http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Tue, 4 Jul 2006 23:45:20 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/07/04/234520.php Adam DrakeIt's been a while since my first post about switching and since then I have made some changes. Specifically, I've switched my RSS reading from Vienna to Safari as recommended by henk, commenter #6 in the last post. It took a good Google search to figure out how to do it because Safari doesn't import OPML files. The basic process is as follows:Export your feeds from your preferred reader into an OPML fileInstall Mozilla Firefox (if not already installed)Install the Sage RSS Plugin for Firefox and import your OPML fileExport your Firefox bookmarks and import them into SafariMove the bookmarks from the Safe Feeds folder to wherever you want them in SafariOpen all feeds in a new window so that they will be recognized as feeds, if that doesn't happen you can edit the address and replace with http:// with feed:// (I had to do that for a few of them.)Now that my RSS reading and web browser are one and the same, I can say that my productivity has once again increased by switching to Mac OS. It is important to keep an open mind during these types of transitions, especially where technology is concerned. The fact that I have always used a seperate interface or application for my RSS reading in the past, does not mean that I must use one in the future. Thankfully, Apple has designed the RSS reading in Safari in such a way that casual news and blog addicts like myself can stay up-to-date while doing our normal surfing.In addition to making the full Safari switch, I have also transitioned the 3 remaining employees at my office to Mac Minis. Part 3 in this series will describe what was necessary to stage these new machines so they could be used by our employees. I'll give you a hint; not much. Sci/Tech49997@blogcritics.org Tue, 4 Jul 2006 23:45:20 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/06/24/000156.php Adam DrakeI know, it's been a long time since I posted here. Cut me some slack...I've been busy.This is the first in a series of articles that will describe my experience in switching from a Linux operating system on my laptop to a MacBook running Mac OS X.When the MacBook was released, I was pretty excited. Linux has been my OS of choice for about 6 years, and I still use it on my servers. I have no complaints with Linux, but having never owned a Mac, I wanted to see if it was a better environment for me to work in.The first thing I had to do after booting up was to download all the applications I need to do my day-to-day work. This includes email, web browsing, writing technical papers, programming, and other tasks.The purpose of this initial post is to list what I consider to be the "required" applications on Mac OS X for mathematicians and scientists, or at least applications that I require. I recognize that many scientists and engineers will be coming from a Linux environment just as I have, so my first priority was to replicate the features I need in that environment. These applications are just the ones that I needed to do my work, your mileage may vary.The first missing thing I noticed was that I needed a good text editor and virtual desktops. To that end, I downloaded Smultron, an editor similar to gvim and Desktop Manager, which allows me to have virtual desktops. I like gvim a lot, but it's easier to use Smultron on Mac OS X (for me anyway).In addition to basic text-editing and desktop-switching, I needed productivity applications. When I was using Debian, LaTeX and other applications were easily installed with a simple apt-get. However, on Mac OS X, the situation is a little bit different.If you need LaTeX and its associated conveniences, I would recommend TeXShop for an editing environment (if you need one). Another nice thing about Mac OS X is that you can use LaTeXiT to write complex things in LaTeX and then simply drag them into other applications like Keynote. However, you cannot use TeXShop without a LaTeX environment (MacTeX on Mac OS X).If you do any file transfers via FTP or SFTP/SCP, Cyberduck will be an invaluable tool.This leads us to the problem of office applications. For that I use OpenOffice.org although NeoOffice or AbiWord would work as well. For communication purposes, I have Skype handy, although I haven't had an occasion to use it yet.That pretty much covers it on the productivity front. The only things left are other applications used for communication and day-to-day tasks (email, web-browsing, IM, etc.)If you need anti-virus protection, ClamXav is available.For an RSS reader, Vienna is the best I've found. It is clean, intuitive, and doesn't get in your way. There is another application called RSSOwl that does the same thing, although Vienna is my preference.Adium can take care of all your instant messaging needs. Thunderbird will handle your email. Firefox will take care of web-browsing (unless you prefer