Send comments or
suggestions to:
Christopher 'Vulpine' Kalley,
vulpine@cyberfox.org

Copyright © 1998-2006

"Better Vulpines through Technology."


[an error occurred while processing this directive]


Return of KitsuneSeptember 30th 2000
Well, Kitsune is finally back among the land of the living, and damn she is sweet. As you may know, kitsune is the name of the first stand alone linux workstation I ever had. It died about the turn of the year, and I rebuilt it a few months ago. It worked for a while, then suffered a mysterious failure in the MB. So this is the 3rd attempt at building a counterpart to Nogitsune.

Now Kitsune is a Athlon 650 with 128 megs of ram and a 30 gig hard drive. Desktop is provided by a 32 meg Nvidia TNT2 card and a Viewsonic 17" monitor. Currently she's running SuSE 7.0. And it's running it much stabler than Nogitsune does. The fact it's not running Xinerama makes me wonder. So I may leave it running SuSE, and switch Nogitsune to Debian and build everything from scratch. Maybe a complete cleaning and wiping of the drives on Nogitsune will help things.

So far I like the Athlon chip, the motherboard leaves a little to be desired, none of the onboard stuff (sounds, NIC) work under linux. Lucky for me I can disable all that junk. A Netgear 10/100bT NIC works much better anyway. I need to pick up a PCI soundcard and some good speakers for her. Then I'll be ready to rock and roll. :)

Screenshot for those curious eyes. :)

New News LayoutSeptember 30th 2000
As you may have noticed, I've got the news page setup a little differently. I hope this will make things a little easier to update. (It can't get much harder ;) Each news item gets it's own little box. When I run out of room on the page (which is whenever I feel like clearing it) I'll move it to the Old News page. Let me know what you think. Special thanks to Tom Gilbert for the news code, it's stolen happily from his page...with a few modifications. :)

SuSE 7.0September 30th 2000
Well, big news of the week. SuSE 7.0 has been released. And dear gods is it big. Tons of apps, almost all of them the current stable release. But it has it's flaws. SAX2 (the Xfree86 4.0 configurator) doesn't autodetect very well. And dear gods, if you want to run multihead and xinerama (where you have multiple monitors that act as a single desktop)...prepare for HELL.

As most of my readers (I think we're up to 4) know, I run 3 19" monitors. I used to run MetroX which was good, but it didn't do Xinerama, which I wanted. So when this came out, I thought 'Cool, new version with Xfree86 4, automagically configured xinerama' Was I in trouble... Well, to start, it took forever to figureout that the autodetect was on crack...or at least thought my video cards had ALOT more memory then they did. Fix that. Get xinerama running, very cool. Setup aterms and logtails. Cool. Install GAIM. Run GAIM. No window. Not good. Run from a term window...really weird error. Try other gnome apps. Same thing. Try KDE...ditto. After much gnashing of teeth, and sacrifices to the Oracle of Linuxhood...I guess/discover that gtk and xinerama do not play well together. At least under SuSE. Now I know it works for other people. Mandrake's works. Tom Gilbert's works. Why not me ? Probably because I haven't setup xfree86 4.0 manually. Well, hopefully I'll get this working this weekend. Until then I have kludged together a number of apps to allow me to do what I love to do online. Look at pics, talk to people, just no gnome or kde apps. So, I present a pair of screenshots...

Number 1 and Number 2

As you can see, it looks mostly the same, term windows and netscape...pine and tail files. But no licq, no gaim. Instead I'm running a text icq client called Zicq. Not the best client in the world, but the only one that doesn't go nuts with gui interfaces. I'm also running TiK Instant Messenger which is a very nifty Aol Instant Messenger clone. I may stick with this one after I fix my other problems. We'll see. But that's been my fun for the last 3 days. Now when I get the new linux box in (kitsune is being rebuilt) I may put something else on besides SuSE and we'll see if I have better luck with say Debian or Storm Linux, and installing what I need later. We shall see.

