First you need to install Ubuntu. I download the Ubuntu Server ISO, as I prefer to set this up using a bare bones system. I will eventually want to install Xubuntu though, and using the server kernel probably doesn’t matter much to most people.. so you can use whichever version of Ubuntu you’d like. These instructions will go through using Ubuntu Server.

Installing Ubuntu itself is explained a million times on the net, and is really not in the scope of this post. I did not set up Ubuntu to be a DNS or Lamp server (the only real option Ubuntu Server gives you), ending me up with a bare system and a command prompt.

So the first thing to do here is check for updates.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

This first downloads all the available updates from the Ubuntu repositories, then applies them. It typically will not actually upgrade the kernel though, so let’s do that next.

sudo apt-get install linux-server

Once this completes, reboot the system.

sudo shutdown -r now

Once you are back up, let’s install the linux headers and the build essential files.

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-server
sudo apt-get install build-essential

Now we’ve got a nice, updated system. Let’s get a graphical interface.

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

This step takes a while, but is pretty painless. There is one thing to configure here, and that is the available screen resolutions. As I can rarely remember what the monitors I have support, I err on the high side here, by selecting all the resolutions including 1280 down to the lowest. Once this is complete, reboot again to get you into your graphical interface.

sudo shutdown -r now

On boot up, you now will login to XFCE, a more lightweight user interface. It should be familiar to anybody who is used to Gnome, but even if you’re not, it’s pretty simple to explore. I always make these changes:

Right click the taskbar at the top and “Add New Item”, adding:
Verve Command Line
System Load Monitor
a Launcher for xfce4-terminal, which is the terminal application

This is very much optional, but it certainly makes things easier to navigate.

Next let’s adjust the repositories, so that we can tell Ubuntu to include commercial software (such as VMware server). Click on Applications -> System - Synaptic Package Manager. Select Settings -> Repositories.

In the first tab, under “Installable from CD-ROM/DVD” I always uncheck both options here. I tend to not have the Ubuntu CD in a convenient place, and unchecking this means that when you install software that originally is on the cd, it will just download it from the net rather than forcing you to find and insert the disk. This is optional.

In the Third-Party Software tab, click Add.. and in the APT Line field type in:

deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu feisty-commercial main

Click close. Synaptic will then likely warn you that the Repositories ahve changed, just hit close there too. We can just quit out of Synaptic then.

We now need to fire up that terminal program (if you didn’t add a launcher to the taskbar, you can find the terminal in Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal. We need to update our apt to include the new repositories.

sudo apt-get update

Now we can install vmware-server.

sudo apt-get install vmware-server

This is a fairly large file too, but once it is downloaded you will be prompted to accept a license agreement, then eventually asked for a serial number. You will need to obtain this number from VMware, but it’s free and pretty easy. To have a serial emailed to you, just fill out the form here:

http://register.vmware.com/content/registration.html

Note: be sure to select the proper host Operating Sytem (Linux) on that form, because it seems the serial numbers for VMware Server on Linux and Windows hosts are not interchangeable. I registered for a pile of keys a while ago, and just refer to the email whenever I need to do this installation.

So ok, now you’ve got VMware server installed! You can get into it by clicking Accessories -> System -> VMware Server Console. Hit Connect with Local Host selected, and you’re into the interface! You can now create a new VM, or open an existing one, or whatever you please. Windows XP? Ubuntu? Red Hat? SuSE? Haiku? NetBSD? Hey whatever Operating System you want to play with, you are now able to do it.

There are just a couple notes. I usually will add firewall rules to the host, to shore up the security a bit. I’ll talk about this in a future post, but firewall builder is my current favorite, which simply is an interface to write up iptables rules.

On a server I also turn off the screensaver. This is done by going to Applications -> Settings -> Screensaver Settings and changing the Mode to “Disable Screen Saver”.

Also, in order to have your VM start up automatically when the host comes on, you will have to select this option in the settings for the particular VM (click the VM menu in VMware Server while you have a VM selected).

One step I’ve considered as a potential solution is for companies with large username pools to do purges. If somebody has not logged into their Yahoo login since 1998, chances are they aren’t going to need it anymore. The same goes for AOL, which has millions of users on it’s AOL and AOL Instant Messenger services.

But that brings up a few problems. Firstly, how long should the login period be? Some free email sites, Lycos and Yahoo included, will dump your mailbox if you don’t login within a certain period of time. These times are measured in months. Is it too much to ask that a user login at least once every couple of years to keep their account active? I don’t think so.

