Recently in Computer Category

Many who read the Fozzolog know I've become a fan of Porcupine Tree -- a progressive rock band based out of England. They've been releasing music steadily since the early 1990s.

I saw them perform live last year in San Francisco and had the time of my life. Performing on stage with them was guitarist and singer John Wesley, an American who has accompanied the band on the road since their In Absentia album tour in 2002.

"Wes" is also featured on the band's most recent album Fear Of A Blank Planet.

Anyway, my buddy Thom alerted me today that Wes posted a blog entry to his MySpace site a couple days ago which contained some rather shocking news. Here it is:

This is really cool news and it makes perfect sense. Wes is in a good situation to do something like this -- he's fairly independent and not encumbered by the iron fist of a record company.

I say this is common sense because of my experience with Porcupine Tree. I was introduced to the band by word of mouth and was then prompted to download some of their music from (evil, illegal) music sharing sites/networks on the Internet. Some of the stuff I downloaded is out of print or very difficult to get your hands on otherwise.

Someone (perhaps, someone from the RIAA) might say I'm a bad, bad person for doing this, but consider the outcome: I ended up traveling to San Francisco and attending a concert I otherwise would not have. I bought the band's live DVD Arriving Somewhere (which is excellent, BTW), a DTS DVD-Audio version of Deadwing, and the CDs: Fear Of A Blank Planet and Stars Die - The Delerium Years.

Word-of-mouth and, more importantly, music (illegitimately) obtained from online sources results in money in the bank for artists who make good product.

So, if you're inclined to like progressive or alternative rock, you can do as I will also do: download Wes's stuff. See if you like it. If you do, consider purchasing a CD or two or, better yet, hit that "Demand It" button on his site to indicate that you would likely pay for a ticket to a concert in your area if John Wesley were to perform.

I was watching tonight's episode of Glenn Beck's TV show and his last segment featured a young lady as a guest talking about her 300-page iPhone bill.

I found the transcript for the show here and share it with you now:

Wow.

As for Justine Ezarik... just Google her to find her vlogging, blogging, flogging, etc. sites.

It's nice to find someone more narcissistic and "jacked in" than me so I can point my finger at her and laugh.

Fozzout.

So, the "revolutionary" Apple iPhone is hitting the market this week. I took some time to download the guided tour video Apple has available. I have to say I'm very, very impressed with what they've done with the iPhone.

That being said, I don't think I'll be getting one anytime soon. Here's why:

• No Ogg Vorbis or FLAC support. I know I'm in a very small minority of people who care about this, but most of my musical library is not in MP3 format and this is the biggest reason I've never cared much for the iPod to begin with. I wonder if the video realm is the same way. Does the iPhone only support Quicktime videos?
• Third-party applications? I didn't see anything in the guided tour video about third party applications. My Treo 700p has served me really well because I can throw lots of different PalmOS applications on it for lots of different things. For example, I track mileage on our cars and it reminds me of service that needs to be done.
• Will it dock with Linux? Can I use the iPhone from a Linux desktop? Last I heard, iTunes was not available for Linux.
• Only AT&T? I'm sure AT&T (A.K.A. Cingular) paid a pretty penny for the exclusive rights to sell the service in the U.S. for the iPhone when it was first released. I'm a Sprint customer. I might consider switching back to Verizon, but there's really no way I'd ever switch to AT&T/Cingular. They've got a terrible track record for signal coverage and customer service, in my area anyway.
• Third party applications!! I have to mention this twice because I use my Treo 700p a lot to establish SSH connections to servers when I'm not near a computer. The Treo doesn't offer this capability natively, but I can do it by installing one of several open source applications.

That being said, I am very impressed with the web browser demo and the tricks the iPhone can do with its built-in accelerometer. If nothing else, iPhone -- like the iPod before it -- will be the kid to beat for the next few years, resulting in good news for everyone.

My dad sent me yet-another sentimental, well-meaning "send this to everyone you know" e-mail message. Now, I checked the veracity of the message at breakthechain.org and urbanlegends.about.com and found some confirmation that the basic premise of the letter is true - Anne Graham did speak to someone on the CBS Early Show and did say some of the things attributed to her, but most of the contents of the message were added to her words.

From what I can tell, everything from the paragraph that begins In light of recent events and forward is not attributable to Anne Graham Lotz.

Nonetheless, I do believe this is worth of thought. I'm not going all bible-thumper here -- I'm just pointing out there some things worthy of pondering in this -- albeit somewhat fabricated -- message.

While we're here reading about passing stuff on via e-mail, let me just say that I ABHOR chain e-mail -- especially the ones that actually encourage the reader to pass it on or that there is some kind of virtuous or monetary reward involved for spreading the bologna to the most people.

