[NB These are notes to self, they become pretty ungrammatical towards the end!]

This interesting and erudite book starts from the position that the collision of technology and culture is nothing new, but that with the increased pace of technological change the collision has become more obvious. That is, new media have always intersected with cultural change but major innovations have lasted for millenia (cave painting), centuries (printing) or decades (television). As media technology change begins to happen within the span of one lifetime the relationship with culture becomes more obvious. An important point here is that the invention of the technology is itself a creative cultural act; engineers have always been artists and vice versa. Thus, the modern science/art of interface design and its relationship to culture is the topic of the book. Obviously, this is a very technologically led (even determined?) point of view, but well put nonetheless.

The story begins with the 1968 demonstration of the first graphical user interface, complete with mouse and cursor, by Doug Englebart. This was the first creation of an information space on a computer, with the various now familiar spatial metaphors of desktops and trash cans. Paradoxically, it moves the user further away from the data processing (with a whole extra layer of code) while making the user feel in much more direct control. “the tactile immediacy of the illusion made it seem as though the information was now closer at hand, rather than farther away. You felt as though you were doing something directly with your data, rather than telling the computer to do it for you’ (21) No more typing esoteric codes to, say, delete a file, just drag it to the trash can. “That informationscape was both a technological advance and a work of profound creativity. It changed the way we use our machines, but it also changed the way we imagine them. For centuries, Western culture had fantasized about its technology in prosthetic terms, as a supplement to the body… but the bitmapped datasphere he [Englebart] unleashed on the world in 1968 was the first major break from the machine-as-prothesis worldview. For the first time, a machine was imagined not as an attachment to our bodies, but as an environment, a space to be explored. Your could project yourself into this world, lose your bearlings, stumble across things… Not since the Renaissance artisans hit upon the mathematics of painted perspective has technology so dramatically transformed the spatial imagination.” (24-5)

Johnson then shifts to talk about mass media and the unending rise of what he variously calls metamedia, metaforms or the parasite forms. What he means is the culture of celebrity and the enormous amout of programming and magazines that feed off other media. This, he argues, is ‘more than just standard issue postmodernism’ but argues rather that the mass media has become naturalized, a thing in itself rather than something that must speak to the ‘real’. (29) Thus its as natural to comment on the media as it is to comment on the weather. But, the form this commentry takes is of a particular type and performs a particular type. “What unites the diverse strains of this emergent species is a shared belief in the need for information filters – data making sense of other data. The parasite forms thrive in situations twhere the available information greatly exceeds our capacity to process it… They feed on surplus information, on the bewildering sensory overload of the contemporary mediasphere.” (32)

And this is where it all gets interesting, because Johnson contrasts the metamedia forms of today with the narrative structure of the Victorian novel. “Where the novel ushered its readers through the crowds and assembly lines of industrial life, the metaforms process and contextualize the byzantine new reality of information overload… The old-style narratives acculturated their audience to the industral age by building elaborate structures of casue and effect, connecting the increasingly atomized public spaces of the new cities, linking working-class orphans to withered aristocrats to idle speculators to colonial scavan ers. These narrative webs – dense and meticulously interwoven – were a way of restoring a sense of connection, of unity, to a culture that had transformed itself utterly in the space of fifty years. The novel was a response to the question: “What connects all these bewildering new social realities?” And that answer was phrased in the form of a story. The parasite forms, on the other hand, are a response to the question: “What does all this information mean? Which sources are the most reliable ones? How does this information relate to my own particular worldview?” The response arrives as a kind of hybrid, a mix of metaphor, footnote, translation and parody. It is a measure of the newness of the form that we lack a single word to describe it.” (33) Johnson, of course, and emphatically, draws the line between high culture and low – “Anyone who thinks MTV is the Shakespeare of our time would probably do well to have the cable cut off for a few months , just to get some perspective on it all” (34) and argues that the poor quality of the metaforms results from the fact that “they are taking on a symbolic task that exceeds the capacity of their medium.” He slips into a cultural criticism of Milton’s Paradise Lost, and the character of Satan, to argue that when a new form comes about, the old forms strain to adapt themselves to the new, “a glimpse of the future shrouded in the worn, restrictive garments of the past, like a Cubist body rigged together with corsets and lace. They are the ghosts of technologies to come.” (34) Or, alternatively – “at transition points, some messages may evolve faster than their medium. And in doing so, they anticipate another medium, one that is still in embryo” (35) The point of all this, is that the low culture metaforms on the TV don’t work well, because they are essentially trying to do something that is suited for the digital world, and it is through an exploration of ‘interface culture’ – operating in a zone between medium and message, and between producer and consumer – that we can see what the metaform is becoming.

The following chapters dig into the details of various technological features, including their history as well as their relationship to culture:

- the desktop as a metaphor, bringing in ideas about the importance of creating space and how interface designers sometimes overplay the metaphor, accidentally bringing in the limitations of the real desktop. The spatial stuff brings in discussion of the computer as a technology that brings people together through the internet. But design of spaces affects the degree to which community is built. Text remaining the most useful medium of community building.

- Interesting new wrinkle in multiplayer shoot ‘em up game, Quake, where players can design their own spaces to wage battles. These are then exchanged and bartered so that exchange starts to use space as the content, not the context, of exchange.

- windows the point being that you can multitask, by having many applications running and flicking between windows to move to different tasks. (elsewhere Turkle (Life on the Screen, 1997) talks about the way some early internet users took on many identities in MUDDs and flicked repeatedly between them, finding no difficulty in slipping between rather diverse made up identities). The windows also relate to our method of filing and again, text is shown to be important since our process of finding files is dependent on the way we’ve categorised (rather than, say, making use of our visual memories). Talking about potential improvements and innovations leads him to frames on websites, whereby you can show content from somebody else’s site. There is some interesting material on legal battles around news aggregator sites that sold advertising space alongside frames of ‘stolen’ content from major news corporations. “Over the next decade, this stiching together of different news and opinion sources will slowly become a type of journalism in its own right, a new form of reporting that synthesizes and digests the great mass of information disseminated online every day.” (104). There m ght be something relevant here about information overload, and the ‘information cocoon’.

- links weakness of the ‘surfing’ metaphor (given that it is supposed to be a comparison to channel surfing) highlights importance of hyperlinks that you use on the web to switch between resources. The hyperlinks are, for Johnson as many others, the key feature of the web. But, he points out that no major innovations in web scripting have touched the functions of hyperlinks. Yet, the basic technology has been used in multiple ways. Creation of hypertext was always meant to revolutionise story-telling, leading to nonlinear narrative where the reader can jump around in the larger text to choose their own pathway. However, its more creatively and usefully used at the level of syntax, more like the way we use adjectives and adverbs. Rather than explain all the nuances of a point you’re making you can just point to where that is done elsewhere, leading to denser prose.

- text starts with word processing, and the way the user interface shifts the way we actually write (and how it was only the desktop metaphor that brought about on screen writing, instead of transcription). Long digression about tendency to misunderstand new technologies. Note on how ingrained text is with icon based interface. Then he gets onto the interesting stuff which is about the potential for high level processing of the textual content of documents in order to say something about their content, style and so on. Great story of how it was worked out which parts Shakespeare played in his plays, by noting the effect of the memorized vocabulary of the part played on the play he was writing at the same time. Recognition of patterns in texts particularly useful for comparing different works and suggesting similarities and differences, so you get the potential for ‘find docs like this’ commands for finding and organising files, and saving search criteria permanently as ‘view’ folders, whose content changes as documents are created, deleted and modified.

