Pinning, Debian, Mixing

24. January 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Linux

I did a bit of research on this awhile ago and then it came back to get me because of the status of gnome in debian testing. Notice that there are a few packages not in Debian testing yet. Like gnome-shell. This causes problems when I want to use the extensions showcased here. If you view the site with Chrome on Linux running the latest release version of Gnome 3.2, it will fail anyways because the plugin for the site is fubar but if you use firefox or iceweasel its all okay. Anyways, it came down to wanting to use a few packages from the Debian unstable branch mixed in with Debian testing here. This is one of the reasons I love Debian so much. It seems there is always a way or two to get this done. One way is to just upgrade to Debian Unstable; but I tried that before and had a few issues with stability and printing. So I backed it off and re-installed back down to testing. The second way is to mix the distributions a bit. Debian really does not support the second way; yet there are easy ways to get this done. Its basically called pinning and the Debian website/wiki has details on it.

Since these systems are merely playgrounds for me and my crucial system runs a pure Debian testing mix, I feel quite enabled to mess things up, try new things, re-install when necessary. So I decided to implement pinning on Debian testing and get a few packages from the unstable tree.

First off, I created a file called /etc/apt/preferences and it looks like this:

mperry@foobar:~$ more /etc/apt/preferences
Package: *
Pin: release a=testing
Pin-Priority: 900

Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 300

Notice the priority levels in the two entries. They are really important! The wiki page tells you about what they do so read carefully. Then I created a second file called apt.conf. It looks like this:


mperry@foobar:~$ more /etc/apt/apt.conf
APT::Cache-Limit "100000000";
APT::Default-Release "testing";

This file declares my default release and also sets the apt cache limit up higher so I don’t get out of memory errors or apt crashing when I do things.

Finally, I added some stuff to my sources.list file thusly:

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main non-free contrib
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main non-free contrib

This adds some unstable sources to my debian testing install. So now if I do aptitude update it will draw the sources for unstable as well but due to the low priority will not upgrade stuff. So I want to draw the file gnome-shell particularly from the unstable sources. I do a “apt-get install gnome-shell/unstable” and it goes out and grabs the file and the supporting libraries it needs from unstable. I notice that gnome-tweak-tool will not work with the gnome-shell I am getting so it gets removed. I install the gnome-tweak-tool from unstable doing “apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool/unstable” and it gets that application.

Finally, to see what it all does, you can use a policy tool to inspect the configuration. Simply run apt-cache policy. I’ll resist including it in the blogpost because its pretty detailed and lists out all the repositories I draw packages from including iceweasel (debian’s version of firefox), google chrome, debian multimedia. It lets you check though that things are set the way you think and it shows you how repositories are assigned default priorities. Very handy! It does take a bit of background research to figure out what each of the priorities really means. So prepare to get your hands wet with how Debian does package management a bit.

All in all, I have grabbed about 10 packages from unstable and now my system is mixed. Regular testing updates happen as usual. When Debian testing gets the same or a later version of gnome-shell, I will get that version instead and the pin will not be needed.

So this gives me a decent system, with the latest gnome-shell from unstable. I can install extensions from the website above no problems. Things are pretty stable. I still have mostly Debian testing. If you are satisfied with a pure testing solution, by all means stick with it. If you like to hack around a bit with Debian (seriously, most people I know that run Debian do like to play with it), this could be a alternative to go learn.

The main thing is that other distributions come and go. Debian has stood the test of time. Its simply the best.

Moving Along

23. January 2012 · 2 comments · Categories: Current Events

I decided to re-activate the blog awhile ago because I felt like there were things which still needed saying. I think there are some friends of mine which have gone through similar life events. I’ve already blogged that my wife of some years is really no longer my wife of so many years. She has decided its better to move along. What I want really is to move along as well. I want to move along back to India or Singapore and not return for some bit of time. I could live in India for a good measure of time and be peaceful and at rest. Chennai would welcome me back with open arms. Singapore would tell me there is a new place to eat just down the street and it pours the coldest beers in town. I’d have to stop on the way in Japan. There is something cosmic about Japan. Something that touches me deep. I’ve vacationed there many times for days at a time. This last time I rode the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto and saw a wonderful mix of history, city, shopping, and people. I love it there too.

