On the Road : Victoria J.K. Lamburn’s Blog

This is just utterly beautiful. Been in love with GPal’s productions since I discovered his remix of Loudeast’s Sonido Profundo a couple of years back…

Chris Nemmo Reflections (GPal Edit)

I tend to stumble across great things. I’m not so much into dance (or trance) these days as I once was, it’s all a bit the samey and today it’s lost all its magic it once had. *sigh* Alas, it’s been apparent to me for many years that the main reason I got into dance music was clearly from the Commodore 64’s SID music and the Commodore Amiga’s Paula sound chip. All that was missing usually was a 4/4 beat in many games. Seems I wasn’t alone in often dreaming away with an A500 wired up to the 28″ Rumbelows hired telly back in ‘90 with Turrican screaming out at full blast… Those were good days eh. Someone has remixed it, and it’s actually come out really well. Trust me if this wasn’t Turrican I probably wouldn’t give it a second listen. I also found a stunning Green Beret remix…

It ain’t 1990 any more… This is big bad dirty ugly 2008…

This, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7370362.stm, has surely got to the most ridiculously stupid news story in the world.

The bloke is banged up for doing something he shouldn’t have and yet despite going in at 29 stone (which is 406lbs US folks, we use stones over here in the UK - 14lbs = 1st) he is now down to a paltry 22 stone (a mere 308lbs.)  By my reckoning unless he’s about 11′ tall, he’s massively overweight — and that’s after the weight loss.

About an hour after each meal my stomach starts to hurt and growl. I feel hungry again.

Awww diddums I say. Well tough shit man, you committed a nasty crime, killing someone. And now you’re being punished. When you get out, then you can stuff your gluttonous face as much as you like down at your local all you can eat diner.

Really this world is chock full of responsibility shy idiots, fat or not.

Although this is not currently released until September 2008, I have been working with the latest working version of the upcoming OpenOffice.org 3.0 release.

So far my work has been squarely in Writer (the word processing component) which I have grown to really like over the past year. While some of its interface is a little sprawling in places, it can’t be accused of lacking features. I also happen to think that it works a lot better than Word. Two areas where Word always manages to drive me up the wall is complicated numbered lists and documents of any length with sections. It can get messy and frustrating when the section break doesn’t do as intended and often enough these problems are fixed by diving into Normal mode.

However Writer in its 3.0 iteration is looking very good. It has much improved note/reviewing features, a nice tidy zoom control in the lower right (clearly from MS Office 2007) and also supports multiple pages in the view when editing which I have never found a need for but that might be more in part due to me not owning a widescreen monitor or laptop. I could see some merit in two pages per view on a 1680 by 1050 widescreen display. However, on a 4:3 aspect screen at resolutions of 1280 by 960 or lower, it’s too small to look at comfortably.

The icons have also been a given a subtle touch up and they look nice.

I think OpenOffice.org has a bit of a dilemma here. It’s clearly become a very powerful alternative to Microsoft Office and I do genuinely feel that for the majority of uses in the enterprise or corporate environment would be served by OpenOffice.org very well; especially as its interface is much closer to pre-Office 2007 Microsoft Office products than 2007 is. The only exceptions are people with legacy Microsoft Access databases (which do get around a fair bit still), Powerpoint 2007 and very complicated and deeply workflow entrenched Excel spreadsheets.

The Access databases speak for themselves as they are often entwined in Visual Basic for Applications code and use a bunch of forms that are in the database itself. These don’t lend themselves for OpenOffice.org Base usage, but it’s not impossible for this situation to change if Microsoft does indeed drop VBA with the next release of Office for Windows, over time a replacement will need to be found. Invariably these databases tend to be small affairs on a desktop as most databases that are critical to an organisation’s functioning should now at least be on a dedicated database engine such as SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL etc. which is far in advanced of the scalability and reliability of Jet.

The second is Powerpoint. Up until 2007, it was a decidedly tired looking affair with naff slide styles, terrible clipart and it was a feature of dread in any meeting when someone beamed up their Powerpoint slideshow which could have been just as easily created on Powerpoint 4.0 from 1993. At least 2007 improved this by getting cool slide styles, excellent drawing functionality and generally it is harder to make a bad looking presentation now than before, although the Comic Sans risk always lurks in every company… Impress however whilst alright, isn’t that impressive. Generally the slide effects are very Powerpoint 4 and whilst OpenOffice.org 2.4 addressed this to a degree, there is always a chance that even a decent 128MB dedicated video card will grind to a halt doing a simple slide in transition. This has always been a huge problem with me adopting Impress as it is inexcusable. Even my old 14MHz Amiga 1200 15 years ago with Scala MM200 could exact smoother transitions. Sort it out, please. On top of this, Impress has for as long as I recall, has come with the crappest presentation templates in the world. They suck, all two of them. Sure you can install more and then have something great looking. However most users do not do this. After all, why have Powerpoint presentations looked the same since the dawn of time even when Microsoft offered templates to download. Please for the love of god sort this out for 3.0.

