http://www.chownlife.com/ Experiences and travails from a user/developer foraging through the Linux landscape. en-us 2008-07-09T15:54:22-06:00 http://www.chownlife.com/archives/2008/07/blogging_softwa.html Since I started at my new place in December, getting to my home server has been a challenge. We have a Cisco 871 firewall here. I soon noticed that all traffic to and from my server would be blocked at... Site Posts flynn 2008-07-09T15:54:22-06:00 http://www.chownlife.com/archives/2008/03/first_steps_in.html I'm starting to mess around in Flash. I finally bit the bullet and purchased a copy of Flash CS3 Pro (after trying endlessly to mess around with Open Source alternatives). I'd love to get some simple prototypes going, and my... Coding flynn 2008-03-19T09:13:17-06:00 http://www.chownlife.com/archives/2008/02/finding_the_pat.html Why the heck is it that we're perfectly happy to send the CPU off to do most other mundane tasks like modifying every single pixel, culling every errant vertex, and monitoring every directory for new music, but when I'm coding,... Coding flynn 2008-02-05T16:44:53-06:00 http://www.chownlife.com/archives/2008/01/feedback_produc.html So, for the longest time, I've worried that my upbringing was hampering my progress. I never achieve near as much as I think I should be able to. I've attributed that to two major things: 1) Being told constantly that... Design flynn 2008-01-04T12:29:27-06:00 http://www.chownlife.com/archives/2007/10/server_upgrade.html I've done a few of them so far. Redking is now running on a shiny new mobo/proc combo, has 2 GB of ram, and much more drive space for the home & web directories. Also, I got a DVI video... flynn 2007-10-11T14:01:46-06:00 http://www.chownlife.com/archives/2007/10/rtfm_if_you_can.html I find that most of my problems figuring out how to do something: 1) How to properly classify the problem 2) Where to find the information once it's classified For example, I have 2 machines that I run. One is... flynn 2007-10-03T16:16:16-06:00 http://www.chownlife.com/archives/2007/08/slipping_throug.html Ok, so here's how the new package management for distributions is supposed to work. You use your favorite manager (yum, apt-get, etc), you install the binary, and then away you go. For the longest time, I would have problems with... Configuration/Installation flynn 2007-08-22T13:26:30-06:00 http://www.chownlife.com/archives/2007/08/the_gutwrenchin.html So, there was a post on Slashdot recently that epitomized the frustrating thrill that you can get with a complex system like Linux. Basically, Linux evolved from Unix. Unix files have a time stamp called "atime." What atime means is... Configuration/Installation flynn 2007-08-13T12:19:35-06:00 http://www.chownlife.com/archives/2007/07/vblank_redux_and_another_flaw_in_being_a_user_in_the_open_source_community.html Ok, so my last post was wrong. The setting in drirc does NOT sync to vblank. My latest guess is that it's not supported in the r300 branch of the radeon driver, but I can't tell for sure. Here's the... Configuration/Installation flynn 2007-07-20T12:21:37-06:00 http://www.chownlife.com/archives/2007/07/syncing_to_vblank.html So, I've upgraded my desktop box to Fedora 7. I like it a lot. It's mostly a bug fix/refinement release (IMHO), but there's one glaring omission: in order to run the ATI fglrx driver you have to roll back to... Configuration/Installation flynn 2007-07-18T02:01:26-06:00 http://www.chownlife.com/archives/2007/06/network_fun.html So, my server is redking. I've got a unique setup with two network cards so I can have protected access to it from the internal network, but all other traffic comes from the outside. As a result, configuring it has... Configuration/Installation flynn 2007-06-19T11:24:32-06:00 http://www.chownlife.com/archives/2007/06/crashy_crashy.html In the past year or so, I've had more hard drives fail on me than in the previous 20 years combined (we got our first hard drive in our IBM PC in around 1985, I believe). I don't know what... Hardware flynn 2007-06-11T16:09:39-06:00 http://www.chownlife.com/archives/2007/05/feedback.html Ok, so in many ways I like the idea of programming so much more than the actual coding itself. One of the major problems I've found I have is one of feedback. It doesn't even necessarily mean feedback from others,... Coding flynn 2007-05-25T18:43:00-06:00 http://www.chownlife.com/archives/2007/05/the_frustration_of_open_source.html I love Open Source, don't get me wrong. Since I've migrated to Linux, I've been able to do WAY more for cheaper. I've also been able to do things I wouldn't have ordinarily been able to do. But...the community has... Software flynn 2007-05-25T13:58:00-06:00 http://www.chownlife.com/archives/2007/04/preserving_ancient_video.html Pretty much since I saw Buck Rogers on TV in the 80's, I've been obsessed with archival. I think it was because they made a point of having that section in each show where Buck explained the crazy 20th century... Hardware flynn 2007-04-21T23:10:00-06:00