Log In
E-mail or User ID
  Keep me signed in
Recover Password
Create an Account

A Convergence of Treo, Commodore, Ubuntu, Vista, and USB Keys!

In the week and a half since my last post I've been giving a lot of thought to writing a manifesto. It seems everyone has one, except me. I think my blog contents speak for themselves, but many of the comments lately have indicated that my positions on some things cause some people to not actually read, but simply look for phrases to latch onto and run like a track star on steroids, usually straight into a wall. That wall is called reality.

I probably will write a manifesto, but not tonight. It's late. I'm tired. Instead, I'll share a little bit of random stuff I've encountered since my last entry.

1) I got a Palm Treo 700w. Yes, I got a Treo, and yes I got the version with Windows Mobile 5.0. Why? Because I'm a programmer, and Microsoft provides awesome tools for programming mobile devices and I want to learn them. Sure, I could use the device emulators, but if I can't take it to a job interview and show it to them, what's the point? Also, it comes with Excel, Word and PowerPoint built in. That's pretty cool. Right now I'm writing a little mobile application that will hit a web service on my website and allow me to keep track of my gas purchases per vehicle and get reports from my website. This is proving to be a lot of fun, but I think I'm going to get a good book on Windows Mobile development and soak it up shortly and re-write it.

I also really like the Windows Media Player that ships with it. Using WMP 10 on my XP x64 pc makes it very easy to sync up the SD card and WMP 10 automatically converts music to the format that uses the least space on the SD card for the song while preserving quality. My truck has an audio input jack on the dash and I'm looking forward to taking a nice relaxing drive with the Treo being my DJ.

2) An acquaintance in the Commodore community has just about sucked me into helping him write a Windows Service in C# that will act as a modem emulator. There are other programs out there already that do this, but they are written in VB6 and Java, neither of which is conducive to running as a Window Service. I've already been working on a BBS written in C# and I'll probably give him my inbound socket management component and event model that I'm planning to use to drive menu options in my BBS software. There's really no reason why the BBS and his modem emulator can't be the same Windows Service. I could make connecting to the Commodore BBS just a menu option in the main BBS.

3) I've put together a small AMD Athlon 64 based Windows Server 2003 x64 machine. I'm planning on making this my Active Directory Server and installing 64-bit versions of SQL Server, Biztalk 2006 and Exchange. I've been offered a couple of side jobs to do this kind of work and even though I could muddle through it with documentation, I want to get better at it. No better time than the present to get started!

4) I only have 1 more class after my current one then I'll be done with class rooms on my way to my B.A. in Organizational Management from Bethel College. I do still have 15 credits left in my core, but I should be able to finish all of that through Clep and Dante's tests.

5) I've been playing around with Vista Beta 2. I'm not sold on the interface changes yet, but I definitely like the changes to the Windows Explorer. The paradigm of allowing you to go to any sibling directory from a drop down (not a tree) is such a no-brainer that I can't believe it wasn't implemented in Windows a long time ago. Beta 2 is showing a lot of stability issues on three different machines. There's a really good reason Microsoft pushed it to 2007. Here's hoping that driver creators get used to the new paradigm and devote more time and effort to 64-bit than to 32-bit. BTW, delaying to 2007 means that every PC sold at that time will be 64-bit. Why bother with 32-bit? Just put a bullet in that old horse and let's leave the 32-bit security woes behind us forever!

6) USB Key + TrueCrypt + PortableFirefox & PortableGAIM rules. I'm becoming a fan of GAIM. It's like Trillian, but without the crashes. I'm planning on writing a blog about the awesomeness of TrueCrypt one day.

7) I really like my Xbox 360. The longer it takes Sony to get the PS3 out the door the harder it's going to be for them to dominate like they did with PS2. Given the price difference I don't think that PS3 will outsell Xbox 360 by much, if at all! Why? Nintendo really seems to be on the right road with their controller. It's got to be very intuitive for kids and I'll probably get a Wii for the kids in a year or two. My two year old can work the Xbox 360 controller to play racing games, but I watch him and it's not natural. He's very animated in his play and being able to mimic actions and seem them on the TV will be a major advantage for him in playing games. I just hope the game developers for Wii get that part of things right. I've read reviews on the Wii controller that really stress this aspect of the Wii and if the game developers do Wii right, the PS3 may be in real trouble.