One good thing however that I hope is replicated into Writer and Calc is the table styles which give a nice professional look that Office 2007 offers to tables.

Finally Excel isn’t something I know a lot about but it’s clear that some organisations have Excel spreadsheets deeply embedded in the workflows they work with and a simple straight swap may not be just that. However for the majority of statistical analysis and chart functionality, Calc is great.

Essentially I am impressed with the quality of the current OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta and more is to come such as improved Office 2007 (OXML — formerly OOXML) import/export and other bits I am sure I have missed. However, it does strike me that many more companies shell out for Office licenses when probably 70-80% of their workforce doesn’t need all the functionality Office 2007 provides.

It’s even more mind boggling that a seven year old child would need Microsoft Word? Even Wordpad surely suffices for what they want most of the time. After all, us lot from the early 90s didn’t have this at all until 1993 when the Acorn Archimedes computers most schools had (a legacy of the BBC Micro programme) started getting a word processor called PenDown. It didn’t do masses but it was good enough. I do really think that so much money could be saved in education with suites like OpenOffice.org. Government is another good example.

This of course doesn’t detract from the fact that on the whole the MS Office ecosystem is great and has done a lot for the office but I am struggling to think why most people need Word when really they are using it as a glorified Wordpad application with most documents I see, no usage of styles or anything.

So what does OpenOffice.org 3.0 really need in my book to really sharpen its game?

• Some decent default slide templates for Impress. The current ones are bloody awful. Sorry guys.
• Tighten the interface up, try to introduce a bit more space in things, let the dialogs/windows breathe a bit more. There’s a lot of functionality, so don’t let that get hidden. I’m not suggesting a ribbon interface.
• Enhance Writer’s default styles to have nice suave styles like Word 2007 has with its nice colour schemes too

Perhaps also a leaf out of Firefox 3’s book is needed, skin the application to look more comfortable on the target systems. E.g. Luna style for XP, Aero Glass style for Vista, Aqua/Leopard style for OS X, GTK/QT look for Linux distributions. Sadly we live in a world where most people look at appearances first and that will often win them over rather than whether something is actually better. I’m currently using Live Writer (a Microsoft product) which looks great. Invest some time on aesthetics please.

Otherwise though, this is shaping up to be a good release. Let’s hope it becomes a fantastic release.

This question recently came up. If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?

My answer: my nasty anger streak.

I don’t get angry hardly ever but when I do snap, I do snap. Not particularly nice. It happened today. I was driving (a bad start) and there are some road works, narrow road and they are about 100yds long, long enough distance and I am on the side of the road with priority to go through, as per the signs and also the fact the road works are on the other side of the road.

As I approach a couple of cars on the other side come through, OK fine I wasn’t there then, then another 2or three sneaked through, and I though hmm ok maybe they hadn’t seen me… And another 2, but this stage I was beginning to think you’re taking the piss, the 9th/10th car went through and I took my chance and low and behold someone on the other side who wasn’t there as I proceeded decides they will come barelling through. I was incensed.

I reversed let them through and then some jack ass in a people carrier as go on through does the same. I lost it. I feel really bad and I feel like a terrible personed. I wound the window down and shout “Who’s priority is it then?” and all I could see was a shrug. I mean, yes I feel utterly horrible for very angrily shouting, road rage. I hate it, I hate my anger streak.

That said, I was in the right and this is a very good case of some drivers who don’t have a fucking clue, or those who take the piss (or both.) The fact that at least 7-8 of the cars saw I was sat there waiting to go through when the priority was given to me, big fat white arrow on the sign on my side, little red arrow on the right.

But I really do wish I wouldn’t react the way I do sometimes. I am tired and stressed and this just got to me somehow, it’s petty and nasty and I wish sometimes I would be a pushover and just let these things happen, but I can’t, I just react badly when people take advantage. I should not have shouted but I did.

But seriously, please drivers, learn what the sign below means.

I was introduced to Sia Furler a little while back and I love her new album Some People Have Real Problems which I got back in February and have played it often. Looking for inspiration on Youtube I stumbled on remixes of one of my favourites on the album The Girl You Lost To Cocaine has been remixed. This was a fairly cool video someone has made of the full Stonebridge remix with some Madonna footage, which is so so, but it’s all about the music and her voice, it suits it perfectly.

Note: I’m aware that I haven’t had a chance to approve and reply to many comments this week, bear with me, I aim to get on top of it this weekend — it’s very busy at work right now and my evenings have mostly been spent away from the Internet!

Software

Ok with that out of the way, I have finally got my network working and have a few tips for other people who are possibly looking to create a small network that allows for a more centralised storage platform and sharing amongst computers apart from the obvious sharing of directories over a workgroup (which is notoriously unreliable!)

