I’ve been using my Dell Mini 9 pretty much as my main machine. Even coding on it. I just like the portability of it. This past weekend however, things went awry.

A batch of routine updates caused my install of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) to break. At the same time, my network connections broke. No wireless and no ethernet. And though Ubuntu has a different way of managing packages and updates than Windows and it’s frustrating to have to open another machine and look up the instructions for Ubuntu, I gotta say, it’s nothing compared to the frustration of dealing with Windows’ blue screens and broken .dll files.

After much struggle and many choice words, I got the network connections back up. And after several attempts, I got JRE repaired and properly installed. But Firefox was acting crazy. The back and forward buttons didn’t work. The search bar didn’t work. And the Ubuntu toolbar was busted. When I’d click on the power switch to shut down or restart, the whole toolbar would just disappear. (I eventually found the Terminal command to shutdown so I didn’t have to do hard shut-downs.)

I decided to move from Ubuntu 8.04 which came pre-installed on the Dell Mini to 8.10 and 9.04 to try to fix all these remaining problems. The hiccup here was that the 8.04 version installed was a Long Term Support (LTS) version and not automatically updated with every new release. To change this I needed to go to Software Sources and change the Update option. But my Updates tab had also disappeared.

So after all these hours of working on it, I finally decided this combination of problems was a Dell-created error and not Ubuntu.

Today, I bought a new 2GB USB stick, downloaded the Netbook Remix of Ubuntu 9.04 on my Windows machine, used the Disk Imager to create a disk image on the USB stick, booted up the netbook from the USB stick, played with the Netbook Remix for a while and did the full install, wiping my machine of Dell’s version of 8.04.

So far, it’s working like a charm and I love the Remix desktop.

One further note: when I bought the netbook, I wanted the netbook qua netbook so I went with Dell’s default 4GB harddrive. Little did I know that Ubuntu 8.04 took up 3.5GB. Ubuntu 9.04 uses 3.8GB. Though I’m not planning to keep any files on the netbook, I have few resources left for additional applications which I might one day want. This annoys me. It’s bad service from Dell. Just as their custom version of Ubuntu is bad service.

But their hardware is top-notch. So I’m torn.

I heard today that Dell is actually going to discontinue the Mini. I wonder what the reasons behind that are. If a Mini 9 with 16GB harddrive goes on sale for less than $200, would I buy?

If IT wants to open your screen on theirs and watch what you’re doing, there’s not much you can do about it. But here are three things I do to allow a modicum of privacy. Bear in mind, I’m not an IT guy. This is just information from an amateur who digs privacy.

1) I use the Firefox add-on called KeyScrambler which encrypts your keystrokes before they hit the browser. This is useful if your IT department (or other Big Brother) has a keylogger installed. (A keylogger is a program that records all your keystrokes.)

2) This is certainly not a universal solution but just another layer of safety: I have two monitors at work. I make sure all my personal surfing is on the secondary monitor. Now, at another job I had, I’m pretty sure IT could see both monitors when they viewed my screen. But at my current job, I had to have IT install something remotely and the IT guy asked me to drag it over to the main screen so he could see it. So while they can probably get to whatever you’re doing, it’s one more roadblock for them.

3) Most importantly, I use TOR (The Onion Router) when I want to want to hide my browser tracks and/or get around a firewall. In their words:

Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location.

To use TOR, go to torproject.org and hit the download link. Then grab the appropriate bundle for your operating system. If you’re using Windows, the standard bundle should work fine. Don’t worry about the zero install version.

When you install TOR, you get a package of several applications and the TorButton addon for Firefox. The Torbutton creates a link in the bottom status bar of Firefox. When you want to hide your tracks, you click TorButton link and it will turn green and read “TorButton Enabled.” Once that happens, all your internet requests are bounced off servers all over the world.*

This does two things: makes you invisible to those trying to track your surfing and often gets you around those pesky firewalls and content filters at work. For example, my work blocks MySpace and Facebook. If I want to check them, I simply enable Tor and go. No filter stops me.

This also works to get around those filters that many places with free wifi use. Ever gotten online at a Panera or Corner Bakery and soon as you open your browser, you have to agree to their terms and conditions? Forget that. Those places are blocking certain content and probably watching your steps as you surf on their connection. Just enable TOR and you’re good.

TOR is also useful to me for my work. Because I work in the web department and our IT department has a lockdown on the web servers that we use, it’s a tremendous pain to try to get them to set-up anything out of the ordinary scope. So a few weeks ago, my bosses bought their own commercial hosting to use as our playground. The problem was that they couldn’t even login to our new hosting control panel because the corporate firewall blocked it. I told them about TOR and we got around that obstacle.

The huge downside to Tor is that it slows your connection like you’re on CompuServe dial-up. That part blows. But in return for some safety and security and freedom, it’s a small price to pay. You won’t want to leave it enabled all day at work but for those times when you just have to check in with Facebook, it’s sweet.

* Fun with TOR: find out where it’s routed you in the world by opening MySpace to see what language it’s in.

Evidently the DiggBar puts any site within a frame and creates a shortened URL making it easy to Digg it or share it or whatever. (Just check out digg.com/techcrunch.com for an example.) That has its uses obviously.

Frames, though. Frames are exactly what they sound like. The content of your site appears within a code frame of another site. So though the user sees your content, the address bar shows their URL.

I’m not going to make any claims that frames are bad user experience because I don’t know that’s really universally true. The DiggBar looks unintrusive and pretty. But as a website owner, I hate for my site to be displayed in someone else’s frame so for years, I’ve used a short “break out of frames” script that checks to make sure my website is in the top frame and if not, makes it so.