- agents working against the trend of the user interface – which made the user smarter and gave them more direct feeling manipulation of their information – agents instead make manipulation less direct, and makes the computer smarter. Three types – personal (sits on your harddrive doing routine tasks for you); travelling (goes over the net coming back when there’s info to report); social (communicates with other agents). Technical differences in agent communication requiring and enabling ‘push’ media rather than ‘pull’ media, which means more agents guessing your info needs and fulfilling them before you’ve specifically asked. Gets onto Firefly programme for matching musical tastes using data of lots of other users (they liked x and y, you like x, you might like y), pattern matching again.

- infinity imagined summing up with the claim that the biggest innovation of the digital age is ‘information space’ created through interface design, and that that innovation will have significant effects on art forms, in fact, he describes interface design as if it is to be the dominant art form of the coming period. Difficult to perceive it this way because we don’t yet have a relevant language to describe it in “For the most part, our evaluative criteria reduce to the bottomdollar question: is it easy to use or not?… Its not that our interfaces are lacking in imaginative depth or complexity; its just that we don’t have the critical vocabulary to deal with them in anything but the most rudimentary forms” (217) So, there are some key oppositions/conflicts to be worked out through improvements in interface design that will have profound impacts: – spatial depth vs psychological depth – society vs the individual – mainstream vs avant-garde – one interface or many – metaphor vs simulation – fragmentation vs synthesis

I occasionally want a local web server on my netbook for fiddling around, but don’t want it running on start up. So, using the following steps I removed it from the start up list and created a launcher button to start and stop apache and mysql.

1. Remove from startup list:

$sudo update-rc.d apache remove
$gksu gedit /etc/init/mysql.conf

In your text editor look for the lines with start up information and comment them out by adding a hash at the beginning of each line.

2. Write simple start script

$gksu gedit /usr/local/bin/lampstart
In your text editor paste the following code:
#/bin/bash
sudo /usr/sbin/apache2ctl start
sudo service mysql start

Save and exit

3. Write simple stop script
$gksu gedit /usr/local/bin/lampstop
In your text editor paste the following code:
#/bin/bash
sudo /usr/sbin/apache2ctl stop
sudo service mysql stop

Save and exit

4. Make scripts executable and update db
$sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/lampstart
$sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/lasr/mpstop
$sudo updatedb


5. Make launcher icons
Go to System->Preferences->Main Menu
In the left pane select the application group for the icons
Click ‘New Item’
Enter the following details:
Type: Application in Terminal
Name: Start LAMP
Command: /usr/local/bin/lampstart
Comment: Starts Apache and mysql
Optionally click the icon in the top left and look for a nice pic, I found suitable ones in /usr/share/icons/hicolor/48×48/apps

So, you’re starting to be convinced of the benefits of linux? Keen to experience the increased speed and power and to try out some of the thousands of pieces of free software available? Like the thought of being secure from viruses and spyware? But still a little attached to your Windows operating system? Here’s a few tips for making the best of both worlds.

1. Use Ubuntu

There are loads of distributions available and it may be difficult to make a decision. Ubuntu has rapidly become the most popular and this must be due in part to its ease of installation and use for newcomers. So why not follow the crowd and try Ubuntu first? Go on, go and download the latest release.

2. Dual boot Windows/OSX and Linux

Dual booting means that when you power on your machine you get a choice of going into either of two or more operating systems. There are lots of articles around on how to set up a dual-boot machine with XP, or with Windows 7, or with OSX. My own experience is dual booting Windows XP Pro and various versions of Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuse and whatever else took my fancy at the time. The obvious benefit is that you have all your familiar applications there, and you can take your time learning linux without jumping in at the deep end and having to learn everything at once. Remember:

• If starting with a clean computer install Windows first (the same seems to go for OSX). Windows isn’t designed to play well with other operating systems. Ubuntu certainly is.
• If you’ve already got Windows installed:
  • Backup everything. Time-consuming, yes. But there are dangers in the install process, especially the first time you do it, so don’t leave anything to chance. Remember to backup data that is stored by your applications in locations other than My Documents. Some applications have decent data export tools; for others you may need to search through folders within C:\Documents and Settings\your-user-profile, such as ‘Application Data’ and ‘Local Settings’.
  • Clean up your Windows install. Most important is to defragment your hard disk. Your files are scattered across the disk, especially if you’ve been using the operating system a while. Your Ubuntu installation may require moving a lot of that mess into one place to make room for your new OS. Get XP to do it first so that it can keep track of where everything is stored. It is probably also useful to use a utility like CCleaner to get rid of temporary files and oodles of accumulated crap.
  • Make sure you’ve got access to a proper install/restore disk for your pre-existing operating system.

An alternative to dual booting is virtualization. Installing a program like VBox-OSE on Ubuntu lets you install a full copy of Windows or OSX operating systems plus your favourite applications right inside Ubuntu. There’s clearly a benefit here of not having to reboot to use other programmes but there’s a penalty in the speed your applications run.

3. Separate Data and Software

If you are dual booting it makes sense to put all of your data on a separate partition that can be accessed and written to by both operating systems. But even if you’re not dual booting, keeping your data separate may make operating system upgrades easier and lets you experiment with confidence. Keeping your data separate is more secure and if anything goes wrong you can simply insert a linux live CD to get a temporary operating system and get straight to your data. Points to bear in mind:

• You can use the linux utility gparted to create additional hard disk partitions. Its not included in a default Ubuntu install (although you can get it easily through the System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager). It is included on an Ubuntu live CD though. I prefer to use it from a live CD – that means you’re not using any of the hard disk for running the OS so you can easily change any of the existing partitions.
• If dual booting with Windows the logical thing is probably to format the partition as ntfs, since both Windows and linux can read and write from that filesystem. Choosing linux’s favourite ext3 filesystem format is fine too, but you’ll need to install Ext2IFS on Windows to be able to write to it from within Windows. (IFSdrives seems to be super-reliable and after a two minute set up you can just forget its there. Though because it writes from windows as if the ext3 partition is ext2 it doesn’t keep the journalling up to date – I don’t really know what this means but it doesn’t seem to matter!)
• Once you’ve created your data partition you might want, in Ubuntu, to change the text file located at /etc/fstab. You can then reliably mount your data partition in the same location meaning that you can create links to place on your desktop or wherever is convenient. The following commands in Terminal do the trick:
  • sudo mkdir /media/choose-name-for-data-store-here – this creates the place you’ll go to for your data.
  • sudo blkid – this gets a list of partitions on physical drives, and you need to note down the UUID of the partition you want to automount. Labels like /dev/sda1 (meaning the first partition on the first SATA harddrive) correspond to labelling in the gparted graphical interface, so you could always use that to work out which partition you’re aiming for.
  • sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak – this backs up your fstab file in case of errors.
  • gksu gedit /etc/fstab – this opens a text editor to edit your fstab file. Add something like the following at the bottom, then save and close.

