Tropical Storm Fay is expected to make a third landfall in or near Flagler Beach, Florida this afternoon. The storm brought up to 30 inches of rain to the Melbourne area and heavy flooding. The storm is moving slowly so Florida will continue to experience more rain and more flooding, mainly in areas further to the north.
Further south, in Palm Beach County, there is little or no flooding. This isn't a hurricane and for most people in that county there is little or no damage from the storm. My mother was not so lucky. Her roof was damaged on Tuesday. She has moisture in the garage and some plaster has fallen. A roofer came out yesterday, looked at the damage, left some materials, and promised to come back today once the rain had passed to do repairs. I guess this is just another reminder that living in Florida means dealing with hurricanes and tropical storms.
This is also a reminder that if the view held by most responsible experts in the field is that global warming will cause stronger, larger and more frequent storms. Anytime some right winger talks about "global warming alarmists" or complains about the cost of making changes in our energy policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions we need to remind them of the very real financial and human costs of doing nothing.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
I Never Though I'd Say This But....
I never thought I'd say this but I am very glad that John Edwards did not win the Democratic nomination for President. Enough said.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Something New From Neuronium Founding Member Carlos Guirao
Carlos Guirao was an original member of Neuronium, appearing on their first five albums. The New Digital Dream is probably still my favorite Neuronium disc even though there have been plenty of excellent albums in the years since it was first released. Guirao also played on A Separate Affair, the collaboration between Neuronium and Vangelis which is one of my favorite pieces of ambient electronic music to relax to.
After he left Neuronium in 1982 Guirao recorded one solo album and then was part of a techno duo called Programa. Aside from the mid '90s releases of In London (the Neuronium & Vangelis CD single) and A Separate Affair, both of which were recorded in 1981, there has been nothing new from Guirao in something like 23 years... until now. A friend visited Guirao and borrowed a tape of his unreleased second solo album. After listening to it he obtained permission to distribute the album, Pesadillas De Un Ser Viviente, Spanish for "Nightmares of a Living Being", at no charge via the Internet. As a result Carlos Guirao's album has been released on the 'net and can be found here. Oh, and yes, it's perfectly legal to download.
The music covers a variety of styles. It's mainly upbeat electronic music with some drumming and occasional vocals. It's closer to Programa than to Neuronium but really doesn't sound like either one. There are bits that remind me of Jean-Michel Jarre or Christopher Franke but there is probably more that's pretty unique. The 16½ opening track, "Oceanic", is probably the highlight of the album while the fifth track, "Desconocido", is probably the most interesting, at times giving just a bit of the Neuronium sound, perhaps with elements of '80s or '90s Tangerine Dream mixed in. This isn't Guirao's best work to date and there's a bit more of the commercial synth-pop feel than what I usually like, but it's skillfully done and some of the tracks are quite good. Definitely worth a listen.
After he left Neuronium in 1982 Guirao recorded one solo album and then was part of a techno duo called Programa. Aside from the mid '90s releases of In London (the Neuronium & Vangelis CD single) and A Separate Affair, both of which were recorded in 1981, there has been nothing new from Guirao in something like 23 years... until now. A friend visited Guirao and borrowed a tape of his unreleased second solo album. After listening to it he obtained permission to distribute the album, Pesadillas De Un Ser Viviente, Spanish for "Nightmares of a Living Being", at no charge via the Internet. As a result Carlos Guirao's album has been released on the 'net and can be found here. Oh, and yes, it's perfectly legal to download.
The music covers a variety of styles. It's mainly upbeat electronic music with some drumming and occasional vocals. It's closer to Programa than to Neuronium but really doesn't sound like either one. There are bits that remind me of Jean-Michel Jarre or Christopher Franke but there is probably more that's pretty unique. The 16½ opening track, "Oceanic", is probably the highlight of the album while the fifth track, "Desconocido", is probably the most interesting, at times giving just a bit of the Neuronium sound, perhaps with elements of '80s or '90s Tangerine Dream mixed in. This isn't Guirao's best work to date and there's a bit more of the commercial synth-pop feel than what I usually like, but it's skillfully done and some of the tracks are quite good. Definitely worth a listen.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Slackware 12.1 First Impressions
Late last week I downloaded and installed Slackware 12.1 on my aging (OK, old) Toshiba laptop side by side with Vector Linux Light. I'll post a full review to my O'Reilly Linux Dev Center blog once I've had more opportunity to use the latest version of Slack.
