tsclient vs. rdesktop
If you use tsclient under Linux to connect to a remote Windows desktop via RDP5, then you may want to check out using rdesktop instead. From my (admittedly brief) experience with rdesktop, the speeds are much greater, and I’m not entirely sure why. I don’t know if rdesktop has more options that allow for fine tuning the connection or if tsclient (being a GUI) is slower than the command-line rdesktop due to the extra overhead of the GUI rendering. I’m not sure.
If you’re looking to use rdesktop instead of tsclient, you can read through the well-written man page for figuring out your command line. To help you out, here is the command line that I use to connect to my remote Windows 7 desktop:
/usr/bin/rdesktop -u[USERNAME_REDACTED] -z -xb -P -g1280x960 REMOTE_HOSTNAME_HERE
Hope this helps!
Welcome Linux MINT
I’ve been a long-time user of Ubuntu for my desktops, laptops and netbook, but those days are over. I got fed up with the Unity interface and the kludge of packing GNOME on top of it to make that work semi-properly. I’ve been using Ubuntu since 6.04 (11.10 is the latest) and that’s quite a few years.
Now, I’m a dedicated Linux MINT fan after only two days of using it. It took me only a few hours to backup $HOME, install MINT, restore $HOME and configure/polish/tweak things to where I wanted them. That’s not too bad.
I’ve only done this on my work laptop thus far, but I plan on dropping MINT on my desktop (probably over the weekend) and once I’m done with that, I’ll go with MINT on my netbook as well.
My server (the one hosting this site) will remain Ubuntu server because I don’t have to put up with any GUI garbage on servers. 
Longest Upgrade Ever
With the release of a new OpenOffice.org from Ubuntu (to close some security issues), Ubuntu’s servers are being hammered. I happed to flip to the ‘apt-get upgrade’ window I had going just in time to see this:
Longest Upgrade Ever
Look at the time left on the download. I don’t think I want to wait ’49,710 days’ for the download to finish. That’s roughly 187 (and then some) years. I wonder if my son’s son’s son would finish the upgrade for me?
Fortunately, the download didn’t take quite that long. It finished shortly after I got done cropping the screenshot. I still think it’s pretty funny what “progress bars” will read from time-to-time.
Backup Disaster
Here’s my backup schema.
My laptops (3 of them) and flash drives (a handful of them) get backed up to an external hard drive named “Helix”.
Helix, in turn, gets backed up to an identical external hard drive named “Operator”.
Now that the scene is set….
I had successfully backed up 2 of 3 laptops and all my flash drives to Helix. While laptop #3 was being backed up, I decided to save a little time and wiped Operator to make room for the fresh image coming in from Helix.
Well… Dammit… During the backup of the third laptop, things went all screwy and the hard drive at itself. Now I’m left with no backup of anything I deemed important. You see, there was data on Helix that was not on any of my laptops or flash drives. I’m not sure what to do now other than to fsck Helix and see if I can recover the drive. I really hope that I can because I can’t afford to lose the years (decades?) worth of collected data, files, music, PDFs, pictures and more. I just hope the fsck works. It churned all night last night and didn’t finish by the time I had to leave for work. I have the drive plugged into my laptop now, and a second fsck is churning away. I hope things come out well. We’ll see…
Now to figure out an affordable solution for backing up the data that just lives on Helix and none of the laptops or flash drives. *sigh*
S9Y Gone
Serendipity (S9Y) is going away on my site. I’m removing it forever because I have migrated everything to WordPress and I’m very very happy with the results.
S9Y served me well over the long years this blog has been around, but it’s anti-spam features are, quite honestly, lacking and poor. WordPress has rocked in this area, so I’m sticking with it.
Goodbye, S9Y.
Learning Ruby
For some reason, I’ve picked up a Ruby book (I had a free book coming to me from a local tech book store.)
I’ve been reading through it, and I’ve gotten up to page 80. Ruby is a slick little language, and I can see why it’s so popular. After I’m through some of the more complex concepts in the language, I may see about rewriting some of my existing applications in Ruby… Just for the fun of it.
We’ll see how it goes.
Domain Name Expired
I screwed up and must have missed the warning emails from Network Solutions (my domain name registrar) about the fact that my domain name was about to expire. I got an email this morning telling me that my domain name protection service had expired, which meant that anyone in the world could have scooped up my domain name. Fortunately, the domain name is worthless. It’s really not a great e-commerce or business name, so it’s pretty safe.
I’m just glad someone didn’t snag it, park it, and ransom it for big bucks. I’m not sure I would have shelled out the money for the ransom had this happened. I guess it would have depended on the price and how well I trusted the ransom holder.
Anyway, beosig.net is safe for another three years.
PS: I did check my other four domains (yes, I have five total), and they are fine for a while. As a matter of fact, the one I have for my son is good until he turns 10 years old, and he’s only four months old at the moment. Heh. That’s assuming that the whole WWW as we know it now still exists a decade from now.
OSCON 2007 Trackback
As most of you know I went to OSCON 2007 last year. I recently subscribed to the OSCON 2008 RSS feed in anticipation of going again this year. The OSCON 2008 RSS feed had a large dump of articles today, and I was linked in with them!!! This really makes me happy and proud that O’Reilly thinks that my write-ups on the conference warranted linking to.
Here’s a blurb that they pulled from one of my posts and put on their site:
“The trip was worth every penny, every bit of effort, the lost sleep, and the crazy schedule. I learned more than I ever thought I would. I met more people than I thought I would, and I got to learn about new companies, new products, and new ideas. I really hope to be able to return next year, but that’s a year off. We’ll see how it goes at that time.”
I tend to try to work my links into my wording, but there are too many to try to do that with. Here they are:
I’m Not Alone!
Two weeks ago, I made this post railing against the fact that so many schools are cramming Java down the throats of CS students, which is making them become less effective at coming up with their own solutions to real world problems.
I kept my rant short, but there are a few people out there that have talked in much greater detail about why they also dislike this trend in universities. Here are some related posts of people that agree with me:
A Real Programmer Can Write in Any Language
This write-up by Dr. Robert B.K. Dewar and Dr. Edmond Schonberg makes me very happy. They are basically railing against the propensity that modern universities and colleges have towards forcing Java on first-time programmers instead of teaching them the foundations of quality software engineering. Most universities are ignoring the basics of how to actually get software to operate properly. Properly means keeping data and processes secure, functional, accurate, stable, and efficient.
Java may attempt to enforce some of these things, but by programming in Java, the person at the keyboard is not taught how to do these things. They take it for granted that their language will do it for them, and this is not always the case. It’s like not wearing a seatbelt because you assume your airbag will save your life.
One analogy that Dewar/Schonberg used was this:
“The irresistible beauty of programming consists in the reduction of complex formal processes to a very small set of primitive operations. Java, instead of exposing this beauty, encourages the programmer to approach problem-solving like a plumber in a hardware store: by rummaging through a multitude of drawers (i.e. packages) we will end up finding some gadget (i.e. class) that does roughly what we want. How it does it is not interesting! The result is a student who knows how to put a simple program together, but does not know how to program.”
Another quote from the write-up that really tickles me is this one, “Conversely, we want to say that a competent programmer is comfortable with a number of different languages and that the programmer must be able to use the mental tools favored by one of them, even when programming in another.” According to these guys, I’m a competent programmer. I’ve always been able to take my expertise in one language and translate it into usefulness in another language. I’d like to see a pure Java programmer claim the same thing.
I could rant on this for much, much longer, but I highly suggest that you click the link at the start of this blog to see more of what got me started. I agree with pretty much everything that they’ve written there.
