I recently upgraded to the newest version of vmware workstation, and they seem to have fixed the problem that I described in this post. Ubuntu is now one tiny step closer to its goal of world domination, thanks to VMware!
Our cat Grace’s favorite pastime is lounging. She loves to sit on the easy chair with you, and once comfortable will often stay in a spot even if it becomes precarious, as it did one day when I was sitting with her for a while but had to get up.
[Update: the problem described below is now fixed]
Unfortunately installing vmware-tools inside of Ubuntu Dapper Drake does not by default give you the ability to resize your desktop - I was getting an error message during the tools config saying “No X install found”. I spent some time searching the web, reading the vmware forums, etc. and finally found some nice people who had come up with a solution. Even once you have installed it using these instructions, you need to use the Preferences->Screen resolution menu from inside Ubuntu to do it instead of just resizing the vmware menu. Anyhow, here are the instructions.
sudo bash apt-get install build-essential apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`
[Update: changed the link to a locally cached copy, since the original source seems to be down]
cd /tmp wget http://platan.vc.cvut.cz/ftp/pub/vmware/vmware-tools-any-update1.tar.gz tar xzf vmware-tools-any-update1.tar.gz
cd /tmp tar xzvf /cdrom/VMwareTools*.tar.gz cd vmware-tools-distrib/ ./vmware-install.pl
During vmware-install.pl, I chose the default answers to everything but at the end did not choose to launch vmware-config-tools.pl.
cd /tmp/vmware-tools-any-update1/ ./runme.pl
Again, choose to not run vmware-config-tools.pl yet
cd /usr/bin patch vmware-config-tools.pl /tmp/patch.txt ./vmware-config-tools.pl
perl -p -i.bak -e 's/\"mouse\"/\"vmmouse\"/' /etc/X11/xorg.conf
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/14733625.htm
The next step was to radio for emergency landing clearance.
“They came back and asked what my problem was,” he said. “I told them I had one hand full of snake and the other hand full of plane. They cleared me in.”
I don’t understand what’s up with the plans offered by the online storage gang. Here’s a sample of their pricing:
box.net: 15GB storage, 50GB/mo transfer, 9.99/mo
omnidrive: “approximately $70 per year for 10GB (or more)”
xdrive: 5GB, unlimited transfer?, $8.29/mo
strongspace: 4GB, unlimited transfer, $8/mo
For comparison purposes, here’s the storage you can get with a web hosting package from 3 popular hosting providers:
dreamhost: 20GB storage, 1TB/mo transfer, $7.99/mo
godaddy: 50GB storage, 500GB/mo transfer, $6.99/mo
1and1: 100GB storage, 1000GB/mo transfer, $9.99/mo
Finally, amazon.com’s S3 storage service is .15/GB/mo for storage and .20/GB/mo for bandwidth, so you could get:
amazon S3
I understand that the online storage providers are giving customers easier and more convenient ways to get at this storage than they get with a web host. But I think at this point it’s mostly tech savvy people who can understand even these simplified interfaces. My feeling is that since many of their potential users are also savvy enough to understand how to use [s]ftp/rsync/scp/webdav to access the storage that web hosts or amazon provides, they really need to compete more aggressively on GB per dollar to get more business.
Last weekend on our trip to Kirkwood, Amy and I drove on I580 over the Altamont Pass. It’s been a few years since I last drove through there, and it seemed like there are far more windmills than before. I did a little searching and although I didn’t find anything specifically pointing to growth at the Altamont Pass site, overall wind production did rise from around 3500 GWh in 2000 to about 4400 GWh in 2005. (see here and here).
Also, there used to be some really crazy looking ones that I have now learned are called Darrieus wind turbines. I was looking for them as we drove through the pass but didn’t see any, and Amy thought I was nuts when I tried to convince her that I had seen windmills that looked vaguely like a piece from a DNA strand. Of course when we got home I had to go and do some research. 
There is a lot of interesting information about wind power and the Altamont Pass wind farms here, here, and here. Apparently wind farms are a controversial source of green power, with the two main problems being their propensity to kill birds, and offend some people’s sense of aesthetics. In any event, California is one of the largest producers of wind power in the US, and according to this page cited above, about 1.5% of our total 2005 energy production came from wind turbines.