So, I also want to move along. Move to a new drumbeat. I have a good job now with $LARGE SOFTWARE COMPANY. They take good care of me. They care about me. They told me the other day, “Michael, we are so glad you are with us”. Imagine that. In a previous place I was pretty much blamed for everything no matter if I caused it or not. I guess I was an easy target. Yet when something went all fucked up; who was called on to go fix it. I remember so many calls with unhappy customers that somehow were turned around. Often times I actually got more money from them to finish a job we had messed up.

But I want to move along. Get away from all the BS here. Find my way back. Back home to Chennai. Back to airports where no one knows me and my travel is mine only. Back to my own wild places.

Mikey’s Back!

21. January 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Current Events

So many events have occurred. Some private and personal. Some technological. Some work-related. I decided to start writing here again not to capture all the tawdry events in a life filled with them but instead to start communicating again on things that really matter.

It dawned on me when talking with my daughter about friendship that my friends are international in scope. I have relatively few friends here but when you include Japan, Singapore, India and even Sydney; the number picks up. I’m sorry to say though that I am not much of a social butterfly. The travel I have done was best done in solitary confinement and not with others who enforce their wills on the food, lodging, affairs.

I traveled back to the places I love last November and it already feels like years past. I realize i am hooked on the travel and it feeds some low level drug habit I have. It randomizes my existence and lets me truly drop the more base and bad things in favor of being neither here or there. That’s the greatest joy for me in travel. This year will be something new in that spectrum. I have been planning a trip to Japan and China.

Most of all though; I’m back. Mikey’s here. He will start writing again about how Android is kicking apple’s ass in every market that matters. How apple is a silo and we don’t deserve living in them. How Debian/rules.

Unfortunately, you will also have to read through or around more troubling personal issues because this blog is a reflection of a soul, a mind, an existence which has its issues.

Stand by for more vapid and useless content filling up a mysql database server!

Happy holidays

24. December 2011 · Comments Off · Categories: Current Events

Hope everyone  has a great holiday season. Be Thankful for what you have. Strive to be more. Look beyond.

I’m also thankful. The last two years have taught me a lot. Don’t want to relive them but I’m glad to know what I know.

Take care all. This blog is gonna take a hiatus.

Happiness and Contentment

23. December 2011 · Comments Off · Categories: Ideas

I had this discussion with my kids the other day. We were discussing whether we are happy or content and what the difference is. A member of my “in law” family once remarked she had never had a happy day in her life. Perhaps this shocked me; but in retrospect knowing what I know about the entire clan it doesn’t surprise me. When I look at the lesser family tree members, I can see that waiting for them too. The only thing for sure in this life is that you get older or as Pink Floyd remarked regarding time,

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Thus it is and always shall be. But the real question is what the difference between mere contentment and happiness. An archeologist friend once remarked to me to take a look at cows in the field. That’s contentment. You don’t see them clicking their hooves, cracking jokes, running all around. But what is the sublime difference between the two things that makes us reach happiness? I’m not sure; but one thing I know is its pretty evident when we don’t have it. I have not been really happy since probably September 2009 although I have had moments where I think I got close. Leaving a work place behind that was bad for me this year had to rank high. It may have broken some things but it let me see pretty clearly that you are supposed to not just be content with work. You are supposed to enjoy it.

Relationships are another thing which interest me. Having been the product of a working slowly toward failure one and see my friend Ed travel his path to divorce; has let me see that when we really depend on another for happiness, when we believe that marriage can blend the two into one, when we believe the vows; we pretty much ignore the human element. We come with socially engaged ideas that we are supposed to find that other person, blend everything into a complete person, lives led joyfully holding the hand of the other and walking toward that sunset. Maybe a few dark clouds to stumble on your path; but in the happily idiotic method of all this; we all yield and become that true essence. I’ll just say that all that is “bullshit”. We will never be able to fit into another’s shoes much less our own. When we believe all the mumbo-jumbo we really are let down when the whole thing comes shaking down in an earthquake of accusation, infedelity, hatred, and finally separation. What happened to that great institution then? Not sure; but what I’ve learned is that its not all its cracked up to be.

