The last few days I've been trying out EyeOS, a "Cloud Computing Operating System" that is open source, free to download and easy (for the most part) to install. It's really quite amazing, but is it useful?

The geek in me first reacted with astonishment and excitement. And truly, EyeOS is very astonishing in what it accomplishes, and very exciting on a technical level! The ability to very quickly display what feels like a virtual desktop over the Internet is pretty amazing.

Installation is a breeze - literally just uncompress and dump it in your web directory. No database is required; all user settings are stored in XML files and it has it's own virtual filesystem. The only catch is that trying to get it to recognize OpenOffice and Microsoft Office files is kind of tricky. You must install OpenOffice on the server, and even then I never could get it to open a Microsoft Office file, just OpenOffice and it's own native format.

Okay, so I decided I agreed with Vermyndax that my last custom theme had puke colors. I wanted a dark theme for the site, but dark themes can be so hard to read that I didn't want to do that to my readers, so I went with a slightly blue/gray text area and a dark background. The text area isn't white so there wouldn't be a stark contrast between it and the black border to hurt your eyes. I think it's a good compromise. I still have some tweaking work to do, but I have to say I like it!

This theme was created entirely with Gimp and PHPEclipse on my Linux laptop.

And yes, I know the right nav panel doesn't work quite right in IE6 (3.7% of my visitors use this.) Get a real browser. Upgrade to IE7 at least if you can't figure out how to install Firefox.

Back in November I ordered a Wii Fit through Gamestop.com. Immediately after submitting my order I received several emails about my new "Reservation Rewards" account and my $10 coupon on my next Gamestop purchase. I clicked one of the links, glanced at the page and forgot about it.

Then, a few days ago "Reservation Rewards" billed my credit card my "$12 monthly fee". Can we get a collective WTF?

So, I went back to the original emails and found one of them - clicked the link which took me to "my account" and on the FAQ found a simple link to "cancel" the account I never asked for. I also emailed help@gamestop.com complaining about this and notified AMEX that I was disputing the charge. Thankfully I use Amex for everything, because I know they'll stand behind me.

It's ridiculous when you can't even order stuff online from major brick and mortar stores without getting slammed with extra subscriptions you never actually wanted to buy. I'm very irritated that Gamestop felt the need to give my credit card number to a third party.

UPDATE
I've learned there may be a class action lawsuit related to these charges and forwarded my incident and communications along to the attorney's at Green Welling LLP

So according to ZDNet bloggers, Nebooks have become the bane of Microsoft, with Linux driven netbooks taking a huge chunk out of Microsoft's bottom line opportunities and apparently the sole trigger for all the Microsoft layoffs of late.

And, in the same e-mail news report from ZD, Windows kicks Linux to the curb by taking over the netbook market.

Obviously both can't be true. Being a Linux fanboy, I like to think that the second article is simply Microsoft or Microsoft fanboy FUD. The truth, however is likely something between the two.

My daughter has an Asus Linux EEE Pc. I have to say I love it, but it was more technically challenging to get working properly than the typical Ubuntu desktop installation. I can understand how people would prefer Windows XP on a netbook if that's what you were familiar with. Assuming the wireless drivers worked out of the box.

Properly done, Linux is a very easy thing to use, and if you build the hardware yourself you should be able to provide working wireless drivers (for instance) preinstalled. That seems to be a primary problem with what's been available.

I look for Linux netbooks version 2.0 - someone really needs to actually use these things before they ship them. A bit more experience will solidify the product lines.

For me, not a problem - I'll still buy a Linux device over a Windows one anyday. For Linux newbies, you really should offer something with a bit more polish - you do the OS a disservice otherwise.

Pound proxy is a great solution for adding a bit of a security layer, flexibility or scalability to your web server(s). If you're doing anything much more complex than hosting a blog, Pound may have some added value for you.

What Pound Is
Pound is a reverse proxy - that means you put it on the server end in front of your web services, not in front of your clients who need to connect to the general Internet. It takes web requests from end-users and distributes them among several web servers or services you may be running. Pound is also load balancing, so you can run multiple servers that look to the outside world as if they are just one, allowing you to spread the workload around.

What Pound Is Not
Pound proxy is NOT a caching proxy. By itself it won't help to speed up your server or network, but there is a lot of flexibility in Pound that will help you overall.

In Ubuntu, installing and using Pound is very easy. Simply install it and configure two files and you're off and running.

apt-get install pound

To enable Pound, you must edit the following file:

/etc/default/pound

Change it from startup=0 to startup=1. Before doing this, Pound will refuse to start.

The primary configuration file is located here:

/etc/pound/pound.cfg

I just posted a new wallpaper to Gnome-look.org that I call "Solitary Shadow."

Licensed under Creative Commons.

Subversion is a pain, but without it things can be even worse. Sometimes your workstation will get out of sync with the server or if you're like me you realize that you accidentally FTP'd the entire project directory to the web server including all the hidden subdirectories and don't want that floating around online.

Another mistake I commonly make is using the copy feature to copy a series of directories in Eclipse from one project to another. Unfortunately Eclipse will invariably copy all the Subversion pointers as well, completely breaking the target project's SVN links. In that case, I take the hosed project, move it out of Eclipse entirely, check out the current committed copy, then move all the project files back into place, replacing the just checked out copy - to do this you must first delete all the .svn directories.

There's a quick an easy fix using the console to remove all the .svn directories.

rm -rf `find . -type d -name .svn`

Tada! One line takes care of it all for you, recursively.

I just posted a wallpaper design to www.gnome-look.org. Check it out. It's very dark and designed for a 1280 x 800 resolution widescreen laptop. Released under the Commercial Commons attribution license.

It's not very busy, but gives just enough texture that you don't feel like you have a boring background without overpowering whatever icons you may have sitting on top of it.

Setting up KVM for virtual machines in Ubuntu 8.04 is easy!

A few simple steps will get you up and running. First, install the packages with your favorite package manager, or at a console type:

sudo apt-get install kvm libvirt-bin virt-manager virt-viewer qemu

I also found I needed to add myself to the kvm group:

sudo adduser `id -un` kvm
sudo adduser `id -un` libvirtd

You must add yourself to libvirtd for networking to function :-)

Here's one of the few situations where rebooting linux is probably easier for most people than trying to manually start everything, so give her a boot and log back in.

Under your Applications menu in "System Tools" you'll find "Virtual Machine Manager". Connect to the qemu "localhost" setup that is already there by right clicking on it. After it says you are connected, click New at the bottom of the window to create a new virtual machine instance. Follow the wizard to configure your install.

Apparently the down economy has caused a huge upsurge of enlistment, ironically just as President Obama plans to withdraw from Iraq.

Here's my suggestions for things all these extra troops could do at home:

1. Put them to work filling potholes
2. Help organize the unemployment lines
3. Fix the Shriner's Children's Hospital damaged by Hurricane Ike
4. Restore power to Jeneau
5. Provide security for BART since they seem to be doing it all wrong

I'm sure there's a hundred other things they could all be put to work doing. Most of the time you'll see soldiers in the states doing daily workouts and classes in one of the many military bases. Why not put them to work doing something else for 2 hours a day on average? In fact, we could all help out. Clean up a city park or volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. Make this country a better place.