It just irks me, it just absolutely disconcerts me how Mac Fanboys can call their fanaticism a 'social movement around a computer'.

Especially because I know exactly what a worthwhile social movement around a computer should be, and that this unflinching and misguided loyalty to a man and his company has only succeeded in making them purchase, zombie - like, anything it produces with nary a care as to quality or ability, can only lead to disillusionment.

And in their pursuit of its products, how the only culture they are producing is one of absolute consumerism. In fact, an even worse kind, because it does not even care to look at alternatives and blindingly adheres to the beliefs of just one company.

And that again, it's such an intense waste of time and money, when their efforts could be more effectively applied to said worthwhile cause.

Sigh.

I can't wait to watch this.

Dear People of PLUG:
A week ago I received a proposal from a company called Firsteventsasia (Firsteventsasia.com).

They do events, and are holding one of those generic IT ones called 'Philippine Information Technology Expo and Business Solutions Summit' on Sep 30 - Oct 2 at Philippine Trade and Training Center, Roxas Blvd.

Anyway they want an ex-deal. They are giving us a venue for an EB / gathering in exchange for plugging their event on our website.

Here's the text from their proposal:

Philippine International Information Technology Expo 2008 Information Technology for the Enterprise "Bridging Digital Divide in the Country Today"

On Sept. 30 - Oct 2, 2008, we will be holding the Philippine Information Technology Expo and Business Solutions Summit with a theme "Bridging Digital Divide in the Country Today" back to back with a IT Jobs Fair at the Philippine Trade Training Center Roxas Boulevard Pasay City. .

EVENT HIGHLIGHTS
- Multiple Conference Tracks with top level executives speaking on the podium!
- A plenary session geared to address technological advancements and the digital divide in the country today
- Country Pavilions by participating countries
- Job Fair for the IT enabled services industry

In view of all these, we would like to have you as one of our supporting associations for the event. By being one you will have the following benefits:

a. You may give your collaterals or leaflets at the venue
b. Your Logo and Company will be tagged as Supporting Associations and be included in the event advertising materials like Posters, Magazines and Newspapers
c. Your Logo will be included in the Invitation Letters sent to IT Company Offices and Website Media Partner Pages
d. Your Company Logo will be included in the event website for 1 year with active link linking to your website
e. Your Company will be acknowledged 10 times per day on the event
f. You may do a presentation at the stage area (this is on a first come first serve basis)

If you need a booth/E. B Station in our event, you can request to us as early as possible so that we can arrange it as early as possible also.

In exchange for all these we will only ask to place a banner ad to be prominently displayed at your website months before the event and usage of your organization logo.

You will greatly honor us with your support in this endeavor. We believe that this ambitious undertaking would be more possible to happen with your company at our side. Please don't hesitate to call me in our numbers below for any inquiries. We would like to thank you for your time and more power to you and your company!

I'm particularly interested in the 'presentation at the stage area' and 'booth/EB station'.

I'm thinking this is a good chance for us to hang out and get together, while checking out the other stuff going on at the event, and maybe hold a nice conference or two, where people can just talk about stuff they're doing (like topics we discussed in an earlier post). I'm not really interested in promoting PLUG - instead we can use this event to get a chance to meet and greet, do a show and tell, and if someone has a prepared topic to talk about, discuss stuff there.

I'm willing to 'man' the booth (if we'll get one), and help sched an activity or two. We can be very informal about this, and just work out stuff as we go along. In other words, no stress sana (who wants that?)

The good thing about this is that there is NO COST on our part. Pawis lang, 'ika nga.

what do you think guys? I wanna get some 'yeah looks good' votes before saying yes, or if there's an argument against doing such a thing, let's hear it.

Gary

I've completely installed Ubuntu Horny Herod and here are my notes. BTW I know that's not the name, I'm just protesting against the downright fugly name. Can't they give it a proper, cooler name? I mean, 'Hardy Heron'?! I can't imagine the general populace to get turned on by that name, really.

