Michael Harper’s Tech & Art Blog

I finally get to plug a screensaver that’s available for Linux. There aren’t too many outstanding ones around and I’m still searching for a way to use Mac and Windows screensavers in Linux. This screensaver uses the power of fractals and grid computing to create completely unique and visually stunning “fractal flame” based screensavers. A computer that is using the Electric Sheep screensaver will connect everyday to the ES servers to download new art. Users can get involved and create their own fractal flames or let the machines rule us by mixing the available fractal flame code together to create its own offspring. I’m trying to get some more info from the site but for some reason it’s down right now (www.electricsheep.org). Despite that, I remember the site as being not so well developed (most of their time is apparently spent making great screensavers). Instead check out the wikipedia article that is very clean and to the point - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Sheep.

The Polar Clock is a work of art by a guy (for lack of an available real name) that goes by Pixel Breaker. The clock represents the time and date by basically using concentric colored circles. Very smooth design based in Flash. Check it out.

http://blog.pixelbreaker.com/polarclock/

I came across this collaborative art project the other day called ZOOMQUILT. The original came out in 2004 and was the creation of about 15 different artists. The artwork features many different environments and worlds that are continuously being zoomed into each and seem to follow a red line that runs through each piece of art. I would it call it surrealism but you really have to see it to get an idea of what it truly is. It’s presented as a Flash site, screen saver and still images. Don’t forget to check out the sequel to the original, ZOOMQUILT II.

Not familiar with Error 17? It is apparently a tricky GRUB error (and not a BIOS error in my case) that carries the message, “Unable to mount partition.” I’m running my Toshiba Satellite with a dual-boot setup on a single hard drive: Vista Ultimate on the first partition and Ubuntu 8.04 and swap partition for the other two. This error conceived itself after I attempted to unsuccessfully resume my laptop out of suspend mode. It simply stopped when I opened my laptop lid. A few errors messages but nothing I don’t see periodically usually Ubuntu. So i powered it off and rebooted only to meet this error in surprise. I couldn’t load Vista or Ubuntu. I was simply stuck reading that same error message repeatedly. I tried everything I could think of including running my Ubuntu LiveCD and Puppy Linux in an attempt to use the GRUB command in a terminal to repair or rebuild itself. For some reason I couldn’t even get Puppy Linux to load to RAM which I thought was strange. I checked forums and message boards but all I could find were vague attempts to assist with a very hindering problem. No one was providing sound assistance until I saw a recommendation for Super GRUB Disk. This tool is very convenient. It was straight-forward: Load the iso (400 KB) to a CD and reboot. It has two modes, boot with assistance or just boot. I’ll just summarize because this CD and its included on-screen instructions are for complete beginners.

I stumbled across a great piece of software today called “Ext2 Installable File System for Windows.” This program allows you to mount a Linux partition from your Windows Explorer. How? Simply download the file from www.fs-driver.org/download.html, run the install program and assign a drive letter to the partition. You also have the option to have it reassign the drive letter on each boot. This works great on my laptop since I’m having to dual-boot Vista to get dedicated CS4 support. I’m able to pull all of my source files and assets directly off my Linux partition. It works great and it’s fast. This is a practical way to avoid having to create a FAT32 or NTFS partition that is just for sharing -or- having to use your Windows partition to store both your Linux and Windows files.

Yet another benefit of having Gmail is its incredible amount of storage that is given to you for free. I think that it is currently around 7.5 GB per user. I ask, “so why not take adavantage of that space?” If you use an app like Gspace, then you can. Gspace integrates with Firefox and allows you to easily drag and drop files into a mini filesystem with directories that can be accessed from any another Firefox browser using the same add-on. This app works great for me because I am constantly switching between my desktop and laptop. Now I can easily transfer and store files through Gmail’s excess space. This is great. Check it out at www.getgspace.com.

