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How Running Ubuntu off of an SDHC Card Stopped My NightmaresApril 6

(Update: Made some small clarifications)

Do you want to hear about my nightmares?

Of course you don’t, but I will begin anyway.

One horrifying fictional vision that has kept me up at night was where my netbook’s hard drive broke down because I attempted to use it on a bumpy bus ride. Scary indeed. The idea of abusing technology makes me cringe.

So the next night, I dreamed that my netbook had a solid state drive. Things felt good, until I realized that my wallet was completely empty, and the drive was completely full.

This reflects the dilemma that I had–solid state drives are more durable on bumpy buses, but cost more and store less. What I wanted is large capacity plus the classic SSD durability.

The solution I came up with? I purchased a 16 GB class 6 SDHC card, stuffed it into the SDHC card slot into the side of the netbook, and installed Ubuntu to it.

The home directory partition remains on the traditional hard drive–unmounted most of the time. But the most frequently used files of the home directory, such as configuration files, remain on the SD card. I can be fully functional without ever using my hard drive.

The pros? I have a pretty cheap storage medium that acts like an SSD, yet still have the ability to summon the storage capacity of a 120 GB hard drive when the drive is not in danger of being acci

The Butterfly EffectApril 4

Somewhat recently, I got bored and decided to write a fictional story. Given that I’ve posted nothing on this blog since last August, I decided I had to break the silence with something.

Last night, I talked to God. The strange—yet somewhat predictable—thing was that God is exactly like me. God explained to me that He and I are clones because my universe was designed to be a replica of His. God, like me, is a computer engineer at BitTech—the largest supercomputer conglomerate in the world. Well, he is a computer engineer at his universe’s BitTech—which is exactly the same as the one in my universe. BitTech is well known for attracting the world’s best engineers by giving away lavish perks—including a small amount of CPU time on some of BitTech’s most powerful computer clusters.

After doing some research, the God version of me found out that the CPU time allotted to him, plus some cheap hard drive space, was barely enough to create a simulation of the entire universe he lived in. In fact, he wasn’t the first to do it—other replicas of his universe had been created. It was not too difficult—astronomy had advanced to the point where the details of the Big Bang were known. A new generation of computers had helped simplify the laws of quantum mechanics and unify it with Einstein’s theories. All the buildings blocks were in place, and others had succeeded in putting them together.

But God’s simulated universe was not a

Prediction: Android Gains Strength against iPhone in Late 2009 to 2010August 7 2009

Introduction

Android is not doing as well as I wanted it to. I was hoping that the Linux-based mobile operating system would leave the folks at Apple shaking in their boots.

At the time of this writing, it isn’t like that. There are two major Android phones released in the United States; the HTC Dream (T-Mobile G1) and the HTC Magic (T-Mobile myTouch 3G).

Reviewers have had disappointing things to say about the HTC Dream, citing issues with the dimensions, battery life, speed, the camera, the “Leno chin”, and so forth. But especially, many considered the physical looks of the phone to be depressing.

“The original T-Mobile G1 was an ugly phone, a boxy clunker with a jutting chin…” –InfoSync

Now, I own an HTC Dream, and it doesn’t seem that bad to me. The battery life is fine, the phone is good looking enough, easy to type on, and Android is a pretty awesome operating system. However, the world does not seem to agree with me. If they did, Andro

Four Must-Do's for Giving CDs to Potential New Linux UsersJuly 25 2009

So you’re a Linux enthusiast. You love Linux, and wish to spread the love to other computer users. “How exactly can I ensure that they be happy Linux users?” you ask yourself when thinking about people that are about to convert to Linux.

Well, there are serveral things that one must do to ensure that the newbie Linux user will have a smooth computing experience.

1) Make sure it’s a CD–and a LiveCD

Do not give them a DVD, USB key, or a printed bit of paper containing a large mass of 1′s and 0′s for them to install Linux with. Make sure it’s a CD. Why?

DVDs are bad in case the computer they want to install it on does not have DVD reading capabilities. Remember, Linux has the reputation of running on older computers like a champ. Don’t ruin that ability with a DVD.

USB keys are bad because they often require configuring the BIOS to make the USB key bootable. If you are giving Linux to non-technical users, you definitely want to make sure that they do not need to fiddle around with the BIOS.

Direct installation CDs are bad because it does not let the user test out his or her hardware to see whether or not it is supported by default. It may be the case that the user is not interested in a whole lot of configuration, and does not want to install Linux if it does not have perfect out-of-the-box support for his or her hardware.

Also, don’t just point the new user to an ISO that they have to download and then bu

Five Reasons FriendFeed Has Made Reading Personal Blogs InterestingJuly 17 2009

I don’t like personal blogs.

No offense to people that do have blogs chronicling their lives, but I do not have the time or motivation to read personal blogs, even personal blogs that are written by my friends.

I probably wouldn’t even be able to maintain interest in reading the personal blog of a person that has a life more interesting than a James Bond movie. (Of course, I mean–such an autobiography would probably do better as a book or movie. Especially a movie.)

These above statements are assuming that FriendFeed, Twitter, and Facebook are not personal blogs for the users that use them. But assuming that those three social networks are personal blogging platforms, then my tune has to change–especially because of FriendFeed.

For the rest of this post, I will focus on the advancements that FriendFeed has brought to the personal blog; advancements that enable me to tolerate personal blogs.

1) Posts that are shorter, but not too short

Click on the above image to see it at full-size.

FriendFeed posts, by far, are shorter than long essays about one’s life. FriendFeed comments do have the capacity for quite long posts, but people generally ke