Camino). Flip4Mac will handle playing wmv files, which Mac OS X doesn't really handle natively. Currently it's in beta but I got the link from Digg and it has worked flawlessly for me. I don't know when the release-version comes out, but I do recommend it.Those are all the apps I use on a daily basis. If you have any others, please feel free to let me know. I'm still a relatively new convert to Mac OS and, at this point, I'm trying to make it resemble my Linux environment as much as possible, while simultaneously increasing my productivity. Overall I'm enjoying it and feeling like I get more done, especially with all the native keyboard shortcuts, which I may write about at some later date.Future articles will include converting email into Thunderbird on Mac OS and getting used to those glorious keyboard shortcuts I already mentioned. Sci/Tech49612@blogcritics.org Sat, 24 Jun 2006 00:01:56 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/01/31/222424.php Adam DrakeLike many companies and individuals, I still have to deal with paper. Even though it's becoming an increasingly digital world, paper still reigns supreme in some areas. I have looked at document imaging systems in the past when I worked at another company, and found them to be quite expensive. Below is my open source solution to this common problem, and it only cost me hardware.Step 1: Find a good scannerSometimes it's hard to get good hardware that is supported in Linux. Many major manufacturers are now offering Linux drivers and Brother happens to be one of them. They have a line of multi-function machines that work very well in Linux with their supplied driver (at least in my experience). The scanner I use is the MFC5440CN. The reason I use this particular model is because it has a 35 page automatic document feeder (ADF). That may not seem like very much capacity, but if you have a longer document you can add pages to the ADF while it's scanning. In addition to the ADF, the scanner can be acquired for little money; Amazon has it listed for $123.49 with free shipping. A USB cable will have to be acquired separately (if you don't already have one) because it is not included with the scanner.Step 2: Install drivers & softwareThis part is incredibly simple compared to some other devices I've tried to use, partially because of the simple package management in Debian Linux and partly because Brother supplies a good open source driver. You can simply navigate to their page that contains Linux drivers and download the appropriate one for your distribution. I used the brscan2 Debian installer package.After the driver is downloaded, it can be installed by typing (as root) "dpkg -i brscan2-0.0.2-1.i386.deb" (without quotes). The only other software required for this is SANE, ImageMagick, and pdftk. In Debian Linux these are easily installed by running "apt-get install sane imagemagick pdftk" (again, without quotes).Now that the driver and software is installed, some configuration may be necessary in /etc/fstab depending on your configuration. If you already have a line for /proc/bus/usb in your /etc/fstab then you will need to modify it with your favorite text editor (VIM) to read:(users with 2.4.x kernels use usbdevfs instead of usbfs) none /proc/bus/usb usbfs auto,devmode=0666 0 0If you don't have a line like that in your /etc/fstab you can add it by typing as root:(users with 2.4.x kernels use usbdevfs instead of usbfs) echo 'none /proc/bus/usb usbfs auto,devmode=0666 0 0' >> /etc/fstabNext, change USB access control:umount /proc/bus/usb; mount /proc/bus/usb; mknod -m 666 /dev/usbscanner c 180 48The scanner should now work properly.Step 3: A Small ScriptI wrote a small script to do all the processing for me. This way, I can just load some pages into the ADF and run the script. It will scan everything in, convert the images to pdf's, concatenate the individual pdf's, and then delete all the temporary files. It is pasted below:========= #!/bin/bash#Automatic scan/conversion script #Requires sane, imagemagick, and pdftk#Scan in the pages scanadf --mode "Black & White" --resolution 200#Convert each page to a pdf file and delete the original image file for file in image-* do convert $file $file.pdf rm $file done#Concatenate all the individual pdf files into one single file and delete the original pdf files pdftk image-*.pdf cat output $1.pdf rm image-*.pdfexit 0 =========I have it configured to scan in black and white, with 200 dpi resolution. This works fine for the majority of things that I do and results in comparatively smaller files. If you wanted color scanning or higher resolutions, you could change them appropriately. I run the script by typing ./scan.sh filename, where filename is whatever I want the output file to be called. The .pdf extension is put on automatically in the script.ConclusionIn all, the installation process (on Debian) takes approximately 10 minutes and the scanner only costs about $125. I don't know how many pages per