Another Gentoo LiveCD tutorial

I found and Furled another site that shows how to make Gentoo LiveCDs. I'm almost done with it, although I have a problem with the initrd I made. Just need to make sure I did that part right. Maybe I'll have some time over the holidays to work on it. I'd like it to have some multimedia utilities on it, as I may use a spare partition to store all of my media on, just for kicks.

Knoppix/Gentoo fun!

I read about a book called Knoppix Hacks, which details some of the things you can do with Knoppix, and after looking at the preview at Safari.com, I wouldn't mind getting that book. I was able to configure the X.org setup on my home computer using Knoppix-STD, and I'm able to get a better screen resolution than when I just used xorgcfg. Nice hack.

Also, I gave up using catalyst to make my own live CDs in favor of a technique I found on one of Gentoo's forums. It works pretty well, and I'm able to archive the setup for whenever I want to make any more CDs.

Catalyst continues....

So far the catalyst is chugging along :) It's nice to be able to remotely access my home machine so I can work on this while I'm at work. It's even more fault tolerant than the livecd-ng, and the instructions seem easier the second time around.

Just of kicks...

I'm trying to build a Gentoo LiveCD that has VMWare workstation installed on it, kinda like the CoolLinux CD that was put out last year some time. I tried to do the LiveCD thing before with Gentoo's catalyst, but at the time I found that hard to follow, and up until now, implement. I found some instructions on Gentoo-Wiki.com using livecd-ng, and that seems easier to set up. I had to tweak the script some to actually get it to work, and even then I ran out of space before the script finished compiling all the software. I might try catalyst now. More in a minute

VMWare goodness

I finally broke down and purchased a copy of VMWare workstation 4.5, and I am enjoying every minute of its use. I have been able to try out different Linux distros and some instances of Microsoft Windows working. Very cool indeed. I just got turned on to Arch Linux this way, and I want to install it independently of a VM. I want to replace Xandros 2 on my machine, but I might keep it there, just because I don't want to play musical partitions again. Good thing I got that copy ov VMWare :)

Endless Possibilities

I'm fascinated with all the gmail and firefox goodies out there. It's nice to know that these goodies are mostly open source, so I can look at the code and find out how it's done. I just ran into a way you can skin the look go Gmail. Go here and find out!

More Firefox Goodness

I was looking at Wil Wheaton's blog, and I ran across a site that has some Firefox plugins. take a look at this: http://extensions.roachfiend.com/index.php

Firefox 1.0PR

I'm absolutely impressed with Firefox and Thunderbird! Live bookmarks, popup blocking, and countless additions make this the smoothest web browsing experience to date!

Blog burnout?

Doesn't seem like I had anything to write about in the last month. It's not like I haven't had anything to write about. It's pure laziness.

I haven't had much time to do any more transcoding of any more Star Trek episodes, but I have an opportunity to record From the earth to the moon on some channel; I have to find out which channel.

I also found out that the individual whose computers I salvaged for parts wants his main computer back. That takes me back down in RAM from 512MB to 128MB of RAM I may have lying around. Looks like I'm investing in some lighter weight apps. Good thing I was looking at that article on Light weight linux apps.

Another link to check out: http://platypuswiki.sourceforge.net/

Interesting find.

I'd like to check this link out further: http://www.interactivetools.com/products/htmlarea/

Time flies..

Haven't had much tiime to work on my computer at home. I'd like to set up a system to catalog all my CDs here and at home.

I found something to that effect. I also want a program to catalog my MP3 files, and Zinf doesn't work well on my machine, so I had to find something else. More on that later

Gee....

I don't really have too much to say today... other than that I'll be looking forware to the opening of Aliens vs. Predator.

Media magnetism

I snagged another ST:TNG episode yesterday. What I want to do now is the following:

• Set up MythTV on my computer
  
• write a user mode driver for this TV Wonder Card. That thing's the only reason I still use windows
  at home

Transcode success

I was able to transcode all of my recorded MPEG files to DivX format last night. I transcoded a Star Trek:TNG episode just for starters, and it worked out flawlessly, and I think the picture looked better than the MPEG version. I was able to script the transcoding to do Congo and a news segment I recorded.

Transcode

I was ablel to record another show last night. I was able to catch an episode of Star Trek:The Next Generation.

The files I have on my hard drive are HUGE. In order to free up some more space for mor recording I'm attempting to use transcode to convert these files from MPEG to DivX files. Once I do that I plan to make VCDs from these shows and save them to CDs. Sounds like I need a CD-RW on this machine.

