::A Geek in Korea::

Way back in the day, when torrents were brand spanking new and exciting, I used “The Shad0w experimental Bittorrent client”, which eventually evolved into Bittornado. Shad0w’s torrent program handled one file at a time, crashed a fair bit, and wasn’t all that great.

When more “advanced” clients were available, I picked up the habit of using the RAM-sucking, CPU intensive Azureus. This was only acceptable because the alternatives were lacking in some feature or another. As a whole, Azureus never made me happy, but using something else would mean I was missing out some something I thought I had come to need in a client.

A when a less resource intensive program finally had all the features I needed, I dropped Azureus like the bad habit it was. While I used Windows XP, uTorrent ruled the roost. The first version I used didn’t even come with an installer. It was just a file that was crazy small.

Moving to Linux, I was presented with some new choices, and some old faces once again. The basic Ubuntu bittorent client installed when you boot up is simplistic to the extreme. It was like using the same “one torrent at a time” model from back when the Bittorrent protocol was still new. I don’t hate myself that much.

Looking for alternatives in Synaptic, I found Azureus was available. Hell no. There was also a program called “Deluge” that was in early beta release, and Ktorrent. I decided to check out Ktorrent because it seemed the closest replacement to uTorrent at the time of my switch. The GUI was very familiar.

Any program with a capital “K” in it is probably part of the “KDE” desktop environment. I tend to run GNOME. This isn’t a reconcilable problem. KDE applications like Ktorrent run in GNOME, but they have to load up the non-native “widgets” to draw on the screen to make the menus. In essence, I’m running GNOME, and to draw Ktorrent, I have to load some parts of the KDE desktop too. This means that Ktorrent would take up more resources than a program made to run natively in Gnome. It’s nothing serious. It’s just a minor annoyance that means a few extra seconds when launching a program.

Someone in a thread about Bittorrent clients recommended checking out Deluge. One of the points of interest was that it was built with a PyGTK interface, (GTK+= GNOME Tool Kit) meaning it would run much better with GNOME . Since it wouldn’t have to load a second set of widgets, it would be “native” and faster. Going down the list of features added since the last updates when I passed it by, it had all the features I needed too. Faster, with more features? Sure, I’ll give it a try.

I’ve been very surprised by Deluge’s performance. The plugin system is new, but it still worked better than every single Azureus plugin I ever tried to use. Even Ktorrent’s plugins were a pain to work with compared to Deluge. I’m not running empirical tests to check, but the interface and torrents respond more quickly than Ktorrent in GNOME. The speeds I’ve been getting have also increased, but that might be because they are from another source, and might not have anything to do with the client at all.

I’ve been completely won over by Deluge, and I’m using it as my dedicated Bittorrent client. It’s better than the alternatives in Linux, and it’s better than what I’ve used in Windows too. Give it a shot if you need to download some big files from time to time.

I’m a podcast junkie. Whether I’m walking my dog, or walking to work, if I’m alone for any period of time outside the house I’m probably listening to a podcast. I’ve got quite a few that I listen to each week, and I’d like to share some of the feeds I’ve been listening to recently.

Escape Pod/Pseudopod These are my two weekly fiction podcasts. Escape Pod covers science fiction, and Pseudopod covers horror. They both pay authors to allow someone to read their stories for the show. This means top quality fiction from all sorts of interesting writers.

SModcast This is Kevin Smith’s podcast. It’s basically Kevin Smith talking like he’s in a movie all the time. He has a preoccupation with cursing and homophobia. Occasionally hilarious, other times meandering and pointless. I’ve only been listening this for two shows. It had me laughing so hard at work someone asked me if I was alright.

Slate Explainer This is a daily podcast. Ever have a question about some aspect of the news? Write in and have them explain it. It’s interesting and topical. It’s also short, and lets me keep up with the news.
Slate Daily Podcast This I like because of the political commentary and the “Slate Gabfest”. Despite the “No Politics” rule on my blog, I am actually follow politics fairly closely. This is an interesting breakdown of what happens in the news from some people that make it their business to know what is going on.

NPR Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me The reason NPR will forever need to exist is to bring me this podcast on a weekly basis. This show is genius. Humor, news, quizzes rolled into one. I love this show so much.

