Beginning Linux

I find I'm recently getting inquiries from various friends and business associates who say they want to try Linux. So I thought I'll post about it here. I'm not an expert by any means, and it's late at night and I need to catch some zzz's, but hopefully this post might help some.

So far I've used three Linux distributions (or distros): Xandros, Ubuntu and Gentoo.

Before I continue, the word distro just inspired me to write this post on my other blog:
http://arkaroy.blogspot.com/2008/03/ending-words-with-o.html

Anywhoo, back to my Linux experience.

1) Xandros is very Window-like. It was a good transition for someone like myself coming from Windows. However it is a very minor distro and the community is not very large. A large community results in more standards, more ports of drivers etc. so it is more usable, and there is more support. Of course the Linux kernel is the same regardless of distribution and thus most drivers should work across the board, but in practice most non-hardcore users are helped greatly by distribution-specific installers and availability on package managers.

2) Ubuntu was very pleasant. It has a great GUI and a large community.

Of course the GUI, like anything else in Linux, is customizable in any distribution, but in this post I am only interested in describing the state of things as they are out of the box. That is the audience for whom I write, and compared to whom I am not all that much ahead on the curve either.

I can't recall what may have been any minus points with Ubuntu. Of course, compared to Windows, there are several usability drawbacks stemming from the lack of drivers or application software for some specific pieces of equipment like printers, cell phone, iPod, etc.

3) Gentoo is not pleasant. I only use it because I have to for one of my clients. It is very bare-bones. The installation of major packages is extremely time-consuming because its package manager doesn't have binaries, just source so EVERYTHING has to be compiled. Firefox took ages to compile (whereas in Ubuntu I think it was available right out of the box). I've heard that installing and setting up OpenOffice can take a good chunk of your day. Some people like this DIY approach but I certainly have better things to do.

Of course the advantage is that you only end up with exactly what you want or need. Such zen-like minimalism may be aesthetically pleasing but let's face it, hard disk space is a cheap commodity, heading inexorably toward dirt-cheap-dom, whereas for me (and doubtless you too) time just gets more and more precious.

I will write more going forward on Linux, and hopefully this is a helpful start for some.

Ending words with an O

I've been in Japan all this time and in recent years I'm noticing back in the States (well, being Canuckistani I guess it is le sacrilege for me to say "back", but compared to Japan I suppose America seems sufficiently Canadian that it qualifies as a kind of "home turf") that people in the tech biz have a way of shortening a word and then sticking an "o "on its ass.

Examples

presentation -> preso
distribution -> distro (as in Linux distro)
algorithm -> algo
definitely -> defo

Any other major ones? Feel free to add them to the comments.

Zoho Creator

Just horsing around with Zoho Creator.

For starters, I made an embedded form which I've placed at the bottom of this blog that will allow you lucky people to contact me. Give it a try!

Although I can hardly claim to have "made" it, but rather selected something similar from their template of applications and tweaked it a bit.

Tokyo2Point0

Attended the Tokyo2Point0 get-together yesterday, at Fujimama's.

Two web apps were introduced.

1. http://www.photohito.com/
   
   This is a photo-sharing site by kakaku.com. It is very focused on cameras and lenses, and the photography aspect of photo-sharing. It ties in with the kakaku.com product database via their API, so that when you upload a photo you are presented with hierarchical pull-down menus that allow you to enter camera and lens information. I've noticed that other photo-sharing sites like Flickr and Photobucket also display some camera information which gets embedded into the JPEG header by the digital camera. photohito.com takes this camera / photography aspect to a different level.
   



2. http://www.pressarmy.com
   
   This is a site for viral projects. You can set up a profile page for your project. It is then used to track buzz about said project in the media and the blogosphere.
   

All in all it was a good time. The house wine at Fujimama's was a very nice Cabernet Sauvignon.

Fukutoshin Line

A new line is being built on the Tokyo subway, going to our station. Opening date is June 14.

As a result my life is going to get 200% better (not sure of the exact figure, I will admit).

It is going to run along the same route as the Yurakucho Line in our general area west of Ikebukuro. However past Ikebukuro into the city core it will just run directly below Meiji-dori to Waseda (hence Takadanobaba), Shinjuku, Harajuku, and Shibuya. All these places will be accessible without having to change trains! In fact Shibuya is my daily commute.

Yeehaw!

Toto Cafe

In the course of bicycling around our area last weekend I found another nice little cafe, the Toto Cafe.

It was around before, but seems to have reopened and is better and brighter. Not overly expensive and a nice place to park yourself to read and relax.

Quest for a ToDo list

As a former Outlook user I have been surprised by the lack of good To Do lists, or task managers, among the profusion of Web 2.o applications that have been in our collective face in the past few years.

It's pretty incredible, all manner of music recommendation services (cough...) but such a paucity of something so basic, and so comparatively easy to develop.

Yahoo! Calendar does have a task list, but it is very basic, hardly a task manager. The interface is not very slick either. Google Calendar, which otherwise has a superb interface, doesn't even have a task list to begin with.

All the buzz (ya, that inescapable buzz) over the past year seems to be about Remember The Milk... people talk about it as if it is the Second Coming, or Obama. But a glaring shortcoming is the lack of sub-tasks, or task hierarchies.

A new find is Todoist. Finally something with a nice friendly interface and a task hierarchy! It still could use some work, like a calendar view. Another thing, tasks are inextricably tied with appointments and schedules, so I'm surprised that both Remember The Milk and Todoist are not schedulers-come-task-managers. It seems like a no-brainer to me that two genres of application really belong together. I think there is a genre called PIM (personal information manager) that does encompass both. Remember The Milk tries to piggyback itself on Google Calendar, but it is not a very smooth or seamless operation.

Anywhoo, for now I will continue to test-drive Todoist and let you know how things are going!

Back to normal

We had a nice New Year's mid-day meal yesterday at home, cooked by Kasumi. Mio joined us.

Will post pics later... sorry I know I'm sounding like a broken record.

In the evening, the three of us went to Hie Jinja for hatsumode. We dropped by my office because I needed to pick up something. We then went to a Turkish restaurant right near my office called Anatolia. I love that place.

Noda-san party

Went to Noda-san and Tango-san's place last night for a shin-nen-kai.

Brought the obligatory wine and cheese.

Some interesting guests, including the woman who did the translation for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Sho-gatsu

Spent the shogatsu (New Years Day) celebration eating and imbibing at Kasumi's uncle and aunt's place in Shin-Yokohama.

Will post pics later.

A Happy New Year

A big countdown party at the home of my German friend, Roy (no relation, hehehe).

I took two bottles of Robert Mondavi, a Zinfandel and a Chardonnay (I think it was!). We bought them at the Bic Camera on Meiji dori for a freaking incredible 950 yen! I don't think it is that cheap in North America.

Will link to some pics after getting them up on Flickr.

Bicycling

I'm going to start keeping a more detailed account of my non-work activities from now... for my own record-keeping if nothing else. It may not always be interesting to others - you've been warned!

Today Kasumi and I went bicycling up to Nakamurabashi station, the next major station on the Seibu Ikebukuro Line. Not very far but it was a bit cold. We stopped in a little cafe, called Chez Gon, and had coffee and cake. I had a chocolate roll cake, she had an apple pie. The desserts were good, the coffee so-so.

VBA

I've started doing some VBA work, using Microsoft Access.

So far so good, except that I'm pretty unimpressed with some aspects of it, especially object-orientation.

I found that you can't pass a class instance as a parameter to a method of a different class. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I'll follow-up on this later. In the meantime it is pretty sucky. :(