# mount data store partition
UUID=b7296b71-b1bd-4e73-9b7f-077dd37902c5    /media/filestore    ext2    rw,user,auto    0    0

• • You’ll need to make a few changes to that example: change the long UUID number to whichever you found with the blkid command (don’t include quote marks); change /media/filestore to whatever you named your data store directory; and change ext2 to whichever filesystem you formatted your partition with (probably ntfs or ext3).
  • Back in the Terminal run “sudo mount -a”. If there are no errors you should now be able to navigate in the file manager to the directory you created in /media to see the data on your additional partition.
  • NB If for any reason you want to unmount your data partition in Ubuntu then you’ll need to do it as root, i.e. use the command “sudo umount /media/your-data-store-directory”.

4. Investigate problems (and note down the solutions!)

Its always possible that some particular configurations of hardware don’t work as easily as one would hope. Hardware manufacturers might share information with Microsoft that they don’t with linux developers. (Although the biggest manufacturers are getting much better in this regard.) But if you’ve got a problem with your installation it might be relatively simple to fix and somewhere has likely been there before. Get googling and be very specific about your searches. (Searching ‘choppy graphics’ is clearly not going to be very useful – know your hardware so you can search, say, ‘NVidia 8500 ubuntu 9.10 video mplayer bug’.) Remember that you can trust information on the official sites (say the Ubuntu bug tracking website or community wiki) much more than random blogs (like this one!).

Most importantly, when you get your fix, note down exactly what you’ve done so you can a) undo it if it causes other problems and b) redo it if, say, you decide to install a different or newer version of your operating system. An obvious point perhaps, but its a lesson its taken me longest to learn.

5. Use the Cloud

Using  cloud services – i.e. places available through the internet where you store some of your data – is a good way of separating data from software. It not only gives you a handy backup of your data but also makes it available from whatever computer you happen to be using – as long as you can keep track of all those passwords. Services I like include:

• Dropbox. This quietly keeps your files synchronised across any computer that you’ve installed it on and you can get an installer for linux, Windows or OSX. There’s also a web interface where you can access all of your files and even roll back to earlier versions of them. A free account gets 2GB of storage space so you’re not going to be backing up your whole hard drive this way, but its useful for those worky files you always want with you. (This link gets us both a bit of extra free storage space if you sign up).
• Xmarks add-on for Firefox. Keeps my bookmarks, keyword searches, passwords etc securely synchronised across computers. Lovely.
• Also, as a researcher I use Zotero to keep track of my reading notes, bibliographic data and so on. The v.2 beta version now includes the possibility of synchronising your metadata, notes and your pdf copies of readings, websites and so on. At present this seems to provide unlimited storage space for free!
• GMail contact data can be kept in sync with Thunderbird with the Google Contacts add-on. Even if you don’t use GMail I think its worth signing up for an account just to use its contacts as a central point to sync multiple copies of Thunderbird (or Evolution for that matter) and perhaps your mobile phone too.

Depending on what sort of data you want to look after and/or share there are plenty of other services out there: Flixr is an obvious one for photographers and is often linked into photo management software like F-Spot and Picasa.

6. Keep up to date (but be careful of upgrades!)

Software updates are now a vital part of computing. Ubuntu installs with its Update Manager configured to run as soon as you turn on your computer. The updates only rarely require a computer restart so you can generally accept the suggested updates and leave the system to it. One warning, however, is that Ubuntu releases a new version of the operating system every six months. These upgrades won’t happen automatically, although the Update Manager will let you know when they’re available. But upgrading is a bigger job than simply accepting software updates – especially if you’ve got an odd selection of hardware or have heavily customised your operating system. The potential instability of system upgrades has caused some controversy among linux fans. The best practical advice is probably not to upgrade as soon as its available (in April and October each year) but to wait a month or so. When you do upgrade make sure you’ve got a little bit of time to iron out any wrinkles and go back to those installation notes you made so meticulously.

These tips are hardly an exhaustive how-to. But the purpose is to suggest some  of the easy practical steps to feeling secure about your linux use. Keep things organised and your data secure and you can be free to experiment. Customize your desktop, set your visual effects to do something pointlessly cool, install a wide range of applications or even create another partition and install an entirely new operating system just because its looks take your fancy. The excitement of linux is in the experimentation – just take a few precautions before you hurl yourself in.

I came across various instructions for connecting an Ubuntu powered laptop to the internet through your mobile phone’s data connection. My first thought was ‘brilliant’, followed rapidly by ‘ooh this’ll be fiddly’. It requires a bit of manual coding, but using Rahid Hasan’s excellent how-to it just worked first time (that link looks broken now, its also copied here). I can now enable my bluetooth on my eeePC, turn off the wifi, and a get a reasonable connection speed via my Nokia E71 on three. Grand – no more hotspot charges.

UPDATE: This is a little more complicated in Ubuntu 9.10. For some reason pairing the phones doesn’t result in a bond on the refcomm channel. I get the error “In file /etc/ppp/peers/BluetoothDialup: unrecognized option ‘/dev/rfcomm0′”. The following seems to solve it.

To get it working, follow the instructions linked above with the following modifications:

1. All of the required packages were already installed on Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10 Netbook Remix, so no need to do any of the sudo apt-get ing
2. The command to restart bluez-utils is now /etc/init.d/bluetooth restart
3. Phone specific information: the apn for three is three.co.uk and the data profile number is 1
4. Check what devices you have with ls /dev Is there one listed as rfcomm? If not, then the following command is required: sudo rfcomm bind 0 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx zReplace the x’s with your phone’s mac number and the z with your dialup channel number (both found when you follow the linked how to). This command only seems to be required once per session, then you can, in theory, pon and poff as much as you like. Perhaps the solution is to run the command at startup.
5. I get permission errors unless I run the launch command (pon or poff) with sudo
6. On launching the connection I get a permission error (only members of group “dip” can use this command) – but no group dip seems to exist. So, use sudo to launch instead.
7. Start the connection with sudo pon BluetoothDialup And stop it with sudo poff BluetoothDialup NB these commands can be written into custom application launchers through Preferences->Main Menu; but use gksu instead of sudo.

The latest edition of Ubuntu (9.04) is generally excellent. There are continuing problems with graphics cards, however, that probably flow more from the proprietary (closed source) drivers provided than anything that Ubuntu folks can control. For me, its the NVidia driver that’s the baddy, failing to recognise any accurate information from my Acer widescreen monitor. This required manually writing a new xorg.conf file pretty much from scratch – here’s the solution for pairing NVidia 8500 GT with an Acer P193w

NB The following sample xorg.conf file is set specifically for a particular hardware set up. Because this configuration doesn’t allow the graphics card to take required information from the monitor (becuase it seems to get this wrong) using this configuration in a different system could cause serious hardware damage. In particular, it is essential to get the correct modelines for your monitor, using the modeline calculator referenced in the file.

sample xorg.conf for nvidia

# xorg.conf (X.Org X Window System server configuration file)
#
# NB this is kev's hand edited version making use of xorg.conf manual and
# nvidia linux driver manual
# http://www.x.org/archive/X11R6.8.0/doc/xorg.conf.5.html
# http://http.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-8178/README/chapter-03-section-02.html
# keyboard and mouse sections were pasted in from an xorg found on the ubuntu wiki,
# hopefully they're applicable here
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
#   sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section "Module"
  Load            "glx"
Endsection

