Feeling geeky

I've been wanting to setup a server at home, that I could access from anywhere; too bad I have been too cheap to pay for a static IP, or a Dynamic IP service and I haven't had a domain name in a while.
Since work has been a bit slow as of late, and I've been working on learning shell scripting, I thought I would try my hand at creating a few scripts to help me out. One script to fetch the servers outside IP address and upload that to an FTP server (yes, I know security concerns), and another to pull that IP address from the FTP server and apply the updated IP address to my laptop's hosts file. I have it working on my server at work, and should have it working on my home server after I set the box up this weekend.

The only thing I'm not happy about is using an outside FTP server, bit I'll look for a better solution to that a bit later.

Anyone familiar with DynDNS.com? I happened to spot it while looking for a Dynamic IP service, good, bad, or ugly?

While I'm feeling geeky, I think I'll try writing the AI for Data (from TNG), should be done in a week or two.

Google Desktop on Linux

Well, the day that some people have been waiting for has arrived, Google Desktop is now available for Linux. It isn't the Google Desktop that you see for Windows, you don't get the Google Gadgets, but you do get an indexed search of your computer.
Some people are not impressed with this. And you can see why when you think that Linux has Beagle and Srigi, both of which do the same basic thing (though they don't index you gmail account).
I for one am happy to see this. I don't care about getting Google Desktop on my computer, though I am testing it out. One thing that is different about this, versus some of Google's other Linux offerings, is that it does not require Wine to run. I see this as a good thing, hopefully other companies will see this as an example, and try to follow with some other products.

Linux fun

I've had a bug up my butt for a while, so I finally took the plunge, and reinstalled Kubuntu. I put on Gutsy Tribe 1. Before a did any of that, I backed up my information to an external hard drive - that took about an hour. All in all, the install was rather painless, it took about an hour from the time I put the CD in, to reboot, for everything to install - but then again I did take a small break in there for a sandwich.
After the install I had to go through, and reconfigure X though - it doesn't like to work with my display the first time (I had the same problem with Feisty, so I knew what to do this time). I got NDISwrapper to work for the first time with this system, never been able to get it to work before; so now I can use the internal wireless. I did have a strange problem though, this morning when I went to use my wireless, I just could not get it to work, so I pulled out my trusty 50' CAT5, plugged it in, pulled down kwifimanager, then suddenly knetworkmanager started working. All my settings copied over fine. Oh, and OpenOffice works now - maybe I can work on my resume again.
One of the problems I was having with Feisty, was that sometimes the computer would overheat, hasn't happened with Gutsy yet. Or maybe that is because I removed Vista from the HDD as well.

Dvorak

Okay, here is the deal, I prefer to type in the Dvorak keyboard layout - it's just easier and quicker (once you get used to it). A couple problems with this though:
1) Work computers are not normally setup to use this layout - though you can normally change that if you are the only one using the computer.
2) In Linux (the version that I use), it is difficult to tell what layout you are using - if you are also using the US QWERTY layout - the few times I do. I'm hoping the ever helpful Linux community can help with this one.
3) In Windows if you start out with the US QWERTY layout then you have to change each separate program use dvorak (it doesn't change on the whole system).
Despite these few problems, I still prefer to use Dvorak, it even came in handy when I hurt one of my arms and had to type with one hand (it has layouts for people who have the use of one hand versus two. Plus it's fun to say.

Online Music Services

Well, I'm going to rant here for a minute - so if you don't want to read that, then please don't read on. You have been warned.

Okay, today I have one simple thing that I want to do - I haven't wanted to do this in a while - since before I changed to an all Linux system. I wanted to download one song - I even wanted to pay for it. Simple, right? Nope, not when you use Linux apparently. I don't blame Linux on any of this, I blame the places that sell the music.
Previously I used iTunes on Windows, they don't make a Linux version (I searched high and low for a version that would work with Linux). Then I thought, well Wal-Mart sells music, and it doesn't require any large program to sell it, they don't support Linux either, basically only WinXP (not even Mac).
Okay, so I don't find any programs that will download music nativity on a Linux machine - so I do what any simisane computer geek would do - I hop onto the forums. Oddly enough, I came up blank, I saw where someone asked about this same thing - about a year ago, but there was no solution posted. I did find ways of getting iTunes for Windows to work under Linux - but it doesn't work that well apparently - not worth my time to try that...
I really don't want to spend $14.00+ on a CD, just for one song - even if I would like the other 10 songs - it's still cheaper to download them all.
What BS.