Blog of a bald geek.

Some of you might know that I was not a fan of facebook.
I never said too much here because all my experience was by looking over the shoulder of Freddy and watching her struggle with it.
Yesterday at 7:06am, after a very interesting week,  I made my account and messed around a little.
Ended up talking with my buddy Doug over in Lancing MI to try and get me going. In the end we both gave up.
At 5:43pm yesterday, I deleted my account.

So. I was right. It is junk. One of the worst web sites I have ever tried to do battle with. Only Godaddy.com and the software of Weather-display is worse.
It really does have the feel that it was written by a few computer geeks that were half tanked late in the night.
There are menus all over the place, the feel of the navigation really is such that you can believe that the core code has never been touched and its just been built on, hack on gak.
The security settings are very confusing and having it wide open by default is just wrong (and very sad).
The basic lay out is just not logical or intuitive at all. Its like they are still stuck in the 90′s.

How did it become so popular? No idea. Clearly a lot people have more time and patience than I do. I suspect that they have the 80/20 rule in force. Of their 500 million users, only 20% of them are regulars.

Anyway, it matters not what I think, they are going just fine.
I am personally disappointed that some friends and family have stopped communicating along the usual channels since getting their facebook accounts. The pressure for me to ‘just sign up’ to be in the loop is not going to let up anytime soon I suspect.

So, the Ben Orchard that is on facebook? Its not me…. and its not going to be me anytime soon.

Had a moment of clarity on Friday afternoon…….. (Warning, geek content to follow).
It occurred to me while I was mumbling under my breath about my flakey web site that quite often the browser was throwing up the “cant find beno.id.au” thing way too fast……. It was like it could not even find me……

Ahhhh, perhaps its not. So, I hit up my DNS server host……… Afraid.
This guy has been great. I have been using him for about 6-8 years now.
Its been free for me all this time, and I honestly never really think about it all that much. My Linksys router has had its OS replaced with a Linux version (Tomato), and it supports Afraid for dynamid DHCP, which Time Warner use.
So I never have to worry about my IP address changing and I never have to worry about my domain name resolving to said IP address.

That is, until the last week and a bit.
When I went to the news section of Afraid, I found what I was looking for.
In case you are reading this long after the event, here is a cut and past of the news from Friday;

So, we found the mystery to my woes. I really am annoyed with myself, I really should have figured this, or at least included it in my tests a lot quicker than I did. I really am getting rusty over here (thats more than enough out of you Gary, I hope you split your drink from laughing!)

So, the bottom line it, I cant complain as I am getting it for free. The obvious thing is to see if paying for it would protect me from this sort of thing in the future or not. A few days of hit and miss every 6 years, is it really worth it? Is this sort of attack on his servers going to be come more common? Some of these questions I am not sure I am ever going to get answers to.
Bottom line. Least it was not something at my end. I have to be honest, I really was getting tempted to point the finger at Windows 7. It was the one thing I changed, and I am having hit and miss issues with my photo album, one moment it will change a photo, next it wont. I really cant get to the bottom of THAT one so I thought it might be a small indicator of bigger things.

Anyway, bottom bottom line, I am still going to take the site down for about 1/2 hour tonight to remove a hard drive from the current server PC.
That drive will then go into Terrys computer and will be formatted and have Linux installed. I will move the web site over to that PC (ie, my original one). Once the site is up and running I will swap the IP addresses and we will be back running on Linux. That will only take about 1 minute for that one.
I am hopeful that this will be it for another 6-8 years. Both Freddy and I are getting sick of all this shuffling and not having things working. Once this (last) shuffle is done, we are hopeful that 98% of things will be back up and running and the last 2% (I suspect that it will be the sharing of drives and data between windows and linux again) that is left hanging, I will just battle through it.

If you have been trying to hit my site of late (whadayamean you havent?!), you probably have noticed that it has been a bit hit and miss.
I am really not sure why. I have tested pretty much everything and just can not find anything wrong…… Not helpful or fun.
It seems to have been doing it for at least a week now.

