Oh Hey, THIS makes me wanna buy corporate music and videos!

Got a warning about a video I put on Youtube.  Used a template in iMovie and I'm 100% sure that I did NOT violate any terms of copyright.  Googled it and found out this is really common.  Still--wtf?!  This kind of shotgun spraying hits innocents like me and simply makes me want to embrace the cold and impersonal world of BIG MEDIA COMPANIES.  I don't know about you, but I sure feel like running out and buying a mp3 after getting this email.  ;-)

Next thing you know they'll copyright the act of flicking a booger onto a wall.

Holy Crap--New Life for an old Aspire One

I got my Acer Aspire One back in the good old days when it appeared that Linux was going to dominate the newly emerging netbook scene.  Of course that never happened for various reasons.  I won't go into that--but when Microsoft decided that they needed to dominate the netbook market, they also managed to annihilate the netbook market.

My Aspire One is one of the first ones made.  It came with Linpus Linux, which was pretty horrible.  The first thing I did was to unlock the hidden advanced features of the desktop.  The second thing I did was to start trying other Linux distributions in search of one that would make me happy.

I found Ubuntu's netbook remix to be too slow.  Although I had flirted with many other distros, I ended up using an Ubuntu alternate install cd and went the geeky route of installing no GUI desktop.  My plan was to use it for ssh-ing to a server, and also for programming CLISP and Python (using Vim).  The only problem was that I couldn't get the darn wifi to work right, so I had to be plugged in right next to my desktop.  Obviously NOT the best setup for a netbook.

So recently I started thinking of this little Apsire One as I was wrestling with dual booting Linux on my Macs.  What is so amusing about installing Linux is that some things that are difficult to get to work in some situations (wifi, sound, etc) are surprisingly easy in others.  I simply wasn't using the Aspire One, and I felt a little guilty about that, as I had such high hopes for Linux Netbooks.

So a couple years went by, and things changed a lot while I wasn't looking.  I had used CrunchBang on the Aspire One quite a while ago and thought it was pretty impressive.  I don't recall why I moved away from it, but I do remember that CrunchBang was pretty new at the time.

Last night I downloaded the CrunchBang iso file and put it on a USB stick using some excellent guide I found through a Google search.

This morning I installed CrunchBang with no problems.  Everything works, and I was happy to see my favorite text editor Geany already installed for me.  Writing this blog post was surprisingly easy, especially considering how clunky Linux can feel on newer Mac hardware.

Thanks CrunchBang!

Linux Mint: I sense a strange disturbance in the force...

I have chosen to NOT address the whole Ubuntu Unity desktop controversy, for several reasons. 

First of all, I tend to be pretty liberal and embrace change.  First impressions are often flat out wrong, and nothing bothers me more than people who won't even give something new a chance.

Second, I have heard very good things about Unity from people that I respect.  That DOES mean a lot to me, and by no means have I written off Unity altogether.  In fact, I recently installed Ubuntu (with Unity) on a Macbook Pro 6,2 and I'm really trying to get used to it. 

That said, I can't help but feel as if there is a major shift going on here, in the world of popular Linux distributions.  I don't remember exactly when Mint passed up Ubuntu on the page hit rankings on distrowatch, but it sure seems like the times they are a changin'.

So today I burned my first Mint DVD.  Like any Linux user, I have drawers full of all sorts of old Linux cds.  Some of those helped me get out of a mess in the past, and some opened the world to a new distribution.  Some failed so miserably that I couldn't even get them to boot up, but that's a different topic.

Major GuiltTrip Reporting for duty!

It's tough, really.  With all the recent SOPA stuff (I was firmly on the side opposing SOPA) there has been a lot of meditating, contemplating, and half-assed rants about the whole piracy and intellectual property rights mess.

So I found a copy of Free Ride by Robert Levine at the local public library and decided to check it out.  It's well-written, if not all that convincing.  Nonetheless, I can't help but wonder what Robert Levine would think about the fact that I checked this book out for zero cost at a public library.  The heart of the issue is so much more complex, isn't it?  I mean, there are books at the library that I would gladly spend 5 or 10 bucks to "rent"--and then there are books like this, that I came across almost by accident and decided to check out.

There are books I have checked out from the library that I have subsequently gone on to buy (Visualizing Data being the latest).  I just prefer to sample stuff first.

Silicon Valley's Secret in the Modern Classroom

Just read this great article, and now I'm simply making a note of this as something to consider for implementation in the classroom.

Might work for some of my CS classes.

On Choosing a Web Application Framework

The Skyline MAD Team (Mobile Apps Development) has produced 3 working apps from scratch, using HTML5, CSS3, a little JavaScript and some PHP.  During the process, students noticed that we could re-use certain parts of our code between the apps.  Of course this meant that we did a LOT of copying and pasting of code from computer to computer--not the best development situation by any means.

We had looked briefly at a form-based web application framework that we experimented with.  To their credit, my students felt uncomfortable NOT being able to see all the parts of the framework.  We also had little knowledge about which database was being used, etc.

So it didn't take long for some of my Python hackers to write up a couple helper scripts that would lead the user through making HTML forms.  Python did all the work pasting the proper tags around the content.  The only problem was that we found ourselves having to tweak the HTML later on because we were using JQuery Touch or some other toolset.

We like PHP, but it is not our go-to language for scripting--that would be Python.  Although I'm not currently teaching a Python course at Skyline, Python is still the most popular language choice from my top programmers.  So, with 10 minutes to go before I had to leave for an eCSite meeting in Boulder, one of my students, tritan67, asked if we could update our server's Python installation to include something newer than the 2.4 that CentOS uses internally.  I started to say, "no, I gotta go, so maybe tomorrow...", but when it comes to Computer Science, I almost never take that approach.  So instead I said, "What the hell, let's do it!"  The next 10 minutes saw us googling stuff, downloading Python source code, and finally installing Python 2.6 alongside the 2.4 version on the server--compiling it from source.  After all the recent debugging frustrations with the MAD Team, it was like going home again when the Python installation "just worked."

I'm still a bit surprised how easy it was.  Not only did we get 2.6 installed from source, but tritan67 jumped onto a terminal, wrote up a helloWebWorld.py and we confirmed that it was all working.

That was such a good feeling, that we started to immediately look for ways we could write our own framework using Python CGI scripts.  But--since there are more Python web frameworks than there are programmers--we figured we'd look into something like web2py or Django.

Haven't decided yet what we'll settle on, but it looks like either Django or the Google App Engine will be where we take this.  Of course I'd just prefer Django on our own server, but there's something to be said for the Google App Engine as a platform for teaching students how to make web apps.

Back to coding.  Python, we missed you a LOT.

SOPA is a bad idea

I was happy to read today that Wikipedia will be blacking out this coming Wednesday in protest of the SOPA legislation that I hope you have been hearing a lot of outrage about. 

In fact I was so happy that I made a donation to Wikipedia just minutes after getting the good news.