Section "InputDevice"
  Identifier      "Keyboard0"
  Driver          "kbd"
  Option          "XkbRules"      "xorg"
  Option          "XkbModel"      "pc105"
  Option          "XkbLayout"     "gb"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  Identifier      "Mouse0"
  Driver          "mouse"
  Option          "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Device"
  Identifier    "NVidia0"
  Driver        "nvidia"
  Screen        0
  Option        "NoLogo"    "true"
# set false to use freqs set in xorg.conf, default is true
  Option        "UseEdidFreqs"    "false"
# true could damage monitor if incorrect info specified in xorg.conf,
# but may be necessary if driver misidentifies all edid info from monitor
# default is false
  Option        "IgnoreEDID"    "false"
# nvidia's proprietary alternative to xinerama for multiple monitors,
# default is false
  Option        "TwinView"    "false"

EndSection

Section "Monitor"
  Identifier    "Monitor0"
  VendorName    "Acer"
  ModelName    "P193w"
  HorizSync    30-81
  VertRefresh    55-76
  DisplaySize    428 278
# modeline calculated by http://www.arachnoid.com/modelines/
  Modeline    "1440x900" 106.47 1440 1520 1672 1904 900 901 904 932 -HSync +Vsync
  Modeline    "1280x800" 83.46 1280 1344 1480 1680 800 801 804 828 -HSync +Vsync
  Modeline     "960x600" 45.98 960 1000 1096 1232 600 601 604 622 -HSync +Vsync
EndSection

Section "Screen"
  Identifier    "Screen0"
  Device        "NVidia0"
  Monitor        "Monitor0"
  DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection    "Display"
      Depth        24
      Modes        "1440x900" "1280x800" "960x600"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
  Identifier     "Default Server Layout"
  Screen        "Screen0"
  InputDevice    "Keyboard0"
  InputDevice    "Mouse0"
Endsection

NB This adventure has been postponed due to my lack of knowledge/skills to make it work

Moving from a flat to a house so no longer will the same room function as lounge, dining room, study and guest room. Simply having a very long cable on a widescreen monitor meant that one PC used to serve both work and entertainment functions, but alas no more. So, how to have a satisfactory work-from-home PC and a media PC without spending too much moolah? One (theoretical) answer is to scrounge a basic ‘obsolete’ PC and use it as a thin client – meaning it is just a gateway to using the resources on my current, decent quality PC. The software to make this possible is really oriented to businesses, schools or colleges running clusters of computers cheaply but the principles are (probably) applicable at home. And I hope you don’t need to be a veteran sysadmin to make it work. This post, is going to be a running commentry on what I’ve learned as I go through the stages.

The Scrounge

A thin client doesn’t need much in the way of processor speed or memory and has no use for a harddrive, but it does need decent network card (and it’ll be much easier if its PXE-bootable).

Scrounging hint: given that software licensing and data protection are the things that are likely to make an IT department nervous about giving stuff away, just ask for the machine without the hard drive. Sorted.

Lucky me – my workplace was refurbishing old computers and had a box to throw my way (Dell Optiplex GX280). Its 3GHz processor and 512MB RAM would actually make for a very reasonable linux machine without the need for any of this thin client business. But it doesn’t have a hardrive, and anyway, the thing client’s the whole point. So…

Exploring the PC

What have you got your hands on? Download a linux live CD like Xubuntu to find out (NB get the larger full disc, the alternate install disc is no use without a hard drive). If you’ve got an older machine try DSL. Load to the BIOS, slide the CD in, and hit F2/F12/Del or whatever to change the boot order. Save and exit.

Have a play, does everything seem to work? Good…

Now, open the terminal and type:

lspci

This gives you the lowdown on some of the important components. Look for ‘Ethernet controller’ and write down the full description of the controller because you’ll need it later.

Personal hurdle 1: No BIOS! eek. Some info about the graphics chip appears and then nothing, nadda, sweet FA. Turned out that the person donating the machine had kindly put in some extra RAM from another identical looking machine also being decomissioned. But non-matching (or maybe just malfunctioning) RAM made the machine halt before it had even managed to load the BIOS. Apparently this is usually a sign of a hardware problem so try unplugging things if you run into it. I removed the offending hardware and all’s rosey.

BIOS settings

As yet the only BIOS setting I’ve needed to change is to enable the PXE bootable thing, which was pretty easy to find after hitting F2 and looking around. If the card isn’t PXE-bootable, you’ll either have to invest in a new NIC or try one of the alternative methods.

Personal hurdle 2: BIOS settings locked! Okay, so this is pretty likely on a machine scrounged from a business. Try to find your PC’s manual. Mine described a jumper on the motherboard to resent admin and system passwords for the BIOS. Open the box, pull the jumper connection, close the box, power on, no more mister password. For fuller advice try this random website on BIOS settings.

Well okay, that’s as far as I’ve got so far. But it all looks plain sailing from here. Yup, gonna be a breeze…

Networking 1 – setting up a static IP address

Usually this kind of network would run with two network cards in the server PC, one getting an internet connection and one connected to a switch. But a very useful blog post from Life, Revived suggested that you can make do simply with an existing ADSL router as long as it has two or more ports. So, physically you just need a cable running from the router to both server and client(s).

The more complex bit is about how the computers do their IP addressing. The server needs a static IP. This means putting appropriate settings (which should be available from you Internet provider) in the configuration screen found, under Ubuntu. Check the router’s IP by putting it in the address bar of a browser – for Speedtouch routers this is 192.168.1.254 – you should see your router configuration application. Now do this:

1. System->Preferences->Network Configuration
2. Under the ‘Wired’ tab select your connection – probably eth0
3. Hit ‘Edit’ and go to the IPv4 settings tab.
4. Change Method to ‘Manual’ and hit ‘Add’
5. Fill in the details.

• ‘Address’ is the static IP of your PC. The first three figures should be the same as that for the router and the last must be different. (There are some useful guides to networking at PortForward.com, including information specific to different router models.) If you’ve got other computers using the router, either wired or wireless turn them on and have a look at the router config webpage – you should see the range of IP addresses dynamically assigned to your PCs – choose a static IP that is well outside of that range.
• Netmask always seems to be 255.255.255.0.
• Gateway is the IP address of the router.
• DNS Server addresses come from your Internet provider – you can enter more than one address here, separated with a space.

Keep a note of all those numbers – they’ll come in handy in a moment.

Personal hurdle 3: There’s a silly bug in Ubuntu 8.10 which means that after a reboot the network reverts to the automatic settings. There are a couple of workaround suggestions here, but they didn’t work on my system. Instead, the following workaround from the official bug report worked:

check the “system settings” checkbox, THEN uncheck the “connect automatically” checkbox, check “connect automatically” again… wait for sometime and then click on “Authenticate” [OK in my system]: n-m should trigger the sudo authentication dialog box and let you save the settings.

Setting up the server

Now its a case of hopefully following the instructions at the Life, Revived post, which I’ve copied in parts below.

