October 2008 – Page 2

Fantastic Contraption

I ran into this flash based web game a while back, it sucked up a couple of nights while I compulsively played through the first 18 levels. I was going to post about it back then, but decided against it as there are plenty of other discussions about fantastic contraption out there already.

For the geek crowd, it should probably be renamed to fanatic compulsion. Today I saw that two of my coworkers had just recently come across it (one of them with a physics background no less!) – they were both clearly trapped by this meme-like game. Consider this posting a warning – it is a huge time suck.

The game allows users to save their contraptions, and share them with others via a link – so a little internet searching will find you solutions to view if you need hints. As well, once you complete a level, you can see the solutions others have saved. Pretty neat how 5 simple elements can be combined to create so many solutions.

Astute readers may notice that I’ve posted a Google Chrome screen capture. This was actually taken running on Ubuntu using Wine. Instructions came via LifeHacker, but be warned lots of things don’t work (like any https:// connections). There is of course also CrossOver Chromium, but this is basically Wine linked to Chrome – so it suffers the same shortfalls. I used Chrome here because for whatever reason, the flash engine included with the Wine setup is much faster than the one embedded in my Firefox (same machine). I have more opinions on Chrome, but will save them for a future discussion.

Ubuntu and the default keyring

I run Ubuntu (Hardy at the moment) as my main desktop. Overall its been a good experience. The update mechanism has worked well even migrating from one release (Fiesty) to another via the update manager. For the must have windows apps (iTunes) I run VMWare Player and a virtualized WindowsXP image.

I tend to suspend my desktop (vs. hibernate or full shutdown cycle) as it gives me nearly instant on access. From time to time a kernel update will cause suspend to fail, the most spectacular being today when my machine would no longer complete its POST. The solution was to disconnect the power cord for a minute and let the capacitors discharge (a little led on the mainboard went out after 30 seconds) and then it booted fine.

Look for Ubuntu 8.10 – Intrepid Ibex to be released in just over a week. Linux isn’t for everyone, but as a developer its a nice desktop environment.

So I do regularly change my password, its a good habit to have. In some cases, it makes sure that I at least once in a while log into the system I have access to – otherwise I might lose access to a remote system and not find out until I need to do that DNS update.

There is a facilty called the GNOME Keyring. It hangs onto your access credentials so you’re not constantly entering passwords (for example, every time you re-open the email client). Of course, the thing that holds onto your credentials, needs a password to keep that data safe – but you can link it to your login password. How to do this is covered in the blog posting Automatically unlocking the default GNOME Keyring.

You may need to delete the previously stored keyring if your user password and your keyring password were not the same.

rm ~/.gnome2/keyrings/default.keyring

This is also the same sad procedure I was using to re-synchronize my keyring with my user password when it was time to change my password. Very annoying that there didn’t seem to be a way to just change it.

Well, it turns out that there is. The Seahorse application lets you do this. I found the following blog posting by Ivan Torres that shows you how to do this. Now changing the password is accomplished by Applications -> Accessories -> Passwords and Encryption Keys, then Edit->Preferences, select default and click on the Change Unlock Password button.

Easy right? Well, not really. As is, it works smoothly up to the point where you want to change your password – then its dig around until you remember (or figure out) how to change your password, or simply blow the keyring away and start over. Ideally, it’d be nice to have a password change facility that did your user password and default keyring in one shot, and I hope it will be installed in /usr/bin/passwd.

Linux, you get what you pay for.

Wikipedia

So the other day while I was posting about my experience setting up SlimRio I found myself referencing Wikipedia as I often do while blogging. I’ve always felt that Wikipedia is a great resource, but I had never really bought into the culture or gotten overly excited about its existance and what it represents. At IBM’s Impact 2008 conference one of the ‘keynote’ speakers was Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales, and one of my coworkers who was also there was very excited about being able to hear Jimbo talk about his part in helping create Wikipedia. His talk was interesting, but it didn’t change my thinking about Wikipedia.

The event that did changed my thinking about Wikipedia, was my first attempt to edit and update a page. I had noticed that the Rio Receiver page is tagged as an orphan – it only has 1 link and requires at least 3 incoming links to change this status. After my edit to the SqueezeCenter page to add a reference about SlimRIO it now has 2 links. I had assumed I’d need to register and all of that nonsense, but Wikipedia allow for completely anonymous edits so I was done in a matter of minutes.

We often forget the web is a scary place. If you find it on the web news it must be true, like the recent United Airlines share plunge triggered by bad reporting. Wikipedia does invest in preventing and reporting abuse, however the sense of responsibility when making an edit is still quite something. Giving back to the community is one of the reasons I have this blog, Wikipedia is another outlet to do the same. Where the two activities differ is in the scope. A blog is effectively an indepedent news source, whereas Wikipedia is a community effort.

I think I finally “get it” about Wikipedia. It has me thinking more about crowd sourcing and Amazon’s mechanical turk – I don’t think we’ve tapped the full potential of this idea yet.