say?

I thought this was an interesting story on OnStar and NSA/FBI spying: Big Brother - OnStar Bugging Your Car

Home Network Setup

Well I got home the other day, and I decided to do some work on my home network.

• Upgraded My Desktop
  The Ubuntu on my desktop computer at home largely goes unupdated. I finally got around to installing all the security updates that have came out since Thanksgiving (The Canadian one), and upgraded to Gutsy. There was a bit of a problem, but it sorted itself out. Next I applied the latest kubuntu package to my laptop, to get both systems running pretty much the same versions of the core programs.
• Set up NFS Home
  I synced up the UIDs between both my systems. This allowed me to export user’s home directories to my laptop. This allows my mother and uncle to use my laptop wirelessly around the house, however, when I leave with it, they see an identical desktop with bookmarks on my desktop computer.
• Mail Server
  I set up a mail server, and updated the DNS for qbdesk. Mail destined for the @qbdesk.vectec.net address now routes to my desktop computer at home. I set up my uncle with a mail account while he’s here. When my mother moves into her new place, she’s going to need a few mail accounts, so that’s ready to go.
• Gentoo?
  Ubuntu is great, for the average Joe. Ubuntu, however, just doesn’t cut it for me. I like to see more updates of more software. The fact that they only change the kernel version during ubuntu upgrades annoys me. I want .23 now! The fact that they still use an old version of Eclipse, and apparently have no plans on updating the package until after Hardy is released, kind of annoys me. Plus I get annoyed when I have things installed, then to realize I need to grab the dev packages of certain things. With the improved space my harddrive will bring me, I definitely will upgrade.

I’ve got to tell you more

Erm well not totally related but anyway.

I’m really getting tired of this nutjob who calls himself RMS. It’s one thing to be a zealot. It’s another thing to be Richard Stallman. He’s in a league of his own. And that is a bad thing in his case. I can understand you have an ideal, but keep it in your pants (or at least out of my throat), please? Personally I do no use Linux (SORRY: GNU/Linux), not for moral issues but just because I don’t like it. At all. It’s a good thing I’m not spiteful, else I’d be throwing down on Linux just because of Stallman’s GPL.

http://osnews.com/story.php/19057/Stallman-OpenBSD-Ports-Suggests-Non-Free-Software

Fredericton!

This isn’t my video, but I can’t resist sharing it:

What would it take?

Okay, so everyone here probably has their favorite operating system. I’d say that’s a given. Mine is Mac OS X. I know some of you love Linux, and most people here don’t like Windows too much. So my first question is Why do you love your choice so much? What makes it so much better than MY choice or someone else’s choice? Why won’t you use anything else? Is it cost, or support, or morals or more obviously form and functionality?

And my second question would be what would it take for you to drop your current choice for something else? What features in an operating system could possibly make you want it so bad that you’d switch and never come back?

Biggest Konqueror Gripe

I’m not sure why this is the way it is, but it’s hella annoying. For some reason, in Konqueror, and ONLY in Konqueror, the button text is the same no matter what I set it in the appearance dialog in the KDE control panel:

A Great Big Ad

I saw this many moons ago on TV, and recently found it again. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do:

Okay, I’ve got to tell somebody about this…

Well I’m not sure how many of you actually know me, but I’ve got to get this off my chest. Cody, you’re the only one I may have already mentioned this to, but you probably didn’t think much of it given my tone of the matter. But if you know what I’m leading on to, don’t say anything about it yet.

I’ve been keeping a secret for a little while now. I’m not going to give you all the details right now, but I’ve got to at least say something. See, there’s this girl (I know, there’s always a girl). But this time she’s a really special girl. I don’t know how I’ve been able to keep this to myself for this long, but whatever. So there’s this girl, and she’s amazing. She’s really fantastic. I can’t tell you who she is yet because she doesn’t want people to know yet. But we’ve been together for a little while now. Lets see… what can I tell you about her? Well she’s very open minded, she loves to share. She sometimes seems like an idealist but she blinds me with her beauty so I don’t even care. She has a lisp, which she says is common but I don’t know about that, she schemes sometimes. It’s not even a very big lisp, but I felt like mentioning it because it helps paint a better picture.

We’ve been getting along quite well but like I said, it’s a new kind of relationship for me. She doesn’t like me to keep things to myself, she wants it out in the open, but I actually really like that now. She’s very free that way (not as in beer). I’ve met her parents, her mom is really great. Her dad is a nutcase and I can see that being an issue down the road. But for now I don’t really care because it’s just me and my dearest.

I will be following up on this shortly, but I just wanted to clue everyone in, because I think most people know I’m bad at keeping things to myself, so now I’ve proven myself! Well, to an extent.