Open Source Angst

Open source is supposed to make users happy (except when it doesn’t work). It’s supposed to make their developers happy (as long as it scratches their itch.) But it has been causing me angst.

I don’t get to write any.

Of all the years I’ve been working with free software/open source, I have only been hacking bits and pieces. I did write one thing that seems to have found its way into many project. A little ego trip. And, almost everything I did was work related. I never got to scratch a personal itch. I think back and realize, perhaps I didn’t have that itch at all.

In the past few months, I thought that I should get back to writing open source. For pure fun.

But the fun didn’t come. It never had a chance. I did not get motivated. Now I realize, I wasn’t really interested. I was just feeling guilty, feeling obliged.

I felt obliged because the Philippines doesn’t contribute much to open source. There are some significant people and companies who do, but in absolute terms it’s just a drop in the bucket of global open source contribution. This has been discussed before, in PLUG (Philippine Linux Users Group). The conclusion was, in the Philippines, the people who have the skill to contribute to open source need to make a living. If they had extra time, they would work on a sideline. Students could do it, as there are programs like Google Summer of Code that help. But someone told me, students are lazy.

I still want to help. I still actively use open source products – and thus help, as a tester. I’m not much of an advocate anymore. I have grown tired of it. Perhaps in other non-coding, technical ways.

In the PLUG thread that discusses this, the post that kicked off the topic was all about using open source to add to the portfolio or resume. At this point in my career, writing open source won’t help much. But I hope younger folks would find it useful.

bittersweetness

I will forever associate the word “Bittersweet” with Marc Almond. That 1988 song is stuck in my head thanks to the NU 107/99.5 RT of that era, mixed with the a killer melody and lyrics that tempt you – “Let’s Go To Paradise Jack.” Ultimately nonsensical but filling for the moment.

Just like that, memories of my 1995-2002 ISP career haunt me.

Jim Ayson reminded me of this because of his post on the Philippine Cyberspace Review, with some significant but mostly forgotten Internet history information.

I once blogged that I will share more of my personal experiences. But I still feel the time isn’t right. I just have too much regret over missed opportunities and what-could-have-been. The bitter. On the other hand this was a career and life-changing six years. The sweet. Need one to have the other.

But I’ll leave the stories for the planned EB, if the stars on that night shine right.

Unswitchable

I read MacRumors on occasion. It’s not just because I want tech gossip. I’m thinking, when shall I get myself a Mac? The old Mac Envy.

It’s still nowhere in sight. Even if technical articles showed to me demonstrating Mac superiority over Windows and even Linux, I have already invested in building a home Linux/Windows PC, which costs cheaper than a MacBook, is more powerful and expandabe, and is well-suited for me learning sysadmin stuff under virtualization.

Most of my laptop work is done on my office PC which needs to be Windows.

There’s just no ROI for me getting a Mac. It would be useful if I were a pure Java developer – no dependencies on proprietary stuff. But that’s not happening soon.

In the ideal world I would have lots of free time to hack on Java, Rails and other Unixy stuff that would run on OS X, but I’m not there.

What Page Represents You?

What Page Represents You? What is your homepage?

In the 90’s, it was a Geocities or Tripod.com page, or an ISP-hosted ~page. With links, pictures, about me, and blinkie-blinkie things.

In the 2000s, this became a blog. With blogrolls, pages, and then widgets.

But for those who are not defined by their blog, what should their page be now?

That is what I ask myself. What do I do with my domain? This blog barely represents me, so I shouldn’t point it there anymore.

How about my lifestream? There’s friendfeed. I could redirect it to my friendfeed. But it doesn’t paint a complete picture of what I do online. How about posts on other sites (famous only in the Philippines?) like Multiply? How about posts to online forums and mailing lists/Yahoo! groups. They represent me, and they are public. But they remain scattered in a million pieces around the web.

What page represents you?

VPS Migration Step 1

I have been hosting my sites or blogs on Virtual Private Servers (VPS) since 2003 or so. I thought that a Unix guy like me should eat his own dogfood and do sysadmin on his own server. And, I’ve been planning to run my own apps – Rails, Java, etc.

But that didn’t happen. I am still doing my own personal R&D, but in its current iteration it does not need a public-facing website. It all lives inside my PC.

