Drinkable Chicken

Fortunately for all rumor mongers, it was indeed a tablet that was announced by Apple today. They would have looked quite silly if it had been something else. :-)

From what I’ve seen so far, I like it. As usual, there’s a large number of bloggers and commenters who disagree, sometimes with valid arguments, but most of them seem to be of the flavor “oh noes it has no camera” or “it’s just a large iPod Touch”. Whatevs. Most people won’t care, they will just use it for videos, music, web surfing, reading books and magazines, email, instant messaging, and much more, without a steep learning curve. Sure, it’s not a replacement for a “real” laptop or desktop computer, but I don’t think it was intended to be anyway.

Personally speaking, I do want one, but not immediately when it becomes available. Not only do I not have the funds for it at the moment (I was unemployed for ~5 months last year, remember), but also, from what I have seen, it’s better to wait when buying hot new Apple products. (Remember the iPhone price drop?) Chances are the price will go down, or the low-end model will be beefed up. They will likely also need time to iron out the wrinkles in the operating system, and developers would need time to start writing apps specifically for the iPad.

(When/if I have money to blow, I would probably sign up for the developer program and start writing apps. And in spite of the App Store restrictions, I might be able to use Scheme! :-)

One thing I am wondering is if the touch screen will work (or can be made to work) with a stylus… essentially you’d then have a Wacom drawing pad. Coupled with the right software, that could be a great tool for artists. (Or musicians… imagine a Kaossilator app…)

So I installed Gentoo Linux the other day… I then spent most of Friday night and Saturday (I know, I am lame =) trying to set the console font to a size that I liked.

Backstory: Gentoo insists on booting up in a resolution of 1024×768 on the iMac, and then sets the console dimensions to 128×48, which leads to a font that is just a little too small for me to read comfortably on this screen. So I spent a lot of time trying to set the resolution to 800×600, hoping that this would lead to a larger font. Under OS X, that resolution works fine, but under Gentoo, the machine refuses to recognize it. Or rather, it ignores video settings that I pass, or the screen goes blank and the computer seems to hang. Pretty weird. At some point I even tracked down the driver in the kernel source, changed it to boot into 800×600, recompiled and reinstalled… which had the same effect as manually setting the resolution, i.e. the computer hangs.

So eventually I started looking for larger console fonts. There aren’t many… there’s the Sigma font, and Terminus… I am using that last one now, and I don’t like it too much, but at least I can read what I’m writing. :-) Fortunately, the sources of both fonts are available, which means I can change them to my liking, or create my own font (eventually). ^_^

Other than that, Gentoo works great on the iMac. Network worked right out of the box, which is essential as many packages can be downloaded using emerge.

Well, back to my hacking configuration hell… :-)

So, I got my old/new iMac yesterday. I figured I’d try installing Gentoo on it, and if that didn’t work, try an easier install like Ubuntu or Yellow Dog. As it happens, the install worked fine. I did a minimal install, compiled the kernel, etc… and to my surprise, ended up with a working Linux system. :-) (I expected it to be crazy difficult, but it wasn’t so bad.)

I recommend trying this; it’s a great learning experience when you don’t know much about what makes Linux tick. I learned a lot, anyway.

Although the PPC version is not “official” (it’s supported by the community), it appears to be up-to-date and the installation went well. Granted, there were a few parts in the handbook that worked a bit differently in the newest version of Gentoo, but nothing I couldn’t figure out. Overall, the manual did an excellent job of guiding me through all the steps (many of which I had never done before, like setting up a file system from the command line, or preparing and compiling a kernel).

Now I just need to find a way to set the text mode to something lower than 128×48, and I’m golden… =)

So this week I will be getting my “new” iMac, and I want to install some version of Linux on it. However, the following restrictions apply:

• This is actually an old iMac from around 2000-2001 or so. Specs: G3/450, 256 Mb of memory, 20 Gb hard drive, DVD-R. (Note that this is a PowerPC.)
• Linux should run in text mode only. (For various reasons, e.g. to save space, because the machine isn’t really equipped to run GUIs smoothly, and because I actually LIKE text mode. :-)
• I want to do as much as possible with this machine, so any distro that caters to text mode users (more so than usual), gets extra points.
• Although I have a few years of experience with Unixoid systems, I am not all that familiar with Linux per se, so the distro should probably not require expert knowledge.