We are weak clay. Made from imperfect ingredients and that’s okay. So to answer the question regarding happiness and contentment… We ain’t sure. What we do know is that we don’t know. Happiness is fleeting.

And we are one day closer to death.

 

Debian Less than Stable

21. December 2011 · Comments Off · Categories: Current Events, Linux

Or testing for that matter.

I decided to go play with that dangerous boy that lives next door that breaks things. Its not so dangerous since I used to run this branch of things for years. There are bound to be new issues which arise. Things like before where suddenly one could not sudo because of a libpam issue. But this is all fun right?

It also means I get the full monte of the Gnome 3.2 experience and I started playing with the Extension Gnome website which lets you install Gnome Shell extensions from a compliant web browser. That would be any browser I am gathering besides Chrome. Firefox works just fine. Perhaps Iceweasel does too. I don’t particularly like the rebranded Firefox on Debian so I download the real thing and plop it into /opt each time. Mozilla is kind enough to compile a x64 version as well these days.

So, what’s next? Well there is the much anticipated Facebook Timelines thing which you cannot seem to opt out of no matter what you try. Facebook wants to show our development and evolution on their service no matter what we want. I’d like an option to go back to the other profile thing. Of course Facebook will not do this. They never really do what we all expect. Google+ of course is much better and there is a better clientele there like Linus, a lot of the Linux guys I know. It seems a better signal to noise ratio across the board. But of course we all stay with Facebook because they disappoint us.

Such is life on the internet meme.

Lonely

16. December 2011 · Comments Off · Categories: Current Events

Always remembering Deanie the Weenie, Ernie the Burnie, Stan the Man and Andy the Dandy. Don’t know where you guys are, what you are doing,  I think you all remember this song from the nights spent partying in a dorm room. Dean’s favorite.

From Mike the Spike :-)

Tidbytes

13. December 2011 · Comments Off · Categories: Current Events, Ideas

A virtual potpourri of stuff…

Work. I will have two jobs come Monday. I have a part-time gig now doing some data center management which is nice. Come Monday, this rather nice Fortune 50 software company likes my style and will offer me a 4 to 6 month contract to do some project management for a group of projects they have. I get to go play again with Microsoft Project, Visio, and some other stuff. I’ll wait until Monday and then tell you all where I’m going. I was out of work this time since September 27th. That’s less than two months by my reckoning.

Travel. The 6 month contract means my trip to Japan and China is on for around June this next year. I’ll be working the next months to save up some cash for a month’s travels to Japan and China. Then when I get back, back to the job search thing again and another consulting gig.

Computers. I tried to use Windows 7 today on real hardware. There is something about it which I don’t like. I mean besides its networking kinda sucks. It seems slow on this rather old ThinkPad T60. It seems to light up the disk drive icon every so often for no real reason. Not quite sure what its doing. Debian is a lean, mean fighting machine! I built a Windows 7 VirtualBox guest with the applications I really need on that side. I’m pretty sure that new $COMPANY will provide me a new laptop. Unlike the last place which told me forever there was some laptop plan almost ready to be finalized. In the end, even a rather model contributor could not get the company to buy him a laptop. Its the only place I have ever been where I was not given a piece of equipment necessary to do my job. At Celestix, my boss got me a few laptops for testing and traveling.

Life. Life in general. I upgraded the WordPress thing to the newest one and had to fall back to a backup I had taken. Thank the Linux gods for command-line backup programs like backup-manager. A quick untar and replace and all was good again. I’m sitting here tonight with a fire going in the fireplace and my daughter is tapping and typing away in some social RPG thing with a bunch of virtual friends.

Its quiet here now. Fire is crackling away. Thinking about entering the whole work place thing again. Working with computers and technology is okay. When I did archeology if someone would have felt the bumps on my head and said, “you will spend your life editing a file with strange lines and graphs in it”, I would have said, “forget about it”. Who woulda known. But its okay. Relationships come and go. People come and go.I’ll tell you what’s forever.

Desert sand, snakes, and sunsets. Thanks for reminding me, Mr. Abbey.