Install the ltsp server:

sudo apt-get install ltsp-server-standalone openssh-server

Edit your dhcp configuration file which will tell the client where to look for an operating system:

gksudo gedit /etc/ltsp/dhcpd.conf

Enter the network information you used above. Mine looks like this:

#
# Default LTSP dhcpd.conf config file.
#
authoritative;
subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
range 192.168.1.200 192.168.1.230;
# option domain-name "example.com";
option domain-name-servers 212.139.132.6;
option broadcast-address 192.168.1.255;
option routers 192.168.1.254;
#    next-server 192.168.0.1;
#    get-lease-hostnames true;
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
option root-path "/opt/ltsp/i386";
if substring( option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 9 ) = "PXEClient" {
filename "/ltsp/i386/pxelinux.0";
} else {
filename "/ltsp/i386/nbi.img";
}
}

Restart the dhcp server with:
sudo /etc/init.d/dhcp3-server restart
If all is okay, then great. Time to build the image for the client to boot from:
sudo ltsp build-client

Setting up the client

The final job is to write the boot instructions for the client to a floppy disc. Dig out your note of the ethernet controller info and visit rom-o-matic.net. Have a look at the list of network cards and select the appropriate ROM type, hit ‘Get ROM’ and save somewhere sensible. To write the disc use a terminal command like this:

dd if=file-you've-downloaded.dsk of=/dev/fd0

Personal hurdle 4: My server PC doesn’t have a floppy drive. Unfortunately,  running a Xubuntu live CD on the client machine doesn’t seem to allow access to the floppy, so I’ve had to physically swap the floppy drive into the new machine to write the boot disc. Alternatively using a CD might have been easier (choosing a .iso instead of a .dsk download from rom-o-matic), but ideally I’d like to be able to use the CD drive in the client machine without the minor faff of remembering to put the put CD in on every shut down.

Go, Go, Go!

Now its time to start the client machine, hit F2/DEL to get into the BIOS. Choose to boot from the floppy you’ve just inserted and give it a whirl.

My results so far: ‘Non-system disk or disk error’. Shucks, time to revist rom-o-matic…

So a new year’s gift to myself for 2009: an Asus eee PC 901. After a quick play with the Xandros-based operating system that came pre-installed I decided to give the eee-specific Ubuntu distro a whirl. Despite the claim on their wiki that it would work ‘out of the box’ for the 901, there were a few issues with my installation (Ubuntu Hardy Heron v 8.04.1 on Asus model no. EEEPC-BK006) that I’ve resolved with the help of posts on the wiki and the eeepc users’s forum. So, largely because I might need to do it again, here’s my step-by-step guide on how to get the thing running as I like it:

UPDATE: ubuntu-eee, used in the description below, has rebranded itself as easy peasy. It seems to contain more license restricted software than the standard ubuntu installation and looks pretty swish. But ubuntu are clearly pushing their own netbook-remix so I’ve installed v9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) from Ubuntu’s main site. Where necessary I’ve updated the advice below for that, and added tips on Firefox and Mobile Broadband. Incidentally, Ubuntu Netbook Remix on the eee-pc absolutely rocks.

Another UPDATE: As the Ubuntu versions have rolled on and got a bit bigger and slower I’ve now moved to lubuntu 11.04 for the occasional-use eeePC. It feels nice and quick for the kinds of simple jobs I’m doing with it.

N.B. I’ve mostly included eee-pc specific things here – there are other necessary steps with Ubuntu (like making flash work properly, and getting drivers to play .mp3 files). These all relate to using software with restricted licenses, but that software is available and works very well and Ubuntu now generally offers wizards to do these things which should pop up when you need them.

1. Install the OS
2. Recognise removable drives (N.B. Not necessary since Ubuntu 9.10)
   
3. Wifi (N.B. Not necessary since Ubuntu 9.04)
   
4. Webcam
5. Make bluetooth work and enable other devices to push files via bluetooth
6. Password lock after standby (N.B. Not necessary since Ubuntu 9.04)
   
7. Make ‘home’ key show desktop
8. Install eee-control
9. Install Launchy (N.B. Gnome Do is probably preferable since 9.04)
   
10. New fonts
11. Firefox 3.5 (N.B. Not necessary since Ubuntu 9.10)
    
12. Mobile Broadband

Install the OS

I first attempted to dual boot Ubuntu and Xandros by installing Ubuntu on an additional SDHC card plugged into the card reader. In principle, this is achievable. However, the installation messes up the boot loader so I ran into an error at the grub that meant that I just couldn’t run either operating system. There are some hints on solving the grub error 21 issue but I decided just to go for a clean install. The following method requires a windows or linux PC with an internet connection and a blank USB flash drive. NB Doing the following will completely remove your standard Xandros installation and any files you have saved!

1. You’ll need to enter the Asus’s BIOS several times, but its quickboot mode, on by default, makes this tricky. So, first enter the BIOS to turn quickboot off. After hitting the on button you’ll have to tap Esc and/or F2 very quickly to get to the BIOS settings. It took me about five attempts of rapid and repeated tapping to get in. Now you’re in, use cursor keys to navitage to ‘Boot’, then ‘Boot Settings Configuration’ then set both the ‘Quick Boot’ entries to ‘Disabled’. Hit F10 to save, exit and reboot.
2. On another PC download the ubuntu-eee iso file and the appropriate utility (called unetbootin) for making a USB flash drive bootable from the Ubuntu eee website.
3. Run unetbootin and use the interface to select the source file (i.e. the iso just downloaded) and the destination (i.e. a blank USB flash drive).
4. Insert USB drive to Asus, turn on, and hit F2 to enter BIOS.
5. Change boot priorities to boot from USB drive. First navigate to Boot->Hard Disk Drives; select 1st Drive, hit enter, and select USB. Second, Boot->Boot Device Priority; select 1st Boot Device and choose ‘Removable Dev.’
6. Hit F10 to save changes, exit and reboot.
7. You should now be presented with Ubuntu’s live CD boot loader. You can run the operating system to test it without affecting your current Xandros installation, but don’t expect everything to work straight off. To bite the bullet and actually install ubuntu over the top of Xandros select the option to install.
8. Most of the following screens should be very straightforward, except partitioning. Select manual partitioning.
9. Select the 4GB drive (probably sda) and choose to use the whole drive as the root filesystem (labelled ‘/’). I selected Ext 2.
   N.B Ext 3 is the standard for linux now, and may be more stable through its journalling system – but that system requires very frequent disk writes which may noticably shorten the life of the SSD.
10. Select the larger SSD drive, 8 or 16GB depending on model. This is probably labelled sdb. Choose to use this as the user’s home filesystem (labelled ‘/home’) – this is where all of your local files will be stored. Again I chose Ext 2, although Ext 3 is the more standard option.
    NB most linux installations would also include a ‘swap’ partition – equivalent to Windows’ ‘virtual memory’ – but again to reduce the frequency of writes to disc most people seem to recommend not having a swap on the eeePC. If you’re intended to use very memory-heavy applications for which 1GB ram is not enough you might like to reconsider this and put a swap partition (1GB?) on the larger SSD drive.
11. Finish working through the installation wizard and wait while it installs. Choose to reboot. I had an issue here where the machine wouldn’t turn off properly, I think because it had been tricked into thinking it was installing from a CD and wanted me to remove the CD. So, I used a hard turn off (press and hold the power button), removed the flash drive and turned on again.

Hey presto – working ubuntu. And doens’t it look so much more natty than the grey of Asus’s custom Xandros? But, it doens’t work in entirity. So I had to apply the following fixes…

Make Ubuntu recognise removable drives

UPDATE: This is not necessary on the Ubuntu 9.10 release.