• For a home network that has a bit more oomph than a simple Workgroup setup, dare I say this: Windows NT 4 Server works bloody well for a 12 year old server operating system.
• I picked up a brand new boxed retail copy with five CALs for £7.50. That had to be worth trying. In fact, I’ll be honest — I built the Samba domain controller and it worked well, but NT 4 Server was just easier to manage so my chosen domain controller is Windows NT 4 Server. (For a small five computer network including the server, Active Directory isn’t really too important.)
• Samba 3 makes a good primary domain controller (PDC) for Windows NT networks akin to what was the main domain service with Windows NT 3/4. Sure ActiveDirectory has long succeeded this but it is still useful. Allow yourself about three hours from start to finish to set Samba up properly. An excellent guide of how to turn Ubuntu 7.10 Server into a Windows PDC is here: http://www.rrcomputerconsulting.com/view.php?article_id=3
• Windows up to and including XP (and maybe Vista, not tested), Mac OS X and Linux distributions with Samba installed (which is most by default) work very well with a NT4 PDC.
• On Mac OS X, in Directory in utilities folder, you can configure the SMB/CIFS protocol’s workgroup to be a domain instead
• You can create a drive mapping on Mac OS X (tested in 10.4 Tiger) that is reconnected after a reboot:
  1. First browse to the share and mount it (so the share icon is on the desktop) as usual
  2. Open System Preferences
  3. Click Accounts
  4. Select the Account which the shares should be automatically mounted for
  5. Select the Login Items share
  6. Click ‘+’ to add an item and browse to the desktop, select the share in the file dialogue box and click Add
  7. Voila, share will be reconnected every time you log in. To save on it asking for the password tick the save password to keychain box.
• On Mac OS X when mounting shares, when asked for the username and password, ensure you enter the username and password given the access rights on the share itself, not your current Mac OS X account’s user name and password.
• If you are connecting to a PDC domain and are using Windows with a wireless connection to the domain controller, leave about 20-30 seconds before hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del to log in so that your wifi card has negotiated a successful connection to your wireless access point, otherwise login scripts, home directory connections and roaming profiles may fail to download/execute.
• Finally on Windows 2000 and XP, make sure that the network adapter that is connected to the switch/hub (that connects onwards to the server) is configured in the TCP/IP protocol’s advanced settings to allow NetBIOS over TCP/IP when using an NT 4 PDC domain.

I have to say so far it is working like a dream.

Hardware

This is the server:

• Dell GX150 - Celeron 800MHz, 128MB, CD-ROM, Floppy, Serial, VGA, Parallel, 10/100 Ethernet, 1 x AGP, 1 x PCI, integrated video/VGA, 20GB Hard Disk - £10.50
• Windows NT 4 Server with 5 CALs, retail boxed, brand new and shrink wrapped - £7.50
• DLT IIIXT 15/30GB Fast SCSI tape backup drive - FREE
• 1 x DLT IIIXT 15GB tape - £3

Eventually I will replace the hard disk but the main point here is that for what will be mainly a file server (and possibly a print server) - a Celeron 800 is absolutely fine. The server is connected via 100Mbit ethernet to the switch/router.

To be continued…

Inevitably when creating a network it is usually because things have become difficult enough to administer locally with the computers as a whole. That was part of the case for me. The second reason was the need for greater amounts of storage and related to the first factor: a large amount of centralised storage was ideal.

Two of my computers are wireless ready (ThinkPad and Dell desktop) and two are not (eMac and iMac.) The eMac is not a problem as it is right next to my ADSL wireless router which has 2 10/100Mbit RJ45 connections. The iMac still does not have a permanent connection, the ThinkPad and Dell connect via the WLAN.

Yesterday I picked up a copy of Windows NT Server 4, brand new, sealed boxed with 5 CALs in a thrift store for a mere £7.50. Sure not as cheap as downloading say CentOS, but it had to be given a go. By and large it works really well actually despite the range of clients connecting which varies from Windows, Mac OS X and Linux systems. Everything can log into the domain, everything can access the shares.

So in effect this works fine and since it’s just my network I have no real reason to administer user profiles with the possible exception of setting up roaming profiles. This is where the problems began. The issue is that the two Windows clients connect using wireless, and from what I can fathom out - the wireless network regardless of what I use to manage the connection (even Intel’s ProSet with pre-logon enabled) is not connected when the workstation receives it’s instruction to connect a home drive and run a logon script.

This isn’t really the end of the world as the mapped drives still connect (if you do it manually first through My Computer (Right Click) Map Network Drive and tell it to reconnect after logging out) and then all is well. And of course I can browse all the network shares the domain user in question has permission to view/change so really all that I cannot do is run a logon script, map a user home folder and run an effective roaming profile on the server if I connect via WLAN, via wired it works pefectly.