Boots on the Ground

08. December 2011 · Comments Off · Categories: Current Events

Way back when, an archeologist instructor/professor I had would get tired of classroom shenanigans. He would be staring out the window at the beautiful New Mexico springtime and then look around at the books and lecture materials. He’d jump up and tell us,

time for boots on the ground!

We all knew he wanted to hit the road, get the south central plains air flowing, see fields of grasses. During our summers there we had these field classes that took us to a relatively unknown location in New Mexico called the Chupadero Mesa. It was a wild and rugged area the way I remember it. We camped out for about 2 months there doing archeological field surveys of lands surveyed in the past at some point.

The sites were truly amazing and I remember working a few days with a geologist mapping strata, looking at aerial photography for locations of possible archeological sites, and traveling down many canyons validating earlier attempts at locating prehistoric archeological sites.

One evening we were sitting around when a bunch of cowboys pulled up and offered to share their liquor with us. We assumed this would be beer; but real cowboys don’t drink liquor which requires cooling. I mean how are they gonna cool the stuff when they’re bouncing around in trucks and on horseback. We all sat around a fire talking about the falling stars which arced the sky, a pale moon which seemed twice the size of normal, and, crisp cold air heavy with the promise of dew and perhaps even frost in the morning. They knew stories about lost mines, ghosts, and strange places where not even cows wanted to go.

After some hours of drinking they all piled into their trucks and left us after eating a dinner we all prepared. Venison, potatoes, green beans in a big pot. One of the guys called it “bullshit stew” because there was so much of it and the stories after it got even better :-)

Now I sit here remembering that advice. Days roll by and I see a new light coming. Freedom is gonna knock at my door. I’ll take some of that stew again. Then I’ll yell much like before…

Its boots on the ground time

I got lucky with it this time. I got work times two it appears. I’ll be getting some new electronic gear very shortly that I want. I also will be departing in June for a month on the road to China and Japan.

Definitely boots on the ground time.

Reading News

04. December 2011 · Comments Off · Categories: android

News reading is a hobby of mine at Starbucks on my Motorola Xoom. I’ve found a few good free market applications which render news in bits and bytes one can easily peruse. Here is my synopsis and relevant information for each of the applications I use:

World Newspapers – This is the primary source for me. Not limited to this or that number and can be used to read google reader accounts if you want. The developer regularly updates the application and it works fine on my HTC Sensation phone or my Xoom. You can save articles, share and add your own sources as you want. The interface is kinda clunky at times but lets face it; you end up reading the news more than staring at the interface for the list of sources. Give it a shot.

Taptu – This one may come in a IOS version; not sure. I ain’t never touched an iPhone so don’t know. I seem to remember loading this on my iPod touch during the three days or so I had one. This one presents the news in a different format which I find rather innovative. Articles roll by from left to right. You can add sources up to 1000. Again, you can share, save, and also find new sources of your own or use one that is managed  by the Taptu team. Very cool! Give it a try to see news presented slightly differently.

Feedly – This is my newest one and the nice thing here is that there is a Google Chrome application for Feedly as well so you can see the same basic presentation on the Xoom, the phone, and in my browser. The graphical presentation in Feedly is really unique, themable, and you are able to add sections, link to your google reader account, and it shows everything in a visually pleasing UI which really makes it comfortable reading.

There is no one favorite application for me to reading news. I like all three and they all present. I argue to give them all a try. Here is what’s missing though from these that I can see. There is no way to sync the list of favorites to a website so when you add a new device or tablet, it will read the list you have maintained, added to, or removed from. I urge the developers to consider ways and means that the applications can sync to a central source. Feedly would benefit definitely by sync’ing to the sync’ed extensions and settings in Chrome. Lets face it, we all use Chrome these days. Faster, easier, nicer than Firefox and they’ve made a lot of inroads to centralizing data.

Most of all, thanks to the enterprising devleopers on Android for making it the nicest mobile operating system out there. And the most popular! I mean the thanks to the widest possible group of folks including developers like Cyanogen, the XDA forums people, the folks that build ROMs and maintain them, people that document things and make Android an online phenomena.

Great job everyone and thanks from a regular user.

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