Running X on MS Windows

I want the ability to run X applications using my XP laptop. To do so, I can either get a commercial X server for Win32, such as Hummingbird Exceed or Winaxe, or go the open source route. I'm going to try the latter. I'm currently installing Cygwin on my company Dell Latitude, taking advantage of the fat pipe I have at work.

Aside from giving me some of Linux's functionality on XP, I'm looking to use the Cygwin X server to connect to Gondor when I'm at home, allowing me to export its display to the laptop so that I can run apps on Gondor but have their display sent to the laptop's screen.

I could use VNC -- which is based on X -- to run apps on Gondor with their displays on the laptop, but I'm hoping that the Cygwin X server will give me better performance.

Another way this would be handy if it works well on the company laptop, is to install Cygwin on my personal Compaq, which I use in my side work. I could use a X server when going to one client's site, who's running a SUSE email server. I currently do all my admin for that box -- whether I'm onsite or at home -- using SSH and occasionally webmin. I do have X on the box though, and for some purposes having X could be handy.

"Man tax" proposed in Sweden

When feminists get out of hand:

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A group of Swedish parliamentarians proposed levying a "man tax" to cover the social cost of violence against women.

"It must be obvious to all of us that society has a huge problem with male violence against women and that has a cost," Left Party deputy Gudrun Schyman told Swedish radio on Monday.

Unbelievable.

The Pond

An old farmer in Kansas had owned a large farm for several years. He had a pond in the back, fixed up nicely with picnic tables, horseshoe courts and some apple and peach trees. The pond was properly shaped and had been planned for swimming.

One evening the old farmer decided to go down to the pond to look things over, as he hadn't been there for quite awhile. He grabbed a 5 gallon bucket to bring back some fruit from the trees. As he neared the pond he heard voices shouting and laughing with glee. As he came closer he saw it was a group of young women skinny dipping in his pond.

He made the women aware of his presence and they all fled to the deep end of the pond. One of the women shouted to him, "We're not getting out until you leave!"

The old man frowned and said, "I didn't come down here to watch you ladies swim naked
or make you get out of the pond naked." Holding up the bucket he said, "I'm here to feed the alligator."

Moral: old age and cunning will triumph over youth and enthusiasm every time!

Hacking the Fluxbox menu

As I've previously mentioned, my old Dell Latitude is running Slackware 10 setup to use the very lightweight Fluxbox window manager. I chose Fluxbox because it requires fewer system resources than KDE, Gnome, or even Afterstep. It therefore allows me to make the most of this old hardware.

There are a couple of ways to launch apps after you're in Slackware's Fluxbox setup. The first is to right-click on the desktop, which brings up a menu, while the second is to start the app from a terminal (although you start your first terminal from the menu). I wanted to add a couple of items to the menu so that I didn't have to type in a command to start them any time I wanted them to run. This is pretty easy.

My Fluxbox config file is /home/dave/.fluxbox/menu. It's a plain text file which starts off like:

[begin] (Fluxbox-0.1.14)
[exec] (rxvt) {rxvt}
[exec] (mozilla) {mozilla}

The first line is the beginning section of the menu (duh). The lines starting with "[exec]" are entries in that section for executable programs. The next item, in parentheses, is the text that appears in the menu. The final item, in brackets, is the command that will be run when you click on it. So, to add an entry for the gkrellm system monitor, I added:

[exec] (gkrellm) {gkrellm}

To add an app installed to a location not in my PATH, you'll need the full path to the executable, like this:

[exec] (thunderbird) {/opt/thunderbird/thunderbird}

One nice thing is that when you edit the "menu" file, changes take effect as soon as you save it. You don't need to restart X and have Fluxbox re-read the file.

Good vendor experience for a change

This morning I had a good vendor experience for a change. It was a conference call/web demo with a large wholesale hosting company. Their in-house tool used for the admin interface and customer-facing interface really impressed the heck out of me. On top of that, their webmail app blew me away. Its got a very nice look and feel that doesn't resember other webmail interfaces I've seen. It looks like you're viewing a regular mail client from within a browser. I doubt I'd want to use it over dialup, but on a nice fast cable modem connection I bet it would rock. We're not looking at this company so much for email hosting as for web hosting, but this offering is too good to ignore, IMO.

Different kids

It's amazing how different kids, even siblings, can be. Amanda is three months old today (and Alexandra is 22 months old). I was watching Judith play with Amanda tonight and noticed how much more aware she is of her surroundings than Alexandra was at her age. She wants to be involved with the goings on around her, in contrast with Alexandra, who to this day is very content to amuse herself.

It's going to be really interesting to see how they develop over the next several years.