Anyway, here's some thoughts:

1. Downloading the Ubuntu Torrent was a breeze. Installation isn't for newbies as I chose to do manual partitioning instead of the guided stuff, which confused me more than helped. I had two 40gb. partitions and I wanted to install Ubuntu on the first (NTFS) partition, while retaining access to the 2nd (FAT32) partition. Otherwise I kept the rest at default (monitor, keyboard, network settings, etc.) and that's fairly a no brainer. Newbies won't have a hard time installing on a fresh machine and IMO, this is just as easy or easier than Win.

2. On the other hand, updating after installation took an hour ++, which again can turn off newbies eager to get going. I played around with it a bit then realized that Update Manager had something like 129 updates raring to go, so I scheduled to do that when I watched TV instead.
3. The default burnt orangey theme is ugly for lack of a better term. It dawned on me that Kubuntu (KDE powered Ubuntu) might've been the better choice, because KDE was (is?) known to be the prettier one and Gnome the more hardcore. I've switched to the clearlook theme and its prettier, but to get really mainstream, we need 'stunning beautiful' rather than just 'passing good to look at'. Need to check options here.
4. For my own needs, I immediately installed Bluefish, which I'm using to write this. From what little I've used, it's just as intuitive as my previous favorite, Homesite. Also installed Filezilla, and then realized I didn't back up the URLs and passwords of my FTP accounts. Brilliant. Spent an hour or two setting that back up to spec.
5. I thought I'd get working on WINE to get Photoshop 7 going, but I worked on GIMP a while ago to resize a few pics and, true enough, (some) of the keyboard shortcuts and commands (seem) to be applicable. I really need to figure out whether Photoshop will really work on this or not so I have to install it, but if GIMP can do the everyday stuff without me having to relearn everything, hey why not?
6. This package bundles Firefox 3 Beta 5, which improves on auto - complete when you're typing in a URL on the browser, giving you lots of choices, which is cool. I certainly hope Firefox improves from the extremely buggy previous versions I was using the last time. For a previously no - name browser brand to make it in the cutthroat industry they're in, they've gotta not drop the ball. Unfortunately, I've been less than happy with previous versions so I'm hoping this one doesn't suck.
7. The most contentious issue that needs to be dealt with is that of the instant messengers, which if we're gonna introduce to internet cafes need to act and look as much like Yahoo, MSN or Gtalk as much as possible. Without which, we're gonna have some issues. I'm trying Pidgin right now, and Kopete afterwards, so we'll see.
8. Lastly, gaming needs to get done, so I'll try Warcraft first, and maybe some other popular thing like Counterstrike later.
9. I'm due to upgrade my PC soon, so I'm really looking forward to getting a better video card to handle Gnome's fancy window switching and other effects. Now that's seriously cool stuff. Dragging and dropping windows and coolly moving across windows can really get people's eyes popping. Even I'm kinda floored by it all, moving things around this way and that. But it's a resource hog, obviously, and one that my 4 year old PC can't hardly hack sometimes, especially, I assume, if I start using WINE and such. At any rate, that's in the works.
10. Incidentally, as mentioned the video card issues are my biggest problems. Scrolling up and down gmail is a pain, as it struggles to cache. I'm positive the issue is either on a setting or a different driver altogether (I'm using something that sounds like an alternative 'try if you dare' video card driver), but right now it's extremely sucky and slow. I'm sure there's a fix somewhere, it's just a matter of Googling.
11. And finally, I need to start learning keyboard shortcuts asap. Keyboard shortcuts is possibly the single best technique one can do to improve productivity. You can cut down the speed of writing a blog post by at least half by learning how to quickly turn on / off apps, move them around, resize them, etc. I think it's this single thing that kept me from doing the switch. The idea of relearning years of shortcuts made me ache. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to assign shortcuts to apps I put in the panel, and the help is annoyingly unhelpful.

The PLUG plan to introduce a distro specifically for internet cafes was instigated by myself, really, and was brought about by clamors from a cousin who owns a cafe and some people in the mailing list as well.

To my mind, I cannot see a better purpose for the Philippine Linux User's Group other than to embark on, albeit ambitious, projects like these. I've decided I wanted to embark on an advocacy, and as such promoting FOSS and Linux seems to be right up my alley - something that I think I can contribute best in. I say this in the light of the fact that we, as individuals, have the opportunity now more than ever to join and / or to start in a plethora of choices of activities such as these. While I can, for example, spend time in charities and such, I think my effectiveness doing so would be limited. On the other hand, promoting Free and Open Source is something I can really sink my teeth into. Something that I understand and therefore can see that I can make a big difference at.