I've rambled enough and my downloads are done. I've decided to keep Ubuntu 6.06 around on my Celeron system. I've been wanting a decent machine for testing code with Mono on Linux and now that I've get it all set up with Mono and Monodevelop, I'm a lot happier with it.

My StumbleUpon Page

Read 9 comments


Manifesto??? Let's hear it! Now!
Commodore stuff, huh? Is that what OpenCBM was for? I'm almost certain that there's something equivalent in 6.06's Universe repository. Don't have that machine here though, as I've updated to a MacBook.
Yup, OpenCBM is a library of stuff for converting Commodore files. It's used by another package called cbm4linux which allows a person to hook up an IEC based drive to a Linux box through a special cable that plugs into the parallel port of the linux box and to the IEC serial port on the drive. However, I have not had any luck installing cbm4linux on my Ubuntu box. The pre-built version available on the official website is very old, and I could not get the new version to compile using their supplied instructions as make claimed that a directory was missing, but it appears to actually be there.
I know that in Synaptic that there are programs relating to the Commodore. Searching under 'Name and Description' for commodore or CBM should give a few results, and I bet one of them will do what you want. My Linux laptop is on loan to a friend with no functioning computer, so I can't hit it up myself to check for a week.
I've already looked at those and most of them are pertaining to C2N tape files, which I'm not interested in. The packages I really want CBM4LINUX and VICE (Versitile Commodore Emulator) which when combined allow the linux box to run C= software AND use the disk drives from the emulator, making the emulator much more compatible with commercial software for the Commodores.
I am just wondering why are you using Commodore? Just for fun? I used to emulate an 8080 processor on x86 boxes to run CP/m, but have not doen this for years now. No attack here, just curious about why you would want to do such a thing?
Why do I use Commodores? Why do people drive '68 Mustangs? Because they are fun, and they remind us of where we were, and how far along things have come. Unlike a 25 year old IBM PC, the 25 year old Commodores have character and aren't just some ubiqutous white appliance. The games are fun, clever, and engaging. Last night I played three games of Lords of Conquest on my Commodore while waiting for Windows Server 2003 x64 to install. I'll also spend time playing M.U.L.E., hanging out on Commodore BBS's (yes, they are still around and they are on the internet!) and occasionally I still program for the Commodores. Up until a few weeks ago I was running a BBS on a real Commodore 128D. The main thing is that it's something different than my every day life of PCs.
Have you ever used [url=http://www.scherrer.cc/crypt/]CrossCrypt[/url]? It is another encrypted drive in a file utility, but it has the advantage of being completely usable via the command line. I have used TrueCrypt, and keep it on my portable storage devices, but I have always returned to filedisk as my primary encryption program. Their are a bunch of other utilities that are useful to carry around, and require no installation. I keep these on my USB flash drive, and on my iPod (free stuff) 7-Zip Putty Gaim Registry Replacer (Registry Search & Replace) TrueCrypt Unlocker (program & optionally a shell extension to remove handles & allow deletion of files) (pay stuff) Nero (made portable) Pass2Go (Roboform in a portable format) Keypass
bearfx, I've never used CrossCrypt before. I'm going to check out the tools on your list there. I'm actually interested in getting a big 4 gig USB stick and putting a full installation of Ubuntu on it just to see if it's usable in such a manner. I wonder how it would react to the driver situation of moving it between completely different types of machines...

Leave a Comment

Connect to this blog to be notified of new entries.
You are not logged in.
Sign In to post unmoderated comments.
Join the community to create your free profile today.
Archive Category: Opinion
Keyword Tags:  Treo   TrueCrypt   Vista   Commodore

Receive the latest blog posts:
Share Your Perspective
Stuff, Feeds & Stats

Performancing Metrics Blog Statistics