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2007

Virtualization Bandwagon Jumping

I decided to jump on the bandwagon and tried out my first appliances today, using the free VMWare player, and a couple of appliances from rpath.org.

Working on Foresight, a number of the images published are for various virtualization technolgies, such as VMWare, Parallels and Xen. Following the VMWare installation instructions in the Wiki, I installed VMWare on Foresight 1.3, downloaded 2 appliances, and was up and running in about 5 minutes.

I am starting to see why these are all the rage right now (at the last TCLUG meeting, a lot of folks put Virtualization on the list for a future speaker to come talk about). From using an image for testing, to installing multiple appliances on a server for specific applications, there are some pretty cool use cases that become possible.

And yes, I know I’m late to the party on this topic, but better late than never. 🙂

Here’s a screenshot of Openfiler, a NAS appliance running in a VMWare player:

vmware-openfiler

And here is a screenshot of Openfiler running, and a WordPress-Multiuser appliance just starting to boot up:

wpmu-openfiler

Click through to see larger versions on Flickr.

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Writing Foresight Docs: Part 4

Progress on the Userguide has been swift this week. Ken’s comments about having Foresight Linux 2.0 in testing in a “couple of weeks” spurred me to action. In no particular order are the things I’ve learned and accomplished this week:

  • URLs. Again, it’s just a matter of re-wiring my brain from HTML to Docbook’s format. For example: [ulink url="http://www.openoffice.org/product/math.html" type="http">Math here[/ulink] (replace brackets with < or >) links to the Math page on OpenOffice.org. Similar, but different. And god knows I’m no HTML expert to start with.
  • Bullets have been driving me crazy. It was just one little thing, adding the mark=”bullet” to the tag, i.e. [itemizedlist mark="bullet"]
  • 3 of the 5 last pages created were created with zero syntax errors. Yes, pride cometh before the fall. All it means is I’m starting to get the hang of this. And I haven’t started doing any of the advanced formatting yet.
  • All pages have been committed. There’s some editing to be done (more on this below), but the directory structure is complete, all screenshots are uploaded,and the copy is complete in all XML files.
  • I’ve learned more Mercurial commands, such as hg pull and hg update, as I’ve worked on this on my laptop and desktop now. And I experienced a moment of panic after editing a file and not having done a pull. But I figured it out, thankfully.
  • I added a TODO file in the repository, but it probably needs to be updated more often.

Things left to do:

  • The first few pages need major formatting updates, especially on removing the indentation.
  • All pages need to be reviewed and edited for the correct URL tags.
  • Bullet points need to be fixed in almost all the pages.
  • Screenshots need to be resized to 510 pixels wide (so they print correctly, per the GNOME Documentation Handbook guidelines).
  • I still need to research, learn and build a Table of Contents.
  • I need to add some advanced formatting, specifically the arrow labels when showing how to access menus to run applications. (The tag I believe).
  • I still need to research on how to add this to the default Yelp page in GNOME, and how that will work from a packaging perspective.

Paul Scott-Wilson asked a great question in IRC last night, regarding whether Docbook repository or the Wiki will be the master copy of the userguide moving forward. My recommendation would be that Docbook would be the master copy, put together from the text on the wiki. This way it gives users a chance to contribute to the userguide on the wiki, adding new copy, having it proofed, and then moved to Docbook. The Printing section is a great example of this, it’s 80% complete on the wiki, but it needs to be 100% to be included in Docbook. (Jonathan Brickman, where are you? Please finish the Printing page!) Additionally, the Docbook repository has source control, which would make it easier to manage over the long term. Opinions or thoughts? Leave a comment below on the blog, or email me at pcutler at foresightlinux dot org.

Progress will be small to non-existent as I have to travel for my day job. This probably means no blog updates either. More to come soon.

Last.fm

I’m a big fan of Last.fm and since I started using Banshee, I’ve reported all my my music through it. A couple of tools came to my attention today.

Digg linked to the Mainstream-O-Meter to measure how mainstream your listening habits are. Digg, being the force they are, have made the site go offline temporarily. My music came in at 68% mainstream. 68%! I like to think I’m a little more eclectic, but maybe I’m not. Or maybe tech geeks like me who use Last.fm just have similar tastes. 🙂

Pscott linked the second one, LastGraph, which graphs out your music listening habits over time. You can set the background color / theme, and the date range you want to graph.

Here’s my 2007 graph:

2007-music

And here is since I started using Last.fm in Oct. 2005:

all-music

Click through to Flickr to actually read them. A couple of notes:

  • I hacked my Xbox, and added Last.fm reporting. My wife listening to music through it really skews it. (Dixie Chicks or U2 anyone?)
  • I’m definitely a streaky listener. I get stuck on an album or artist and listen to the crap out of it. (Liz Phair, Chili Peppers, The Shins)
  • You can tell when I installed my home theater in August of last year. From August to December, I wasn’t spending any time in my office on my PC. It was all about the new, big TV. The little music I listened to was on the Sonos through the network. (I so wish Sonos had Last.fm reporting built-in!)
  • I also listen to a lot of 89.3 The Current, both on the radio through the home theater, and streaming online through Banshee. That is not reflected in the graph. That is truly eclectic listening.

I’m a big enough fan, that I’ve actually subscribed for over the last year. I can’t say I’m thrilled by the recent acquisition by CBS, but I love the statistics Last.fm collects and lets me share, both on their website and through the badge on this blog.

Writing Foresight Docs: Part 3

My original intent in this continuing series on Writing Documentation for Foresight was to post weekly, but I just had to share the latest news.

With Paul Scott-Wilson’s help in IRC last night, the Userguide’s first two chapters are now working in Yelp. Pscott shared a diff file fixing some syntax issues, and pointed out I could just run yelp installation.xml to display the Docbook file in Yelp, or if it crashed, the terminal spit back all the errors and the lines to go fix them on. (I really do need to use the command line more.)

After spending a couple hours on all the errors that the terminal was yelling at me about, we now have Yelp displaying the Userguide (with images!):

userguide-yelp1

There are still a number of typo’s I’m finding, especially as it relates to bullets and indentation, but the menu’s and links are working, the content is displayed, and best of all, no errors when starting from the command line. Check it out yourself from the Mercurial repository, it’s up to date.

Next up: Learn how to tie the docbook files together (Pscott pointed me at this link: http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/ModularDoc.html) and package them up in Foresight. These first two chapters took me longer than expected to port to Docbook and re-write, so it’s probably a good idea to see if this even works.

Nadrinplace.com

My son Alex has a blog.

And like his father, his alias (Nadrin) was randomly generated by a game.

My wife registered the domain and added it to my hosting account, and I installed WordPress for him this weekend, and he picked out the theme.

Good to know geekery runs in the family!

Here he is at his desk, his monitor is just out of sight on the left.

DSC01677