And so we start with this, one user (me, today) at a time. This'll take at least six months or so, given work schedules and such, but we'll get there. In iCafe parlance, all their bases will soon belong to us.

The following attended the meeting (loosely referred to as 'the group' below):

Ryan S. Ching ryan.s.ching@gmail.com
Victor E. Mendoza vicmendoza@gmail.com
Paolo Alexis Falcone pfalcone@free.net.ph
AC Perdon acperdon@gmail.com
Ian Sison ians@qsr.com.ph
Joebert Jacoba joebertj@gmail.com
Mark Achanzar mark@mymegamobile.com
Gabriel "Gary" Mercado (myself)

The topics discussed were as follows (in no particular order):

PLUG Website -

Paolo explained that the website is not functional due to an upgrade error. As a result he is unable to extricate the contents of a PLONE 2.0x archive file that contains 10 years worth of data. This has been compounded by the fact that since there is no PLUG board to decide on this, he has not been able to determine the proper course of action to take.

Inspite of the unavailability of this archive, the group has decided to establish a new one. While Ian prefers a WIKI type of website, Ryan has offered the services of a local Drupal Users Group which the group had decided to be the best path to take. Ian will volunteer a domain name for the website, while hosting will continue to be at Mr. Jijo Sevilla's server.

The group has determined that establishing a new website is an important priority as this will function as an important way to communicate with its members alongside the mailing list.

Status of SEC Registration -

As Marvin Pascual explained in the mailing list, PLUG's SEC Registration will expire by January 2008. Ian volunteered the services of a lawyer (?) friend who can determine for the group the any renewal fees needed. What, if any, fund raising activities will be done for this purpose will be determined pending determination of said fees.

Paolo further explained that there are several issues that need to be addressed re inconsistencies in PLUG's constitution, such as its inability to call a General Assembly without Board Members, which cannot be formed as well because there is no General Assembly (or something like that - Gary). The group had decided that these will be tackled at a later date, and is second in priority to the SEC renewal.

Electing A Board -
Ian suggested the adoption of an 'agenda - based' approach to electing new board members and leadership. Essentially, this involves an individual or group determining any projects and activities he or it wishes for PLUG to undertake, and actively looking for like - minded members needed to execute these. From these people PLUG's Board would be formed around.

This is in lieu of this author's initial suggestion - the 'traditional' method of forming a Board, which is to ask who amongst the mailing list wishes to join, form a Board, and then solicit suggestions from the membership or otherwise determine afterwards which activities to pursue. Ian argued that this method has met with little success and is likely the reason why there has been little progress.

The group has determined that Ian's suggestion has a higher likelihood of success, and in this light, I have decided to submit to the group my own agenda by the week after posting this.

PLUG History and Future -

Along with discussion over pertinent issues, Ian revealed a bit of history re PLUG, explaining that it has been around since the late 1980s. As a result, the group was further motivated to pursue efforts to revive the organization, not to mention in consideration of the fact that there is a great deal to do in the future as well.

Visiting Mr. Axmark -

While it is recognized that it is important to forge relations with influential persons such as MySQL co-founder Mr. Axmark, who happened to be touring the region at the time, it was concurred that it is too early to do so given PLUG's current state. Instead, Joebert and Victor happened to have separate engagements with him and will extend PLUG's welcome on the org's behalf.

The group concluded the meeting at 8:30pm.

I finally got Make going by following a recommendation to change the line "#include <linux /config.h>" to "#include <linux /configfs.h> in the dm9601.c file. But my issues didn't stop there, as after I finally had a hold of the precious dm9601.ko file Make produced, and added it to my modules, it then wouldn't recognize my USB NIC at all. I read somewhere that it worked for some other guy after a series of reboots and plugging / unplugging, but after several tries of that I got nada.

I gotta tell you after working on and off on that thing for a week, I was severely disheartened (yeah it's that serious. Serious enough for me to call myself severely disheartened.) I was about to ditch the dang notebook in when the weirdest thing happened - the USB WIFI NIC worked instead.

