Because it matters

Here at Taksuyama.com we reported the tragic breakdown of toilets at the International Space Station (ISS) earlier and we even prayed for those poor souls that were facing unimaginable possibilities in the middle of NOWHERE (see the post). I'm happy to report some good news regarding the ISS this time. Internet access on the ISS went live this morning! The crew now has full browsing capability (they've even tweeted). But on the other hand, I'm worried about the astronauts' productivity at ISS... Oh, I should get back to work, too.

Glyn Moody at Linux Journal reports:

Today is the birthday of Linus. Although that's essentially a private event for him, there's an interesting historical link to the creation of the Linux kernel, too.... To this student loan, Linus added what he termed “Christmas money”. As anyone who has a birthday very near Christmas will tell you, such “Christmas money” almost invariably includes money for the birthday bundled in too, so it's likely that some funds for the PC arrived in the form of birthday presents. Significantly, Linus wasted no time in buying the new computer after Christmas – and hence his birthday. As he told me in 1996: “ I remember the first non-holiday day of the New Year I went to buy a PC.” Read the rest of this entry »

Even if you don't live in California (we do), you may have heard about Proposition 8 that was passed on November 4th to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman (as per Genesis 2:22-25). There have been violent protests about this Californian Constitutional amendment and other similar laws passed in other states. Being backed by the governor, protesters gathered around Saddleback church, Mormon churches and other places. These sad acts are expected from sinners (just like myself before I met the Lord) who haven't come to know Jesus, the only Savior that can set us free from our sin. So this is not really news.

But what is news to me (I just found this out) is that Apple, the manufacture of Macintosh OS, had donated $100,000 (or at least pledged to) to defeat Proposition 8, which would have devastated families, ministers, and children. I always suspected that Apple was a liberal-leaning company, but did not have any evidence for it. Now I know. Christians, if you don't like Windows (I certainly don't), get a PC with Linux! And don't buy Macs to support Apple! If you need help getting used to Linux, please write to me and I'd be happy to start a series of articles to help you out.

Also there are other alternatives to iphones and ipods too.

Recently I decided to switch to Debian from Ubuntu mainly because I felt that Ubuntu is getting slow. Of course the obvious disadvantage is that there will be things that won't work out-of-the-box. One of the items on the menu to be tweaked and hacked is suspend and hibernate. Now I really don't use hibernation, but just suspension. So what I've shown you here may work for hibernating. I just don't know b/c I'm too lazy to test it. Sorry.

I heavily consulted this tutorial and this advice given on the Debian forum. Read the rest of this entry »

'Tis the season for traveling to places in addition to celebrating the birth of the Lord Jesus. As we live in a rough neighborhood, safety of our apartment during trips always has been a concern to us. This year, we will have additional security measure in our household: webcam surveillance system! For those of you who are planning on breaking into our home, give it a second thought, better yet, repent!
As you read this article, you may think we're way too paranoid or something, but I think it's kind of a fun project even if you're not paranoid about it. I had fun with it This system will detect any motion in the room and take pictures and email them to you (also will transfer the files to a remote SSH server for safe-keeping).
There are 5 steps to this process. Let's begin! Read the rest of this entry »

As an Ubuntu user, I am faced with the task of installing a new OS every 6 months. I know I can do the upgrade through the Update Manager, but I always prefer the fresh install. I've done this process so many times now for the new Ubuntu versions and also to switch to different distros. To make this process easier, I've written a simple bash script to automate parts of the process. I figured somebody else might benefit from this. Also I wanted to keep the script here so I won't lose it Read the rest of this entry »

I am planning on writing a review on different 2D chemical structure editor (CSE) programs that are available to Linux (there is one comprehensive article on this, but it's a bit outdated). In the mean time, I want to say that most of them have made tremendous progress in the last year or so. Big thanks to all the developers!

Here in this article, I want to focus on GChempaint, one of the most prominent CSE's of the day IMHO. Read the rest of this entry »

DIY Dedicated Caching Proxy (with Dansguardian) Server at Home

September 2007

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Overview

This how-to is for those of you who want to set up a proxy server that will filter out the filth of the Internet (Dansguardian) and enjoy a safe and godly computing environment at home. As added benefits, you will be able to connect to your home network remotely and may be able to use this same server as a web server if you so choose (as a result of following my entire how-to). Moreover, Squid proxy caching capability will probably increase the speed of your Internet surfing.

Read the rest of this entry »

This how-to article will explain how to set up BackupPC on Debian / Ubuntu (should be applicable to other distros as well) for a mixed OS environment using rsync. Since the actual program that will be doing the back up is rsync, the use of bandwidth is conserved. Rsync only transfers the difference; only the new and modified files will be transferred to the backup server each time.

BackupPC comes with a web interface that each client can access separately, making it easy for each user of the service to manage the backups. Read the rest of this entry »