Ubuntu on the Eee: Way Cool!

I’ve been having a couple of nagging problems with Xandros on my Eee. It’s probably what you’d call “power user stuff” that nobody except me is going to run into. So, I decide to give Ubuntu a try instead.

I had actually tried loading Ubuntu 7.10 on my 12” Toshiba laptop, but there is some bug preventing audio from working, and I got fed up with fighting with it. I thought to myself, if this is the kind of trouble I’m going to have with Ubuntu, historically considered the “easy” Linux, then I’m in for a world of hurt.

But, I did a bit of reading, and found that a bunch of other folks are running Ubuntu on the Eee just fine, and there’s a website chock-full of info on how to get it installed and running.

The installation process was pretty easy. I have an external CD-ROM drive, so I downloaded the normal ISO disk image of Gutsy Gibbon (7.10) and installed it via their normal installer. Afterward, I copied the Ubuntu Eee script to an SDHC card, and ran it, to tweak everything that requires tweaking. (As the instructions suggested, I had to re-run it after loading a bunch of updates…and I did have do those mod probe commands before everything completely behaved.)

After all that, I’m up and running, and very happy.

I can tell that Ubuntu (or Gnome) is putting a bit more load on the Eee than Xandros/KDE was. I may try loading Xubuntu instead and seeing if that makes it slightly more responsive. But even accounting for that, I’m very happy with the results. I have a fully working system, don’t have to worry about filling up the drive space as quickly (by, say, upgrading OpenOffice without the old one taking up space on the default UnionFS partition), and lots more unixy-stuff “just works” without having to tweak it or work around Xandros/Eee customization issues.

I’ve been using the computer with Ubuntu on it since Thursday or Friday (today is Monday), and have even been using it for work today. I work for an internet company, so we’re all about web applications and Outlook. I’m using Thunderbird instead of Outlook, and that’s working just fine (though I have to login to the webmail interface to get at my calendar). Firefox is just Firefox, like on every other platform, and I’m having no issues there. Same with OpenOffice…all working excellently.

A Strange Adventure

What a strange and wild ride it’s been through the land of UMPCs and ultralight laptops.

I’ve been through a gazillion different laptops over the past few years. Here’s just a few highlights. (And this isn’t even accounting for normal size laptops/work computers provided by employers/etc.)

For the longest time, I had an Averatec 3200 series laptop. It was a bit slow, but the price was right ($999 new when I bought it, back whenever that was), and it ran like a champ. It was tiny. 12” 1024x768 screen, only a few pounds, very tolerable for hauling around. I did much of my blogging on that laptop. I rarely traveled for work back then, so I didn’t take it on the road with me very often. The furthest I got with it was the Starbucks down the street. I’d still have that laptop today, but the power supply connector slowly came loose from the motherboard. I wasn’t up for soldering, so I gave the laptop to a more technically-inclined friend, who repaired it and gave it to his mother.

I replaced that with a Toshiba U205. 12” widescreen, 1280x800 screen resolution. When the Averatec finally died, I decided I needed a replacement 12” laptop immediately, so I dragged my girlfriend to Best Buy and picked this one nearly at random. The laptop base is very thick, which makes it less fun for transporting it around. (It just barely fits into a 12” MacBook sleeve, one that would probably held two of the Averatec laptops.) And, this laptop was my first experience with Vista, which made me want to poke my eyes out. I ended up buying a retail XP license and downgrading it myself. After I went to XP, everything was golden. Until recently, it’d been my workhorse, every day, Powerpoint, Word, Outlook, etc, laptop. The screen is bright and gorgeous.

Beside the huge annoyance of Vista, I also had to deal with the huge annoyance of Best Buy – I had to argue with two employees and a manager about how no, I did not want to buy antivirus from them, no, I did not want to buy an extended warranty, no, I am not interesting in hearing more about why I’m wrong. They had a whole script worked out and they weren’t planning on “letting” me buy the laptop lest I invested in security software and a warrantee. I should’ve gave up and left at that point, but instead, I raised my voice and let them know, very loudly, that we can either stop talking and just sell me the laptop, or I can leave. They shut up and sold me the laptop at that point. That experience, combined with all the stuff I read about various other Best Buy shenanigans (read the Consumerist sometime), pretty much guarantees that I will never step foot into a Best Buy store ever again. But I digress.

