Lathe of Dreams (3.0;Rebirth)

This Too is Hackable

Most every device I own gets "hacked".

My Sony PlayStation3 (PS3) was hacked to upgrade from a 60GB HDD to a 250GB HDD. It is now running Yellow Dog Linux (YDL) 6.1 as a fileserver when not playing games or watching movies. My Nokia N810 was hacked to allow for XRandR from the kernel, allowing me to do Portrait or Landscape mode from OS2008. My Sony Reader PRS-505 was hacked to include custom fonts, icons, and a persistent clock in the lower-right corner as I read e-Books or view manga.

Much of this is possible because most of my devices run some form of Linux. It's this hacking which currently attracts many people to my website or to my wiki.

LINKS:

In any given day, 20-30 readers have searched or bookmarked me about one of these hacks. In the last 2 weeks, I've received 5 emails and 2 instant messages from people I don't know, asking me about one of these hacks.

In most cases, I've tried to help, even if it was clear that they didn't understand what they were attempting to do. It's all too easy to "brick" a device with a typo or a bad command. Thankfully, most devices have a flash or firmware mode allowing you to recover to a default state. I'd still recommend making backups first before you attempt something new.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only hacker out there... I'm glad to share the knowledge, and that some of you are finding it interesting. :)

Nokia N810 WiMax Edition (coming soon)

Ken Foreman

Nokia N810 WiMax Edition:

As you probably know, I've owned a Nokia N810 since Day One of the Nokia N810 US shipments. My older Nokia N800 went to a friend and former co-worker.

I've been watching the Nokia N810 WiMax Edition since it was first announced at Internet Tablet Talk a few months ago. Since there are few people interested in my brushed-aluminum N810, I can now safely look at pre-ordering the chocolate-black N810 WiMax, knowing my older N810 will go to a good home. My pre-order is now registered, and I'm told I can expect it to ship on/around July 9th, 2008.

So Phaedrus (so named after Robert Persig's alter-ego) will likely be going to my brother-in-law, while Athena (so named after Appleseed's Adminstrator of Olympus) will become my new companion. I'll scp everything from root to a backup on my PowerBook, and backup/keep my 8GB miniSDHC for use in Athena.

In other news, my two-year review was yesterday. It's now been 2 years and 5 months since I left CSC for a short stint at Savvis and my current job at the Administrative Office of the US Courts. My second review was better than I expected, with a couple great recommendations. It was asked that I refocus on my technical courses, certification, and attending technical conferences.

To that end, I enrolled at redhat.com this morning. I'm taking courses towards becoming a Redhat Certified Technician (RHCT) later this year. Hopefully, I'll be comfortable enough and ready enough to test for my Redhat Certified Engineer (RHCE) next year. Between HP Proliant DL385G5s, SunFire T2000 servers, and an IBM zSeries running RHEL5 zLinux, there is no lack of practice or application. I'll be able to practice, learn, and better myself as a UNIX Systems Engineer while here on the job.

Odds and Ends

Ken Foreman

My Nokia N810 home screen, rotation in Portrait and Landscape:

Surfing the web and drawing with Xournal on my N810:

It was a busy weekend for Vicky and I. When not running errands or cleaning house, I was doing backups and restores to my 12-inch Apple PowerBook. I have it now so that it syncs music, pictures, and documents between my PowerMac G5 and my PowerBook G4. I've been using rsync, Backup 3.0, and TimeMachine extensively.

My 12-inch PowerBook is now becoming my primary computer. I use my PowerMac G5, SunBlade 1000, and Dell Optiplex as various servers, sandboxes, and displays. My Nokia N810 is my handheld computer for writing scripts, surfing the web, and reading on the train. I've been using the Sony Reader PRS-505 for reading eBooks from Sony/Borders, and reading manga from Tokyopop on it recently.

There's other news on several fronts, but nothing I'm at liberty to say on my blog. I was able to add Vicky to my Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) for some new tech I've been testing for a promising new company in California. Hopefully we'll see more from them soon.

There may be some other news, but all I can say is "pray for us."

Life of a Geek

Ken Foreman

What's in my case each day?

These last two weeks, I've been reading Paul Kearney's Monarchies of God series on the Sony Reader PRS-505. I finished Book 3: The Iron Wars on my commute home last night. When describing it to Vicky, she told me it reminds her of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series. Maybe superficially, but I think Paul Kearney does a much better job of comparing Christianity (Ramusio) to Islam (Prophet Ahrimuz) without the dead-horse beating that Pullman was prone to.