As explained on Tombuntu, something about installing from a flash drive messes with Ubuntu’s ability to recognise and mount new removable media. To solve it, simply do this:

1. Open a terminal window (Accessories->Terminal) and type the following:

$ gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

1. In the text editor window that should’ve opened, go to the line that references a CD drive (something like ‘/dev/sdc1     /media/cdrom0 …’. Comment out that line by putting a # at the beginning).
2. Save, close, reboot. Sorted.

N.B. If it is important that a particular device can be referenced in the same location, no matter what combination of things you have plugged in, you can set a specific mount point Right click the device in the file manager to get its properties. Unfold settings and change mount point to whatever you want – it should still be located in /media though, unless there’s a good reason why not.

Make Wifi work

UPDATE: This is not necessary with Ubuntu 9.04 or 9.10 – simply go to System->Administration->Network Connections and put the relevant information in the ‘Wireless’ tab.

I used the ndiswrapper method explained here, plus info about the driver from here. Specifically…

1. Using another PC download ndiswrapper-common, ndiswrapper-utils and ndisgtk. Copy them to a USB flash drive. (Full version numbers from link above, you could install these programmes through Administration->Synaptic if you have a working wired internet connection.)
2. Also download the Windows wifi driver for the hardware. (ndiswrapper is a utility for running windows wifi drivers on linux.) Download the driver here. Unpack the .zip folder – you’ll just need the file rt2860.inf – copy it over to your USB drive.
3. Insert the USB drive into your Asus, navigate to the files you just downloaded. The three ndiswrapper files are .deb format, meaning you can just click to install. You’ll get a warning that there are other versions in your software repositories. Don’t worry about it. The status should be marked as ‘all dependencies met’ or similar. (If not, and there are dependencies listed, you’ll have to download these as .deb files and install them first.) All being well, install each in turn.
4. Now go to Administration->Windows Wireless Drivers. Click ‘Install New Driver’ and navigate to the rt2860.inf file. Select and you’re done. To configure your wireless network go to Administration->Network. Or, if in roaming mode, just click the network icon in the taskbar.

Make Webcam work

I had to change a BIOS setting for this, but that was all.

1. Restart and hit F2 on boot.
2. Navigate to Advanced->Onboard Devices. Go to Onboard Camera and mark as enabled. (While you’re there you might want to do the same for bluetooth.)
3. F10 to save and reboot.

While the Cheese application does work to take snapshots and short videos it is, perhaps, not quite as it should be. Taking pics or video should result in a thumbnail turning up at the bottom of the app window. On mine it doesn’t. But then closing and restarting the app does display the previously taken pics and video. There appears to be an issue with the sound recording level as well, although it is doing something.

Make bluetooth work

I had to change a BIOS setting for this, but that was all.

1. Restart and hit F2 on boot.
2. Navigate to Advanced->Onboard Devices. Go to Onboard Bluetooth and mark as enabled.
3. F10 to save and reboot.

N.B. the second of the special silver keys at the top of the keyboard (marked with arrows pointing out of a screen) is a quick way to enable/disable bluetooth.

Enable devices to push files over bluetooth

The built in bluetooth utility is good for pairing up devices and for browsing files on other devices, but doesn’t allow for other devices to push files to your eeePC. For this you need the package gnome-user-share. So,

1. Open a terminal and type: sudo apt-get install gnome-user-share. (Or use the Synaptic Package Manager)
2. Go to the System->Preferences->Personal File Sharing
3. Select ‘Receive files in Downloads folder over Bluetooth’ and any other options that seem appropriate. NB I accept files only for bonded devices, which means you need to use the standard bluetooth utility (System->Preferences->Bluetooth->Set up a new device) to bond your device to the PC. It has to be this way around, bonding from the device to the eee isn’t the same thing.

Password lock after standby/screensaver etc

UPDATE: No issues with this in Ubuntu 9.04. I just used Preferences->Power Management to ensure that the computer goes to standby on shutting the lid, and the power button immediately shuts down. The first silver button now turns off the screen and has a password lock.

Having previously had problems with this, its great that standby works as it should. Using Preferences->Power Management accesses settings for what to do when shutting lid, hitting power button etc. (Note that if you haven’t got a swap partition you probably can’t use hibernate.) But no options in the GUI for password locks. Point 1 below is a reasonable method, but runs into a seemingly common ubuntu bug, for which a quick fix follows.

1. Use the terminal command: gconf-editor
2. Navigate apps->gnome-power-manager->lock.
3. Select appropriate option. I seem to be having problems with the screensaver so have gone just for ticking ‘suspend’.
4. Using this, though, results in ubuntu not recognising the password. Choosing ‘switch user’ gets you to the gdm login screen which should allow logging in as usual.
5. For me, the quick fix on this bug report worked, i.e. use a terminal to run:

$ sudo chown root:shadow /sbin/unix_chkpwd
$ sudo chmod 2755 /sbin/unix_chkpwd

1. I had previously tried the solution posted on this other report of the same bug, although it didn’t work for me. But hey, it clearly works on some systems.

N.B. The first of the silver keys at the top of the keyboard turns off the screen. It’s not a standby though, so no password.

Make the ‘Home’ key show desktop/home

Info from the ubuntu-eee wiki.

1. From Home, select the Preferences menu, followed by Keyboard Shortcuts
2. Scroll down and click on Hide all windows and focus desktop (it’s in the Windows Management section)
3. Press the ‘Home’ button (shown as ‘Super’)

N.B. As of Ubuntu 9.10 this no longer works as the Super key is recognised as ‘Mod3′, presumably standing for modifier. That means that only key combinations are accepted in the Keyboard Shortcuts tool, not the single Mod3 key. I feel a bug report coming on…

Install eee-control

eee-control is a small utility that sits in the system tray and gives you quick access to turning on and off bluetooth, wifi etc, as well as allowing you to set the performance mode of your CPU. This package is not in the repositories, but for Ubuntu 9.04 instructions and a download are available here. As yet there’s no download for Ubuntu 9.10 – I’ll have a go at building it from source and report further.

This can now be installed from an optional added repository:

$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:eee-control/eee-control
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install eee-control

Install Launchy

UPDATE: Launchy is not currently included in the repositories for Ubuntu 9.04 and installing from the Launchy .deb file caused conflicts on keyboard shortcuts that I couldn’t solve. Instead I’ve gone for gnome-do from the repositories which works just as well. Just replace ‘launchy’ with ‘gnome-do’ in the below code to install.

Gotta love this application launcher, whatever the OS. Now included in ubuntu repositories, so:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install launchy

Installing new fonts

UPDATE: The microsoft core fonts are now included in the ‘ubuntu-restricted-extras’ package, that also includes support for flash and various audio and video formats. Go to Favourites->Ubuntu Software Centre and use the quick search box to find ‘restricted extras’ for the appropriate package. Bingo.

Info on fonts from the Ubuntu Wiki.

1. Make a directory to store them in.

$ sudo mkdir /usr/share/fonts/truetype/new-fonts

1. Copy the font file to the new directory.

$ sudo cp ~/Downloads/new-font-file.ttf

1. Refresh the fonts list.

$ sudo fc-cache -f -v

N.B. Some apps may not recognise the new fonts until after a reboot.

