excuse me wtf r u durin?

Hey Keith, that's my daughter!

Indamixx - Final Impressions

I sit here writing you on my Linux-powered netbook, but it's not running Indamixx, an OS I paid almost $150 for. I guess I expected miracles from the folks at 64studio, but didn't get them. Certainly, it's not their fault - they try to do the best they can, and as far as the open-source community goes, they are the only ones pumping money into it and trying to make a valuable product from it. Still, I found the performance to be less than desirable. For example:

1. That damn menu is hard to get rid of. I tried various apt-get get-this-crap-out-of-here, but to no avail. You see, 64studio is based on Gnome, and Gnome should not be put on netbooks...it just saps too many precious resources.
2. xruns galore with energyXT. I was very upset about this. While Hydrogen ran happily pumping out beats, energyXT sat there, doing nothing, and generated xruns. And we're not talking just a few, a bunch. What a disappointment.
3. Did I mention Gnome? Yea, it's there, with all of it's gnome-settings-daemon goodness. The network manager was hard to deal with, and would often fight me when I just wanted to connect to whatever wireless was available.

OK, now for some devil's advocate: All of these problems can be corrected. In the case of #1, the menu can be stopped. (and really, some might not want to - it is updated automagically, and is nice...but RESOURCES PEOPLE, RESOURCES!!!) Issue #3 can be corrected easily with an apt-get remove --purge gnome-desktop-something-or-other, and issue #2 never got any attention, because by this time, I was tired.

When you spend money on an OS, especially one built on Linux and geared to audio production on a niche hardware platform, you expect a few things. First, you should expect that the graphical interface and other programs would be configured to be as lean as possible. This is a netbook, NOT a laptop, and thus everything should be configured as such. Second, all of the configuration should "just work." If the Network Manager is giving issues, it should be removed.

In fact, most everything in the Indamixx OS (formerly called "Transmission") should be pulled out. Here's what we need: A GUI that somehow shoots the gap between bloated (GNOME) and super-minimal (evilwm or dwm, maybe even fluxbox). XFCE would be a perfect choice for this. Second, this is Linux! Use the tools that already exist for managing things like wireless connections (wireless-tools, anyone?).

AND AWW HELL DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON WIRELESS. Folks, ath5k is NOT ready for the big-time. I'm not sure what the technical details are of this, but I'm running older madwifi drivers and is working very, very well. So ath5k - wtf? I have to set the rate manually? This should not be...

Basically, give us a minimal install CD that installs a bare system, a realtime kernel with all of the supporting modules, a minimal GUI like XFCE that works *with* the system, not against it. Finally, with all of that free space, stuff it full with everything Linux has to offer.

Incidentally, throw in the latest version of Renoise. It rocks. :)

In conclusion, if you buy and Indamixx, buy one that has been tested with your specific hardware. I will not be asking the folks at Indamixx for a refund, because I feel that they will get there, eventually. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but they are doing The Good Work, and should be supported. Hang in there, guys. Pay more attention to your hardware platform, yes, but hang in there.

It's Bright in Here

My 3 year old son Hayes went to the dentist today, and immediately started complaining about the bright light in the room.

Directions for Getting to My Castle

Sometimes life shoots you in the back. Kids are usually the ones holding the gun. :) I usually love being a father, but this week (and the last) have been bad. Still, life usually throws you a curve ball and knocks you back into feeling great about them.

I was shown a paper my 9 year old daughter wrote called, "Directions for Getting to My Castle". This was life's curve ball. Here it is, spelling, grammer and all:

I'm writing this because I think castles are pretty and big. OK
you want to come over but you don't know how to get there. So...you go 100
degrese North and 50 degrese West. You go past Lolly Pop Land and you walk
20 degrese East. You go past the dark, dark, dark layer where the
werewolves live. Then you go past coton candy land and if I were you...I
would eat some. Then wala...your THERE!!!

Perfect. I'm in love with my kids again.

The Best Comment Ever

This comment on a recent Reddit post deserves the "Best Comment Ever" award:

There have been good people who have called themselves Christians; there have been evil people who have called themselves Christians.

There have been good people who have called themselves atheists; there have been evil people who have called themselves atheists.

There have been good people who have called themselves Muslims, or Buddhists, or Jews, or Pagans, or Hindu, or Pastafarians, or Theists, or gnostic, or agnostic, or blacks, or whites, or men, or women, or homosexuals, or heterosexuals, or __; and there have been evil people that have used the same label to describe themselves.

Judge a person for who he is and what he does; not for the deeds, good or evil, of those who went before him and bore the same label.

Yes. Just Yes.

Indamixx, Initial Impressions

I received my copy of Indamixx's OS today, and proceeded to install it on my ASUS EEE PC tonight. The install was painless, with no intervention required from the user. No software selection, no username/password requests, nothing. hmmm...

Once the system booted, it had a great home screen, which I would love to show you, if I would only get my wireless working. (Shame that we're back to these issues with a "works OOTB" distro, but there ya go...) Luckily, I get 30 days free support from 64Studio, the makers of this distro. I've sent them an email, let's see how they respond.

Indamixx: +1 for easy install, -5 for no security on usernames/passwords, -10 for no wireless. Total: -14. The experience had better be really good from here...

Goodbye, Facebook

This week I finally canned my Facebook account. I didn't just deactivate it - no no, I destroyed it.

Initially, Facebook was a great way to hook up with long-lost friends, and I loved it. I got a chance to talk to a lot of folks that I had forgotten about, and was thankful for the opportunity. Everything was beautiful, but then things started to change.

About the time I got on Facebook I hit a rough time in my personal life, and spewed some of the darkness on Twitter, which updated my FB status. Low and behold, these ramblings were met with negative remarks, which made me wonder, "Is FB just for postitive, happy-happy-joy-joy stuff, or for honesty?" No matter, back to the bland positive stuff.

And then it just all started pissing me off. Basically, you can sum up all of Facebook status updates thusly:

• OMG JESUS IS TEH REASONZ FOR TEH SEASONZ!1!! PRAY 4 ME I HAZ A BLADDER INFECTION BUT GOD IS GOOD LOLZ!
• Going to pee...
  Just got back...
  Breathing in...
  Breathing out...
• Jane Doe has just taken the quiz, "Which sexual organ are you?" and the answer is, "Vagina." You are a vagina! Congrats! This makes total sense, seeing as how you are a girl and all.

Enough people. Just enough.

The final straw was FB getting raided by what I call the "I'm 60+ but I need to feel hip so I'm getting a FB account" crowd. Basically, our parents showed up on FB, and that sucked. The last thing you want is to Tweet about your recent drunken brawl and have it get communicated to your parents via someone else's parents. The "hip" factor was completely lost.

Between the lack of honesty, meaningless status updates and Invasion of the Elderly, I just couldn't take it anymore. Granted, I'm being extremely judgemental. After all, are all my status updates that useful? No. Have I ever used FB just to spew meaningless crap out to the Internet? Yes. So I'm just as guilty as everyone else, which is yet another reason to dump it (really, if something is affecting you that deeply, give it up).

I feel more free now. Instead of sitting down and partaking in the FB crack pipe, I actually get some meaningful work done. I am focusing on projects and getting to bed earlier. I'm having some withdrawals, sure, but I feel like FB rehab is working for me.