If you're a friend or co-worker, you might recall my 15-inch Apple PowerBook G4/1.5. Vicky's niece is about to go to college, majoring in Computer Arts, and needed a workhorse for running Adobe Photoshop CS2. I rebuilt my 15" PowerBook with OS X 10.5.2, installed Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop CS, and Adobe Illustrator CS. The PowerBook is now hers, and I traded for her 12-inch Apple PowerBook G4.

I took apart the 12-inch PowerBook G4 this weekend, cleaned the motherboard, reseated the Airport Express, and replaced the battery with a 4400MAH. It now has 1.2GB DDR2 RAM, an 80GB internal drive, and a 250GB time capsule. I installed OS X 10.5.2 (Leopard) and have it run Time Machine now.

So now I'm torn between the TabletPC (just because I can write and draw on the Tablet) and the 12-inch PowerBook (it's OSX, and my UNIX work runs fine) as my daily workhorse. I'm now alternating between the two in my Timbuk2 case.

Building a Better Bliki

Ken Foreman

The idea of superimposing a blog on top of a wiki was first suggested to me a few months ago by my friend, Pat. Today, I finally got around to installing MoveableType 4.1 and scripting it to connect to my existing MediaWiki. Pat suggested that I call the resulting Blog/Wiki a "Bliki".

Little did either of us know, but Bliki is already a recognized term on Wikipedia. As well as being called a Bliki, it's also known as a wikiLog, wog, wikiWeblog, wikiblog, or bloki. There's also a number of downloadable software packages that already do what I am attempting here.

I'm still going to approach it just as I am now: two separate components (MoveableType Blog & MediaWiki Wiki) that are joined by common scripts and shared data. Approaching it this way will hopefully allow me to enjoy the best of both worlds: the ease of Moveable Type and the power of MediaWiki. Both are fully customizeable using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which allows me to keep my look-and-feel separate from my content.

John Irving once said "Half my life is an act of revision." I'm reminded of that again and again throughout my life. I strive to communicate better, even if I feel like I'm taking a few steps backwards before I take a step forward. Hopefully my efforts at "Building a Better Bliki" will be more than few steps in the right direction?

Nokia N810 Screen Rotation

Ken Foreman

Me and My Nokia N810 Internet Tablet running OS2008.2.51-3:

Now able to perform screen rotation on the N810 to display Landscape or Portrait:

Apple iPhone and iTouch users have been able to perform screen rotation with a twist of their device. The actual screen rotation is performed by randr under Apple's XWindows manager, The actual software to do this rotation is common to UNIX and can be performed on other devices. Rotation Support for OS2008 brings this same functionality to us Nokia N8x0 users.

LINK:
* LatheWiki: Nokia N810 Screen Rotation (Pictured & Documented)

Nokia N810

Ken Foreman

In my earlier blog, I wrote a number of blog entries about the Nokia N800 and N810 internet tablets. I am enthusiastic user and developer for the Maemo platform.

In my later wiki, I've begun linking to and continuing to document my efforts on the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. Clicking on the LatheWiki link (in the metadata above this entry) will take you to that growing Wiki article on the Nokia N810.

To make it easier, I'll also include a corresponding Wiki link at the bottom of each blog entry. You will see blog entry titles repeat fairly often.... this is to maintain the link integrity between the Blog and the Wiki. The Title and Talk:Title are the keys to making the Lathe of Dreams "Bliki" (conjoined Blog & Wiki) successful.

LINK:
* LatheWiki: Nokia N810 Internet Tablet

Conjoined Blog & Wiki

Ken Foreman

on April 23, 2008 9:08 AM | Permalink | LatheWiki | discussion

Over the past 15 years, I've written a number of blogs on a variety of hosting services (AOL, MSN, MySpace, BellAtlantic, Verizon, Starband) and on my own leased servers (Innospyre, LatheOfDreams). Recently, I decided to make the leap from writing blogs to maintaining a blog to maintaining a Wiki.

Needless to say, it was a pretty big paradigm shift, both for me and for my users. I lost more than half my audience, and I found it much more difficult to maintain a Wiki and keep it presentable than to maintain a Blog.

I still think the idea of a personal wiki has merit, but in order for it to be searchable and readable for ordinary web users, it needs a blog as a front end. People should be able to read blog entries, and if interested, click the corresponding Wiki entry. Likewise, people should be able to find related blog entries from the wiki.

So behold... Lathe of Dreams (3.0;Rebirth)! This is my third iteration of "Lathe of Dreams" as hosted on this server. Using MediaWIKI and MoveableType 4.1, with a common MySQL 5 database shared between the two, my goal is to present both an easy-to-read blog and an in-depth wiki.

The experiment continues...