The Windows-to-Linux roadmap: Series Overview has a lot of good information for the technically interested. It includes articles on logging, file system setup and networking.
Afternoon shadows
Jack took this photo on our walk yesterday. There are deer, but they are too far away to distinguish them.
Faux postage card
Emboldened by my success with the CD burner, I started working on getting my Epson 610 scanner to work with Linux. It now works, although I am not completely sure of which of the many things I tried succeeded. USB scanners don’t seem to have good support under Linux.
I made this faux postage card for a swap last spring featuring cards using eyelets. The base of the card is white. I added a black border with Gimp so the card would show up.
k3b
k3b rocks (almost). This morning, I managed to burn my first CD under Linux. I used an application called k3b, which allows burning CDs and DVDs in a variety of formats. Unfortunately, I was slowed down by k3b being set up to use the KDE desktop environment, so I had to use KDE to run the k3bsetup utility. However, it all seems to be working now under my normal Gnome environment.
Branches
I just found this one, taken a few mornings ago, in my camera.
Grip
I’ve been using grip to transfer some of my CDs to my fixed disk so I can them replay them with “xmms”:http://www.xmms.org/. Although I like to listen to music when I am working at my computer, I find it tedious to continually have to switch cds in the cup holder. Right now, I have over 400 songs by thirty artists and groups. Grip, as indicated by its name, grabs a stranglehold on the computer resources, but hidden in the configuration tabs is a place where you can tell it to play “nice”:http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man1/nice.1.html so you can use your computer for other activities at the same time.
Reading as a child
Epersonae’s emergency weblog entry reminds me of my own bemusement when I used to see those library programs enticing children to read ten books in the summer. I was lucky if I could make ten books last me a week. The high point of my week during the summers was when my mother would go to Safeway, and drop me off at the Gaithersburg library on the way. I can still visualize the layout of the old library, which was replaced by a much larger version after it burned down.
It was easier during the school year, when I volunteered in the library before school started so that I could make sure I had my two or three books to last me through the day. (Yes, I read them in classes. At the time, I didn’t realize that my teachers had to know I was doing it, but I don’t recall ever being reprimanded for it.)
Linux Redux
After two months of using Linux in a dual boot system with Windows 98, I decided I was ready for a 100% Linux box. Friday night, Jack and I went to a local store front that assembles generic machines, picked a machine, and waited while they installed the upgrades that I wanted. The guy slapped components in so quickly I wondered if the system would work when I got it home. However, the next morning, I quickly installed Redhat 9 Linux, which is what I had been using on my dual-boot machine. Getting it customized the way I like is taking much longer, of course.
Continue reading Linux Redux
Lily and Major
I hadn’t schooled Lily with my trainer recently, so we made tentative arrangements to do so yesterday. Although Lily seemed a little more alert than usual when I tacked her up, I was surprised when I mounted her and she felt as though she was going to explode. She rarely acts like what she is: a young half-Thoroughbred. I quickly dismounted and put her on a longe line and waited for her to turn back into a horse I wanted to ride. She would apparently settle down for a bit, and then explode into a fit of galloping or bucking.
Continue reading Lily and Major
Three Deer
These three deer were part of a small herd that Jack and I saw while we were walking the dogs this afternoon.