I’ve still go the Toshiba. But, I wasn’t finding it suitable for travel. So, in my quest for smaller, lighter, more easily transportable, I bought an OQO Model 02. I tricked it out. Max RAM, max disk, Sprint EVDO built-in, docking station, spare battery, rugged case, tablet pen, Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, etc. Every appropriate piece of kit I could think of, all to help maximize my OQO experience.

I ordered the OQO Model 02 back in May, right after it became available. (I think shortly after people found their pre-orders getting filled.) After using it, here’s what I found: The OQO Model 02 is a piece of garbage.

I had nothing but problems with the integrated Sprint EVDO modem (and I have had Sprint EVDO for a long time, so I know what I’m doing). I’ve had the thing brick for no reason. (Thankfully, I had the dock with DVD drive, so I could reload it.) I’ve had simple flash animations in Firefox hard freeze it. I’ve had the thing decide it doesn’t want to start up for no reason. I even ended up RMA’ing the first one. OQO Support has been very helpful and kind, but even replacing the unit didn’t really make things better.

I gave up and cancelled the Sprint service and went back to using an external EVDO modem, because it works a thousand times better. Talking to other geeks who have EVDO built into their laptops, I found that they seemingly never had issues – only I did.

I was traveling all the time for work, then. The point of having the OQO so was that I could catch up on emails or work projects while sitting bored at the airport. Or on a train. Or on a bus. Or at a café. But the EVDO connection flapped intermittently, seemingly right in the midst of me trying to fix some important problem while logged in to work. It drove me nuts. I had visions of throwing this thing out of the window off the train a number of times. And beyond that, something about the CPU speed, bus speed, backplane, or something else, is just too painfully slow for everyday use in Windows. And keep in mind that we’re talking XP – not Vista!

So, forget that. The OQO became rarely used. For a while, we hooked it to our living room TV, and used it to run Slingbox (which it could barely do) or play movies I had converted to XVID format (which it also could barely do). Laughably, the thing has an HDMI port on it, yet it struggles to handle higher rez video. I’m not talking about running Adobe Premier, I’m talking about simply playing back an already compressed widescreen movie. I have no clue why they though to put an HDMI connector on it; all I ever did was end up converting it to VGA. It would’ve been much better to have a VGA connector on board, for PowerPoint warriors to use on the road. The thing is just absolutely not suitable to drive an HDTV.

Office 2007 was unbearable on the OQO, so I ended up rolling back to Office 2003 instead. It worked alright, and it did come in handy to have Outlook in my pocket while traveling. With two batteries, the thing can last all day long, which is neat. It comes in handy when you’re at a conference, sitting in the audience, and don’t really have the room for a full laptop.

But overall – with the problems I had – I’d call my OQO experience negative. I had always wanted an OQO since the first ones hit the street way back in 2005. Finally, I could afford one, and I could even get it with EVDO built in. Boy, do I regret that purchase.

I ended up selling everything to a friend at a substantial loss. I was pretty frank with him that the Asus Eee was cheaper and way better. But, he really wanted it, so I gave him a good deal. There’s been no complaining since, so perhaps it’s better suited to what he wanted to do with it.

I even consider my Sony U750P UMPC better than the OQO. I’ve had the tiny Vaio for years, and will likely never sell it. Mostly, we use it as our bedroom TV. It’s an excellent companion to a Slingbox. It’s only got an 800x600 screen, but that’s more than enough for simple web surfing or watching videos. If it had a built in keyboard, I’d probably still be using it as my work computer, to this day. When I worked in an office and had to go to meetings constantly, I had my employer set it up as my work computer. When docked at my desk I had a large monitor and keyboard. When in a meeting, I had just the touchscreen and a stylus. I've since then left that job and taken another one, where I travel quite a bit more. Without an integrated keyboard, I just don’t find the Sony suitable for travel, so it stays at home. (It has a neat, foldable USB keyboard. But it’s not really something you can successfully wrangle on a plane or a train.)