NPR Sunday Puzzle This podcast is how I get my brain going on Monday mornings. Listening to the puzzle and trying to solve the quiz is usually tough. I like to listen and see if I’m faster than the people that call in. (I’m usually not.)

Podiobooks- Seventh Son Trilogy I’m hooked on this series of audiobooks. I listened to two of the books while in Europe, and I’m waiting, week by week, as the author releases episodes leading up to the end of the final book in the series. It has not disappointed yet.

The Naked Scientist Fascinating. As a teacher that has quite a few science classes, I like this podcast because it answers simple questions in topical formats about different issues in science. They also have people answering questions from people all around the world. If I ever got stumped on an answer to a science question, I’d probably send it in to the Naked Scientists for an answer.

The Onion Radio News It’s the Onion, in radio form. It’s usually long enough to last me the time it takes to descend the elevator each day. Good for a quick awkward laugh in a confined space.

A little more than one year ago I wrote about Songbird. Songbird is what you get if you took iTunes, broke down the wall that kept you in the iTunes store, then set it loose on the web. Instead of being forced to go through what is available from labels, you can surf the entire INTERNET looking for songs.

Visit one of the Mp3 blogs that are easy to find with Songbird, and all of a sudden you can be exposed to hundreds of different sources of music. Listen to the songs as you surf, then download what you like. It will keep track of all the music you find, organize them, and even sync them to a mp3 player. Better yet, it’s built on Mozilla, so you can have “Firefox” like features like tab browsing and advertising blocking.

The 0.1 version I was using last year was a little rough around the feathers. It showed promise, but it needed to smooth some of the processes that to get to the useful features. Right now, the 0.3 version is a vast improvement. The entire GUI is much more responsible and stable. The plugins I tried out weren’t really ready for use with Linux. They also seemed to be version dependent. I hope they eventually adopt a Firefox 2.0 plugin system that makes most things platform agnostic as well as automatic to update.

Does it beat the current reigning champ of music organization in Linux land: Amarok? Not yet. Amarok is more polished, and it has tons of plugins that are very slick. I also like the playlists and the great management features. It’s bar none the best music player simply because it’s had the time to be polished like a diamond.

However, I’m running Songbird these days just as much because I still get that giddy feeling when I find a new song. If you are looking for some web remixes or want to find a few random tracks from an artist you’ve stumbled upon for the first time, I’d recommend giving it a try. It’s clearly got some momentum, and it’s getting better. Who knows where it will be in a year?

It runs on EVERYTHING, Windows, Linux, and Mac, so you have know excuse, you know?

Last week, after a request to move some music around on my wife’s iRiver H10, I completely messed up her device. I had installed Rockbox, which worked well-ish considering the maturity of the firmware. Rockbox doesn’t support Korean fonts in any manner I can figure out on my own. My wife’s music, being mostly Korean, was showing up as a series of blocks, not characters. It wasn’t acceptable. She asked me to switch back to the original firmware.

Luckily, switching back to the original firmware was easy. There were no signs Rockbox had ever been installed. This is a good thing, because I damaged the music database that the device uses to sort and organize music. Without it, the player was nothing but a Windows-Only paperweight. P.O.S. My wife took it to the after service center and they wiped out her music and rewrote her database to get it working once again. I had made backups of her collection anticipating this, so she didn’t lose anything.

I was handed a blank Mp3 player and told, “Please, put my music back on this.”

I decided that I’d go back to what I had originally planned when I started Windows XP virtualization. I’d run my VirtualBox Windows XP install, mount the USB drive, and use the Windows application that comes with the Mp3 player to manually rebuild the database each time I add or remove songs from her player.

Now, how the hell should I go about that?

First: Install the PUEL version (Non-free) of VirtualBox. It includes support for USB.

Second: Enable USB support for VirtualBox. I followed this guide.

Third: Install the propriety Mp3 database program. In this case iRiver Plus 3.

Fourth: Add music to Mp3 player in Ubuntu. Unmount.

Fifth: Load of Windows XP. Fire up the Mp3 database program. Rebuild Database. Unmount.