My first impression: Slackware is still Slackware. The installer assumes you know what you are doing (think Expert install if you're an Ubuntu user) and that you want the ability to control every aspect of the installation. A newcomer to Linux would be utterly, totally lost. I've actually done two installations: a fully functional one with an Xfce desktop and all the dev tools that currently occupies about 2.7GB of disk space, and a truly minimal but usable installation with a minimalist window manager (PekWM) and a handful of apps and tools. That takes up only 600MB of disk space. Slackware always was flexible and that hasn't changed.
You can tell you're dealing with a distro for serious Linux geeks when booting into the GUI isn't even offered as an option by the installer. Heck, the installer doesn't even deal with X configuration. You start at the command line. GUI system administration tools? You can get them from third parties but Slackware itself is devoid of such things. Edit your config files or use command line tools.
Is this a bad thing? If you know what you're doing and don't mind taking some time to get your configuration right and your favorite apps from various third party sources it really isn't. OK, it's time consuming but the end result is a fast, rock solid system. That's what Slackware is known for. It remains seriously user unfriendly, hence all the derivative distributions like Zenwalk, Vector Linux, Wolvix, etc... that try and fix that. They all succeed to a large degree, giving users a friendly environment with all of the speed and stability.
Most of the usual third party packages sources like LinuxPackages.net and Slacky.eu don't have a full selection of apps built for 12.1 yet but that is rapidly changing. The project I'm working on is going to force me to do a lot of compiling from source in any case.
Could I live with Slackware as my main distro? Yes, easily. Would I recommend it? Only to those who know what they are getting into.
In a way I've come full circle. In late 1995 I was introduced to Linux by a coworker. When I asked which distribution to choose she suggested two: Red Hat Linux and Slackware. I chose Red Hat because she said it was easier to learn. It's also what she ran on her workstation in the office. Slackware was the second distro I looked at all those years ago.
What's changed since then? First off, I was very skeptical about Linux at the time and probably for about three or four years after that. I didn't think it would ever be a serious OS or that it was anywhere near ready for prime time. That sounds silly now but 13 years ago the state of Linux was still pretty primitive. Second, I don't think any of us would have dreamed of downloading a 3.8GB DVD iso image in an hour and a half and burning it ourselves. Thankfully time and technology really do march on.
What hasn't changed? In a fundamental way Slackware is the same as it ever was. It isn't any easier to get going now than it was all those years ago. You really do have to either know how Linux works under the hood or else you have to be willing to learn.
My first impression: Slackware is still Slackware. The installer assumes you know what you are doing (think Expert install if you're an Ubuntu user) and that you want the ability to control every aspect of the installation. A newcomer to Linux would be utterly, totally lost. I've actually done two installations: a fully functional one with an Xfce desktop and all the dev tools that currently occupies about 2.7GB of disk space, and a truly minimal but usable installation with a minimalist window manager (PekWM) and a handful of apps and tools. That takes up only 600MB of disk space. Slackware always was flexible and that hasn't changed.
You can tell you're dealing with a distro for serious Linux geeks when booting into the GUI isn't even offered as an option by the installer. Heck, the installer doesn't even deal with X configuration. You start at the command line. GUI system administration tools? You can get them from third parties but Slackware itself is devoid of such things. Edit your config files or use command line tools.
Is this a bad thing? If you know what you're doing and don't mind taking some time to get your configuration right and your favorite apps from various third party sources it really isn't. OK, it's time consuming but the end result is a fast, rock solid system. That's what Slackware is known for. It remains seriously user unfriendly, hence all the derivative distributions like Zenwalk, Vector Linux, Wolvix, etc... that try and fix that. They all succeed to a large degree, giving users a friendly environment with all of the speed and stability.