Or at least, there was this past weekend when Amy and I went up to use some vouchers for Kirkwood we had bought earlier in the season. It’s amazing how much snow falls in the mountains near Lake Tahoe, particularly this year since we had above average rainfall/snowfall.
I snapped this picture with my cell phone near the highest point of highway 88 on our way there. It’s cool how the snowplows leave striations of the various snowfalls throughout the season (most noticable to the left of the white truck).
I prefer to have a close button on the edge of each tab, and when I close a tab for focus to go to the previously selected tab, so these two are invaluable:
(I wonder if these actually have any code in them, or they just change some preferences somewhere)
Next, here are two extensions which help me to solve two web annoyances - pages with crazy annoying flash, and sites that are designed only for IE and don’t work right in firefox.
And depending on how much web development I happen to be doing, this one comes in handy:
Both flashblock and web developer have useful buttons you can put on your toolbar. The button for flashblock lets you add the current site to your flash-allowed site list, and the button for web developer allows you to quickly show/hide the developer toolbar.
To get the buttons, you go to View->Toolbars->Customize and just drag them onto the navigation bar.
Finally, here’s another nice one to have:
This one automates lookup to bugmenot.com for anonymous username/passwords for registration required sites like nytimes & friends, and autofills form fields.
There are times that I’m using remote desktop to connect to a machine running vmware, and I need to user of the virtual machines running inside vmware. The display refresh is often slow in this case, and the mouse emulation seems to get a little confused as well. It would be cool if vmware itself provided a vnc / remote desktop server you could connect to, instead of having to mess around with turning on remote access within the virtual machine itself (which, if your virtual machine’s networking is set to NAT or a host-only private network, is complicated or impossible to make work).
Now here’s an awesome idea: AWD bicycles (two wheel drive, in other words). When mountain biking up steep grades with a normal bike, you have to lean forward to avoid doing a wheelie, but balance your weight carefully between the forward and rear to keep traction to the rear wheel. There have been many times I’ve ended up either walking my bike up really steep sections, or tried to keep riding but ended up losing traction and totally biffing it. I can imagine an AWD bike would make these steep grades much easier.
(via bramcohen)
I read an article in the Mercury News about the Wonderful World of Rats event held this past weekend. Unfortunately we were busy but it would have been fun to drag Amy over there. (I had mice for pets as a kid so I have a special place in my heart for pet rodents)
Leo intently watching a bird out on our deck.
(P.S. Dig the wood paneling. I know you’re jealous!)
Web applications are great. We all love web apps! Location independence, no worries about backups, short development cycles meaning we get new features fast; it’s all goodness and light. But there are some security and privacy concerns. Here are two great examples. First, what if a malicious employee at an otherwise benevolent company decides to steal some of my data in violation of their privacy policy? Oops. Second, I’ve heard that in some cases the bar for the government to get at your personal data is lower if it lives on a server somewhere (just a subpoena is needed), than if it lives on your personal computer (a search warrant is needed). Oops.
So what if web apps using fancy AJAX techniques delivered the application code (html, javascript, style sheets, etc.) from their servers but the data lived on a server you controlled?
I’m sure there’s no way it could work.
Ok, maybe if you used this: http://www.fourmilab.ch/javascrypt/.
And perhaps this might come in handy: http://webdavclient.mozdev.org/.
But still, anyone would be nuts to try this.
Ever wonder how those automatic proxy configuration URL’s work? Basically the URL must return javascript code served up with a Content-Type of “application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig”, which the browser will run to decide whether to proxy each URL it fetches, and which proxy to use. The javascript should be returned as just plain text, not wrapped in <script> tag’s or anything.
The one function you need to implement is FindProxyForURL(url, host), which gets called for every URL the browser fetches, and must return a string containing one of “DIRECT”, “PROXY host:port”, or “SOCKS host:port”. Actually, the string can also contain a list of these separated by semi-colons, in which case the browser will try each one in sequence until it is able to fetch the page. There are some convenient functions predefined for you to help in examining to url and making proxy decisions based on domain, network of resolved ip server host ip address, time of day/week, etc.
The specification can be be found here.