Go ahead try to view S&A in the DiggBar: digg.com/sandwichesandapples.org. See what happens?

Now I don’t mind missing the Digg traffic so this works out fine for me.

Here’s the script if you want it. I didn’t write it so I leave in the credit. Put it in your <head> tags:


<script>
<!--
/* Break-out-of-frames script
By Website Abstraction (http://wsabstract.com)
Over 400+ free scripts here!
Above notice MUST stay entact for use */

if (window!= top)
top.location.href=location.href
// -->
</script>


They sold most of the iBooks but not all. A year or so later, they knocked the price down to $25 to get rid of them. I was lucky enough to grab one then. I figured I’d use it as my internet-only coffeeshop machine. (This was before the term “netbook” had entered the language.)

However, the machine was now too slow and had too little memory to run the current version of OS X. Its version of OS 9 had a version of Internet Explorer that was obviously not supported anymore. Current versions of Safari and Firefox wouldn’t install on the old version of OS 9 that I had. So I made my first leap into the world of Ubuntu¹, specifically Xubuntu — a distro of Ubuntu with a smaller footprint for which there was PowerPC version. (PowerPC being the architecture of the iBook I have.)

So when I started this experiment, Ubuntu was on version 7 but for whatever reason, Xubuntu only had version 6 available for PowerPC. I had to use the alternative install to get around my low memory problems. (The alternative install is the version without the flashy graphic user interface. It looks like DOS during the install — just blue screens and console fonts.)

So I got Xubuntu 6 on the machine but it wouldn’t update automatically to the new version which meant all my applications were also frozen in time a year behind Ubuntu releases. When version 8 was rolling out, I went on a hunt for an alternative install version of Xubuntu 7. I found one somewhere on the internet (possibly a university site), installed it and my updates started rolling out perfectly. I moved up to version 8.04 and then 8.10 and everything’s rocking along.

Over the past few years, I’ve gotten fed up with Windows and Mac. I’ve made the comment before that Apple is just Microsoft with better UI. With either company there’s a shitload of political baggage that I just don’t want to take on. I’m happy Linux provides an alternative to the bullshit and an alternative to junking old computers.

¹ If you’re not familiar (and I sure wasn’t before I decided to do this to my iBook), Ubuntu is a desktop version of Linux — the open-source operating system. It’s free. And anyone who wants to can peek at the code and modify it. So, in case you weren’t aware, there isn’t just Mac and Windows. Linux is available in many different desktop flavors. And Ubuntu itself is available in many different flavors, each with a different focus. And you can install Linux on a Windows or Mac machine to breathe new life into it.

PS — Does anyone else find it amusing that Hack A Day is copyrighted?

So here it is:

HTML tags that style text have an opening tag and a closing tag that closely mirrors the opening tag. Links are created with the <a> tag and include an instruction that tells the browser where to go called the href. The <a> tag precedes the text to link and the </a> tag closes the link. A standard link looks like this:

<a href=”http://link.to.website.com”>text you wish to link</a>

To link an image you just place the opening and closing link tags on either side of your image. Your image is delivered in a tag like this:

<img src=”http://path.to.your.image” />

Your new linked image will be something like this:

<a href=”http://link.to.website.com”><img src=”http://path.to.your.image” border=”0″ /></a>

You’ll notice I added border=”0″ to the image tag. That prevents your image from being surrounded by a border of your link color. Ideally, your designer has accounted for this in the stylesheet to your site where you can dictate rules for the style of images everywhere. But if not, it’s a handy thing to know. I know it’s annoying when linked images are surrounded in big, blue borders.

The Add-On places a small button between your Address Bar and Search Bar. When there is download-eligible media on a page it is colored-in and moving. Click the little arrow next to the Download Helper button to select what media on the page that you’d like to download. It will add the media to the standard Firefox download queue.

Incidentally, the Violent Femmes recently released a version of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” via MySpace.

It’s been a couple years since I looked into all this but here’s what I know.

I used iUniverse.com for both my books. They charge a good amount but they set up the entire layout of the book. All I did was turn in a Word Doc with some simple formatting. They created nice little chapter headings and other cool typography for the book block. iUniverse also secured the ISBN numbers and listed the book with Amazon, Barnes and Nobel and others. So that was a start-to-finish
solution.

I also used Lulu.com for my second book. It’s FREE. I had to format the book block the way I wanted it and layout my cover art with their “cover art wizard” but it was FREE. And they offered tons of cool options — different sizes of books, more flexible pricing for them, etc.

With iUniverse, they chose the price for the final book. With Lulu, they gave me a base price for the book and I chose my own royalty.

One thing is that my Lulu book isn’t available on Amazon or anywhere else because it doesn’t have an ISBN #. Lulu will help the author secure an ISBN and get the book placed in those stores, but the author has to do the legwork (as I understand it — things may have changed a bit).

Both companies offer cover design services and editorial services, etc.

I think both experiences went well. But because I’m such a fan of open-source, Creative Commons projects, I’ll go to Lulu first next time. They’re more flexible and allow me to be more hands-on.

A couple of other things I’ve seen:
I had a friend use Xlibris.com several years ago. It was basically the same deal as iUniverse (they handle everything for a high price). His book cover looks terrible. And I don’t like the layout inside as much. Plus it was more expensive. Thumbs down from me.

Some cartoonist friends used LightningSource.com which gave them absolute control. But really absolute… like they had to worry about the cover art being a millimeter off center. They also had to buy their own ISBNs and handle all the distro themselves. But they’re control freaks and didn’t mind it.

Finally, another friend of mine used Blurb.com to make a photo book for her boyfriend for Christmas and it looks great. I don’t know how great they are at larger, meant-for-the-public projects though.

I hope that helps.