I got the ultra cheap Justec Wireless G 54 Adapter, for P960.00 at CDR King (no page on their site for it though), and it had Linux drivers for kernel 2.4+ and 2.6+ along with it, even downloadable from the Justec site. Following it was a mere RTFM affair, and it helped that I had linux-headers and build-essentials already installed due to previously trying on the 10/100 LAN NIC. So before I knew it, eth0 was configured to the zd1211 (it's driver and nick on the wifi network). I had to manually insert a static IP and the essid of my WLAN, and badabing-badaboom, it was connected to DA INNERNET. WAHOOOOO!

So anyway now that Phoebe is ok, I've installed apache, php, mysql, phpmyadmin, and later on in the day, WordPress, and a copy of Kikay.

Anyway, I bought a USB NIC for it, and am trying to deal with driver issues. Again, documenting here so I'll remember. Here are the files contained in the Davicom driver for Linux 2.6:

dm9601.c
dm9601.h
Makefile
readme.txt

What it looks like:

Bought at CDR King for Php300.00, product page here.

NOTE: Turns out it's a pIII.

So I've been busy practising a big move to a new server, and this is the first of many migrations I'm about to do in the next few days. Everything looks like it's working fine now, so I'm pretty happy and hella relieved as well. Below is a shortlist of what I'd had to do to transfer Pisces-Iscariot blogposts, comments and pics lock stock and barrel to this brand spanking new one. This is so that I won't forget when I have to do it again, with some extra details for whoever else might need the same information. Believe me I'd had to do a lot of groping in the dark (ie. searching in forums, sending tons of email to my host's excellent support team, testing on my practice server, bugging the chief, etc.) to finally be able to do what I did, so if I'd have appeared extra nervous or cranky these past few days, now you know. At any rate this'll help anyone who'd happen to be in the same boat I'd be happy. Read on:

1. Bought domain. Fixed it to point to my new host's DNS settings, which I gather are in two very different parts of the world, allowing redundancy of the highest order.
2. Opened a VPS account with my new host, which allows for root accounts. And since Ubuntu has proven dead - easy to use, I've gone and chosen Ubuntu Dapper Drake (where in heck do they get these names?!) as my operating system of choice.
3. Installed, or rather mentioned that I was going to use them, after which the support team installed these themselves (they're that friendly), mysql, php, phpmyadmin and lftp.
4. Used LFTP, a command line FTP client, to transfer everything. It's interesting how I'd never thought of FTPing files from remote host to remote host before, and consequently don't know of a GUI client that can do so. LFTP is quick, efficient, and since I used it's mirroring ability, now I know how that process works. This is partly the reason why I like doing things myself. Who knew it'd have been so easy. Now I've actually thought of a new service that can make use of that. Details much, much later.
5. Used WordPress Database Backup, a WordPress Plugin, to either download or otherwise save my WordPress databases in a specified folder on my webserver, from which you can use LFTP again to transfer it to a directory on the new server. PhpmyAdmin is unable to do the job as it limits downloads to only 2,048kb. I chose to download it instead, so I can check it's innards or edit it as well.
6. Again since PhpMyAdmin on the receiving end is not up to the task of uploading the sql backup because of size constraints, I used the marvelous Bigdump, a configurable php file that you upload to your destination server, to take care of importing it. Basically, I created a new database on my new server, then imported my SQL backup into it. Worked wonders, or rather (and more to the point), it just worked, which is way terrific enough given that the default method, phpmyadmin, didn't / couldn't. I think it's even mentioned, (although not necessarily recommended, but mentioning it is enough), in the PhpMyAdmin help files as a solution, which says a lot.
7. The next steps are WordPress SOPs. Once I uploaded all the WordPress 2.13 files in the /var/www section of my new server, I created the all important wp-config file. At this stage, when I enter the URL http://lefthandedlayup.com on my browser I should be able to view my old posts in the new blog in the standard Kubrick WordPress theme.
8. WordPress asks the main URL at the wp-admin to point to, so I changed all that to www.lefthandedlayup.com from the previous Pisces-iscariot.exchange.ph. If you do not do this, all internal hyperlinks to such things as comments and images will still point to the old URL. Once you do this, WordPress admin will effectively shut you out, so you'll need to login again. Don't worry this is normal.
9. Now, to transfer the pictures I've LFTPed in step 2 above. I log in console and use the ff. command:
   $cp -r /var/www/pisces-iscariot/wp-content/uploads /var/www/lefthandedlayup/wp-content/uploads/. To transfer the plugins, it's just $cp -r /var/www/pisces-iscariot/wp-content/plugins /var/www/lefthandedlayup/wp-content/plugins/. All I do now is look at a post that I know had pictures in it and voila, the pictures appear. Ditto with the plugins, which you'll need to activate. Happiness.
10. I decided to use the highly efficient .htaccess method of transferring queries to http://pisces-iscariot.exchange.ph to this site, instead of other redirect techniques. This is a more permanent, easy, quick and complete method, which I think may affect RSS queries as well, negating my having to tweak that. Anyway, just uploaded it so we'll see. A good tutorial is here.
11. I chose this theme for awhile, but I reverted back to this one for reasons I'm not really sure of, but that Ferrari at the top probably has a lot to do with it. Nothing like putting a red prancing horse on the cover of a magazine to get people to look at it, and I'm sure now that the same holds true for blogs as well. Anyway, I think I'll keep this one, maybe make the fonts a little smaller or something, but I think this is it.