TV Wonder USB Burn-in

Last night I got a chance to do some video recording on my computer. The movie Congo was on USA last night, and I was able to record it. The output format for the files (I stopped and started in midstream) is MPEG, and the files are huge. I tried to convert them to AVIs using Virtual Dub, so let's see how that's going this evening.

True to form

I was thinking about the name of my blog, and I thought I'd give you all some insight as to where else I've been hiking on the Information Superhighway.

I keep my bookmarks on iKeepBookmarks.com. Check them out!

An interesting development experience

This past weekend I had a laptop computer I used to do some development for my job. I didn't want to install any of the tools to do development with, so I opted to use the SLAX live CD and create the modules I used for development. The module creation was exceptionally easy, and I had a very pleasant experience this holiday, although I didn't get my work completed.

I used Java, MySQL, Ant, and Netbeans for development, and I like how I was able to use Netbeans for my work. I didn't realize how easy it was for me to create and modify databases with Netbeans. I learned a lot this weekend, especially how to set up a Java servlet to be accessed via the web, and how to set up MySQL.

As I haven't finished my work today I'll just commit the changes I made over the holiday and bring my work home.

Module issues

I was able to install and run the SLAX modules I created already, with the exception of postgresql. I just made a MySQL module instead, and downloaded a JDBC connector for it. All in all I'm impressed with how SLAX performs on the laptop I borrowed. It's nice to be able to carry Linux around in your bag and use it on any computer.

Module issues

I've made all the SLAX modules I was going to say in the last post, but the postgresql mod failed to run properly, so I just made a MySQL module in its place. That works, with some tweaking, but now I need to install a JDBC connector for MySQL. I got one today, so I'll be able to work on my database projects from anywhere, and on any computer.

SLAX rox!

I got an opportunity to create a module for use with the SLAX live cd, and that has to be some of the simplest stuff I've seen to date when it comes to modifying bootable CDs. I made a java module based on a Slackware package I got from one of my Slackware CDs. Once I booted the CD I was able to use the module that I made! A really nice touch to that distro. I'll put the module up later when I get a chance.

Other modules to create.

• Apache ant
  
• Jakarta Tomcat
  
• Postgresql
  
• Netbeans
  
• Apache - just for good measure
  

What to Do?

What else to do on my Xandros machine at home?

• Install Tomcat


• Install blosxom


• Install Bochs or qemu so I can play Descent

Test Post

Until now I didn't know you could title posts in Blogger. Hmmmm......

Got a lot done on my Xandros machine last night. I had to reinstall Apache so that I could use PHP with it. Then I also installed the PHP module for Apache, Webmin, Apache Ant, and PostgreSQL. I'm trying to set up my computer like what is on the server at work, so I can start bringing work home, because it seems like that I might need to to meet my deadlines.

A couple of days ago I loaned one of our TVs to a friend of my wife, which only left us with one TV in the house. I have a TV wonder USB, which we used to watch TV in our room. That was pretty impressive to be able to do that.

Another thing I like about Xandros is that when I compile software and install it using checkinstall it keeps track of it. Even packages I imported using alien were kept track of. Nice....

Interesting.....

I've been using Xandros for some time now, and I'm getting used to using it more and more often. Last night I was able to install Diablo II on my Xandros machine last night as well as finally get my ZSNES installation working last night. My sound worked as soon as I hooked up some speakers. Hook up my joystick, and I'm in business.

Keeping the blog alive :)

My Xandros machine at work is humming along just fine. I installed Mozilla on it, as well as Firefox 0.9 (which I accidentally trashed by installing a wayward extension), Xine, and I'm trying to get the dvdrip program to work. Zinf never worked on this machine, so I insalled Yammi for my audio library. That really sucked, too, for I liked Zinf for its ability to organize music.
Don't have Xmame, snes9x or zsnes yet, but that's coming. Also need to install Java/eclipse/Ant as well.

What about my home Xandros machine? Since I got it up and going I haven't touched it too much. I installed a WineX package I built at work. It works okay, but crashes if I leave it idle too long. Not a problem as long as I keep saving my Starcraft games often. I haven't had a chance to record any shows to computer or perfect my AutoHotkeys solution to setting up a timer for recording shows, yet, but that'll be in the future.

Some days it seems so hard to pick myself up and get any work done. There are plenty of things that I can tinker with on my computer that I allow myself to get distracted. I'm working on that.

An interesting note-taking site.

A nice way to capture thoughts as they come to you.

I was able to install PostNuke on my computer, after having to recompile apache and PHP so that they can talk to each other. Interesting concept. From my perspective, I think each user will have his/her own PostNuke installation. Now it's just a matter of figuring out how to configure the sites so that users can just log in, update their content, and most importantly, design the site the way they want.

