Older blog entries for AArthur (starting at number 21)

iMacLinux

3.0, maybe? At any rate, iMacLinux is now on it's own dedicated box, at John Buswell's house, connected via. a 2MB commerical line. So, in theory, mysql failures are a thing of a past, and it should be up most of the time.

PowerMacLinux.net is up and running, thanks mostly to the person who does the crap nobody else wants to work on it (or doesn't have to time to). Okay, I'm giving myself to much credit.

I fixed up the links, into a nice organized right sidebar. As you can see, with the new Nope revision, stuff got alot nicer (none of those really nasty URLs now). Moving onto the new machine, and the new Nope revision broke some things, I'm working on getting it all fixed up.

Yes, I spent alot of time redesigning the sidebars over the weekend. And updating pages. Of course nobody ever looks at them or cares.

So check out the new revision. Yes, I know the DNS isn't right for www.imaclinux.net -- it's pointing to the old Sourceforge host. It's suppostly being fixed, but imaclinux.net works. Not to worry, I've been prepared, made the head story on Sourceforge, that we have moved, and for those who can't read, added a meta refresh to the page to take you to the new site.

Scouts

Tommorow night, at 8 PM, I'm meeting with Edge to finish up (hopefully) on Personal Management and Family Life. Then on to, getting paper shuffled, and ready to be sent in. I can't wait.

iMacLinux

Sourceforge MySQL crap appears to be down again. Once it's up again, then you can see, the "Around iMacLinux" section on the right sidebar.

Somebody (forgets name, like usual) has volunteered to help out with PowerBookLinux.net. Good, it would be nice to get the site under work now.

Insanely Great Macintosh has an interesting article on Ten Greatest PowerBooks of all time.

Scouts

Tonight's a scout meeting at the church. The snow has stopped, so it looks like it's going to happen today. Hopefully tonight, the other scouts will show there info that they have suppostly gather over the week. Besides the meeting, not much has changed since the last meeting.

Society

Here is something somebody relayed to me via email:

PLEASE PASS ON TO ANYONE WHO MAY BE INTERESTED.

Do you think the Anti-Gay policy of the Boy Scouts of America is wrong?

Well, here's your chance to do something about it.

The CDCIS would like to invite you to our:

COMMUNITY ACTION MEETING Wednesday, December 6th 7:00pm - 8:00pm Trinity Temple 279 Whitehall Rd, Albany

There will be a quick informational presentation followed by an open forum to ask questions and discuss the issues. At the end of the meeting, you will be able to volunteer for different parts of the coalition. We hope to see you there!

The Capital District Coalition for Inclusive Scouting is sponsored by the CDGLCC.

While it sounds interesting, I think that they do have to draw the line at some point at moral values. Where they stand right now, I believe is reasonable, excluding those who have done things that are socially unacceptable.

But then again, it's all relative to what your defination of socially acceptable it. Mine is probably different from yours. I don't condemn it, but I do support there positition that it is morally wrong.

iMacLinux

Check out the Nubus PowerMac Kernel Compiling Howto, that I posted today. It's been a bit slow news week, so not much has been posted.

Scouts

Stuff is starting to slow down. Still working on what to do at the meeting on Thursday. Need to get a second coat of paint for my sister's room, to finish up my Family Life group project with my sister.

Besides that, I still need to get Mr. Rapp to sign my Eagle Project book, although I did get a letter of thanks from him. I also have to go over my Personal Management Budget, not to mention going over the Family Life stuffs.

School

For college, I am thinking in studying Political Science, and a carrer involving Goverment (obviously). I probably will attend Hudson Valley Community College for the first two years, then for the second two years SUNY Albany. Obviously, I'm more certain about the first, I have to think more about the second.

Albany is a good area to live in for studying this, as the State Goverment is in New York. SUNY Albany offers an intern program, that lets Juniors and Seniors in college work with the State Goverment.

Not to mention, I like this area alot, as much of New York State. It also mean, I can save some money going to college, as I won't have to pay for board.

I'm 45 out of 92 in the Greenville Centeral Class of 2001. My overall GPA is 80.2. That said, I've taken fairly difficult classes, such as Course IV and Physics. My Social Studies total average is around a 90, which isn't that bad. I took the SATs in November, I don't have the score yet.

I figure I'll start out at a community college, as it will be slightly easier, and I will be able to get into a better school for the final 2 years, then if I started out in a 4 year college.