Most of the usual third party packages sources like LinuxPackages.net and Slacky.eu don't have a full selection of apps built for 12.1 yet but that is rapidly changing. The project I'm working on is going to force me to do a lot of compiling from source in any case.
Could I live with Slackware as my main distro? Yes, easily. Would I recommend it? Only to those who know what they are getting into.
In a way I've come full circle. In late 1995 I was introduced to Linux by a coworker. When I asked which distribution to choose she suggested two: Red Hat Linux and Slackware. I chose Red Hat because she said it was easier to learn. It's also what she ran on her workstation in the office. Slackware was the second distro I looked at all those years ago.
What's changed since then? First off, I was very skeptical about Linux at the time and probably for about three or four years after that. I didn't think it would ever be a serious OS or that it was anywhere near ready for prime time. That sounds silly now but 13 years ago the state of Linux was still pretty primitive. Second, I don't think any of us would have dreamed of downloading a 3.8GB DVD iso image in an hour and a half and burning it ourselves. Thankfully time and technology really do march on.
What hasn't changed? In a fundamental way Slackware is the same as it ever was. It isn't any easier to get going now than it was all those years ago. You really do have to either know how Linux works under the hood or else you have to be willing to learn.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Back From A Few Days In Computer Hell + Advances In Green Computing With Linux
Last weekend I lost my desktop system to hardware failure -- the kind of failure not worth repairing. This closely followed a laptop dying as well. I found myself scrambling to make life and work go on with less for now. The end result will probably be that I'll buy two systems in the coming weeks, a small and inexpensive travel system, probably an Asus Eee PC I wanted anyway, and something powerful enough to be a desktop replacement and to allow me to do demos for consulting customers or potential customers.
For right now I'm down to two systems, both laptops, both very long in the tooth. I'm writing this on my five and a half year old vintage veteran Toshiba Satellite 1805-S204, with a 1GHz Celeron processor, 512MB of RAM, and a 20GB hard drive. The second system is 10 years old: my one surviving itty bitty Toshiba Libretto SS1010, a system about the size of a paperback book with a 233MHz Pentium MMX processor, just 64MB of RAM, and a minuscule 2.1GB hard drive. I decided to rebuild both with an idea of optimizing for speed. The idea is to use a Linux distribution designed to get the most out of limited hardware. Don't misunderstand me: Vector Linux 5.9 Standard, Xubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04, and Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 all ran brilliantly on the Satellite. Still, if I'm going to do serious work I want to use as few resources as possible for the desktop and overheard and leave as much as possible for applications, particularly things like OpenOffice and multimedia apps that eat memory.
I decided to play with fire and try out some beta code, particularly Vector Linux Light 5.9 Beta 5. This is the first beta with the new LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment). The previously offered window managers, JWM (still the default) and Fluxbox, are also still included in the iso. There are some bugs which I've dutifully reported as you'd expect in a beta but nothing serious. All in all it works very well and is remarkably close to ready for prime time. Best of all... it's fast on the Satellite. Really fast!
LXDE looks good. Vector Linux has a unique replacement for the HAL daemon called VL-Hot. It doesn't continually poll the hardware bit rather is triggered by udev events. You can choose between VL-Hot and HAL in Vector Linux standard as either will work perfectly well with KDE and Xfce. VL-Hot also works correctly with pcmanfm which is used to control desktop icons in LXDE and in the Vector Linux Light implementation of JWM. Not only is this far less resource intensive than HAL but the fact that it mostly works well on lightweight desktops is truly impressive. This is a huge step forward for those with limited, low end hardware and for green computing in general.
I'll definitely be writing more about LXDE, VL-Hot, and Vector Linux Light in more formal articles and reviews for my blog over on the O'Reilly Linux Dev Center. I just thought a quick, informal posting of my first impressions might be of interest to the more adventurous Linux users out there who like to play around with bleeding edge software. The nice thing is that this is working well enough that it doesn't feel like bleeding edge. I've actually had more problems with the released version of Xubuntu Hardy Heron, but that's another story.