As a desktop machine, Xandros is cool, but for server tasks, I may have to go back to Gentoo or Slackware. I wanted to host a demo of ColdFusion and put PostNuke on here for testing, and I may still do that, since I need the environment in short order, but at my next opportunity I may put Gentoo back on my machine. I will still keep my Xandros setup at home, though.

The Xandros works well. I like using it at home, and I'd like to put it on my machine at work. It's simply a matter of playing musical filesystems as I find out what I need and what I don't need. :)

I have a Gmail account! I didn't realize that as Blogger user I had an invitation. It's good that I have something like this. It's about to be on!

I also have the TV Wonder USB working on my computer at home. I can view and record movies now. I'm trying to automate the thing such that I can set it up to record shows at a certain time using ATI's program. I'm experimenting with AutoHotKey to try to do that.

I was able to fashion a Celeron 500MHz computer with 512 MB Ram and a 40GB HD. I was able to install Windows 98 on it (so I can use my TV Wonder device for capture) and try out Xandros Desktop (Open Circulation Distribution) for usage on my machine. I like it so far, but my only beef with it is that if I want to be able to update software as easily as Gentoo I'd need to have internet access, which is what I will not have. So I will be stuck with creating stuff from source, or switching back to Gentoo or Slackware. I installed checkinstall, so when I compile stuff from source now I just create Debian packages for it for later. I really like the interface it has on it, so I may keep Xandros around a while. I will still keep Gentoo and Slackware around.

At one point I was trying to get a Live CD together with all the games I was able to put on it. I was using Gentoo's catalyst to put it together, and I was able to get to livecd-stage1 before I put that project aside. I found a LiveCD distro, SLAX, that will allow you to compile modules that you can add into the LiveCD on the fly. I plan to compile ZSNES, Snes9x, XMAME, and WINE so I can bring all my games with me on the road as I pleas. I think that'd be neat.

I remember also a time where I tried to record a program using that TV Wonder USB device, and my computer kept crashing. I was using the software that came with the device, but now I may try using VirtualDub to capture video now; I may also use it for my tape collection. I can save the music as an AVI file, then strip the audio to make WAVs, then MP3s.

My Gentoo installation process didn't work! :( The most frustrating part of it is that the installation usually choked on decompressing the tarballs or compiling the software. So I went about installing Slackware on the machine last night, which we'll see if that worked, since I had to go to bed before I completed the installation.

I found out today that there are some machines one of my fraternity brothers wanted me to look at. Maybe I can get some parts out of that thing.

Now I just need to get blogrolling back.

I like the new format of Blogger. more templates :)

I was finally able to get Gentoo installed on my machine at home. It would always choke when I tried to unpack any tarball. So what I did was unpack the stage 3 tarball and the portage tree I had, save that on a loopback filesystem, and copy the files from there when I got home. Now all I have to do is compile the rest of the stuff I want on there, and all's well. Why did the computer choke? Not sure, but I think it's got some hardware issues, and since I really can't buy a machine now, I'll do whatever workaround I need.

post and publish

I'm using blogBuddy...test 12 test 1 2

I'm also thinking about putting blosxom back to work on making my blog.

I copied the kernel and modules from the installation cd onto my Gentoo computer last night. That worked out fine. I'm still having problems with compiling software on it, althought I really think it's a problem with the motherboard or processor on the machine. As I don't have another machine right now, I have two choices: I can compile software on another machine, then install it on this one at home, or I can find a way to compile this software on this machine. It runs Linux (and Windows) pretty fast, so I'd like to use it as I want.

Long time, no see! What's been going on lately? Well, here goes.....

I finally got my gentoo installation up and going on my Pentium 200MHz computer. I had openbox, apache, xmame, rox, openoffice, etc. running on my machine. I even had a little blogging tool called blosxom running on it as well.

Then a lot of changes occurred. First we moved into a new apartment. Then I got a newer computer. The computer I got was a K6-2 with 64MB of ram. I got it from a friend after I built another computer for her. The mobo didn't recognize the hard drive I had in my old computer (A Western Digital drive,) so I had to reinstall everything. So far I got Windows 2000 running on that machine, and now I'm getting Gentoo put back on. I have problems compiling software on this machine, though. I tried compiling the kernel with lower optimization settings, but that didn't work. so I tried to compile the latest version of GCC, to no avail. When I tried to update gcc, the computer flopped on compiling ncurses (it's a portage thing.) I thought about compiling this manually, possibly using the ebuild.sh script.

I also have an ATI TV Wonder USB edition, which I would like to get to run with Linux, but as of yet there are no drivers for it. Looks like I'll have to get that working myself. No problem with that.