I decided to go into the field of Political Science instead of a computer related field because:

  • Math is hard for me.
  • I've became more cynical of technology and computers lately, especially with the enviromental dangers and physical damage of users to/of them.
  • I enjoy working with real people, dealing with real issues.
  • Between experiences in Scouts, and stuff I have learned in High School, politics are more interesting then computers.
  • Can you say, boring programming classes, doing lame qbasic or VBasic shit?

    I plan to send in my application to HVCC in a couple of weeks, then sometime in January take a tour, and meet with admissions.

  • iMacLinux

    I fixed up the XFree86 4.0 howto, with the corrections <blanksout>somebody</blanksout> sent me. Thanks, Again for them.

    Also up on iMacLinux is a new Howto written by me, dealing with mounting .iso images in Mac OS, and burning them using Adaptec Toast. Somebody was asking me about how to do this yesterday on IRC, so I decided to create a Howto.

    As always, we are looking for help over at iMacLinux. Eventhough I am the current content maintainer, as you can see I'm very busy (and it's a big project) we need all the help we can get.

    You don't need to be an expert to help, or have lots of free time. Beelers, who is helping with parts of iBookLinux.net, is very busy, still he manages to help out. I'm no expert either, with only about 2 1/2 years Linux experience, and about 6 years Mac OS experience.

    Scouts

    There has been a small update to the Troop 89 Website, mainly with updated dates and news.

    This weekend I plan to work on my Family Life MB group project, which involves painting my sister's room. Cool. I want to get it done.

    Society

    As I sit in a candle-lit room, next to my computer, I sit back and look at society. Today as you all know was Black Friday. Yes, the hellish day in the city, where people rush to Mr. Big Commerical. I sit in disbelive over the fights I hear about on the news about getting a parking space at Toys 'R Us, just to get the latest wizbang toy. I guess the blame goes on the stupid kids who demand the toys -- but is the fault the adults.

    Any rate, it's over, and I avoided it completely, by staying up in my room, in my house in the middle of nowhere.

    Holiday Sprit

    Excluding all of the Consumerism stuff I talked about above, I love the Holidays. Yesterday I watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Prade on NBC, followed by "It's A Wonderful Life". That's the truth.

    Life is fun. You should always have fun. And sometimes forget your worries and cares. Christmas is a reflection of life, and how great it truely is. The Holidays show people's love to one and another (excluding the parking lots).

    Today, I have been listening to Mp3s, that I have downloading mostly from OpenNap. And, yes I own records and or CDs of most of them, but I am too lazy to rip them by myself. Christmas music is awsome, especially alot of the older stuff (from the fourties, fifities and the sixities) -- like Bobby Helm's Jingle Bell Rock, Bing Crosby's It's a White Christmas, Nat "King" Cole's The Christmas Song, Andy Willam's It's the Most Wondeful Time of The Year, Lou Montie's Dominick the Italian Christmas Donkey, etc.

    Of course, Nat "King" Cole has that cool song "Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer" for summer too.

    iMacLinux

    Those of you who reguluarly read iMacLinux, will notice our new discussion question. The idea is that every few weeks we post a question to everybody in general, with the author's opinion of the question, and readers can give there feed back.

    This week it's about the "Quik" booter loader, and distro's support of it. It posts the question of should distros support it, and to what extend. I brought this topic up, as Quik documentation is hard to get at now days, and while most distros include Quik, there is no automated install when setting up the distro, like is avalible for yaboot (in the October LinuxPPC release).

    Future ideas for discussions include:

  • What area of PowerMac-specific configurations needs the most improvements?
  • Which PowerMac model do you recommend?
  • Old World vs. New World vs. CHRP. Which OpenFirmware is the nicest to work with, and get working.

    Also, I have another G&H in the works, but it's not ready yet...

    Thanksgiving

    The long Thanksgiving day week is finally here. I can't wait until Thanksgiving dinner, not to mention the prades and "It's a Wonderful Life".

    Speaking of that, I now have ripped several of my Christmas CD's (and downloaded songs I have on records and CDs and some others <grin>), so I have a nice collection to listen to for the holidays.

    Scouts

    I got my Family Life family council done. Now I just have to write it up, and run it by Edge. I heard back from Mr. Rapp over the weekend, he is sending me a letter of thanks, I'll try to get him to sign off my Eagle Service Leadership book soon. All I have left now is my Family Group Project (a holiday video for my Grandparents), and all of that wonderful paperwork stuff. I really want to have the paperwork filed by the weekend of December 5 (the weekend after this one).

    School

    Yesterday, I did my Particapation in Goverment presentation on FCC's decission to suspend the fair time act. I'm glad to have that done, and I am glad I am now going on break from school, until next Monday.