I also have the ancient Libretto running Damn Small Linux for the moment. An installation of Vector Linux Light seemed to go flawlessly but when I rebooted I got a kernel panic. I've seen this before with VL 5.9 and I've reported it as well. I'll be experimenting with a few very small lightweight distros on the box in a dual boot configuration with DSL. What I want is a fairly current 2.6.x kernel and current if lightweight apps, something DSL just doesn't offer. I'll definitely write about what works for me.
For right now I'm down to two systems, both laptops, both very long in the tooth. I'm writing this on my five and a half year old vintage veteran Toshiba Satellite 1805-S204, with a 1GHz Celeron processor, 512MB of RAM, and a 20GB hard drive. The second system is 10 years old: my one surviving itty bitty Toshiba Libretto SS1010, a system about the size of a paperback book with a 233MHz Pentium MMX processor, just 64MB of RAM, and a minuscule 2.1GB hard drive. I decided to rebuild both with an idea of optimizing for speed. The idea is to use a Linux distribution designed to get the most out of limited hardware. Don't misunderstand me: Vector Linux 5.9 Standard, Xubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04, and Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 all ran brilliantly on the Satellite. Still, if I'm going to do serious work I want to use as few resources as possible for the desktop and overheard and leave as much as possible for applications, particularly things like OpenOffice and multimedia apps that eat memory.
I decided to play with fire and try out some beta code, particularly Vector Linux Light 5.9 Beta 5. This is the first beta with the new LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment). The previously offered window managers, JWM (still the default) and Fluxbox, are also still included in the iso. There are some bugs which I've dutifully reported as you'd expect in a beta but nothing serious. All in all it works very well and is remarkably close to ready for prime time. Best of all... it's fast on the Satellite. Really fast!
LXDE looks good. Vector Linux has a unique replacement for the HAL daemon called VL-Hot. It doesn't continually poll the hardware bit rather is triggered by udev events. You can choose between VL-Hot and HAL in Vector Linux standard as either will work perfectly well with KDE and Xfce. VL-Hot also works correctly with pcmanfm which is used to control desktop icons in LXDE and in the Vector Linux Light implementation of JWM. Not only is this far less resource intensive than HAL but the fact that it mostly works well on lightweight desktops is truly impressive. This is a huge step forward for those with limited, low end hardware and for green computing in general.
I'll definitely be writing more about LXDE, VL-Hot, and Vector Linux Light in more formal articles and reviews for my blog over on the O'Reilly Linux Dev Center. I just thought a quick, informal posting of my first impressions might be of interest to the more adventurous Linux users out there who like to play around with bleeding edge software. The nice thing is that this is working well enough that it doesn't feel like bleeding edge. I've actually had more problems with the released version of Xubuntu Hardy Heron, but that's another story.
I also have the ancient Libretto running Damn Small Linux for the moment. An installation of Vector Linux Light seemed to go flawlessly but when I rebooted I got a kernel panic. I've seen this before with VL 5.9 and I've reported it as well. I'll be experimenting with a few very small lightweight distros on the box in a dual boot configuration with DSL. What I want is a fairly current 2.6.x kernel and current if lightweight apps, something DSL just doesn't offer. I'll definitely write about what works for me.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Primary Day
Yesterday was primary election day in North Carolina. I went out and voted in the early evening. In the best known races I voted for Hillary Clinton for President. She was trounced by Barack Obama, of course. My choice for Governor, Richard Moore, was also trounced. I did vote for Kay Hagan, who won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. I expect she'll get trounced by Elizabeth Dole in the fall. Oh well...
Far more disappointing to me than the results was what a nice old lady who was working at the polls told me. They had a very slow day with very poor turnout. For once North Carolina actually had a say in determining who would be the Democratic nominee for President. We had major statewide races in both parties. In this county we also had a school bond issue on the ballot. You'd think people would come out and vote but at least here they really didn't. I find this sort of voter apathy very troubling, particularly with all the challenges our area and our country as a whole now face. Don't people realize how much the outcome of the 2008 elections will effect our future? I guess not and that is truly sad.
