Dorm Workspace

I know personally that looking at other people’s workspaces has helped me out immensely when it came to crafting my own. So I have decided to contribute back to the workspace hacking scene!

The first iteration of my dorm workspace was recently featured at hackcollege.com. In the post there I had several key features that I have retained, namely the second monitor, 1 Terabyte External Hard Drive, small collection of assorted books and power terminal mounted to the bunk. I also have a small basket of things that I am to take with me when I leave my dorm, although that doesn’t always work out as planned.

The second monitor is invaluable. When I am just ‘recreationally’ using the computer to surf websites, use AIM or skype I keep a set of static windows open there, including the Marist mainframe, an ssh terminal to my server at home, my email, and iTunes. However, when I am doing work is when it really shines. Writing an essay becomes infinitely easier when I can have reference material up on the second monitor while I type on the laptop. Similarly programming also becomes easier as I can have code examples and snippets displayed on the external monitor while I do the actual coding on the laptop. I don’t know what I would do without it.

The 1 terabyte external hard drive serves as my external back up solution. In the future I will set up an FTP server on my home server an do some offsite backups of especially important data but until I spend some extended time at home this hard drive will have to do as my own and only line of defense against data loss. Thus far it has performed admirably well. The speeds I achieve with the Firewire 800 connection are quite adequate, I have up dozens of gigabytes in only a half hour or so. The real winner here is OS X’s time machine. As an Information Technology enthusiast I have experimented with many backup solutions, both networked and otherwise, and for a single personal computer, Time Machine is by far the best. It takes a differential snapshot of your filesystem every hour meaning that every file and every iteration of that file that has ever existed on my system still exists on my external hard drive. It saved me just this week when I had forgotten to attach the incorrect version of the program to a redo I handed in. What would have turned into a dumpster dive or worse ended up just being a drag and drop of the correcr version of that file from my external. What a relief!

Aside from books being books that I currently am or plan on reading, there are some that are ‘reference’ books. But not reference books in the typical sense, like a dictionary. They are more like morale and intellectual reference books. Atlas Shrugged, Getting Things Done, The Sunset Limited, and The Revolution: A Manifesto are all books that I keep there to remind me of why I am here and what I am doing. There is also a painting on the wall that reminds me of that and more.

Stored in my things-I-take-with-me-when-I-leave-the-dorm-basket are things such as my keys, my wallet, my cell phone, my iPod Touch, a moleskine pocket notebook, and headphones. Those are all essentially self-explanatory.

So that sums up my previous workspace, now here is version 2.o:

Workspace 2.0

I added a headphone hook to keep my headphones off of my desk and generally out of the way, in addition to external mouse and keyboard. The keyboard is an Apple Wired Keyboard, which is a good bit smaller than your standard wireless keyboard. This is exactly what I wanted as I don’t have a lot of desk space available to me. I need to save every centimeter I can! I also found myself liking the laptop-like keys that it possesses, but furthermore I really liked the built in USB hub that the Apple keyboard has as I consistently find myself running out of USB ports on my otherwise trustworthy laptop. The mouse is the famed Logitech MX Revolution wireless mouse. Although the driver still doesn’t work in Snow Leopard (boo, and more on Snow Leopard later) I still get to enjoy the unparalleled ergonomic function, and cool features such as the free-glide scroll wheel, that this mouse provides.

On top of my dresser is a Canon MP480 printer connection to my laptop via bluetooth. The MP480 is a very light and compact piece of equipment which is very useful for the tight quarters it is stationed in, and is also very useful for moving in and out of the dorm room in between semesters. The bluetooth connectivity is also very useful as it means that my roommate and I can share the printer without needing to switch cables back and forth. It also means one less USB port used on my computer!

I think that’s it, stay tuned for those topics I mentioned a few posts ago, I do still plan on covering them!!

Network Speeds at School

Over megabit ethernet in the dorm. =)

Speedtest at Marist

Future Topics

Here’s a list of things I am going to blog about in the future:

Operating Systems (OS X vs Windows vs Linux)

Google Voice

HTPC’s

AP Java Final

College Courses

And maybe a few security things I have been researching.

Just letting you know that I am still alive (though sans wisdom teeth)!

For Future Reference

And mostly my own, at that:

My SpeedTest

In the beginning…

In the beginning, there was a User.

This User did not possess the special knowledge of the Priests of the Cult of Computers.

This User was granted divine Manna from heaven in the form of a shining disc with an outer shell of a transparent horn-like material.

“Lo!” said he, “I have found the Sacred Tablet of AOL!”

And he put the Tablet in the Slot of Curious Whirrings, and nothing happened. And this was Good.

But the User was unhappy, and complained to the Disciples of AOL, that the sacred disc of AOL was defective.

And so the Disciples of AOL conferred with the Disciples of Borg.

Now, the Disciples discipled for a while, and determined that the User could never be trusted grok the mysteries of “Drive D”. The Disciples agreed, also it was bothersome and unholy, to be summoned each time a Tablet was delivered by divine provenance to another User. And so Autorun was created.

Verily, the User could place the Sacred Tablet of AOL in the Slot of Curious Whirrings, and without any further discipling by the Disciples, could run AOL.

And thus were the Demons of AOL unleashed upon the world together with the Lord of PC Plague and Pestilence, he-who-should-not-be-named-but-nevertheless-I-will, Autorun.