Dream TheaterSeptember 30th 2000
Not much else geekwise. Well, I found a new fun band for listening to. Dream Theater. This is a "progressive thrash metal" which is a whacked way of saying it's a band that you really can't label. Lots of long songs with plenty of tempo changes and chord progressions above and beyond the usual E string metal riff. I've just about played their CD, Images and Words, to death. So, I recommend this for any metalhead who is tired of Metallica ;)

Vulpine the Movie StarSeptember 20th 2000
Late Breaking News: I'm a movie star !!!! I spent Monday and Tuesday night working as an extra for a horror movie titled American Nightmare. I played an extra sitting in the back of a coffee house chatting. I even have a line in the movie. "Hey Rick, turn the radio up. He's back on." My claim to fame. Well, I was there for quite a few hours, for a scene that may take 15 minutes on the screen. Check out the website, and when it comes out go see it...over and over again. :)

Enlightenment, EFM and a ScreenshotSeptember 20th 2000
Ok, when last we met, I said something about installing EFM. Ignore that, I have not installed EFM. I'm scared to install EFM, that is a very scary bit of code. Of course, I also have a old and buggy install of libs on Nogitsune. So my new plan is to wait til the new linux box comes in. I'm rebuilding Kitsune (again), this time as a Athlon box. I can't wait :) Speaking of Enlightenment...I found out that if I install the Arctic theme (which I think is ubercool) and shutdown and restart E, it segfaults badly. This caused alot of headaches, pain and sorrow. Needless to say, after some wresting and screaming, I got E working again. Since no one else seems to have this problem in the known world, I'm blaiming my evil libs again. So, when I get to run a new linux station, and do a fresh install, I'll see if it nukes E. Well, after much searching for a new theme, I finally settled on my original theme of choice. Bluesteel. I like how it's laid out, and it's a touch more colorful than Brushed Metal (my old theme). To show off my new desktop, we have... The Screenshot of the Week !!!!
  • Left Monitor
  • Middle Monitor
  • Right Monitor Well, lets see what you can see. GAIM, LICQ, Pine, BitchX, the usual on the left monitor. One change, I'm now using Nexus font for my log monitors. Special thanks to Tom Gilbert aka the LinuxBrit for clueing me on how to get fonts running right. Middle is my usual wall o ATerms. Right hand, netscape with customer colors (Again, thanks to LinuxBrit), and a term window tail'ing -f the logs off of lair (my webserver). I also have Xmms running with a Dust Puppy theme. The background is from a WindowMaker theme, the Discordian theme. This is one of my most faved backgrounds in history. I used it at work, on windows, on the laptop. It's just cool. And unlike Tara Monroe, I don't get called a sexist pig for having a sexy redhead as wallpaper. :)

    • Geeks in SpaceSeptember 20th 2000
    If you look closely, you can see my newest time waster Geeks in Space. This is a online radio talk program. These are the Slashdot geeks, and their take on life, the universe and anime. *laugh* So I have listened to every episode up to 30. So I've spent probably 12 hours of my life listening to these geeks. So, go listen...and remember to email kurt@thepope.org ;)

    Cable Modem EnvySeptember 20th 2000
    On to a small rant. I am so F@#$'ing jealous of Amythest. She has recently gotten cable internet access, and dear gods is it swift. Downloading from my site, I got 4 to almost 5 times the download speed I get out of my ISDN. Now, when I downloaded from ftp.kernel.org, I got nearly 9 times my ISDN max speed. 9 TIMES !!!!!!!!!!!! The down side is, get cable, no more block of ip's to play with. But it's cheaper. *ponder* What to do. What to do. I like Ticnet (my ISP) very much, but $40 a month compaired to $210 for more speed is hard to beat. I don't know, I'll think about it. Of course then, I'd need to learn IP masq and firewall alot better, don't want people browsing my stuff. Plus, I have 5 computers (soon to be more) and @home only allows 3. So guess what, I gotta sneak. Oh well, we will see.