hour can be imaged with this setup, but with my settings it takes approximately 2-3 seconds to scan a page and just a couple of minutes to scan a whole semester's worth of calculus notes. I'm not sure whether this could replace larger document imaging systems used in some companies because of the ADF size, but for personal and small business purposes it's a cheap and easy open source solution. Originally posted at politicalapathy.com. Sci/Tech43015@blogcritics.org Tue, 31 Jan 2006 22:24:24 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/01/27/175740.php Adam DrakeLike many techno-geeks I host my LAMP website on a cheap ($150) computer and my broadband connection. I have also wondered what would happen if my site was linked on Slashdot or Digg. Specifically, would my setup be able to survive the "Slashdot Effect?" A Pentium 100mhz can easily saturate a T1's worth of bandwidth and my upload speed is capped (supposedly) at 384kbps, so the server should easily be able to handle that. My bandwidth will be saturated before the server is incapacitated, at least that's the idea.The machine I use for my web server is a $150 PC that I bought from Fry's one day (I always buy their $150 PC's when they're in stock). Here are the relevant specs on my little server:CPU: AMD Athlon 2600+ RAM: 512MB Hard Drive: 40GB 7200RPM Software: Debian Linux, MySQL, Apache, PHP, WordPressThere is additional software installed on this machine because it is also used as a desktop computer. However, none of that software is important for the purposes of this article.The RAM has been upgraded since I purchased the machine from Fry's because it originally came with 128MB, which is a little low for my tastes. The only other upgrade was a new CPU fan and that was out of personal preference, the default fan was just too loud.Below are some directives in my httpd.conf and some general recommendations that I think are vital to helping you survive a good Slashdotting on low-budget hardware. MaxKeepAliveRequests 0 The KeepAlive directive in httpd.conf allows persistent connections to the web server, so that new connection does not have to be initiated for each request. Setting the MaxKeepAliveRequests directive to 0 enables unlimited number of requests per connection, which makes sense if you think about it. Why allow persistent connections but then terminate them after a short period of time? KeepAliveTimeout 15 Because persistent connections are allowed, it is important that they are not kept open indefinitely. This directive will close the connection after 15 seconds of inactivity. MinSpareServers 15 This is the minimum number of spare servers you want running at any given time. This way, if multiple simultaneous requests are received there will already be child processes running to handle them. Setting this number too high is a waste of system resources and setting it too low will cause the system to slow down. MaxSpareServers 65 Same as above, but the maximum child processes running at any given time. StartServers 15 This is the number of servers Apache will start initially. As more servers handle requests a minimum of 15 spare servers will run up to the maximum of 64. MaxClients 500 This is the maximum number of simultaneous clients that can connect to the server at any given time. Setting this number too low will result in users being locked out of the server under normal traffic situations and setting it too high will result in your server being so overloaded that all the requests timeout anyway. I think 500 is about right for most people's needs. MaxRequestsPerChild 100000 Sets the maximum number of requests each child process will handle. This is mostly to prevent memory leaks and other mishaps but is important nonetheless. Setting this too low will cause a large portion of child processes to end for no real reason, thus slowing down the site. This could be set to 0 (unlimited) but that would negate any protection from valid issues like memory leaks. HostnameLookups off This prevents DNS lookups of all the visitors to the site, I am pretty sure it's off by default. If it's on in your httpd.conf I would recommend turning it off. Those are the main directives in my httpd.conf that I pay attention to for traffic handling purposes. Besides tweaking Apache, I also do other things to help ensure that my site doesn't get too overwhelmed.I minimize graphics on my site, and use css instead (where I can). This is pretty easy with WordPress, depending on which theme you use. I stay away from themes with a lot of images and I tend not to put any in my posts either. They're just too much of a drain on bandwidth, especially if you have a lot of traffic. On top of all that, I don't really like seeing graphics when I go to other sites. Most of the time they just get in the way of the information.As far as static pages go, that isn't much of an option for me. Everything in WordPress is dynamically pulled from the database unless certain