Technology, Open Source and Shiny Things

Greasemonkey is a firefox extension that when it first I dismissed it as a power user tool. Greasemonkey allows you to change the functionality of the browser with custom Javascript. While I consider myself a power user, I am pretty lazy when it comes to writing scripts for myself(more of a waste of time). I was wrong about it completely. The power of greasemonkey is that it can be included In other extensions. One of my favourite extensions based on Greasemonkey is Stylish which allows you to load custom CSS on popular websites that members of the community have created. This allows me to have a darker Google experience. The only thing that is annoying is that there are a lot of terrible themes.

I have struggled for a long time with blogging. Having said that, I am doing well so far. I have been using the Worpress iPhone app which I’d very simple but good.

The other thing that has helped is WordPress 2.7. The biggest thing I had trouble with was staying up to date. I would find myself in an endless circle of not updating and so not posting. It now auto updates. This also extends to plugins. Themes do not yet update automatically but I think this is coming. The new admin backend is a lot more logical. There are things in WordPress that I couldn’t figure out with the old backend. It just makes more sense.

The first time that I used Linux was mid 2006. I had heard about Linux from a couple of people but never really done much investigating myself. One day I was listening to the Maccast, one of the few podcasts out at the time, and the host had some news about the bootcamp beta. Someone had triple booted a mac with OS X, Windows and this thing called Ubuntu.

Well this got my attention I started googlingaround for this ubuntu thing and was really interested. Once I installed it I fell in love. I started learning everything that I could about Linux. Tried different distros and window managers. I tried KDE 3 but it seemed too much like windows and I could spend days configuring the thing. So I stuck with Gnome for two years.

Almost a year ago KDE 4 came out and it was a bit rough, with good reason, anyone who used it would notice the massive changes and give it some time. Well I have been using the 4.2 beta for a few months now and just upgraded to the final release. It is now my desktop of choice and moreover I see so much potential for it going forward. Truly I am a Konvert.

I have been starting to use jQuery for a school project. I have done some javascript a few times. Form validation and stuff like that. I liked the syntax and loose typing but it is such a massive language and programming for the web is always a moving target.

Well jQuery does a good job of abstracting all the browser stuff away and once you get everything figured out it is pretty awesome. It is not really Ajax(although it has some Ajax handling) it is more of a merger of javascript and CSS. They also have an awesome plugin community.

The biggest problem I found was that the code is so minimalistic that it is sometimes hard to figure out what is doing what.

So I just bought my first Mac. My thinking was to eliminate Windows(I need iTunes for iPhone). I also wanted to have a small media centre system. I also wanted to learn about developing applications for iPhone. I am surprised at how powerful it is. Even so I am probably going to throw in a new hard drive and add more memory.

The thing that drives me crazy about it are the lack of keyboard shortcuts. In Windows or Linux I can use the system without a mouse with a Mac I can’t… Yet. The other thing that is annoying is when switching programs it only has the application and not all the windows of that program.

I was wondering if you can do 4 GB of RAM with the new Mac Mini. I have read conflicting reports online about that. The Core 2 Duo is 64-Bit but is Leopard on the Mac Mini? I’m thinking that the people who can’t get more than 3 gigs and change are on the mac mini with just a core duo.

So I use VMWare workstation almost on a daily basis. Over the Christmas break I aquired 6.5 and it is pretty awesome so far. It makes windows installs a lot more automated. It also has a feature that is available in fusion called Unity. Unity allows you to merge the windows from your virtual machine with the ones on your host machine. Definately a cool technology.

So in my quest to find an Ubuntu based backtrack I stumbled across Nubuntu. I tried it out on my Eee PC and once I got wifi working it seemed to show promise. Based on FluxBox and with the first implementation of Cairo that I have seen. It seems to have most of the features of backtrack but it’s hard to tell with FluxBox. I have been thinking of contributing to a project like this and depending on how busy I am this semester I just might get involved.

So I have been looking around at starting to package with Ubuntu. I have been going back and forth as to whether to try to submit packages to Ubuntu directly or setup my own repository. As the packages will likely be security related I am leaning towards submitting to Ubuntu. I don’t know why the metasploit packages are not in Ubuntu. Part of me says that it is lack of interest and they just need someone to step up and make the packages and part of me says it may be for political/legal reasons. I can’t even find deb packages for most of the stuff or an external repository. I haven’t been able to contact anyone on IRC either.

So I have been reading up on packaging. It seems like there are like 8 different ways of making packages. I guess I’m just gonna have to try them all.

So I love Ubuntu Linux. I love Backtrack. I especially love some of the additions made to it recently. But the lack of apt makes it hard for me to use it to the full extent that I can. I understand that there are things like fasttrack but imagine if you could have access to the ubuntu repository.

I have made minor remixes of Ubuntu before but I haven’t done a lot of major work. Things that come to mind are adding things for which there aren’t deb packages, ripping out things that are not needed and making it boot faster. If I even get something running how would I share it and set up repositories.

I guess my question is how does one start a distribution?