My Asus Eee 4G odyssey

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Well, I’ve had this thing for four days now, and I’ve finally gotten it set up the way I wanted it.

The first thing I wanted to do was replace the Xandros Linux on it with Ubuntu, both because I wanted the same set of programs available to me as on my larger systems, and because the customized Xandros system was fairly limited. That proved to be easy to do, thanks to earlier Eee users with the same idea.

But even before I did that, I wanted to expand the RAM in the system, so that I wouldn’t have to use a swap-file (this is a flash-memory-based system, a swap file would eat through the internal flash memory card’s limited lifetime of writes far too quickly, as well as being a security hole). A little research showed that it could take a single 2GB memory module, and the specs for it, and a local electronics store supplied the module. (I probably paid more than I needed to for it, but not by too much). With the extra RAM, I was also able to put all of the OS’s temporary and log files in a RAM-disk instead of on the internal flash drive. It means that my log files are erased every time I reboot, but that’s a small price to pay.

The installation of the OS and several of my most-often-needed programs took up about 70% of my internal 4GB flash drive, leaving me a little over a gigabyte for personal data. Nowhere near enough space (at its most pared-down, my data measured 1.5GB), but I didn’t want to use the internal flash for personal and often-changing data anyway — not only would it eat through flash-memory lifetime, but I couldn’t easily move the data to my main system when I needed the extra processing power. Fortunately, the Eee supports SDHC memory cards (a newer type of SD memory card that can handle capacities greater than 2GB), so I picked up an ultra-fast 4GB one.

Then came the “interesting” part.

I absolutely must store some of my data in an encrypted form, especially on portable systems. I also must have maximum reliability, at least to the point of knowing immediately if any data is corrupted, which to me means using Sun’s Zettabyte File System (ZFS) — arguably the most advanced file system available to date, and unarguably the most advanced one available on Linux. But ZFS doesn’t support encryption (yet), so I had to do some experimenting.

In the end, I figured out a way to have TrueCrypt encrypt the entire card, and create a ZFS pool on the encrypted device. It wasn’t that difficult, but as it turns out, that was only part of the answer: I couldn’t mount the ZFS device as my home directory, for various reasons, so I ended up just moving a small number of data directories to it (including my ~/.mozilla and ~/.mozilla-thunderbird directories) and (re-)creating symlinks to them in the same script where I mount the encrypted device and import the ZFS pool.

It’s not perfect. The Eee turns off power to the SD card slot when it goes into suspend mode, force-disconnecting the encrypted drive, so I have to manually unmount it before letting the system sleep. But it’s a small price to pay for the multiple layers of security (from theft or loss, from silent data corruption, etcetera) that it gives me though.

Now I can get back to my work. 🙂

“Expelled”

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Unbelievable. After 150 years of steadily-accumulated evidence in favor of evolution, we’re still getting garbage like this Expelled movie?

Expelled expresses the opinion that the universal support of evolution in the scientific community is the product of some sort of bias or ideological inflexibility. It is, on the contrary, the result of decades of hard scientific work, building theory and conducting research. Similarly, the failure of intelligent design can readily be laid at the feet of its advocates, whose main activity appears to be to carp about the success of evolution.

The problem, to me, seems to be that scientists are thinking science — where everything is questioned, and nothing is accepted without a great deal of proof — and non-scientists are thinking politics, where everything is a matter of which alpha male pounds his chest in the most threatening and impressive manner. A generalization, I know, but not by that much.

Asus Eee PC 4G

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I had been trying to get a look at one of these for months, but no place around here seemed to carry them. I wasn’t too concerned, because I’d planned to wait for a later version of it before I took the plunge. Ah well, “the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry…” I’m writing this entry on one now. 🙂

This afternoon GoddessJ and I stopped at a nearby mall, and I was left to my own devices while GoddessJ did some shopping. I, of course, hit the two electronics shops in there… and what did I find, but that one of them carried it, and it was in stock! I was suitably impressed with the size, but I still managed to hold out, until I told GoddessJ about it, and she wanted to see it too. Then I just couldn’t put it off any longer… I walked out with one.

This thing is freakin’ TINY! Much smaller than the smallest notebook computer I’ve ever had, or even seen. The keyboard is fairly cramped (though I’m getting used to it already), but the screen is very readable, and quite adequate for a single full-screen program at a time. I’m updating the software on it as I’m typing this… I don’t see any option for a command-line window so far, but I’ll find a way to get one on there pretty soon, I’m sure.

(This is the Linux version, of course. I wasn’t interested in using it for games, and games are the only thing I use Windows for nowadays.)

I’m planning to use this as my carry-everywhere system, once I can get a few vital software packages on it — my password manager, and maybe the GCC compiler and Eclipse (I can’t tell if GCC is on here already or not, since I can’t get to a command line yet). It’s quite portable, and I’d be a lot less worried about having it stolen or lost than I am with its big brother, the Dell XPS M1210 laptop that is my main system right now.

More as I discover it.

“Belief-O-Matic — A personality quiz about your religious and spiritual beliefs”

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I stumbled across this interesting quiz a few days ago:

Even if YOU don’t know what faith you are, Belief-O-Maticâ„¢ knows. Answer 20 questions about your concept of God, the afterlife, human nature, and more, and Belief-O-Maticâ„¢ will tell you what religion (if any) you practice…or ought to consider practicing.

Of the religions it listed for me, the one I actually practice was third (a 92% match), and the top one (which it said was a 100% match) is the closest organized religion that I know of.

For those more interested in the bottom of the list: the last three were Islam and Roman Catholic (tied at 11%) and Jehovah’s Witness (at 7%). I guess I just wouldn’t make it as a door-to-door Bible pusher. 😉