All in all despite being old, discontinued and so forth, I’ve been pleasantly reminded that generally NT4 Server was quite nice to administer, simple to an extent and very reliable. Of course it is only being used to serve files really and maybe a shared printer so it’s not going to be doing anything that deep.

So how to potentially solve this?

Well I have tried everything, running scripts synchrously, using Windows 2000 style waiting for the network to be ready, long timeouts, switching to using to manage the wireless connection, then Intel’s ProSet with pre-logon configured. One thing I haven’t looked at is whether I need to configure WINS, or DNS in some form but I fail to see that as a likely reason for the trouble when connecting via wired ethernet is fine. The other curious thing is that I am certain that just before the desktop appears, the wireless connection is dropped as when I log in pre logon appears from ProSet and then when I actually get the desktop, the WLAN status icon shows it is disconnected.

Now maybe there is still something wrong in that connection profile with ProSet but assuming there isn’t I still need to rig the iMac into the network. Initially I was going to do this using a USB 802.11b stick which is Mac compatible. They can be had for about £7 so there was no nonsense about acquiring an expensive Airport card which is nothing more than an Orinoco/Lucent 802.11b PCMCIA card. Another option has occurred to me and that’s to use a wireless ethernet bridge, a bit like you may use for a console.

If my thinking is right, the bridge would get assigned an IP as such from the router before any log on occurs as technically it’s the same as being wired into the router. This may well circumvent the logon issues with the two Windows boxes, in which case a couple of bridges may well solve the problem.

This also works out nicely as the Dell desperately needs USB 2 ports but one PCI slot has a SCSI card (required for the negative/slide scanner) and the second has the 802.11b wireless card, by using a bridge I would free up that PCI slot.

In any instance my priority is more about ensuring this server has enough storage and redundancy in that than getting home directories working over ‘wireless’ as everything kind of works anyway!

Bottom line is, NT 4 Server works quite nicely even some 12 years after it was launched. When I first stated at uni, they were using NT 4 Server and NT 4 Workstation and I have to say they were some of most reliable computers I have ever known in a public environment.

I guess I like smaller more agile operating systems than the larger all encompassing types like Mac OS X Leopard and Vista. Either way I am quietly pleased given my networking knowledge whilst not poor or bad, is hardly my strength as my skills lay elsewhere but so far I have managed to create a working and usable network with ease. The next step will be acquiring the RAID controller and a pair of hard disks and then the server itself is complete.

I have finally gotten my eMac back from repair and it now has a brand new logic board, CRT and voltage board. essentially the only thing that is the same is the casing and speakers! This should mean that I have years of trouble-free computing with this now given that eMacs are very reliable with the exception of the 1.25GHz eMacs blighted with capacitor disease. Apparently mine had three exploded capacitors, i.e. not bulging, not popped but exploded… How the thing still worked is beyond me.

So I now have it running and superficially this feels faster than my old Power Mac Digital Audio used to be. Which was quite beefy, 1.42GHz G4 w/2MB L3, 1GB RAM, Radeon 9800 Pro etc. So I thought I’d benchmark it as I did with the G4 DA as I did back then.

Here is an XBench 1.3 comparison of PowerMac G4 DA vs. eMac (both mine) - 49pts vs. 53.

The eMac overall comes out slower but I reckon it is utterly skewed by the eMac having a Radeon 9200 vs. the G4 DA’s 9800 Pro; as for everything the eMac feels like the ’sharpest’ Mac I have owned. It certainly beats the PowerBook 12″ I had.

However, whilst neither are cutting edge, food for thought that the PowerMac DA’s lowly PC-133 SDRAM and ATA-66 hard disk interface held up pretty well to the eMac’s DDR-RAM and ATA-100 bus. Achieving high hard disk speeds is not likely on a single controller on a non RAID 0/5 configuration so this is a moot point as a consequence and DDR is slightly wasted on a G4…

On a slightly unrelated note, why has WordPress gone with an ugly colour scheme for their dashboard… Eugh. I’ll be using Windows Live Writer more as a consequence now (when on a Windows machine.)

Up until recently the thought of running my own network seemed to be an exercise in frivolity, needlessness and just wasn’t worth it. After all why does one person need to operate a network? I’m a geek through and through (but a cool one I think hehe!) and this means that I have four computers. The ThinkPad which I am using now is my notebook computer, the Dell GX240 desktop is my main computer for doing just about anything — testing new software, programming, designing, scanning slides/negatives, browsing the web etc., the eMac is my main media computer which also doubles up as a television (with a USB tuner) and DVD recorder and secondary computer, and finally the iMac G3 in my bedroom is for when I want to kick back on my bean bag, and write sipping Costa Rican coffee in the light of a banker’s lamp! They all have a purpose you see.

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