BOOM. New music on the player that doesn’t damage the database anymore.

FINISHED!

Now I don’t need to bother with the damn thing anymore, and my wife can get her music with Korean fonts. I’ve gone from defeat and threatening to throw the player out our balcony to mild annoyance at poor Linux support and the number of steps it took me to get to this point. It took around a year, but I’m finally done with it.

Internet Nerd Rant mode:

I’ve long told my wife that Korean websites need to start adopting well establish “standards” so that they can actually be functional for people. Every time I get locked out of a service just because it uses some non-conforming standard, I get annoyed. She’s not responsible for designing bad websites, but she doesn’t understand why her geeky husband gets all pissy about such a topic. I’m not sure Korean web designers understand the point of the Internet at times. It’s about access to information, not some “lets add crazy extensions” contest.

A dangerous mono-culture built around Internet Explorer and Active X plugins cut out anyone not willing to surf the “Microsoft” way. Basically, when Microsoft went around trying to split the web by designing proprietary systems that don’t play with others, Korea was one of the few countries that said, “That sounds great!”

Koreans adopted things early since the Internet boomed here, and often went with choices that have locked them into proprietary standards. There were very few considerations for “alternatives”, to put it politely. They’ve suffered as a result. I read that people couldn’t upgrade to Vista because Internet Explorer 7 broke how the major Korean portals were doing their business transactions.

Koreans have an increased rise of spyware and malware because the “target” victim clicks to allow any Active X popup they see. Whenever I use a public terminal, or a family member’s computer, the thing needs to be deloused from all the stuff running in the background most likely stealing passwords. This is a Windows problem, but the culture of “Everyone runs IE” certainly isn’t helping things.

The portal websites that most Koreans use break nearly every single design rule I learned studying the web in college. Granted, when I was learning the web, things weren’t great either, but damn, visit Daum, Naver, or G-Market and tell me these aren’t eyesores? (Heh, it’s almost as bad with Korean Yahoo and American Yahoo.)

It’s a cultural thing. I learned to use the web another way. Google minimalism and whatnot. If I see a page I can’t easily scan for information immediately, I’m gone.

Anyway, then thing that set me off on this topic was that when I was looking for the website for the local cinema, the Google result told me that the page in question would try to install spyware or malware. Without all the crazy extensions and plugins that Korean websites require, their website is barely functional. Would I have clicked some sort of popup to allow their stuff if I was on Windows? Possibly. Now even checking a movie on the web is actively dangerous to people’s machine.

Of course, I’m running Linux, and I’m on Firefox, so I’m not likely to be coming down with any of those sorts of virtual herpes that they probably would be installing on a Windows box. Still, the point remains. If people just learned proper web design, they wouldn’t need all that crazy crap.

I knew that the “Gutsy Gibbon” upgrade for Ubuntu Linux was sometime this month. It’s fairly easy to know when to expect an upgrade: Add six months since the last release. Feisty Fawn was 7.04, so that would make the next release, Gutsy Gibbon, get a release sometime in October (7.10).

Turns out, Gutsy FINAL isn’t due out until October 18th, but they’ve released a “Release Candidate” version that’s probably going to be the final version baring any major fuckmuppetry. Since the command to upgrade was LITERALLY one line of short code, I figured “What the hell? What’s the worst that can happen now that my data is in its own partition anyway?”

Or, maybe I just hate myself and wanted a problem to fix.

Anyway, the upgrade commenced as planned for an hour or so, then it started to throw up all sorts of errors relating to my video card drivers. Crap. I had installed some third party drivers, but the release wanted to remove them and found them broken somehow. It suggested I file a bug report about not being able to uninstall what it wanted. The final warning it gave me was rather ominous, “This upgrade may leave your system in an unusable state.”

Oh crap.

My pictures are well backed up, and I’ve got my data separate from my architecture, so in theory, if worst came to worse, I could just reinstall and not lose any data. Oh well, let’s see what happens when I reboot.

