Arkadian.eu

One of the great things about linux is its versatility. Ironically, this is one of its problems too…

What do I mean by that? Simple. If I download a standard linux distribution with the purpose of setting up a file server, I will probably end up spending the better part of a weekend setting it up.
- Which packages should I include?
- Which should I exclude?
- How should I set up the security / firewall etc?
- Setting up samba from scratch?
- Setting up some sort of backup system?
- What about remote access?

I used to just install everything from whatever distribution I had in hand and spend a lot of time tweaking.

Turnkey Linux (http://www.turnkeylinux.org/) provides a great solution. Instead of downloading the standard ubuntu DVD, you download a small distribution that’s already customised to do exactly what you want. There are many different appliance to choose from: LAMP servers, File servers, domain controller appliance, etc etc… The images are tiny (around 100-200MB) compared to the full-blown DVD image and they are also supplied as VM images! In other words you can just download one and run it on VirtualBox or any other VM system!

Turnkey Linux appliances are based on Ubuntu, which means that there are thousands of packages you use to customise your appliance.

My file server at home is now powered by Turnkey Linux.

At work, I have been working with two computers over the past few years. That involved having two screens, two mice and two keyboards on my desk. I wasn’t very pleased but I could live with it.

When I realised I would have to get a third computer, it became apparent that I needed a better solution to manage them all while maintaining my sanity…

I got a stand from allcam.biz (http://www.allcam.biz). I got the longer side arms (optional extra) and attached two 17″ on the two sides (portrait) and a 19″ in the middle (landscape).

By effectively removing two monitor stands, I saved a lot of desk real estate. This stand does not swivel freely (you need to unscrew the bolts if you want to adjust the monitors), but this is not a big issue for me.

Then I had to solve the problem with the keyboards & mice. At first, I thought I will have to go for a hardware solution (either a kvm box from which I will only use the key & mouse inputs/outputs) or a simple usb switch that allows you to share usb devices across different computers.

But, after a bit of searching, I found that there is a free software solution to this problem: Synergy. This is a fantastic little program, that allows you to seamlessly use the same mouse and keyboard across as many computers as you want. What’s even better, you can move from one computer screen to another by just moving the mouse past the side border of one screen and into the other screen. In other words, in the same way as if the two screens are attached to the same graphics card! This is achieved by sending the keystrokes and mouse coordinates via ethernet. It works so well that, unless you were told, you wouldn’t know that the mouse is not physically connected to all three machines. And to make things even better, you can mix-and-match windows, linux and osx machines and you can copy and paste text across different machines! Amazing!

At that point, I had to get a wireless keyboard and mouse. I got the Logitech Cordless Desktop S520 from Amazon for about £30:

This is a great solid keyboard: it has a standard shape (I can’t work with curvy keyboards), an armrest that is actually part of the keyboard, a low battery indicator both on the mouse and the keyboard and the Caps Lock and Num Lock lights on the usb receiver (which means you don’t waste any battery for them). The laser mouse is one of the best I’ve used.

By removing the multiple keyboards, mice, cables and monitor stands, I have saved a lot of space. I even have space for a couple more computers now!

This past week, I got my hands on a WiShield 2.0 from Async Labs (http://www.asynclabs.com/).

This is a very exiting addition to my collection of shields as it adds wifi capabilities to my projects!

There is a nice wiki page on the async_labs site (http://asynclabs.com/wiki/index.php?title=AsyncLabsWiki) and relevant code (libraries & examples) is hosted at the GitHub (http://github.com/asynclabs/WiShield).

I have a few ideas about this shield – stay tuned!

Yesterday, I visited the Decode exhibition at the V&A museum http://www.vam.ac.uk/microsites/decode/

This exhibition is about creating interactive pieces using modern technology. It’s a rather small exhibition, probably due to the fact that few artists have embraced the new technologies currently being developed.

Many of the exhibits I saw, I was already familiar with:

Flight Patterns (one of my favourites) – http://www.aaronkoblin.com/work/flightpatterns/index.html

We Feel Fine – http://www.wefeelfine.org/

Weave Mirror,  similar to the wooden mirrors from the same artist – http://smoothware.com/danny/woodenmirror.html

Flow 5.0 – http://www.studioroosegaarde.net/work_html.php?id=21&picture_id=1399

Many of the exhibits are using Processing, open Frameworks,  Arduinos (or other similar devices).

I loved this exhibition; my only issue was that it wasn’t big enough…