plug-ins are installed and since my upload speed is the main bottleneck in my implementation, static pages aren't really a factor. However, if you have a faster upload speed, then having a cache of static pages would speed things up for you.Another thing that will help with bandwidth if you submit a link to one of the larger sites (Digg, Slashdot, etc.) is to use CoralCDN. CoralCDN is essentially a caching/proxy service that will reduce the drain on your bandwidth. All you have to do to use it is append ".nyud:net:8090" (without the quotes) to any link you submit. All requests for that link will then be automatically routed through CoralCDN.Those are just a few things you can do to help avoid having your server killed by Slashdot or Digg. The Apache configuration changes are important, but so is having a simple site that is low on graphics and other bandwidth intensive content. I'm sure there are many other things that can be done, and I don't claim to be an expert in this field (hence the general recommendations). So far, the previously mentioned things have helped my site stay up under some heavy traffic, but I have yet to be Slashdotted (thankfully?). If anyone else has recommendations on additional precautions I can take, I'm more than happy to hear them. If this gets onto Digg, Slashdot, etc. then it will be a good test of the things I've mentioned. We'll have to wait and see.Originally posted on PoliticalApathy.com Sci/Tech42847@blogcritics.org Fri, 27 Jan 2006 17:57:40 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/01/06/172445.php Adam DrakeBBC NEWS | Middle East | Ariel Sharon's emergency op ends Doctors have finished an emergency operation on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, but results are not yet clear, a hospital spokeswoman has said. I am unhappy to hear about the downward spiral that Ariel Sharon's health has taken recently. In fact, I would say it's more like a nosedive. My main concern lies with the future of the Palestinians and their ability to regain their land.In recent months, Sharon has made drastic changes in policy towards the Palestinians. Israel has withdrawn from Gaza and four West Bank settlements, territories they have been occupying since the Six-Day War in 1967. This is, in my opinion, a major step toward the two peoples being able to live together. It will not be the solution to all problems but I think it would be difficult to find someone (not a zealot) who thinks that the Israeli withdrawal was a bad idea.Now that Sharon is ill, and certainly wont be returning to his position as Prime Minister, the process of Israeli withdrawal and the creation of a Palestinian state is hanging in the balance. Sharon left the hard-line Likud party (which he formed in the 1970s) recently and formed the centrist Kadima (forward) party. Sharon was favored to win the elections that will take place this March. When he became ill, his deputy Ehud Olmert took over as interim prime minister and I became concerned that the general instability would not bode well for Kadima. However, today the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot ran a poll stating that the Kadia party is still expected to win 39 of the Knesset's 120 seats in the March election (with Likud winning 16 and Labor getting 20). The Kadima party has publicly committed itself to continuing the peace process Sharon has started, but that is not necessarily the case with the Likud party now led by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.The current Likud party is patently against all of the progress Sharon has made with the Palestinians and Netanyahu himself has gone so far as to say that Sharon has been "secretly planning" a unilateral withdrawal from 90% of the West Bank. Likud is so much against this withdrawal that Netanyahu equates it to a foreign policy that supports terrorism saying "The real election is between our policies and policies... that encourage terror." I suppose that Netanyahu believes the only path to peace is atop a bulldozer rolling over the bodies of Palestinians. This view is shared by other Israelis as well. They go so far as to claim that "not only is God against the peace process, he wont allow it." Essentially, many Israelis are too childish and radical to understand the concept of sharing. What ever happened to love thy neighbor? Perhaps all these zealots fighting the Palestinians in the name of God should do a bit of reviewing in their Bible (and likewise for the Palestinians, the Koran says much of the same things).I am concerned for the Palestinians, as I have always been. I viewed the withdrawals from some of the occupied territories with a healthy dose of skepticism but in the end believed that it was a genuine olive branch offered in the name of peace. I fear that with the prospect of new Israeli leadership, the Palestinians will not be so fortunate.Originally posted on Political Apathy. Politics41921@blogcritics.org Fri, 6 Jan 2006 17:24:45 EST