The computer started, but the graphics weren’t the proper resolution. It was in “Safe Mode”, and the title bar of all my windows had disappeared. I couldn’t close, resize, or move anything. A quick search of the Ubuntu Forums fixed that problem rather easily. I switched from Compiz Fusion handling my windows back to Gnome’s Metacity. I’ve lost my eyecandy for the moment, but I’ll find some tutorial somewhere eventually. The point is now my system was no longer “unusable”, but slightly less pretty for a bit. Someone’s got to help me find more Emerald themes to make Compiz Fusion pretty again.

I added the “fast user switching” to my menu. This is probably the most useful new feature I’ve discovered at the moment. Now my wife can quickly log into her account. I also had her default language change to Korean, which should make her more comfortable in front of the computer, but make my life hell if I have to dig out any information from her menu.  I’m still the user that can make and delete accounts, so if worse comes to worse I’ll try setting it back to English or make a new one if I must fiddle with her stuff in the future.

Things still seem to be working relatively well. There might be some hidden glitches here and there that might get fixed when the final version is released next week, but it was a good enough upgrade for me that I didn’t need to reformat.

My wife doesn’t exactly share my love of geekery and computers. I am content to play with files, install and explore programs, and even maintain a website. She’s strictly a utilitarian sort of computer user. So far, I’ve got her logging in to her own account to check email or to browse the web using an installed version of Windows XP in a virtualization program. That’s good enough for now.

Today, I had this weird flash of inspiration. “Hey, I wonder of Rockbox works for the iriver H10 my parents bought my wife? That thing is a total pain in the ass. If it managed it’s own database, it might actually be worth using again. Plus, Rockbox is so cool to play with. I wonder what they’ve done with it since I last used it?”

When I went to check this morning, the Rockbox page was down. I wasn’t able to experiment setting up the firmware until after my wife got back home from running errands. The installation is unbelievably easy. Rename ONE file, place the bootloader, install the rest of the files by dropping a folder, fire it up and watch it go. No dangerous flashing of hardware or anything.

I love Rockbox because it lets you extend hardware. My wife’s mp3 player has a small 128×128 pixel resolution screen. Some bored hacker enabled video playback. Why? It’s like watching a movie on a postage stamp. This strikes me as awesome, if not pointless. It’s a “just because you can” sort of hack. Ogg Vorbis support? Custom themes? Games? DOOM port?! Who doesn’t want the opportunity to play DOOM on an Mp3 player? It’s completely impossible to try to beat, but it’s DOOM on an MP3 player. That’s just awesome.

I told her, “I’m going to upgrade your player. I won’t break it. I hope.

She willingly gave me her mp3 player to experiment on. I didn’t have to pry it out of her hands or anything. A lot of the improvements are “under the surface” and not as readily apparent as the streamlined GUI she is used to.  She doesn’t need to worry about building the database for the player, but I do. Anything that gets around the horrible software bundled with the H10 is good with me. I just hoped she was willing to navigate through some text menus instead of the id3 tag database she was used to.

Her primary concern was that since we moved to Linux, Korean fonts no longer work. This does sort of suck, since she listens to a lot of Korean music. She’d rather I go back to Windows XP just because her mp3 player isn’t working 100% correctly. Linux does 95% of everything else we need to do, and we aren’t going back, despite that annoyance. I’ll just have to figure that out some other way.

I’ve told her I’m on the lookout for workarounds. When I showed her Puzzle Bobble on her Mp3 player, she said, “That’s good. I can see it, so I can play that. Thanks!” While I still need to figure out how to get things working under Linux sometimes, at least there is a reason for her to understand why I am trying.

I’ve been an owner of a “DMB” player for a while. I talk about it from time to time. One of the features I never get around to using is the whole Digital Media Broadcasting aspect of the player.

First of all, when it first rolled out in Daejeon, there wasn’t much content. There were two channels, and they aren’t very entertaining. One was news. Boring, Korean broadcast news. I’d be more likely to fall asleep watching this than I would getting off at the right subway stop if I starting watching this.

The other channel wasn’t any better. This was the “youth oriented” channel. It’s all the lame Korean shows I avoid watching normally. Dating shows, game shows with no purpose, annoying stuff. The exact reason I DON’T watch Korean television ever.

Today, I had burned through all my podcasts, had no videos on hand, and was walking back to my house. I tried the DMB scanner and was surprised to find two more channels on the list. One of them was running a sort of “Korea’s most wanted” style show. At least I THINK so. It was terribly boring.