So far I am considering Ubuntu (server install), Debian, and maybe Gentoo. (Although I don’t know how difficult it is to use… the compilation part doesn’t scare me… and the Portage package management system is apparently written in Python, which is interesting.)

Are there any other distros that would be suitable for a PPC with limited hardware?

WordPress just ate my post. Don’t you just love web apps? It’s going to be even better when (as people predict) *everything* will be “in the cloud”, so I can spend all day typing in a cramped input field in a browser window, and then be unable to access my data OR my programs when my internet connection acts up. >=(

Sorry, maar dit moet ik even kwijt. Ik zie steeds meer artikelen die de uitdrukking “de jaren tachtig van de twintigste eeuw” gebruiken (of jaren negentig, enz). Wat is dat voor onzin? Waarom niet gewoon “de jaren tachtig”? Dat het niet over de jaren tachtig van deze eeuw gaat, snap ik ook wel. In plaats daarvan voegen we het volslagen nutteloze “van de twintigste eeuw” toe, alsof dit heel erg lang geleden is. Misschien zijn deze teksten geschreven door personen van 15 jaar oud of zo, die zich de twintigste eeuw niet kunnen herinneren?

Ah… 2010. It seems my website survived, and so did I.

I don’t really have any resolutions, other than that I generally want to move toward more simplicity and minimalism, in my personal projects (programming-related and otherwise), but also in my life.

One of the things I want to try is to set up a dedicated machine that only has a command line interface, no GUI or other kind of desktop environment. To this effect, I picked up an iMac G3 from eBay (for $70 including S&H — can’t beat that :-). When it gets here next week or so, I plan to install some sort of Linux on it… maybe Debian or an Ubuntu server edition for PPC. I want to use the “new” machine for as much as possible: hackery, but also stuff like blogging, chat, and maybe keeping up with social networks, as long as they have command line interfaces. (But all the important stuff should work: Emacs, vim, svn, git, programming languages, zsh, IRC…)

Of course I won’t be able to do *everything* on an old iMac with a text prompt. Work will be done on my new HP Mini 311, for example. Other things like burning CDs, reading comics or blaring my music will still be done on the MacBook. Etc.

But, the idea is that the command line should help me focus. Modern computing environments can be very distracting. Multitasking operating systems are great (wouldn’t want to go back to the MS-DOS days, which was the last time I really used text mode), but that doesn’t mean I want to see everything at once. As more and more applications become web-based, this only becomes more of an issue, as many web pages are overloaded with links, sidebars, menus, ads, search boxes, irrelevant images, etc. Not too mention that it’s way too easy to click on this link, and that one, and oh yeah did I get an email back yet, and who’s on Facebook right now?

I am not a luddite… but it may be a good idea to have an alternative environment where all of this information overload doesn’t necessarily happen. Or at least, where it’s not right in your face.

I also, finally, figured out that I love text. Many of the projects I did, am doing or want to do, are centered around text. Some of these things keep coming back, like writing text adventure frameworks, interpreters / compilers / assemblers, client-side blogging tools, text editors, even roguelikes (still text!). I love languages (both programming and “natural”), reading, writing, blogging… so what better environment to do all this than a text prompt? :-)

(Using a text editor sure beats having to type your blog post in a 400×200 frame inside a browser window, I tell ya.)

Related to this are a few minor sub-goals, by the way. I turned off aMule. I got a Palm Zire last year that has been helping me become more organized. Keeping workroom and bedroom tidy (well, as far as that works around here :-) seems to help too, and so does getting rid of stuff you don’t really need or use. Hopefully all this means that I will have more time for important stuff, like studying, spending time with family, or maybe picking up some old pastimes, like painting.

I talk too much… apparently the focusing has not taken effect yet. :-) Happy new year!