SUSE 9.2 Professional Announced

I guess I won't be upgrading Gondor to SUSE 9.1 after all. Novell announced today that 9.2 will be shipping next month. Highlights include:

• KDE 3.3 and GNOME 2.6 graphical desktop environments for enhanced usability and desktop comfort.
• OpenOffice.org 1.1.3, a complete Word-, Excel- and PowerPoint-compatible office suite.
• Novell® Evolution™ 2.0, the newest community edition of the popular Linux e-mail and personal information client, with integrated support for Microsoft* Exchange 2000/2003 connectivity, compatibility with Novell GroupWise® using IMAP, plus support for a broad set of standard e-mail
• GIMP 2, a comprehensive image processing and graphics creation tool.
• Inkscape, a new vector graphics application that outperforms all other Linux alternatives.
• Nvu, a Web authoring system that combines Web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) Web-page editing.
• A selection of commercial software, including full versions of the text processing application TextMaker and spreadsheet application PlanMaker from SoftMaker, full-version backup software sesam from SEP, as well as a demo version of MainConcept's video editing software MainActor 5.

Sounds pretty sweet.

Back in Mozilla for now

I'm back in Mozilla for now. I just feel more comfortable with it, aside from the compatiblity issues.

One thing I had to do was fix the link to Brian Bilbrey's mirror of Tom Syroids Daynotes in the last post. Whne logged into Blogger in Opera, the URL button is missing, so I couldn't add the link.

I'll keep Opera installed, though, since it's useful for large downloads because it will automatically resume them if interrupted.

Tom Syroid's Insights

Daynotes.net/.org webmeister Brian Bilbrey has put up a mirror of Tom Syroid's "Insights at Syroid Manor," up through the time Tom stopped posting last year. There is a lot of good info, especially WRT to Linux, to be gleaned from Tom's musings.

Check 'em out at http://syroid_insights.orbdesigns.com/.

Trying Opera again

Every so often I give Opera another try as a browser. I'm always attracted to how smokin' fast it is, but it always seems to be incompatible with some of the sites that I access.

For example, the current stable version of Opera -- 7.54 -- is not compatible with Gmail. Gmail isn't a mission-critical app for me, but I do check it a few times each day to read the email lists I subscribe to using that address.

Now, I'm trying out Blogger and before I hit "Publish Post" I'm going to make sure I copy this post to my clipboard, because several of the buttons in Blogger's online editor are missing. I'll post this using Mozilla if blogger completely barfs on Opera.

Mozilla and Firefox may be less "standards complian" than Opera, but they are more compatible with a wider variety of Web pages.

Didja ever notice...

... that when you hear about someone's property being defaced becuase it's bearing a political sticker or sign, that it's virtually always a Republican getting vandalized? For example:

An unknown suspect fired several shots into the Bearden office of the Bush/Cheney re-election campaign Tuesday morning.

From WBIR-TV, Knoxville, TN.

I guess the reason all those Dems favor gun control is because they are psychologically projecting their own lack of self control on the rest of society.

Strange behavior from Firefox

It took me several tries to get the previous post up, and I had to switch to Mozilla from Firefox to do so. Blogger seems to be having problems with Firefox 0.91 on my Slackware box (yes, I know I need to upgrade). It seems to work fine with Mozilla 1.7, though.

Very strange.

Crummy network connection

My primary network Internet connection today is running like crap. Web surfing is slow and GAIM repeatedly drops offline. Luckily, I have a second network to which I can connect.

I generally leave my Slackware laptop on the secondary connection. Aside from redundancy, the secondary doesn't run through a content filter. This is good if I need to look something up which I'd just assume not be filtered.

Smoking moms may increase the incidence of colic

Smoking Moms May Boost Tots' Risk of Colic

By LINDSEY TANNER AP Medical Writer

CHICAGO (AP) - Mothers who smoke during or after pregnancy increase their babies' risk of developing colic, those vexing, inconsolable crying spells that affect up to 20 percent of U.S. babies in their first few months of life, researchers say.

The culprit, based on studies in adults, is likely nicotine, which increases blood levels of a gut protein involved in digestion, said Brown University epidemiologist Edmond Shenassa. That may result in painful cramping that makes babies cry, he said.

Shenassa and Harvard University researcher Mary-Jean Brown reviewed several studies, including six that involved more than 12,000 babies.

The data suggest that compared with nonsmokers, mothers who smoke during pregnancy face about double the risk of having infants with colic, Shenassa said.

Full story here.

As if smoking around kids or while pregnant isn't bad enough. And having recently expeirenced a colicky baby, I can say that anything that reduces the incidence of colic is a good thing.

