OpenSource Lament - Stick-Shift Linux

I have had the pleasure over the past couple of years to see the Linux seed planted and a Linux enthusiast blossom.  Prior to my association with this fellow he had heard of Linux.  It was some cryptic difficult "thing" that seemed to hang around the periphery of his Windows-centric world.  To his credit he wanted not to just know of the back-office systems that provide services to our network he wanted to understand them.

As any sysadmin will tell you the first and most necessary component to understanding Linux is personal initiative.  The person that doesn't want-need-desire to learn Linux can't get it just by loading up the latest distro of Ubuntu.  Linux is a relationship with computing.  It requires a certain kind of passion to enter into such a relationship.  It also requires a certain level of commitment.

Reflection on my early days shows me diving into distros that came on many, many 3.5 inch floppies.  Then if I was successful I got a prompt: root@slackware: ~>  I stared at it for the longest time and then tried some DOS commands...only to be told that "dir" was not found.  I had no comforting background in any of the *nixs.  So I had to start reading TFM.  I eventually discovered "man" and midnight commander (mc).  I was underway.  At least I could see the file system.

Mr. Slackware, Patrick Volkerding was kind enough to include enough FVWM so that once I found the startx command I even got a graphical user interface.  And right there my troubles really began.  I wanted to do the cool things.  With multiple video cards I could run more than one monitor.  With a sound card I could play music.  With an ethernet adapter I could even get on the network.  RTFM.

In those heady days hard drive space and memory were at a premium.  Even worse, resources allocated to a project boxen were hand-me-downs at best.  So it became necessary to roll my own .xorg config files.  And *GASP* recompile the kernel to include the necessary modules to drive my bells and whistles.  At a time when recompiles took way more than just one cup of coffee.  (I would eventually, after a sweeping office PC upgrade, scrounge and build a 5-node MOSIX cluster that cut compile times to a manageable half pot of coffee.)

Software was a matter of downloading tarballs and ./configure ... and ... search for the dependency, download the tarball, ./configure ... and ... search for the dependency, download the tarball, ./configure ... and ... rinse&repeat ... until make && make install were successful.  Then curse and recurse back up the dependency chain until the original make && make install were successful.

So here is my lament.  Linux has become a commodity.  I can slap a DVD in a laptop (of all things) and load Linux ... and everything, everything works.  Through a GUI I can download and install software and the dependencies, if any, are handled in the background.  It all just works.  Well?!?!  If it all just works then what are you bitchin' about?  That Linux Enthusiast I mentioned earlier never got to learn how to drive a stick-shift Linux.

Just my $0.02

I've been away too long old friend(s)

Shame on me.

I drank the media frenzy kool-aid and dived head first into the deep end of the Fazebook pool.  At first it was kool.  Fluries of friends and flashy memes.  Everybody was doin' it.  Likin' this and LOL commentin' that.  Political side-takin' and snide remarkin' screeds.  Oh and did I mention the "Likes" ... like crack cocaine ... just couldn't wait to get those heady little puffs of ego boastin' positive reinforcin' click nods.  Oh I was in it deep, giving as good as I got ... you gotta like to be Liked.

...and somewhere in the back of my mind was a nagging itch.

what happened to my goals and aspirations?  What happened to my focus and concentration...lemme just check who posted the next Kute Kitty pic ... yeah, just like that.  (That didn't really happen.  I was trying to show by example.)  I used to write.  Not masterful works but fairly well thought out stuff.  I used to write poetry, again not master works but not altogether slouchy stuff.  As near as I can figure I managed to drown my muse in the deep end of the Fazebook pool.

Shame on me.

[BONUS EXTRA:  99 Days Of Freedom challenge.]

So I am intent on starting back up here and over at Yardist formally known as Pa^2.

Hope to see ya round these parts more often.

Haiku: Ballet

Coopers hawk soaring

upset crow takes deference

aerial ballet

Haiku: wind

fighting off the wind

denying winter's embrace

red oak leaves rustling

Haiku: Rosemary

rosemary blosssoms sewn

amid savory needles

a bumblebee quilt

Haiku: Rabbit

walk hopping rabbit

crossed within two feet of me

we each took a breath

Open Education

http://www.onlinecourses.com

Haiku: Lightening

warm sheets of night rain

draped across my little woods

moment bright lightening

Haiku: Iris

one lone iris stands

defiantly in silence

behind the church sign

Haiku: Washington

World torn asunder

Politicians kiss babies

Blossoms fall too soon

Creative GIFs by Aakash Nihalani

Motown Philly Back Again

This is perhaps one of the most ambitious pieces of poetry of our age.  This has the taste of the future.

Motown Philly Back Again by Harmony Holiday   We're all pagans and shamans and clap your hands     now we won't stop the beat We believe in divine healing and we hate to see that      evening sun go down We know when the sight of our women dressed in white    each ritual night, is touching, hypnotizes The animals blush and split for us as revival, as revealed    to themselves These are triumphant women. Even Sister Fame hiding out in the alley turning tricks    and singing verses from the undid scripture, is touching Thank you jesus, thank you jesus, that you jesus, baby,    is that you, she mutters up high between rocks    and lace---his eagerness---it was all night long Sometimes he'd interrupt a recording session to tell us    about his early Motown days or expand on his views of    Heaven and Hell One time he was saying how important it was to love    one's father. Do you love yours? I asked him Why don't you tell him Why don't you tell your father, he said I will if you do You go first

Have I succeeded?

  

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 

 

 

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Warped

Warped

via Tumble Into Peace on 1/25/13

Quasars Shift Red

Hot Stars Burn Blue

Space-Time Is Warped

And So Are You

                                 - seen on bulletin board at MIT SIPB room

The Nation Needs Extremists

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The Nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

 

Martin Luther King, Jr.  

 

 

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Greater purpose

Greater purpose 

 

Use me, God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself.

 

Martin Luther King Jr. 

 

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The Teller

The Teller

by David Mason

He told me, maybe thirty years ago,
he'd met a rawboned Eskimo named Jack
while filming polar bears on an ice floe.
Jack went out fishing in his sealskin kayak
but the current carried him so far off course
that when a Russian freighter rescued him
they signed him as a mate to Singapore.
Five years at sea it took to get back home.

The year an Englishman gave him his name.
The year of hustling on a Bali beach.
The year of opium in Viet Nam.
The year he pined for snow. The year he searched
for any vessel that would turn toward Nome.
The man who told me? I tell you, I don't know.

Active Hope

Passive hope is about waiting for external agencies to bring about what we desire. Active Hope is about becoming active participants in bringing about what we hope for. Active Hope is a practice. Like tai chi or gardening, it is something we do rather than have. It is a process we can apply to any situation, and it involves three key steps. First, we take a clear view of reality; second, we identify what we hope for in terms of the direction we'd like things to move in or the values we'd like to see expressed; and third, we take steps to move ourselves or our situation in that direction. Since Active Hope doesn't require our optimism, we can apply it even in areas where we feel hopeless. The guiding impetus is intention; we choose what we aim to bring about, act for, or express.

 

Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone

Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in without Going Crazy 

 

 

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Wot's de idear?

RT Harrrumph!

Surface RT runs a pared-down version of Windows 8 known as Windows RT. The OS, which runs on ARM-based chips from Nvidia and others, is not compatible with standard Windows applications. It supports only software pre-installed by Microsoft or apps downloaded from the company's online Windows Store.