And that brings me to my current primary work/travel computer: The Asus Eee! I love this little guy, and have spent endless hours tweaking settings and fiddling. It’s working great for work, it works great for blogging or surfing while traveling (with my external Sprint EVDO modem), and I’ve even used it as my sort-of-cell-phone, using Skype over hotel wifi or my EVDO connections.

Laptop Magazine calls the Eee, “pound for pound, the best value-priced notebook on the planet,” and I couldn’t agree more. I added a 2GB RAM stick to mine, and a 16GB SDHC card, and it does everything I need to do, easily. The keyboard, while small, is suitable for travel. I wrote a blog post on an airplane recently. I’ve never been able to do that. There’s just not enough room and not even a 12” laptop fits in there well enough to allow you to touch type. But the Eee did!

The Eee has a few rough edges here and there, stuff I’ll likely talk more about in follow-up posts. But overall, my experience has been extremely positive since I bought it back in November. We actually ended up a three-Eee household for a bit. My girlfriend saw how much I was using my white Eee, that she ordered a pink one. When the pink one arrived, it dawned on me how neat it would be to have one in some other color, so I ordered the Galaxy Black 701. Now the Eee has gone from “neat” and “cute” to just amazing looking – it looks really great in black, and I’m very happy.

I’m selling the white one to a friend.

Office Space Hunt

I've been on the hunt for office space in our fair neighborhood lately. I had an office downtown, which was in a neat location, but it was an interior office with no windows, very tiny, and not all that cheap. I figured that up 'round these parts it'd be easier to find something at a reasonable price that was much nicer. Also, I like Rogers Park, like the idea of supporting it more, and like walking around the neighborhood. We frequent neighborhood stores, restaurants, and bars often. The area just feels like home.

In my hunt, I've looked at a few different spaces. I have a strong lead on one place that, if everything works out, I'll go for. It's right by the coffee shop Ennui, which would be nice for my morning coffee and snack needs.

I talked to another guy at another space on Morse. He showed me the space, I liked it, but didn't want to make a rash decision, so I thought on it overnight. In the mean time, he had even called me and offered to drop the price. Great! Definitely was within my budget. So I called him back the next day to agree to make a deal, and I received a strange, "Uhhh, I'm not sure if I can rent it now," reply from the guy. He indicated that somebody else had called him and is negotiating to lease the entire space. Could I wait a week and see if that falls through? If we had that discussion in person, he would've seen me roll my eyes. Tell ya what, I'm gonna keep looking. If you still have space next week, you feel free to ping me and offer it up. Strangely, that same day, he put up a new ad on Craigslist, asking for more money. Maybe he had second thoughts about what he offered the space to me for?

Anyway, that space was right by where people keep busting out windows these past few days. And I was fonder of the next space I looked at.

Anybody have any other leads on office space in RP? Need a one man space, maybe internet, maybe phone (or depending on the space I can use my sprint card and cell phone). I work for an Internet company and just need a quiet place to work. Ennui and Starbucks work for short periods, but not for the long haul.

(ETA: This content is from an previous site and comments were not saved.)

Flying on American

Lately I've grown to have an affinity for train travel. Big seats, power for your laptop, and a comfortable ride. Not to mention, you can get up and walk around.

If I want to go from Chicago to San Francisco, though, flying is pretty much my only option. Unless I want to spend two or three days straight on a train. I'm sure it'd be more relaxing overall, but who's got the time? As a result, I'm currently on an American Airlines flight from Chicago's O'Hare airport on my way to San Francisco.

The airport experience was fine. Checked in online the night before, and utilized curb side check-in at the terminal. The curb side check-in booth I was in line at was staffed by one very, very, very slow guy with too many people to handle, so I started to itch, worrying about making my flight on time (or more specifically, about my bag making it on the flight). Another airport employee noticed me on the verge of jumping up and down and helpfully directed me to the next door down, where there was no line to check a bag. Worked out great, and it very nice of him to point that out to me.