The second problem is maybe a little “out there”, but bear with me. Say, for example, that I have a list of 10 people on my AIM buddy list. And let’s say that some guy I play Counter Strike with from Idaho gets killed in a car accident. After hearing the news, I may not think to remove him from my buddy list. AOL purges his screen name eventually, and a new person takes it. Imagine the shock when several years later I see someone with that screen name sign on! Now consider the implications if this was a spouse or close friend! It’s almost like the girl from Lain!

So I really doubt companies will do this. If our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren all become eventual users of AIM, expect a completely long and random set of digits to be required as part of their username.

And yes, WYOU pulled through (even though Comcast did not), and I was able to get the game in HD!

Now, WTAJ, the CBS affiliate, has been broadcasting HD for a few days, but Comcast has still yet to pick it up. Why? Who knows. But the folks over at the AVS forum have poked around a bit and discovered that Comcast is carrying WYOU, a CBS affiliate from Scranton, on a digital signal that is hidden from their cable boxes. I ran a piece of coax to my TV directly last night, scanned through the channels and lo-and-behold, WYOU, broadcasting in perfect HD.

The guesses I’ve been hearing are that Comcast probably made a deal with WYOU to have them as a backup plan in case WTAJ didn’t have their act together in time for Super Bowl Sunday. According to the folks who have been watching the OTA broadcast, they still seem to be working out some of their audio-video sync kinks.. so it remains to be seen what sort of service to expect by this weekend

In other news, I’ve been doing a lot of work at work (imagine that) on Wordpress, trying to build a new subsystem of it using VMware as opposed to being locked onto a specific piece of hardware. I tell you what though, VMware is an amazing tool. With it, you can basically run your server on whatever piece of hardware you want, as long as it has the disk space for your virtual machine, and can run VMware. If you’re married to Windows, you can still run it on top of a linux host, and save that virtual machine image for the easiest disaster recovery imaginable. Your whole server catches on fire and melts down? Run that backup virtual machine on your desktop PC running XP, or on that spare Linux workstation, or any other computer until you can rebuild the server, and then *ploink* copy it over to the server and you’re back in business. I can’t stress enough how much stress and drama this is capable of preventing for people in my industry.

So wordpress has updated to 2.1. Crap, i’ve fallen behind, time to update this bad boy! If I don’t return, it’s been fun.

UPDATE: Everything went just fine, 2.1 is up and running

What I didn’t know was that basically ANY movie that was shot on film can potentially be made into an HD program. Film is able to capture extremely high amounts of detail, much more than could be shown on televisions.. it is why movie snobs have always stressed the importance of watching movies in theaters where all the detail is visible.

With today’s technology, old films can be ran through high resolution scanners, giving us a digital version in high definition. What this means is that old movies, made decades before HD technology, can now be shown in high def, and preserved in a digital format.

One of the most impressive examples of this is shown often on INHD. THey broadcast film of the Olympic games of the 50’s and 60’s, shown with details that haven’t been visible since these shows were perhaps shown in some theaters decades ago. I think my favorite one was a show of the 1964 summer olympics in Tokyo, which was shown with no narration.. but the expressions of the athletes, coaches and crowd spoke volumes. It’s beautiful to be able to see such detail that even the threads in the flags are visible. (On a side note, I think it is remarkable that I just saw the 1956 Olympics, and while they’re showing the athletes during their off time, you can see some of them smoking cigarettes while at dinner. Sign of those times I guess..)
The wider angle of movies is mostly kept with HD programming (although a lot of movies are shot at an ultra wide angle, so a bit of letterboxing is still present). HDnet and INHD along with HBO and others show many full movies, and HD is the best way to see them. Remember, HD is higher resolution than dvd, so it shows clearer detail. Until HD-DVD or Bluray become more accessible, HD broadcasts are the best way to see movies in HD.

One of the coolest HD presentations is coming in a few days.. Cinemax will be showing all six Star Wars films, in order (I through VI) in High Definition. The only other way to see the movies in that detail is in a movie theater. Too bad I don’t get Cinemax!

For those who don’t know what this is, it’s when one of the thousands of small colored lights (called pixels) that make up a tv screen gets stuck either on a single color, or stuck in the off position.  So I pretty much had a constant dot in one section.  Now, from a distance, this is hardly visible.  Unless you know it’s there.. in which case you can’t stop looking at it.  On top of that, I found that the Insignia just didn’t have the dark black levels that I wanted.  Black on that tv looked more like… dark gray.
I took that guy back to Best Buy the next day, but they didn’t have any others so I just got my money back.