My last hope for entertainment was my new channel on the DMB. They were showing a “Wow, other cultures are strange!” style show with a Korean panel. The show would travel somewhere and video tape a segment with someone strange, then the host and other guests would make spectacularly obvious comments about what they were watching.

With insights like, “Will he eat that? What’s he doing? That’s sure strange!” this is a staple of Korean television. It’s also the format favored by Korean radio. Play something people want to watch or listen to, then TALK while it’s playing. It’s like America’s Funniest Home Video, without the America, or the bodily damage. No Bob Saget either.

The whole show I saw as I walked home was dedicated to a strange man in China with an unusual pet. He kept giant centipedes in his house. His wife didn’t like them at all, and his neighbors thought he was weird. Not for keeping the pets, but for eating them as well. He showed off for the camera by devouring the giant centipede that was crawling on him. It’s China. It’s not like this was high on the “shocking” scale of strange stuff I saw devoured or for sale to be eaten.

Anyway, watching the man go around eating his “pets” while grossing everyone out and hearing the Korean panel’s comments about it kept me entertained as I walked home. I recorded it to upload to an online video site, but it’s in some strange proprietary format (.TES?) that doesn’t work with anything else. What’s the point of downloading and saving a file in a format nothing else reads?

Anyway, now I’ve got a few more choices on my player for DMB. Nothing great, but it still is digital TV on the go.

We went over to my mother-in-law’s house. She had made kimchi for us, and since we have nothing in the way of side dishes to eat with rice, we needed to pick it up as soon as possible. It’s been a lazy week, with my wife working late and me getting home extra early due to my split schedule. I’ve reverted to bachelor cooking for myself. I’ve fought the urge to order pizza and live like a complete bum, but we haven’t had a decent dinner together all week.

Anyway, we hung out with mom for a while. She immediately got up and started cutting fruit for us, even though we had just arrived from dinner stuffed. When pressed about why she was trying to stuff us further, she admitted she was just “bored” and wanted something to do with her hands while she talked. I fought down a peach and some other fruit, but couldn’t finish off the plate.

While we were hanging out watching some overacted Korean television drama, my brother in law dropped by the house too. He’s living with the parents for a little bit between jobs. He and I chatted a little bit, he asked about Europe, and the dog. The plan is for him to reside in our apartment while we are away. He’s going to be a live in doggy-sitter. It’s not pure altruism on his part, I’m sure he’ll relish in being out of his parents house but still staying rent free.

When it came time to go home, he offered to drive us with his mom’s car. He’s got a license, but he isn’t driving much because he doesn’t own his own car. The license was a requirement for finding and applying for jobs.

A few weeks ago, when I was riding in their family car, I saw they had a “navigation device”. My mother in law had gotten it for free for using a specific bank card to purchase gas. Since she drives a lot at work, she got this sweet prize.

Navigation devices are fairly ubiquitous here. In polling just the parking lot outside the apartment when I walk Yoshi, roughly 40% of the cars have some sort of computer assisted driving device mounted on their windshield.

If you’ve ever driven to a new place in Korea, or needed to find a specific address, it’s easy to understand why they are so useful. There are so many signs, and so many poorly marked buildings, these sorts of devices are essential to prevent getting lost. Korea’s assignment of building numbers and addresses is nearly random. It’s assigned by order of completion in the area. Also, most streets don’t have NAMES. Streets are usually referred to as “Next to this or that building” or “Intersection of these apartment complexes” Yeah. It’s rough getting lost if you aren’t familiar with the city.

Anyway, my mother in law’s sweet navigation system isn’t a first generation model by any stretch of the imagination. These devices are highly evolved in Korea, and they have a wealth of features. This gadget had a large, 4.3 inch touch screen. It could plot a course in any major city from anywhere via GPS. It could receive both antenna and digital broadcast television, as well as had “well being radio” that had calming music that was supposed to help you quit smoking.

There was also a Norebang, or singing room feature! Choose a song, and it would connect to a database and pull up the lyrics. They are all organized in a national song database, so if you go to a location to sing, the same number would pull up the same song, whether it’s in the car or in the singing room itself!
Imagine, not only can you sing in the car, but you can pick the song, it will provide lyrics, and grade your performance afterwards. Any you can do this while driving. Even while you are singing, the directions from the navigation device will cut in telling you when to make turns or change lanes. Really, really awesome.

This sort of entertainment is for bored passengers, and not for the driver. I couldn’t keep my eyes on the road as the passenger. I was having too much fun with this neat toy. If I ever end up getting a car in Korea, this sort of thing will be a must purchase for me.

I have a bad habit of restlessly installing games and utilities from the web without sometimes knowing what they will do to my system. Installing and uninstalling applications in the Synaptic menu is so easy, sometimes it’s a disservice. “Oh well, I’ll just uninstall it if it sucks and try something else” is my mentality when using Linux these days. It’s really that easy, and it’s encouraged to try something that “works for you”. That’s what freedom is all about.

The problem, oddly, wasn’t FROM Linux being too easy to install, but from Windows games being too easy to install too. I had been using WINE for a little while to play Blizzard games. I’ll get in a phase when I want a really focused RTS experience, but then realize I suck at those games and will uninstall them after a week.

The problem is, installing and uninstalling in WINE isn’t as straightforward as it is in Windows, so I get lots of orphan files sitting around not working anymore. If I uninstall a Linux .deb file, I can check to see if it’s gone, or if the configuration files are still around easily enough. Even when I go digging into WINE’s folder, I still can’t get rid of all the files I need to remove a game from my system. I’m not sure if Uninstalling is unsupported in WINE, or I just don’t know the procedure. (Almost positive it’s the later.).

Anyway, spurred on by a Kubuntu user in the forum, I installed the Kubuntu desktop with Synaptic. It’s literally a few clicks to install an entire desktop environment. No wonder I get in trouble with how easy Linux can be sometimes.

I wanted to check out Kubuntu again, as I hadn’t used it in a while, and KDE is getting a lot of hype these days with their impending KDE 4 release. The install went smoothly, but I realized that I have a lot of duplicate applications in my menus. I got rid of most of the applications I didn’t use, but hit a conflict with media players. The KDE application kaffeine tried to play all my media files, but didn’t display video. Unacceptable. Even uninstalling or removing configuration files didn’t solve the problem.

“Nuke it from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.”

In a move that is probably complete overkill, I backed up all my pressing new material that I wanted to keep. I went ahead and completely redid all the partitioning and reinstalled everything. However, since I had decided I was in this for the long haul, I nuked my Windows partition along with my previous Linux install. Windows free? Almost.

Since I was reinstalling, I’m trying to set up a multiuser environment for the first time. I set up a separate /home partition for our personal files so that I don’t have to lose my own information if I ever need to reinstall windows again. This is highly recommended to do when installing Linux the first time, but with my Windows partition sitting around wasting space I never did it before.

The ultimate goal is to get my wife using Linux on her own. This is not a simple undertaking. My wife isn’t fatally tech allergic, but it might give her a rash from time to time. She doesn’t have any background in computers, so it might actually be easier for her to learn Linux. She doesn’t have to “unlearn” any bad habits like I did.

I went and installed VirtualBox so she can use Internet Explorer to surf Korean websites from within a virtualized Windows XP environment. Since it’s “in a box”, she can’t really break it, and there is no virus threat. I don’t need Internet Explorer on my desktop, so I don’t need to install it twice or fiddle with permissions. Besides setting out a few icons for her to use Openoffice, she’s all set now.

The idea is that I can set up the computer for her so it “just works” without having to worry about her messing up some of the tweaking I like to do. She gets what she needs without the ability to break anything (permissions!), and I get what I need as well. Our files will be separated from each other, so we don’t need to worry about messing with each other’s work.

That’s the idea, at least. I’m not exactly a sysadmin. I got the box back up and running the way it used to (without all the extra applications in the menus) in a few hours. With everything still being “fresh” the system seems a lot more snappy and responsive.

I’m slowly learning keep my finger off that “install” button. If it isn’t in Synaptic, or run as a standalone application, I’m not going to go out of my way to make it work. At least, I won’t this week.