A Brief Dissertation on Email Clients

Hello world! I would like to file a formal complaint with the developers of the following projects:

• Mail.app
• Entourage

I would further like to present the following projects with kudos:

• Mozilla Thunderbird
• Claws Mail
• Mutt
• Evolution

The thing that separates these two lists is their ability to handle high volume IMAP accounts. The first two applications are set by default, in some ways (at least, that I can find) inalterable, to check all of my messages on my gmail IMAP account, and download all of the new ones in their entirety when they are instructed to send or receive mail. This causes my gmail connection to slowly stutter, and yes, eventually die for a few minutes as gmail rightly tries to stop me from being so insanely intensive on their server’s bandwidth. I can’t seem to find a way, especially in Mail.app to only download message headers, and download the entirety of the message only when I request said email.

The good news is that all of the email clients have no such problems! Thunderbird especially is able to recognize gmail right away, configure itself, and start downloading my IMAP message headers like it is nothing! It’s a curious thing to observe which projects are open source and which are proprietary. The tend to fall in to two separate categories in this highly personal ‘review’.

Anyways, if anyone has any ideas how to fix this, please tell me!! I especially like how Mail.app handles, it works beautifully with some of my smaller IMAP accounts.

Finally: Mac OS X on Unofficial Hardware

That is the first screen I saw that related to a Mac. This was at about 5:00 PM and I didn’t get to an actual desktop until about 11:00 PM. I was installing the kalyway osx86 image, which is definitely not available any where on the internet in any sort of downloadable form, onto this hardware:

• Intel Core 2 Duo 1.87 GHz
• 1 GB RAM
• 250 GB SATA Hard Drive
• SATA DVD Drive
• A random network card
• Soundblaster Live! 24 Bit 7.1 Surround Sound Card
• An Intel Motherboard
• Nvidia 7900GS Graphics Card

From what I can tell, this hardware should work fine without and hitches when you follow any rudimentary how-to online. It bears noting that both the internet sound and ethernet cards did not work, thus my need for the random network card that did work. Also, the soundblaster did not work but I have an excellent USB sound card lying around that came with my headset that output sto my 2.1 speaker set up just fine.

If you are reading this and are attempting to do a similar install, I would caution you to take a special note of the kinds of connections you are using with your drives (of both the optical and hard variety). It is apparently possible to use IDE drives, but I could not find a way and simply opted for all SATA hard drives. Some people run into issues with SATA too, especially if your motherboard uses the SATA nforce controller, in which case it might be best for you to try using IDE drives. At any rate, opting for SATA drives saved me from the “Still waiting for root device…” errors that have plagued me in this endeavor for the past few months.

The results of my interesting escapades with different drives.

I now have OS X installed and I have already noticed a few things I like and a few things I don’t like. I plan on doing a review of OS X from a linux user’s perspective some time soon, though I don’t know if that will manage to make its way into this spring break series.

The World is Close

It occurred to me last night that the world is closer than it has ever been before. I mean, it is much much easier to communicate with someone now than it was 10 years ago. Not only is it a lot easier to communicate with a single person but it is also a lot easier to communicate with a group of people! Today you can chat via text, and audio (plus video!), play a board game and share pictures all at the same time. And for all intents and purposes the speeds are instantaneous! It’s really wonderful, I am not sure where I would be at this point if I had to write letters to people and waits days for a response. I might go insane. Then again, I might not seeing as how I wouldn’t know that anything faster exists.

It would be interesting to try going without the internet for a period of time, but I think I would miss people a little too much.

Creative Outlets

I’ve been thinking today that it would be really nice to have a solid creative outlet that could not be easily filled. By that I mean, it’s all well and good to write a poem, program, or draw a picture. But once you complete it, it is done, there is nothing more to do. You have to move on to the next poem, program or picture. It would be so cool to have something that I can do whenever I want to that would never be finished and never be entirely uninteresting. Perhaps I am asking too much, it might very well be that no such activity exists for me.

Another consideration is the fact that whatever this activity would be would have to be very low maintenance in terms of costs. Like I could build computers forever I would imagine but that’s not very practical economically speaking, nor very creative to be honest. I actually imagine that that would get rather boring fast.

After sitting down and writing these words I have had a few thoughts.  However, a lot of them seem like they would require almost too much time which could be problematic but I will write them down here for future consideration regardless:

• Start a Podcast
• Develop a Website with actual regualar content
• Begin work on a novel?

Well, that is a pretty short list and almost all of those things would take a lot of time and be a huge committment. Perhaps I could work at my own leisure on a novel (I mean, I certainly could, I just don’t know if that would ever get any where as I am not particularly inspired at this moment. Perhaps at some poin t though). Anyways, it is an interesting thing to ponder.

Also, check out my new tag next to ‘Postulation’!!!

Being Thankful for What You Have

I did a lot of thinking today about being thankful for what one has today. It occurred to me that people often here that you should be thankful for what you have without ever considering how many ways they could find themselves not having, well, what it is that they have. When your brain starts to imagine all the ways you could not be where you are, if your parents weren’t wealthy enough to pay for college, if you hadn’t discovered a passion for your life, if you hadn’t had that dream that spurred you into action. Things could be a lot different in your life, and I learned today that once you realize that, you begin to become all the more thankful for what it is that you do have in your life.