Time to geek out

I'm in the mood for a geek fix. I haven't used the iMac that I was playing around with over the summer in awhile, and with it taking up desk space, my old Dell running Slackware 10 has been sitting moribund in my cabinet. So, this afternoon I put the iMac back in our storage closet and broke out the Dell.

The first thing I did was to login as root and run "swaret --upgrade -a" to automatically upgrade everything that needed it. That took only a few minutes, after which I logged out, fired up X, called up rxvt, and launched Firefox. This machine is old, wih a P2/366 and 128 megs of RAM, but the combination of Slackware and the Fluxbox window manager makes it usable. Doubling the RAM would give me a noticeable performance boost, but I'm reluctant to sink any money into it at this point.

It's nice to have a Linux box back up and running on my desk.

From my alma mater

Via Linux Today, I found this article at The Triangle, the student newspaper of Drexel University, my alma mater. Versatility of Linux Distributions Allow Choice. It's a fairly basic overview of several distros.

Bush, Kerry, and the Jewish Vote

Here's some food for thought:

WEB EXCLUSIVE | JEFF JACOBY
Bush, Kerry, and the Jewish vote

By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | September 28, 2004

WHEN they go to the polls in November, which of the two major parties will American Jews support? Consider:

At Party A's national convention, a prime speaking slot went to an infamous racial inciter, one with an ugly history of Jew-baiting. At Party B's convention, a leading speaker recalled with empathy the many pre-9/11 victims of terrorism, such as Leon Klinghoffer, whom the killers ''marked ... for murder solely because he was Jewish.''

Party A's presidential nominee said nothing about Israel in his convention acceptance speech. Party B's nominee, on the other hand, made a point of referring to ''our good friend Israel'' - and his campaign later distributed that portion of his remarks to its national e-mail list.

Increasingly, Party A is the political home of those who demonize Jews, such as the South Carolina senator who claimed that the war in Iraq was launched to ''take the Jewish vote.'' Conversely, Party B has driven out the anti-Semites in its midst, and is now where the most ardent philo-Semites in American politics are concentrated.

So which party will American Jews vote for in November?

For the rest of the story, click here.

And, just for the record, there is no amount of money you could pay me to vote for the candidate from Party A.

A productive weekend

This was a productive, if not particularly restful weekend.

Yesterday morning I drove down to Hockessin, Delaware to do a site survey at a small law firm which needs a network installed so that they can share files among three users, and also use a cable modem. They currently use dial up access from Earthlink and AOL, which has become a major impediment to receiving large files. Based on their projected type of usage and the small size, I'm going to put in a proposal to install an 802.11g wireless LAN, which I'll lock down pretty tightly.

One thing I did so that I could see if any special configuration will be needed was to fire up my laptop with a Netgear 802.11g NIC in it, and see if I could detect any WLANs. I picked up 5 or 6, one of which was a wide open Linksys WAP which had been taken out of the box and plugged in. I didn't attempt to loging to the WAP, but the SSID was the default and I was able to get an IP, since WEP was off. I gave the secretary at the law office a few of my business cards to pass out. :-)

Today along with a colleague and a couple guys we paid per diem, I was at one of my client's to install LAN and phone cabling in their new office. We got all the cabling run -- 37 drops -- and partially punched down. My partner will rturn during the week to finish punching down all the phone and LAN jacks, and certify all the runs with a Fluke tester. My client will be moving in on October 30th, at which time I'll install three new Netgear 10/100 switches and a new UPS, plus general hand holding during the move.

This job is going a long way to paying for the new gutters and soffets I had to get for the house last month.

Posion ivy finally getting better

I seem to be getting over the poison ivy. It's been a long two weeks dealing with it. I highly recommend not getting it yourself. I should probably put on a MOPP suit and go around my yard and hose down anything that looks like the damn vine with herbicide.

On a side note, I emailed my friends earlier this week about PI, and one of them wrote back to me to let me know that not only is he not allergic to the stuff, he actually eats a bit of it each year to annoy his wife, who's apparently hyper sensitive to it. Nick, you suck.

House passes bill to repeal DC handgun ban

Bill Would Restore D.C. Rights to Handguns

By JIM ABRAMS Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Residents of the nation's capital would be able to own handguns and other firearms under a House-passed bill acclaimed by its supporters as a victory for Second Amendment rights but deplored by District of Columbia officials concerned about increased violence.

The 250-171 vote to end a 28-year ban on handgun ownership was the second victory this month for advocates of gun rights, following the decision of congressional leaders not to extend a decade-long ban on assault weapons.

Unfortunately, the Senate probably won't do anything with the bill this session. But it's a start on restoring the Second Amendment rights of DC's citizens. (See full story here.)