This flakyness along with my continued frustration of getting more than 60% of anything working has lead me to consider yet another computer move…. Well, not so much computer as change the core OS.
I really did try and get along with Windows 7. I really wanted it to work. Really I did.
In a moment of clarity however, it came to me that all the Windows/Linux hassles came from me wanting to use ONE program. Lightroom.
When I was not doing any post processing of my photos and thus was running everything in Linux, all was good.
Then, I got into Lightroom and was running it in a virtual computer on my Linux computer. Because I could only use half of one of my eight CPU cores, it ran like a dog. That’s when I first changed to Windows. Sure, Lightroom ran well, real well, but the rest of my sanity went out the window.
So, as you may recall, I then switched to two computers. Linux for my web server/blog/photo gallery and Windows for Lightroom.
That’s when I had a lot of hassles sharing data between the two systems.
On top of that, I found that Windows does not do something’s very elegantly, like capture remote URLS, batch jobs or use component video capture cards.
Robert spent some time helping me try and get things going, but in the end, I came to see that I just was not using the right tool for the core job.

So, since you all decided for me that giving up was not an option, I have decided to go back to using Linux as my main operating system running the web site etc and do one of two things for Lightroom;
1. Try a new Virtual PC software that will use more cores of my CPU so the performance is better.
2. Give up on Lightroom and use GIMP for my post processing. (Last option, and not thrilled with the thought of this one).
3. Get and use a second computer for Windows and Lightroom, just turning it on when I need it. (And using Gary’s help to get the sharing between the two systems so I don’t have to use a USB stick to transfer the photo files as I was for a while).

So, at some stage soon, my web site will go down for an hour or so while I reformat the hard drive and load Linux and copy the web site etc over….. Oh, wait, given that its currently up and down like a hospital elevator, you probably wont notice any difference at all…. mmm, never mind.

P.S. Since I never did any post processing before I met Zim, I am blaming him for all my computer woes. You should blame him too. :-)

Seems I have an apology to make……. I honestly had no idea that the few readers I have were so passionate about this blog / web site.

I’m sorry for under estimating you all.

Thanks for taking the time to express your support. I really appreciate it.

As such, we dug deep and have hashed about the computers and have things running a little smoother.
I can now update my web site from my windows computer, and still edit my photos on a windows computer.
And I guess most importantly, as a result of your support, I have decided to keep things running. One way or another.

There are still a few little bugs to sort out still, but on the whole, most people are not going to notice those little things (like the Uranquinty weather cam, humming bird camera, some of the weather data pages, Temecula earthquake page etc).
I will tackle those with a different approach. There is always more than one way to get things done in the computer world.

In other news, Zim has started his 365 Project again. He is starting a new phase of his life so it fits to start it up again. We all wish him the best and look forward to seeing where 365 photos take him.

We also got a chance to look at the house again, and will blog about it once we have a little more information (the Realtor feels we should hear something this week…. we aint holding our breaths).

I think I am about done.
Windows 7 has finally beat me down.
I am very seriously thinking of closing down my web site.
If I shut down this site, then I don’t have to deal with different systems not getting along. A bunch of problems go away.
I just cant get Linux and Windows to get along. I am tired of feeling stressed and I am tired of spending time on this. I would much rather be out taking photos or watching a movie or something.
Whats the down side?
I would lose a few people that currently look at my site for different things, but in the end, is that a big deal? The internet is a big place, they will find what they come to my site for somewhere else.
I would lose my photos on my site. I would have to find somewhere else to put them. I really dont like Flickr, but thats the logical choice.
I would lose the ability for people to comment on my photos. That would be pretty sad. (You have to have a flickr account to comment, I hate yahoo almost as much as facebook so I cant ask anyone to sign up just for me).
I would lose this blog.
I would lose the weather.
They are the main ones. There is one other thing, I would lose the humming bird and all sky cam. Its down at the moment, but I got a real kick out of having a camera like that. Again, is it worth it?  Duno.

One thing I do know, it should not be this hard… Its like I am being forced to make a choice. Give up photography and tinker with the computers, or give up the web stuff. I cant do both.

Computer bugs…. I think as long as people are doing the coding, there will be bugs in software.
One of the programmers at work shared this cartoon with me the other day….. The same programmer that is holding fast with his 365 on my web album… which kind of narrows it down to Doug.
Anyway, it was such a classic that I wanted to share it with you all;

 
Click on it to make it big enough to read, its only a small file, so will not take long to open.

Anyway, it kind of tickled my funny bone as we have been messing about with control of devices over the internet of late. The way we do the control is via a data base, so the whole thing just fits in perfect with my current fumbling about in the world of computer code. (Makes me wish I could write real code…. no, wait, I take that back, I have never enjoyed writing code, mostly because I am so bad at it and because I am not wired like that and so it takes a huge effort for me to do it….. never mind, I am rambling).