Much learned in this past week. I’m blogging from my laptop while I watch the Fedora install and update on my HP xw9300 Workstation. Yes, I went ahead and decided to install trhe 64-bit Fedora 10. My xw9300 was running a 64-bit Ubuntu 8.1 and Windows XP Pro. I’ve been doing a lot of software testing recently and XP absorbed quite an infection. You know the type - incessant IE pop-ups that just will not go away. After trying every spyware, malware and virus scanning program I had, I dropped XP and pushed Fedora into the xw9300. The HP xw9300 hardware was originally developed in cooperation with Red Hat, Microsoft and Nvidia. I’m tired of XP so I decided to give the machine a try with Red Hat’s Fedora. I installed Windows Server 2003 first just for dedicated Adobe CS3 support and then installed Fedora. Fedora was quick and easy to install and also provided a Boot Loader section for dual-booting. Wifi worked immediately along with other hardware. Two minors bugs related to additional package installation and updates but mostly a walk in the park.

Over the past week, I have been exploring some of the other Linux distro options available to me. Initially I branched out when I had to do some data recovery on a corrupted Windows XP hard drive. A friend in the business recommended Puppy Linux for fast load times and non-destructive viewing of the hard drive’s contents. Puppy Linux has the very useful ability to load itself directly into RAM as opposed to loading itself on the local disk drive. The Live CD is only around 90 MB but is amazingly a fully featured OS with an office suite, CD/DVD burners, graphic programs, audio editors and more. I quickly loaded Puppy Linux onto a bootable CD and a few minutes later I was extracting the data I needed from the corrupted hard drive. Nicely done. I might also mention that Puppy Linux is among quite a few different Linux distros that can be completely loaded to RAM.

I realize I’m more than one week behind on this post but it was time for a VirtualBox shout-out. In case you’re not familiar with VBox, it is an open-source, virtualization software package that allows you do some amazing things. VirtualBox is available for the majority of OSs available and it’s free. As you might have read, I recently switched over to Ubuntu Linux on my laptop and work desktop. So far so good if you exlude the fact that I use Adobe CS3 for work and play around the clock. Yes, I’ve tried Wine (Windows Emulator) for Linux but it doesn’t meet my standards - I needed full compatibility. I needed software that would run the Adobe apps I needed to run in a somewhat optimized and efficient manner. That’s when I discovered virtualization, or, the act of virtualizing an entire computer and OS on your current computer and within your operating system. To summarize, I’m running Windows on my Linux laptop thanks to VirtualBox. The beauty of the software is that I can run “seamless” mode which creates the illusion that a Windows application is actually running on my Ubuntu desktop. To switch gears entirely, I can just run full-screen mode and tuck my Ubuntu desktop out-of-sight while I Photoshop away and create websites with Dreamweaver and Flash Professional. It is fairly impressive as far as switching between Windows and Ubuntu as if it were just another app. The primary OS (in my case Ubuntu) is referred to as the “Host OS” whereas the secondary OSs (Windows, OS X, Solaris, etc.) are referred to as the “Guest OSs”. You can add as many Guest OSs as you would like. The OSs share the resources on your machine (RAM, processors, hard drive space, etc.) which can all be fine-tuned and adjusted as necessary to give you the performance you need. Another added feature is the ability to “save the current machine state” and essentially hit the pause button on your guest OS, saving the layout and current view in your guest OS. This put an end to my dual-boot and multi-boot OSs. The next step for me is to optimize my virtualization process to get the machines running at full capacity but that’s a completely different post.

Google has recently released a beta version of the 3rd installation of their user-friendly, photo management software called Picasa. This is yet another handy and free product that has been added to Google’s arsenal of software and services (they will one day rule the world). Picasa is incredibly easy to setup and install but, mainly it’s - in my opinion - the easiest and most straight-forward photo management software anywhere. I never was very drawn to a lot of these vendor-made programs that try to persuade you to use their hardward and buy more of their crap. Here are just a few of the reasons (there are plenty more) I prefer Picasa as my photo editor and viewer: