As you can tell by the google ads and search bar, my personal server is back online....

YEAH ME!!!!.

I took the opportunity of a faulty hard drive to experiment with some new operating systems...

First up was Linspire... ugg bloated and slow version of linux. Just could not get the GUI (Graphical User Interface) to move and any sort of speed.

BALETED!!!!!!

Next up was Ubuntu. Very slick looking linux OS, and free CD's I like it a lot but when it came to configuring it as a web/ftp/file server it just wasn't easy enough for me. It seems I have a problem with blinking cursors..... Give me a good GUI and I can configure anything.... put me in front of a command prompt without step by step instructions and we end up 50/50 at best. So although I'll probably come back to Ubuntu at some point and use it to learn more about linux, it didn't make sense to have it as my server at this point.

BALETED!!!!!!

I started reading up on how to make a Mac Mini into an ISP (ISP in a Box), which looks like a really fun and educational project, the problem is I don't have a mac mini, and since my sister's wedding cash has been pretty tight.... so we'll ebay some stuff and maybe make that a winter project.....

BELAYED!!!!!!!

So what did I end up with... a blank hard drive and a desire not to just put Windows XP back on it.... :( But there are these "remixed" versions of Windows out there..... Now I'm not going to put in print what happened after I came across one of those downloads, but needless to say I am running Windows XP Pro (I have several legal copies) again, and its been tweaked for speed and is very very stable....

For the server side I got the latest copy of XAMPP for windows. XAMPP is this nice pre-configured ISP in a box set up based on the latest release of Apache. It come complete with MySQL, PHP, Perl, and offers add ons for python, tomcat, and much more. All pre-configured and compiled in this nice neat lil package... basically an ISP in a Box for Windows.

Now that that is done I can continue working on setting up a computer lab/eletroics workshop in my basement (batcave)... I have been collecting old pc's for a while now, and I plan to set them up with a verion of BSD (probably PCBSD) on them, for file serving and basic storage back up... and I'll probably get each one subscribed to a distributed computing project, but what else I'll use them for I'm not sure yet.....

Perhaps for load balancing when this site really takes off??? nah I'll run out of bandwidth long before that.... ;)

Cindy... can I have fiber optic brought to the house?????

Dermal display technology... no its not a reality, not yet. But Gina Miller has envisioned it.

Nanogirl + Dermal Display

The concept is with millions of nanobots in our bodies in the future, some of them could be used as "pixels"... think user controllable tattoos. Well if the "pixelbots" could talk with the health bots or via wifi get internet access, etc.. well who would really need a PDA...




You have to check out the movie on the site. Really amazing stuff, nice work Ms, Miller.