    Godzilla 2kSeptember 20th 2000
    Not much else, saw Godzilla 2000 last sunday. Woohoo, bad godzilla movie. Unlike last years special effects fest, Godzilla 2000 is back to the guy in the rubber suit destroying Tokyo. Not much of a plot, not much of acting, it was a major MST3k fest. I saw it with a friend, and all we did was make comments. Tons of comments. Bad comments. This is definitely a buy when it comes out...definitely a B movie :)

    Job Hunting and other StuffSeptember 11th 2000
    Ok, so it's another month, and I don't post...not much of mention. Job hunting sucks. :( It sucks alot actually, but it beats being unemployed forever and carrying a sign 'Will configure Apache for Food'. Hell, I should have that made up as a shirt. Well, since we spoke last, I rebuilt Kitsune and Vulpes. Vulpes is now running great with a single 7.5 gig HD instead of a pair of 2.5's. No headaches, the migration went well, all good. On the other hand, Kitsune decided to be a pain in the rump, and kill it's mother board. Funny part was it took two days to discover that she was down. Oh well, I don't think anything else fried, so i'm going to replace the motherboard soon. Kitsune has a K6-3 450 (very nice processor when the board isn't fried) and 128 megs of ram, in other words about double the horsepower it had before. Oh yeah, a 13 gig drive helps too. Hmm, I need that new job soon...I have alot of hardware projects, and little capital to do them. Like I want a dedicated mail server...Vulpes is a play server, shell access and stuff for friends to play on, and break. Urocyon (if I ever get it done) will do DNS, as well as web and ftp. Kitsune was going to be a testbed Linux workstation...before it nuked. Fennec does file serving. Hmm, what else do I need. Well, a box running FreeBSD would be nice, so would a box to run multiple OS's (BeOS, linux, Windows 2000, etc.). I'm also drooling at the VALinux workstations. Say a dual Pentium III 850 with half a gig of RAM. Very sweet, but $4500 is a bit much to spend right now. Maybe next year. If anyone wants to buy me a Yule gift early...that would be nice ;)

    VALinuxSeptember 11th 2000
    Speaking of VALinux you'll notice I've started posting banners. Not to make money, I just want some neat stuff. The banners work on a point system, for each download of the image, I get a point. Trade points for stuff, tshirts and whatnot. Things I do for swag. Well, we'll see how well this works.

    EFMSeptember 11th 2000
    Hmm, no new screenshots...although I plan to be upgrading from Enlightenment to EFM (Enlightenment File Manager) this week. EFM is very snazzy, but I've avoided installing it since the first snapshot tarball because A. CVS and me do not get along, and B. because this is my main workstation, and messing it up would be headache causing. But I need a new challenge, so *crosses fingers* I should have some kind of report up this week, unless it utterly fscks up, in which case I'll ignore this post and go on. Denial is bliss ;)

    DSL DreamsSeptember 11th 2000
    What else...hmm, job hunting, network dreaming, speaking of network...boy do I want DSL. I never thought that 128k ISDN would seem pokey, but it does...at least if I want to run servers with real load on them. So, next home I move to (next year) will have to be within spitting distance of a Central Office, so I can get a 1.54 meg DSL connection. Sure, it will cost me an arm and a leg...but will I care ? Nope. :) Actually, my current ISP Ticnet charges $150 for ISDN, and $450 a month for 1568kbps SDSL. Hmm, 14 times the speed for 3 times the price. Sounds like a bargain to me. *grin* Now to find a new place. Not that I'm in a rush, my current lease is til next July. So I've got time. Time is good :)

    Late Night ScreenshotsSeptember 11th 2000
    Well, I gave up on sleep for a while...and ended up doing a screenshot. The screenshot from hell. Please ignore the quality, it is pretty cruddy on some parts of the image. Then again, I am tired. But I was able to merge via Gimp the 3 images that make up my screens into one honking big image. So, image I was running Xinerama under X, and this is what the screenshot would look like. :) Here it is BigAssScreenshot.jpg One of these days, I'll get XFree86 4 running and do this the easy way. :) Night all.