Far more disappointing to me than the results was what a nice old lady who was working at the polls told me. They had a very slow day with very poor turnout. For once North Carolina actually had a say in determining who would be the Democratic nominee for President. We had major statewide races in both parties. In this county we also had a school bond issue on the ballot. You'd think people would come out and vote but at least here they really didn't. I find this sort of voter apathy very troubling, particularly with all the challenges our area and our country as a whole now face. Don't people realize how much the outcome of the 2008 elections will effect our future? I guess not and that is truly sad.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
CD Review: Neuronium - Synapsia
It's been a while since I wrote a CD review so I decided to write up one of the newest additions to my collection:
You get the idea in listening to Synapsia that Michel Huygen sat down with a stack of old vinyl LPs before recording this album. For example the third track, "Vortopsia", sounds like a recent Neuronium track for all of a minute. Then the electronic bass line kicks in and the synth melody changes and you get the feeling of some vintage Tangerine Dream in their mellower moments. The piece could have been inspired by the B-side of Stratosfear or "Haunted Heights" from '70-'80. Every track on Synapsia has an electronic bass line. Some of it definitely has that vintage sequencer driven Berlin School sound. There's a fair amount of Vangelis and Patrick O'Hearn influence as well, with a dash of Klaus Schulze here and there. Really, though, I think more than anything Huygen listened to his own early works with Neuronium.
Don't misunderstand me; there's none of the high flying space rock of The New Digital Dream. Huygen is completely on his own now despite keeping the Neuronium name. At times I wish it wasn't so. "Brainsucker" could have really benefited from the powerful electric guitar that Santi Pico brought to The Visitor rather than a synthesized sort-of guitar sounding section. All in all what Huygen has done is blend the gentler sound of newer Neuronium with the sensibilities and sounds and influences of early Neuronium. The result doesn't sound like something out of the late '70s and early '80s. The instrumentation is pure 21st century. The good news is that it doesn't sound like sickly sweet new age glop either. It's brilliant, interesting electronic music that builds in complexity as it goes. It's an updating of the early Neuronium feeling in a way that's long overdue. Synapsia is the best album released under the Neuronium name in a quite some time.
NOTE: I also posted this review to Discogs.
You get the idea in listening to Synapsia that Michel Huygen sat down with a stack of old vinyl LPs before recording this album. For example the third track, "Vortopsia", sounds like a recent Neuronium track for all of a minute. Then the electronic bass line kicks in and the synth melody changes and you get the feeling of some vintage Tangerine Dream in their mellower moments. The piece could have been inspired by the B-side of Stratosfear or "Haunted Heights" from '70-'80. Every track on Synapsia has an electronic bass line. Some of it definitely has that vintage sequencer driven Berlin School sound. There's a fair amount of Vangelis and Patrick O'Hearn influence as well, with a dash of Klaus Schulze here and there. Really, though, I think more than anything Huygen listened to his own early works with Neuronium.
Don't misunderstand me; there's none of the high flying space rock of The New Digital Dream. Huygen is completely on his own now despite keeping the Neuronium name. At times I wish it wasn't so. "Brainsucker" could have really benefited from the powerful electric guitar that Santi Pico brought to The Visitor rather than a synthesized sort-of guitar sounding section. All in all what Huygen has done is blend the gentler sound of newer Neuronium with the sensibilities and sounds and influences of early Neuronium. The result doesn't sound like something out of the late '70s and early '80s. The instrumentation is pure 21st century. The good news is that it doesn't sound like sickly sweet new age glop either. It's brilliant, interesting electronic music that builds in complexity as it goes. It's an updating of the early Neuronium feeling in a way that's long overdue. Synapsia is the best album released under the Neuronium name in a quite some time.
NOTE: I also posted this review to Discogs.
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