Well, I think that's it. Everything seems to be dandy at the moment with the site, so I'm a little less nervous about moving the rest.

I'll make a post later explaining what lefthandedlayup means. Those who've known me from way back know that was the name of my early, early, early blog way back, but it means a little bit more than that. Anyway, I'm glad I finally bought it, so I can finally do stuff on a different domain other than Exchange.ph.

I'm hoping this is gonna be my last blog. I've been blogging for approximately 8 years now. I think I like it here though. Maybe this is the one I'll keep using till I grow old and gray. Stay tuned.

I finally got this:

Which led to this:

so I can finally relax, and drink this:

YAHOOOOO!!!!

Ok I know you don't know what I'm talking about. Well, it's about [tag]ISPCONFIG[/tag], but it's far too boring to discuss that. Instead, I'll just give you purty pikchurs like above. Yess. Success.

I expect a great deal of mud slinging to start from either side. What would be good though, is for both to start stating examples of either's strengths, instead of long winded statements heavy on hypothesis, such as "...imposing restrictions (on graduates) on what kind of training can be offered defies all logic and reason" and "As an industry association, we encourage the fostering of forward-thinking innovation and creativity -- necessary characteristics of a healthy software industry and essential pillars of the 'FLY HIGH 2010' software industry targets."

Please.

The fact of the matter is, the PSIA is asking the government to reconsider due to the simple fact that the local software industry will not be able to sell software to the gov't., which might lead to its demise.

How simple is it to say something like that? It's not deceptive, it's direct, it's honest, it's easily understood, and cuts through the crap quite well. I understand that they might resort to verbal exercises to keep people from thinking that they're nothing but money grubbers, but on the other hand, whoever thinks that all software should be free has a very tough life ahead of him and should wake up from la-la land as quickly as possible anyway.

Which leads me to the other side, which is, the Open Source Bill. And if it isn't obvious by now which side I believe in, I'll spell it out: I do not believe that Open Source is the end - all and be - all of all software. It is vitally important for a healthy level of enterprise to remain to keep the software industry alive.

The problem I think, is that a lot of open source advocates see the software industry as Microsoft and others, which charge an arm and a leg for their bloated products. I understand this, believe me I completely do. But it's also important to realize that there are many quality vendors and software manufacturers out there whose products I am more than willing to pay for, because they produce quality without wanting to rule the world. Not only will I pay them, I wish for them to prosper, because their products are so well made that a wider user base allows them to produce better quality.

However, in order for them to do that, they need to turn a profit. They need to put food on the table, because at the end of the day, or to be exact, the 15th and 30th, you need to cash a check to pay the bills, put a roof over your family and pay tuition for your kids. This in turn results in money our economy could use.

Can this be done if everyone offered all their software as Open Source? No. I do not think so.

Even handed, pragmatic, and more importantly, well informed people are necessary right now to resolve this situation. Certainly not rhetoric.