Installing Debian etch

Installing Debian etch, originally uploaded by orebokech.

J. rescued this old laptop from the trash and now that it's running a real operating system, it works beautifully. With a PIII 650 CPU and 192MB of RAM, it happily runs GNOME and Iceweasel... not bad for a free machine!

On Debian's release cycle

Martin Michlmayr: "Yes, deadlines are real, targets can be met, and the project can release on time."

On SVK

Like Joerg, I use SVK to work offline with Subversion repositories, and I'm mostly happy with it. The only annoyance is that its memory usage can be quite insane on large repositories, which makes it very slow. I hear that SVK 2.0 is better in this area, but it's (still) not packaged for Debian (see bug #408306).

Read/write NTFS under Linux

While I wasn't looking, someone implemented a read/write NTFS driver for Linux, using FUSE. It's called ntfs-3g and appears to be working well!

NTFS is now a good choice for USB/Firewire hard drives:

• unlike FAT32, it supports files larger than 4GB (I routinely need to move DVD ISOs around),
• it's well supported under Windows (obviously),
• it can be accessed (read-only) on almost all Linux systems, if FUSE isn't available.

Recent gigs

• Gablé + Cornflakes Heroes (April 8th): 5/5. I literally crossed the country to see this show.
• Action Dead Mouse + Western Pilot (April 11th): 5/5. Loud, but so good.
• Kim Novak (April 13th): 2/5. Not so loud, and not so good.

Recent movies (2)

• Flags of Our Fathers: 2/5. Predictable.
• Runaway Jury: 2/5. Courtroom politics, legalese, blah blah.
• Blood Diamond: 4/5. Probably the best DiCaprio performance to date.

Internet radio in danger

SomaFM reports that a new royalty system will require them to pay approximately $1 million in fees in 2007, instead of a fixed 12% rate as before; this will probably drive them out of business. They're asking U.S. citizens to write to their local Congress representative. I often listen to their indie channel.