That was HDTV #1.

I took my refunded money, went across the street to Walmart, and found a Sanyo tv that was a similar price.   Brought it home and hooked it up and… sonofabitch, there was a stuck pixel.  A constant blue dot.
That was HDTV #2.

Frustrated, I packed it up and took it back to Walmart, who exchanged it for the same model, which finally has no apparent issues (knock on wood).

So I finally had the TV.  The HD Receiver was another matter.  I had gotten one the morning after I first bought the TV, hooked it up and it worked fine for a couple hours, until all of the guide information was broken, and half my cable channels were missing.  Comcast tech support sent some refresh commands to it but by the next morning it was still broken, so I returned it.

The next night I put in HD receiver #2, and found it had the opposite problem of the first one… now I got ALL the channels, even all the pay channels, which I shouldn’t have been getting.  This only lasted a couple hours until I was back to missing most of the programming.  Seriously, I was not having good luck.

I made an appointment to have a tech come out to the apartment, but that day he called me after having done some work outside and things seem to have worked fine since then.

Finally.  It only took like a week.
So my impressions of HD, now that I have it set up finally, are that it is superb..  it makes me really not like watching standard definition (SD) programming.  The problem is, Comcast only has about 10 HD channels at the moment, but I find that the TV is more often on one of those 10 than anything else.  Sports is fantastic in HD, as are nature programming on Discovery.  It’s only a matter of time until everything is shown this way, and I can’t wait.

Now, I’m not writing Sony’s obituary here. This company is too far entrenched to allow a few bad mistakes to knock it out. But it might get taken down a few notches in the coming months. The PS3 could have been Sony’s knockout blow, positioning it as the reigning champion of the gaming world.. but an unfocused attitude toward gaming and an arrogant stance as to what it can force out of a gamer’s wallet are leading it down a path of difficulty. With PS3 costing $499 to $599 at launch (with competitors Nintendo Wii at $249 and Microsoft Xbox 360 at $299 to $399) they are assuming that money is not a factor. Sure, to some this is certainly the case.. but I’d venture a guess that it will become more of an issue than Sony recognizes. By the time you’ve gotten a PS3, another controller and a game or 2, you are literally going to be out HUNDREDS of dollars, much more than if you got the same equipment with the other consoles. Sony is betting that its customers will be taken in on PS3’s ability to play Bluray High Definition video content. But this is not yet even the standard High Def format.. Sony doesn’t exactly have a great track record when it comes to creating dominant media formats. If Bluray fails, PS3 has lost it’s main advantage over Xbox 360. Some people may say PS3 will have much better graphics, but this has yet to be proved definitively.. and how much different do people really expect them to be? Think Xbox vs Gamecube here… the differences are negligible.

On top of this all, Sony is facing shortages on PS3 production, and might leave a lot of people turning to Xbox 360 when they can’t find the newest Sony product on shelves this holiday.

I am no Sony hater, mind you.. I can appreciate some of the sweet technologies that we’ll find in PS3. I just think the price-point is wrong, the strategy Sony is following is poor, and their future is going to be bumpy. Will they emerge on top, or are they basically handing the reigns to Microsoft with their more-afordable, but nearly-as-capable machine?

We’ll see.

Luckily Wordpress has come along and now ships standard with a plugin called Akismet (auto kismet), which claims it will eliminate comment spam. The setup process was easy enough; you just need an API key from wordpress.com, enable the plugin and give them the key. From then on, spam comments should be autoflagged, and hopefully eliminated from your posts.

This post will be a testbed for it. If spam DOES get through, the system allows you to flag it, so it can learn what should be considered spam. Hopefully it makes for a more competant and useful blog system… without the hassle of manually going through each and every comment.

If this turns out to be less effective than I’d like, I have looked into implementing further captcha methods.  One such method, a simple plugin for wordpress, forces all comment posters to solve a simple math equation prior to posting their comment.  While this is easily identified and solved by a human, it is far less simple for an automated script to identify the problem and form a solution that is compatible with the comment interface.

An alternate, more prohibitive method is to require all posters to register.  For one thing, as a blog reader, I know that most people will not go through the hassle of registering for everybody’s blog.   And sometimes the most insightful comments will come from those ‘anonymous cowards’ who for whatever reason wish to hide their identity.  So a system that rules out anonymous comments entirely simply is not ideal.

So we shall see how this works.