Go #77

Got the power bill today, and you'll never guess what happened.

Ok, maybe you will. I thought I was doing a pretty bad job at unplugging the router and stuff when not in use the past month, so I didn't think I'd beat my previous record of 114 KwH. But I guess I was doing better than I thought, 'cause the latest bill shows that I'm just 3 away from the magical double digits. That's 102 KwH for an entire month. According to some of the stuff I've read lately, that's what the average inefficient homeowner uses in just two or three days. I'm not sure what to expect from the next bill. I broke down and ran the dryer a couple times since the end of that billing period, but I was also out of town for 5 days at RailsConf, and unplugged just about every damn thing I could before I left, so... we'll have to wait and see.

Speaking of RailsConf, part of my motivation for setting up this blog was to occasionally talk about Rails, which I have yet to do, so, here goes.

Thanks to the day job for paying all the registration fees and travel expenses for RailsConf. Considering I work for a non-profit now (and my previous job at a much bigger company would have done no such thing), that's pretty fucking amazing. Since this was the first conference of this sort I've been to, I wasn't sure what to expect. I was just one among lots and lots of geeks, and that wasn't surprising. But I think I expected more of the presentations to be low level "Let's dissect some code together" kind of things, and some of them certainly were. But there were also a lot of high level theory presentations that weren't even Rails specific. So, I think that kind of disappointed me. But that just means if I go next year I'll be a more discriminating about which presentations I go to.

One of my favorite presentations though was Josh Sussers's presentation on contributing to Rails Source. I'll not bore anyone with the details, but Josh gave point by point directions to get started and made it seem very easy to take part (assuming you can code), with the hardest part being having the patience to wait for someone to review your submissions. I guess there's a backlog of hundreds of tickets and patches waiting to be reviewed. I managed to corner Josh at the final reception in the lobby and get some tips. His big suggestion was to find a submitted patch that didn't come with a test. Then, write a test case that proves the patch fixes something, and add that to the ticket. So, that night back at the hotel I figured I'd browse around the rails bug tracking site and see what I could find. Well, before I knew it, 7 minutes before midnight Pacific Time, I'd submitted my first patch to Rails Source. So, now the waiting game begins.

There was one more thing that surprised me at RailsConf... a marching band... or at least that's what they called themselves. Twasn't anything like the marching band I was in in High School.

Note to self; To get Eclipse to recognize the Rails plugins in Feisty,..

• Install sun-java6-jre package
• cd /usr/lib/jvm
• sudo mv java-gcj java-gcj.old
• sudo ln -s java-6-sun-1.6.0.00 java-gcj

Ran into some issues ripping backups of DVD's on Ubuntu. First one worked fine but the second and third failed. I did a little research and quickly found the solution, so figured this might be a good time to document everything I know about the subject for future reference.

First of all, certain libraries are not included in any linux distro due to legal restrictions. Fortunately in Ubuntu, getting those libraries is pretty simple. This page has good instructions on how to get them. How the first DVD I tried worked without all this is beyond me, but I'm not too worried about it.

Next, install k9copy, xine, and k3b via System/Administration/Synaptic. k9copy is the Linux equivalent to DVDShrink.

Now, insert the DVD and use k9copy to backup the DVD to an iso file on your hard drive. Be sure to select the 'Keep Original Menus' option.

To watch the DVD directly from the iso, with the physical DVD safely stored on the shelf, run...
xine "dvd://full/path/from/root/to/file.iso"

To move the iso onto another physical DVD, use k3b.

Note that k9copy and k3b are technically KDE apps, but they both run just fine under gnome.

After a year of running a Microsoft Free Household(c), I've switched OS's again, although this switch was less drastic.

I've been hearing all kinds of whisperings about Ubuntu, and when I was presented with a laptop at work to take to RailsConf in a couple weeks, I naturally had to do something about the OS immediately. This seemed like a good opportunity to give Ubuntu a test drive.

All I can say is that I was immediately impressed. Here's a list of things that have traditionally been a pain in the ass with Fedora that somehow 'just work' in Ubuntu.

• Installing the Adobe Flash plugin.
• Installing codecs for mpeg, quicktime, and yes, even wmv movies.
• Wireless networking. Granted, it still took about 20-30 minutes to find instructions on the Ubuntu forums with links to the right drivers and get everything installed and working. But that's comparred to 2-3 unsuccessful days on Fedora. Did I mention they were unsuccessful?
• Wireless Encryption. Once non-encrypted wireless was working, getting connected to a WPA encrypted network was simply a matter of entering the key.

So, I haven't even been to the conference yet, and already the home computer has migrated, too. First thing I noticed on the home computer... everything is faster. And that's not just that new car feeling. I keep the system monitor running on my toolbar showing how much processor, memory, etc. the computer is using. Didn't usually take much to max out the processor on Fedora, but I didn't really notice much since things seemed to be just as fast as they were under Windows. Now I go do things that I KNOW used to max the processor all the time and it barely creeps over 50%.

So, If you're thinking of giving linux a try, I highly recommend Ubuntu. Try it, you'll like it, or your money back. Here's some install notes that I'm making as much for myself as anybody else who is interested.

Partitions. Default install for both Fedora and Ubuntu seems to be to put everything in '/' (root). I don't think that's wise, but maybe I'm just paranoid. So, here's the partitions I set my new install at home to, leaving 90+ Gigs unallocated for future expansion.

• '/' : Primary : 8G
• : Extended : 47G
  • '/tmp' : 2G
  • '/var' : 4G
  • '/usr' : 16G
  • '/home' : 20G

I also had a problem with links on webpages opening in new windows rather than new tabs, as the default firefox settings said to do. Solution:

• Change setting to open new links in new windows.
• Restart Firefox. (may not actually be necessary)
• Change setting back to 'new tab'.

And just to go off on a tangent, here's a string of seemingly random characters (0P8865365P65148QO53R47Q920119S90) that you would probably not have any need to reverse and ROT13, but who knows, maybe you'll be feeling rambunctious some day. Oh, and here's a seemingly unrelated link to a seemingly random story on seemingly random website.