  • It's a Friday. I can (at last!) leave in 25 minutes. And then to bed (eventhough I am not as tired as I was last week).

    Today, I added a projects page to this site. iMacLinux was up for a while yesterday, it appears sourceforge mysql stuff was working for a while. But now it's not. :Z/

    I plan to have ready another G&H for iMacLinux around midnight.

    It's possible that within the next week it will be moved to John's machine, but as I have said before, I have no control over that.

    At scouts last night, the X Patrol discussed planning and excuting events, while the neos worked on other stuff.

    I plan to get Family Life and Personal Management wrapped up this week, and meet with Edge Bagg next week. I still need to also get ahold of Mr. Rapp to get final approval on my Eagle Project.

    I got my report card today (I'm a Senior in Greenville), my grades were: drama 88, chorus 81, gym 87, physics 64, pig 90 and 65 in precalc. Besides the 64 in Physics I'm pretty happy. Bit upset about that, I wonder if that includes the makeup test I took, and Miss. Orris didn't know where they were for a while.

    Okay, this qbasic shit in Advanced Computer class is really getting on my nevers. Especially how you declare strings with a $ at the end of stuff. I much prefer the way bash works. Luckly this is my final qbasic project. I plan to make it my last one (assuming I don't have to do this crap in college).

    Here is another lame qbasic program I did for my beginning programming class:

    'Formula Program
    
    

    CLS

    choose: PRINT PRINT " finUN - (c) 2000, Andrew Arthur, BSDL" PRINT PRINT "This program finds the area of a variety of shapes." PRINT PRINT "Type of Shape Your Finding Area of:" PRINT " 1) Circle" PRINT " 2) Square" PRINT " 3) Rectangle" PRINT " 4) Triangle" PRINT " 5) Octogon" PRINT " 6) Oval" PRINT " 7) Exit finUN" PRINT PRINT "Note: Hitting Return will Quit This Program." PRINT

    INPUT "Type of Shape: ", shape$ PRINT

    IF shape$ = "1" THEN GOTO cir IF shape$ = "2" THEN GOTO squ IF shape$ = "3" THEN GOTO rec IF shape$ = "4" THEN GOTO tri IF shape$ = "5" THEN GOTO oct IF shape$ = "6" THEN GOTO ova IF shape$ = "" OR shape$ = "7" THEN GOTO intheend CLS PRINT " INVALID Value! " PRINT "" PRINT "Please Try Again." PRINT "" GOTO choose

    cir: INPUT "Diameter of the circle: ", diacir INPUT "Units: ", unitcir$ diacir1 = diacir ^ 2 diacir2 = diacir1 * 3.14 PRINT "The Size of the Circle is: "; diacir2; unitcir$; " Squared" SLEEP 100000 devnull$ = INKEY$ CLS GOTO choose

    squ: INPUT "Length of Square: ", sqrl INPUT "Width of Square: ", sqrw INPUT "Units of Measurement: ", unitsqr$ arsq = sqrl * sqrw PRINT "Area of the Square is: "; arsq; unitsqr$; " Squared"

    SLEEP 100000 devnull$ = INKEY$ CLS GOTO choose

    rec: INPUT "Length of Rectangle: ", recl INPUT "Width of Rectangle: ", recw INPUT "Units of Measurement: ", unitrec$ arec = recl * recw PRINT "Area of the Square is: "; arec; unitrec$; " Squared" SLEEP 100000 devnull$ = INKEY$ CLS GOTO choose

    tri: INPUT "Length of Rectangle: ", recl INPUT "Width of Rectangle: ", recw INPUT "Units of Measurement: ", unitstri$ arei = (recl * recw) / 2 PRINT "Area of the Square is: "; arei; unitstri; " Squared" SLEEP 100000 devnull$ = INKEY$ CLS GOTO choose

    oct: PRINT "This finds the parameter of an Octagon with sides all of " PRINT "the same lenght." PRINT INPUT "What is the length of ones side of the Octagon: "; oct1 INPUT "Units of Measument: "; octmeas$

    oct2 = oct1 * 8 PRINT "The size of the Octagon's Parameter is: "; oct2; octmeas$; " Squared" SLEEP 100000 devnull$ = INKEY$ CLS GOTO choose

    ova: INPUT "What is the diameter of the Oval: ", diaova INPUT "Units:", unitcir$ diaova1 = diaova ^ 2 diaova2 = diaova1 * 3.14 PRINT "The Size of the Oval is: "; diaova2; unitcir$; " Squared" SLEEP 100000 devnull$ = INKEY$ CLS GOTO choose

    intheend: CLS END

    16 Nov 2000 (updated 16 Nov 2000 at 04:12 UTC) »

    First off, I want to appologize for the stuff that's been going on down at iMacLinux.net. I have no control over it (nor does any of the iMacLinux staff), I don't even have an shell at the machine at question.