So, to cut costs and save time (yet another server to update and check), I canceled my VPS. I still want paraz.com content to be visible and searchable, so I migrated it here to wordpress.com. But, I was using a custom permalink structure – my preference, which is /POST-ID/post-slug. wordpress.com uses the default date-based scheme.

Therefore, I had to make my own redirect. The post slugs are the same, but WordPress has no “search by post slug” query. I had to make a 1:1 mapping for each post. I did this by performing an XML export on both blogs, then writing a small Python script to parse the XML and do the matching. The output is a flat file with the old URI on the left and the wordpress.com URL on the right. This is used by a RewriteRule which looks for a match and issues a HTTP 301 redirect.

The effect now: people who click on my old URLs from a search engin, or from a link, will land here in wordpress.com.

The effect later: The new URLs should replace the old URLs in the search engine results.

Regression

Many people move from a free domain like wordpress.com, or blogspot.com, to their own domain. Now, I do the opposite. Strange, but with a reason.

I realize that my “problem” with my lack of blogging, for a year or so, is simply because blogging is not very important to me anymore. Is it just a phase, or a break? I don’t know.

But for now, I think my personal domain – paraz.com at the moment – is better used pointing to something that represents me better than my blog.

Tech Update

Unfortunately, I can’t post the best and most interesting tech I’m up to, since it’s work related and I can’t share a single clue as to what I’m up to. Really secret stuff.

Instead, let me tell you about the tech stuff I do in my own time:

• Beta testing Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron
• Using kvm Kernel Virtualization, and comparing it with VMware. Soon going to try Virtualbox
• Trying OSX86 on different PC’s. Already got it working on my Acer 4710Z laptop, but in my desire to achieve the proper 1280×800 resolution instead of 1024×768, I trashed it and the graphics system no longer starts. Will try to fix it still.
• Trying to get back into open source development, especially in Java. Still frustrated that I – and Pinoys – use a lot of open source but don’t give back.
• Planning further PC upgrades. Will probably add another hard drive to my desktop for a RAID0 setup. Might get a “branded” case like a Lian Li.
• Reading a lot on my Safari Books account. Read some tech classics. Read a .NET programming book – but haven’t gotten started. Reading EJB3, just in case I need it. Reading about the Linux kernel details, so that I know what I’m working with under the hood.
• Thinking about how to earn from Adsense and online ads again – without spending too much time on it. It’s not really passive income if you spend too much time working on it and thinking about it.

The Global Conversation

I’ve been thinking how to restart this blog – or if it is possible at all. Should I just give up?

On the other hand, I’ve been busy twittering. It’s easy to blame Twitter for the lack of blogging output. But, I actually post a lot online. Much of it is in forums and email. The difference? There is a conversation.

In contrast, the blog is more of “post an idea” – like an essay, or article. In the past I thought I would be able to keep up blogging article-style. I failed.
I need to make this blog conversational, to make it alive.

How do people keep the blog conversations running? One way is through comments. Another is by continuing the conversations on other blogs. I do read a lot of other blogs (well, mostly tech/industry) but I don’t form an idea strong and coherent enough to post a complete article in response.

I should get there. I must join this blog with the global conversation.

Twitter 1, Blog 0

So I haven’t been posting. But I sure have been tweeting! Well at least I release early, release often – what’s on my mind. But the concept of Twitter as Blog Draft didn’t work for me.

NetBeans Notes

Is the NetBeans blogging contest a SEO scheme from Sun?

I have nothing contest-worthy to say, so I’ll just list what I’ve been doing in NetBeans:

• Installed NetBeans 6.1 beta, the full edition, in Windows Vista. Installed JDK6 Update 5 as well.
• The Look and Feel is a bit Vista-like, but not enough to look native.
• Started on a little project. Learned different shortcuts as I am using Eclipse for the most part.
• Biggest annoyance: New Class is still very sparse: no option to select interfaces to implement, superclasses, and access level. You need to type these in in the code, the traditional way.
• Installed the same version, in Ubuntu Linux. First tried OpenJDK, installed through apt-get.
• The core NetBeans installed, but GlassFish did not since there is an incompatibility – something to do with keytool.
• Installed sun-java6-jdk and ran the installer again. It continued with GlassFish.
• NetBeans on OpenJDK+Linux looks terrible. The fonts are bad. Sun JDK looks better.