Hope to get a blog up soon about our weekend jaunt up to the Palm Springs Tramway.

Right! I was going to keep my mouth shut, but I have decided that venting is better for my mental health than just keeping a lid on it (besides, Gary and Dan are going to have field day with this one for months!!!)

So, you may recall that I upgraded to a brand new computer a few months back. My first ever brand new computer.
I bought a power house one because its got to last me for a long time and because I hope to get into more photography and HD video editing…. So, I got me a quad core (with hyper threading, so yeah, I got an 8 pot screamer) with 12gB of RAM and 2.5Tb of hard drive.
Nice.
I put Ubuntu (Linux) Studio on it as it is set up for this sort of machine and function.
I was pretty happy for the first few days, as you are when you get something like this going…. Then you start using it and the cracks appear.
First up, I have fallen in love with Adobe’s Lightroom for my photography. It handles my RAW photos with ease…. The problem is that there is not a version for Linux. So, I installed the Sun VirtualBox. This allows me to run Windows XP on my computer, and on that I can run Lightroom. The problem is that VirtualBox only uses 1 CPU no matter what. They openly say it on their web site…… As if that is not bad enough. Linux throttles things back if you don’t need all 8 cores going flat out, it brings them back to 1.2Gh if they are not doing anything…. So yeah, my Lightroom is running on half of one core….. Yeah, it runs like a wet three legged dog.
Not happy Jan, not happy at all.
Then I go to burn a CD of some photos for one of the make up girls. No problem. 2 days latter I go to burn another. No. Don’t think so. You think that I can get the CD draw to open… not on your life…. Turn to my source of answers… Google… yeah, seems I am not alone. Most everyone that does much burning has the issue.. The way to fix it? Reboot……Hmmmm, sounding a lot like Windows here, move the mouse? Reboot your computer……
On top of all that the sound on YouTube videos only works once… Uh Huh, you watch 1 video and you have to restart your browser……. I am trying to view some photography videos, and its losing its fun factor when you have to restart after each…… Flash and Linux, a match for insanity it would seem.
Lastly I wanted to share a directory for the family. One place for all our photos and music, one place to back up everyone’s Linux laptops (yeah, we are all running Linux on our computers, the kids love it)….. You think I can share a directory over the network. Nop, don’t think so.
A few hours with Google, no joy, and I am thinking I need to get a life!

So, a few days back, I had a thought……. I have the cart before the horse… I need multimedia before Linux here….. I am not doing anywhere near as much of that intense Linux sort of thing anymore, I just want my photography and video stuff to ‘just work’, I know, I will load Windows7 on and do everything in that… how hard can it be???

HAH! Before you get all clucky Gary, let me tell you how long all that lasted!!!!
So I downloaded a 30 day trial version of Win7. Burnt it on Terry’s computer (my DVD was still jammed shut from the last attempt) and installed it…..
Funny how Ubuntu can fit on a CD at around 700mB and have a fully functional computer after an install, Windows needs 3.7GB and the video is broken, no sound and only USB1……
Of course while all this happening (or not happening), my web site is down. Not that big a deal, there are only 4-5 of you hitting it every few hours, but still, its in the back of my mind that I need to get my site up pretty quick……
So, I throw WAMP on it and copy my site over.
The blog is broken and so is my photo gallery. Only the two most important aspects of my site.

Digging around I find that the blog is messed up because of the mySQL settings, get that sorted, the photo gallery is much the same, so I get that sorted.
HOWEVER, I soon find that I can not upload photos to the gallery… not much good having a photo gallery that you cant add photos too.
Some quality time with Google tells me that I need to make the photo gallery directory (and sub directories) writable.
Ok, so some more time with Google teaches me how one might go about that.
For the record, in Linux you say ‘chmod 777’. That’s it.
4 hours latter with Windows, I give up…. I am a broken man. I don’t care about Lightroom speed or burning CD’s, I just want it to work….. so, I rebooted back into Linux and all is good with the world again.
I was beaten down from the lofty world of Windows7 because I could not for the life of me make a directory writable. It always reverts back to read only.

I was an interesting few days. I am all about using the right tool for the job. I guess I am at the place where I have a pretty interesting job and no one tool is going to do the job.

The answer is to reproduce the same set up I had in Buninyong, two computers. One Windows and one Linux, side by side. Together, getting the job done…. If only my pocket was that deep…….