    What's going on? Sourceforge's mysql database is reguluarly refusing connections. Nope, the iMacLinux engine written by Stew Bendict, stores it's data in this database, and it's essential for it's proper operation. He has sent in a help request to Sourceforge, but it has yet to be anwsered.

    So where does that leave us? For now, the site will be hard to access at times, try reloading the page. Sorry. In the very near future, John will be hosting this site on his own machine, that he will have full (root) control over. The only problem to expect with this, is it is on a somewhat limited bandwidth -- which shouldn't be a problem, except due to Slashdoting problems.

    In short, this is what's happened over the past week:

  • New News Articles on iMacLinux (Me)
  • Work on Preparing the New Box (Stew, John)
  • Work on Yaboot GH Again (Me)

    Now the rest of what's going on with my life. Finished up Personal Fitness Merit Badge. Very Happy to have it done. Haven't been on the 'ride' lately.

    Work on Eagle Scout is starting to wrap up -- it's about time, as I need to have it into council by early December. All I have left is:

  • Family Life Group Project - Probably A Family Video
  • Family Life Family Council
  • Get Final Approval on Eagle Project by Town Supervisor Mr. Rapp

    On the Window Manager front, I have decided to change from KDE 2 to Blackbox + GNOME apps, at least for now, for speed reasons. I may go back in the future, I haven't decided for sure. I also messed around with my pppd stuff, so it now dials up on demand (and disconnects upon idle). That's neat.

  • Sorry, I meant to get this up last night, but I feel asleep.

    Here is a rundown of stuff I've been working on over at iMacLinux.net:

  • Some new Howtos. See iMacLinux Guides and Howtos for details. New ones include the Xpmac one, fbset. We do need an X11 catgory. I could add one, except I don't have an scp account on the iMacLinux machine yet.

  • News articles. Although it's been slow lately. I've been trying to avoid the whole PenguinPPC vs. LinuxPPC.org stuff, if you can't tell. I did post an article about that, and well one of the sides (the PenguinPPC people) weren't exactly thrilled about it, so I removed it.

  • Sidebar stuffs. I'm trying to organize the sidebar. I have to talk to staff@imaclinux.net later about what exactly they want to do about that.

    Other stuff going on at iMacLinux, is John Buswell is still working on getting the SDSL line to run the site on, the machine he is going to be running it on is almost up and working.

    PenguinPPC linked us last week. Cool.

    I'm considering volunteering to help out on the LinuxPPC.org site soon. Time is the big thing there. I'm looking at the Desktop Enviroments part, and possible some other sections.

    PenguinPPC is looking for a new look and feel. Take a look at the choices from here, and send a email to Jeramy Smith on what you think.

    I guess that's about it.

  • Wow. It's November already. I just got back from the Scout meeting, it was quite suprising the number of deer on or next to the road. And yes, you can tell it's November in Clarksville, due to the wood smokey, cow shitty heavy air. Which reminds me, I have to get my butt together on this scout stuff.

    Yes, my TI-89 came on Monday. Halloween was awsome (yes, I stayed home and slept through it). I had great fun on the Copland Hill Campout.

    On the iMacLinux front, the sidebar is being redone, and some of the howtos and guides have been updated or added. PenguinPPC, added a link to the site in their sidebar. Hopefully soon I'll be doing more stuff with that site, especially if John comes up with ideas on how to work together.

    The whole LinuxPPC.org vs. PenguinPPC.org is very stupid if you haven't heard already. Last week these sites split apart, due to silly bickering (over the fact that Jeramy wouldn't give Jeff Carr an account on PenguinPPC). Kids, it's time to grow up. Jeff isn't out there to turn PenguinPPC into a advertisement for LinuxPPC. Heck, he has been grumbling about making LinuxPPC, Inc. into a non-profit. Of course an interactive kind of thing would be cool, but Jeramy feels that would be a security risk.

    I've decided not to take sides on this issue, and generally ignore it to whatever extent possible. That said, I'm siding more with Jeramy Smith on this issue, mainly because PenguinPPC has the developer backing. Okay, enough of this stuff.

    The good news is Turkey day is coming closer and closer. Yum. Prades, Turkey, Stuffing, Gravy, "It's a Wonderful Life" are all on my mind. I'm taking the SAT's on Saturday, if you cared.

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