Firefox 3.5

UPDATE: Firefox 3.5 is included in 9.10 by default. These instructions may be adaptable if a big new Firefox release comes along before the next version of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 9.04 includes Firefox 3 by default. For the latest and greatest it is possible to install Firefox 3.5 from the repositories. But, note that it will be installed as ‘Shiretoko’ without the usual branding, which is the Ubuntu way until 3.5 becomes the officially supported browser (which will happen in version 9.10). When using 9.04 do not uninstall Firefox 3.

1. Administration->Synaptic Package Manager
2. Search for ‘firefox-3.5′
3. From the long list of related applications I just marked the packages ‘firefox-3.5′, ‘firefox-3.5-gnome-support’, and ‘firefox-3.5-branding’ for installation.
4. Click ‘Apply’.

You’ll find ‘Shiretoko’ with a generic icon in the ‘Internet’ section. You can always right-click the icon and choose ‘Add to Favourites’ to make it more quickly available.

Mobile Broadband

Well this is a pretty exciting development for netbook users. Ubuntu now has built in, ‘out of the box’ support for mobile broadband dongles. Using an O2 dongle this was pretty straightforward.

1. If testing this somewhere where you usually have a wifi connection simplify things by right-clicking your signal strength icon and uncheck the ‘enable wireless’ option.
2. Plug in the dongle
3. A wizard should open up, select your network operator and follow on-screen instructions.
4. This resulted in incorrect settings for me, but easily fixed.
5. Right-click the signal strength icon and select ‘Edit Connections’
6. Go to the ‘Mobile Broadband’ tab.
7. Select your connection and click ‘Edit’.
8. Fill in the right details from the bumf you got with the dongle. For me this required changes to the Username, Password and APN fields. (For other O2 users, the username might be ‘o2bb’ and the APN might be m-bb.o2.co.uk – the username you will have chosen yourself.)
9. And then… it just works!

N.B. For more functionality (like sending texts) I’ve seen the UMTSmon package recommended. Not tested it though and generally prefer not to install software that is not in the repositories.

UPDATE: It is possible to get mobile broadband through a bluetooth-enabled 3G phone, provided you have a sensible data plan with your mobile company. See this post for info.

Time to bodge together my own theme?

It’ll probably be yellow.

Some useful links:

• http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development
• http://codex.wordpress.org/Stepping_Into_Templates
• http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags
• http://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop_in_Action
• http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy

These are progressively more advanced topics. Some early lessons…

Theme Structure

There are really four elements of a basic theme, that are written into separate php files (representing templates). These are the header, footer, sidebar (kind of optional) and ‘the loop’. The loop is what brings content into the page on the basis of what the viewer has clicked. Each of these templates may optionally call other templates to be displayed within them.

Template pages

But, there are quite a few different ways of viewing the content – single posts, category views, tag views, search results etc. What this translates into is the need for the following template files:

• index.php – the basic essential item, all other views fall back to using this template if the more specific ones don’t exist
• header.php
• footer.php
• archive.php – essential multi-post view, I think (though falls back to index if necessary).
• category.php – Optional, falls back to archive if unavailable.
• tag.php – Falls back to archive if unavailable.
• home.php – a possibility for a static homepage? In theory it doesn’t even have to call header or footer if you wanted a different start page. Optional, falls back to index.

They’re pretty much the major ones to think about, starting with index.php and then making mods for different views. Additionally, it may be necessary to think about:

• author.php
• date.php
• 404.php – note need for .htaccess to get this fully working
• search.php

And don’t forget, we’ll also need a styles.css.

Widget Complications

Widgets allow for the easy addition of new functions to the sidebar. Its essential if you’re going to share your theme. I’m not so sure its essential for a personal theme, although the very wide range of handy widgets out there (and the fact that more will come along all the time), mean that it would be preferable. So, must learn about widgetizing themes.

Primarily, the content of the sidebar should be organised with unordered lists, and include a function call (to a function defined within the theme in functions.php). functions.php itself just calls a function defined elsewhere, that presumable checks what widgets have been enabled and in what order, and grabs the necessary content.

Each widget as a unique id name for styling in CSS, but of course individually styling every widget in styles.css is going to be a pain and really defeats the easy plugin nature of widgets in the first place. Much better to set the styles for something like #sidebar.ul.li and then hope they cascade properly.

Desktop search tools create an index of all your files allowing you to quickly search them using keywords from anywhere in the the file – just like an internet search engine. So, you’d have thought that search maestro’s Google would produce the best of tools. You’d be wrong…

Both Google Desktop Search and Copernic Desktop Search are available for free to download and use, in a fully functional, unlimited package. Copernic says that it will be producing a pro version of its search software but that it will always maintain and update a free version – a distribution model that has worked pretty well for a number of common applications. Google on the other hand is funding the programme through its ‘premium support’ package for its enterprise edition. If you don’t want to know the details of my comparison of the packages, skip to the interesting bit. I’ve been using both for about three weeks on Windows XP Pro on a fast laptop.

Size and speed.

Both programmes may be downloaded and installed in between 10 and 20 minutes, a trivial process. When unpacked Google DS takes up about 2.6 Mb, whereas Copernic a slightly heavier 7.5 Mb. This is entirely explained by the fact that Copernic is an independent application, with its own graphics and so on, whereas Google uses your browser for an interface. In any case, this is nothing compared to the size of the index. For my 35Gb of info on my harddrive both programmes created indexes of about 250Mb, the initial indexing process taking around 10 hours – it can be done in the background but its almost certainly worth letting your computer run overnight after installation.

Both programmes are best opened on startup, can run in the background and can index your files ‘on the fly’, i.e. updating the index as you use them. On this score Google seemed to outperform Copernic, which doesn’t seem to index my internet history very successfully.

Interface and options.

Google uses your browser interface and looks just like you’d expect, i.e. the google front page with a few extra links around the search box that take you to options. You use the normal Google syntax for your search terms. Your results appear, again, exactly as you’d expect, ranked by relevancy with a very short excerpt of the file indicating the context of the keywords. An icon on the left gives you a quick reference to what sort of file you’re looking at. Some files have an additional small preview image. Click on the link and the appropriate application starts up. Perhaps the biggest plus point with the Google desktop search is that your desktop results can be integrated with a web search, so if you get in the habit of searching the web via Google DS, you’re most likely to surprise yourself by finding the right bit of information at the right time.

Copernic on the other hand, has a dedicated application window, which is far more useful. You can use the normal Googlesque syntax for a simple search, but like your (painfully slow) windows file search, there are a bunch of other buts of information you can specify (date modified and so on). Results are firstly divided into the types of information you have (emails, files, images and so on), and you can navigate the results by either large friendly buttons or the handy links that display the number of results in each type. Within that display results may be listed by folder, date or filetype. A double click runs the application, but more usefully a single click opens the file in a preview screen within Copernic. It only takes a moment to open and the formatting of the display, while not of course matching the file’s native application, is pretty impressive. It is certainly clear enough to be able to scan through tables, quickly spot headings and even recognise long forgotten documents by their layout. Within the preview there are handy buttons to let you skip through the document to occurances of any of your search terms.