Please don't pass this on to anyone. Please.

Starting to cool off- feeling a lot like Fall! Jackets in the morning, shorts in the afternoon.

So, what's up in the life of Fozz? Too much... and none of it seems very interesting to me.

Geeky PDA Linux syncy stuff

First off, I finally got my Treo 650 to sync with FC4. How did I do it? I had to go over to the Fedora Core development repository and find some source RPMs for udev and hotplug. Once I compiled these, installed them, and rebooted (that's really the only way to restart udev), I could sync with jpilot just fine.

The problem with the Treo 650 and Fedora Core 4 has something to do with how long it takes udev/hotplug to create the /dev/ttyUSB* devices. It was usually about eight seconds before they'd show up. That seems to be fixed with these new RPMs

A little background: Unlike older Linux device paradigms where the /dev directory is full of device files for every possible device for which the kernel has support compiled into it, the more recent Fedora Core kernels take advantage of udev and hotplug to create device files dynamically as they're needed.

Getting ready to run to Colorado

This weekend Sons Of Nothing will be taking the FloydShow to Grand Junction, CO and Steamboat Springs, CO. We're all stoked about the shows because this is the first time we'll be playing the Mesa Theater in Grand Junction, which seems like a really cool joint, and we'll be returning to Levelz in Steamboat Springs where we had a great reception back in January.

In addition, it's very likely we'll be debuting the new Sons Of Nothing Screenonifirer. Some people who consider themselves to be technical geniuses might look at it and say, "That's just a video projector," but they're wrong. We've harnessed secret powers of the supernatural underworld to make this, oh, so much more.

We also got a heavy duty, fancy pantsy fog machine -- also enhanced with supernatural, underworldly, neato thingers -- and it created beautiful fog at Ciseros a couple weekends ago... for about forty five minutes... and then... it died.

I think it's a thermostat or something.

Anyway, it was a new unit all covered by a warranty so it's riding the big truck to Florida for some free repairs. In the meantime, we should be able to get a sit-in (fog-in) for this weekend. After all, a FloydShow wouldn't be a FloydShow without the omnipresent fog.

Ahhh, how far I've come. In high school, I manufactured a fog machine using an aluminum garbage can (anyone remember those?), a water heater heating element, a small electric fan, and dryer hose. Filled with water which was heated, we would lower a wire basket containing chopped up dry ice (frozen CO²) into the water, producing a thick carbon dioxide vapor which could then be blown out of the dryer hose.

I remember sitting in my room my first year of college, running a fog machine like this, playing Pink Floyd, and placing 25 watt colored "party lights" into a cardboard shoebox with small holes punched into it. The light emanating through these holes cut through the fog like tendrils reaching out into the room.

I didn't need drugs to have otherworldly experiences while listening to my space rock. All I needed was... hardware. ;-)

So, now we have fog production, the kind of video projection device we need, and a nice big screen. My goal is to focus on supplemental lighting gear now - a couple DMX scanners, some modest PAR cans, and a DMX computer interface. And, of course, getting everything to run flawlessly on Linux.

Won't that be nice.

Home stuff

Christine's stressed about work and it sucks. There's only so much I can do from afar. I offered to beat the people up who are causing her stress, but somehow I don't think that would be the end of her problems.

Just stick in there, girl. Do your job good and the stupidity of others will either stop or begin to be painfully obvious to people in charge.

Lucy's in her second week of preschool and, of course, loves it. Maya just does her thing: She goes to school, does excellent, comes home, draws tons of pictures for everyone, and reads herself to sleep.

I insisted on saving a bunch of my favorite books from my childhood for my kids. I made this decision when I was a kid and I never really could imagine what it would be like to actually pull that box out and hand those books to my own children, but here I am. Maya's eating them up. She's a better reader than I was and I was a really good reader. She's in second grade and reading "big" books like Laura Ingalls Wilder novels. I keep joking about throwing the Lord Of The Rings trilogy at her.

Eli's a weed: Just keeps growing. Not really talking a lot, but he sings a lot. It's cute.

I bought a trailer recently. I need to get a hitch receiver for the car so I can actually use the trailer. It'll be nice, though, when everything's all done. I'll be able to haul some bigger items without bothering my dad or my brother. We'll be able to go camping for a couple days if we want. It's just a flatbed with short sides- like an ATV trailer or a lawnmower trailer.

Our backyard is coming together almost on schedule. The sprinkler lines I wanted to get in by October 1 are all in. I've just got a couple things to finish at the valve box. We've probably got about 5-700 square feet of sod to put down and I've been landscaping the dirt where that's going to go.

I won't be able to do sod this weekend -- I'll be in Colorado -- but maybe next week or the next weekend.

Then, I can start working in the basement again!