On the options front, Copernic’s dedicated application is, again, a lot more useful. Either programmes specify folders for indexing (meaning you can exclude your finances/porn/plans for world domination) and you can also specify filetypes to index. Incidentally, neither can cope with relational databases, which is a bit of a pain. It will, of course, search any reports you output in other formats, so you get to add in a layer of selection before the desktop search gets to the information. For me this meant getting in the habit of rather needlessly outputting my data in a reasonably useable format. Both have ‘integration’ options that allow you to clog up your taskbar or your desktop with not only shortcuts but a search box – I’ve found this merely clogs things up, but its a pretty personal preference. Copernic gives you more choices about when to index information and (to a limited extent) how much of the computers’ resources to use when running in the background. Google gives you neither of these, it also installs to run from start up by default, and I found that I could not stop this behaviour (no icon in the Startup folder). This is frustrating because ‘on the fly’ indexing slows down your machine – Google does so more noticeably than Copernic, I think, but I didn’t actually measure this. The option to turn off the ‘on the fly’ when you want to run a load of applications simultaneously is essential. You can, of course, turn off the whole programme. However, while copernic has easy to access ‘update index’ buttons for each of the types of information, Google has no equivalent. It is, therefore, far more reliant on the on-the-fly option, making it a big no-no for older, slower machines.

The interesting bit.

The interesting and surprising difference between these two programmes was the usability of the results. Google has become the biggest search engine by putting the right results at the top of the pile, time and time again. However, what Google has failed to recognise is that your relationship with your desktop is very different from your relationship with the web. No matter how much of a web-surfing geek you are, you simply don’t have an overview of the structure of the information out there, and given the speed at which its growing, you never will. Information on your harddrives, on the contrary, are structured in a way that you designed. Having results grouped by where they appear should let all but the very messiest be able to filter whole groups out on their own criteria, without consciously thinking about it. Your are just as likely to find those satisfying surprise results – I’ve come across folders full of files that I’d forgotten about and have been genuinely useful now. Google may well make better use of the information it can gather from your desktop, but Copernic lets you make better use of the information you’re carrying in your brain.

Incidentally, the next stage in accessing your data is already available for smug mac users, see Stephen Johnson’s review of Devon Think. If anyone passing reader knows where I can get something similar for the PC, let me know!

Suddenly seeing your website on a machine that doesn’t include your favorite fonts can leave a bit of a sinking feeling. But the information is all out there to compile sensible font-families, here’s a quick guide.

Choosing Fonts

The important differences that are likely to mess up your font choice are first the operating system that your site’s readers are using, and secondly the age. How do you know what fonts people are likely to have installed? You can find out which fonts are included as standard from different operating systems from microsoft. More helpful, though, is CodeStyle’s Font Survey. You may have to spend five minutes actually filling out the survey first, and then you can see their cumulative results – since 2001 – of what font’s people have available to their browsers. They have results broken down by operating system and by type (serif, sans-serif etc).

But the popularity of a font is not everything, after all, the reason other people’s browsers can upset the budding designer is that things don’t look how they’d like them to. Codestyle does offer images of some of the most popular fonts, so you can see them even though you haven’t got them installed. But, its far from comprehensive, and the survey doesn’t even include all of the fonts provided with the latest versions of the major operating systems. So, if you want to see what the font’s actually look like, go to My Fonts to check them out.

Accessibilitiy Issues

Most professional fonts will scale up to large sizes and still look reasonable for the visually impaired and those with serious sight problems will be using software that overrides your style decisions anyway. However, there does seem to be some general agreement that sans-serif fonts are more readable than serif fonts (which is a shame, as you might be able to tell, I just prefer serif fonts). Dyslexia can be ameliorated with good font choice though, according to Dyslixic.com sans-serif fonts with long ascenders and descenders (the uprights extending up from a ‘d’ and down from a ‘p’) make reading easiest for dyslexics. Some prefer ‘comic sans’ for readability, but that style definitely provokes strong reactions from those who don’t like it. Dyslexic.com’s recommended fonts are trebuchet, arial and geneva and suggest avoiding Verdana, despite the latter being produced by M$ as an accessible font. The three recommendations should cover practically all mac and windows users with at least two of the three coming in at over 90% popularity in the CodeStyle survey. However, it leaves unix users a little in the cold, with Arial installed on less than 70% of machines.

There are fonts specifically designed with dislexics in mind: Sasoon, Read Regular and Lexia Readable. You might expect that dislexics are likely to have these installed, and the latter is free so might be the most popular. Because these are unlikely to be found on many other machines, you might safely add these to your font families, on the grounds that hopefully those who need them, will see them, and those who don’t will get whatever the designer really intends. Unfortunately, there are no stats availabel on how many people are using them.

An important point on accessibility is that people may set up reader style sheets that insist on particular colours and fonts that they prefer. These rules should have been marked with the !important declaration. However, in CSS1 an !important declaration in the author style sheet would override this, so while this continues to be common you should avoid marking either fonts or colours (font and background) with the !important declaration, to leave a bit of freedom for the user.

One last accessibility and style issue: don’t use cursive or fantasy fonts for body text! I mean really, they’re ugle. Apart from comic sans, none of them are particularly common and their sizing can be a bit random, throwing other page elements out of kilter. The best thing to do with flashy fonts is to turn them into an image, so you know exactly how they will look and how big they will be.

So, looking thought all this, what font-families am I using? Well, when I get around to updating them, I shall probably continue to bloody-mindedly use common serif fonts, because I like them. I’m considering using ‘Lexia Readable’ as my first choice in all families – its an attractive font in any case. However, I’d like some info on exactly how many people have installed it first. Bearing in mind that not all serif fonts are exchangable (some are tall and thin, others short and fat) and the same goes with sans-serif fonts, here are some suggested families, that take in popular fonts from Windows, Mac and Unix machines.

Recommendations

//my favorite ‘serious’ serif fonts
BODY {font-family: “Palatino Linotype”, “Palatino”, “Georgia”, “Century Schoolbook”, serif;}

//more styled serif fonts
BODY {font-family: “Book Antiqua”, “Garamond”, “URW Antiqua”, “Hoefler Text”, “New York”, serif ;}

//wide serif fonts
BODY {font-family: “Bookman Old Style”, “Bitstream Vera Serif”, serif ;}

//standard sans-serif fonts
BODY {font-family: “Trebuchet MS”, “Geneva”, “Tahoma”, “Arial”, “Helvetica”, sans-serif ;}

//rounded sans-serif fonts
BODY {font-family: “Lucida Sans”, “Helvetica”, “Futura”, “Bitstream Vera Sans”, “Trebuchet MS”, sans-serif ;}

//squarer sans-serif fonts
BODY {font-family: “Monaco”, “Lucida Sans Typewriter”, sans-serif ;}

//narrow sans-serif fonts
BODY {font-family: “URW Grotesk”, “Arial Narrow”, sans-serif ;}

//angular sans-serif fonts
BODY {font-family: “skia”, “Myriad Condensed Web”, “Arial Narrow”, sans-serif ;}

//dark, heavy sans-serif fonts
BODY {font-family: “Charcoal”, “Arial Black”, sans-serif; }

//common monotype fonts
BODY {font-family: “Courier New”, “Courier”, monotype ;}

//attractive monotype fonts – not terribly common
BODY {font-family: “Andale Mono”, “Bitstream Vera Sans Mono”, monotype ;}

Want to see the fonts? Checkout CodeStyle or My Fonts for images.