Got through security uneventfully. I was kind of wondering if I'd get questioned – I have all the gadgets in the world with me. I've got an iPod, my Nokia N800, my Windows Mobile phone and two tiny laptops (an OQO Model 02 and an Asus Eee). I'm selling the OQO to one of my friends when we meet up out in California, so it was necessary to lug it along in my messenger bag.

Nobody seemed to care. We'll see if my luggage was searched – I'm sure it looked weird that I had somewhere around six power supplies packed in the luggage. (And a spare battery, which supposedly they're concerned about nowadays. I'm sure it was under the size limit, though. And I was careful to put it in an ersatz carrying case (also known as a #10 envelope), as supposedly loose batteries are verboten.

Waiting at the gate, I noticed a standby list of 25+ for our flight, which was full or nearly full already. Maybe American had cancelled some other earlier flight to San Francisco. I know the weather was iffy inbetween here and there. Indeed, we sat on the tarmac for perhaps 20 minutes, our departure delayed due to weather west of us. Eventually they got it figured out and we got on our way.

We're on a “Super 80” jet with five seats across. There are signs indicating that there are DC power plugs under the seat. I'll have to figure that out after my Eee DC power adapter arrives.

Nobody's tried to squish their seat back on to me, and I can't hear a screaming baby for miles. This is as near to bliss as I'm ever going to get on an airplane, I suspect.

Terminal 3 at O'Hare is newish and generally clean, but like all airports nowadays, is completely overrun with people and none of those people are happy to be there. This goes for the employees, too. Nobody I've ever bought a magazine or McChicken from has ever showed the slightest hint of a spark that suggests that they enjoy life. But can you blame them? Their life is dealing with people at the airport all day.

Flying used to be a situation where I'd sit back, have a couple of drinks, and try my best to nod off and not think about landing or takeoff. I guess lately I've gotten to more of a zen place where I can sit and just force myself to relax. Lately, I tend to bring a chocolate bar and a large bottle of water, and that alone for food and drink in the air. It seems to help keep me calm.

Also, did I mention the gadgets? Nothing beats toys to play with while cooped up on an airplane. I have a pair of fancy-ish Sony noise-cancelling earbuds, which bring a cone of silence down and around me with a push of a button. Hooked them up to the Nokia, then caught up with a couple episodes of one of my favorite TV shows. Now I've got Miles Davis on the iPod, while I sit here and type this in OpenOffice on my Asus Eee.

The Eee has really turned out to be a traveler's best friend. It's the only laptop I've ever had where I can actually manage typing just fine on a seat back tray table. I might not be the only person who thinks so – I can see at least one other passenger typing away on one a few rows ahead of me.

Greyhound? No thanks.

So, I took the Greyhound bus back home to Chicago from Indianapolis, today.

It was.... about what you'd expect. Lots of stupid people who don't know how to travel and don't care about being courteous to others.

Where do I begin?

There was the guy who was mad that I sat next to him. "You're sitting on my pants!" Uh, your pants are very baggy and they're half over on my seat. Move 'em. He got mad and went and sat somewhere else. No idea where, since the bus was just about full.

Then there was the guy in front of me who was determined to take up as much space as possible. A woman asked to sit next to him and he was rude to her. "Maybe you should look somewhere else first." She said, no, scoot over. And asked him a number of times to do so throughout the trip. He kept getting angrier about it, and kept insisting he was over as far as possible. I saw him. I got to watch his bald spot for four hours. He kept sitting at an angle. I'm sympathetic that he doesn't want to put his ass to sleep, but this ain't first class, and he WAS taking up too much room.

And he had his seat tilted back the entire time. And he had a giant pillow the entire time.

There's no way I could've had the laptop out, even the tiny laptop. He took up all my space. Then when we arrived in Chicago and were waiting to disembark, he turned into chatty Kathy and wouldn't shut up. He apologized about the seat being broken. Dude, I'm not dumb. It wasn't broken. You unlatched it so it would lean back, then you latched it back forward at the end of the trip. Then he kept asking the kid who sat next to me about his medals. (The medals were from marching band.) Oh. I like the drum lines. What do you play? (Trumpet.) Oh. Uh. I think the kid sitting next to me was probably right around 17 and it I couldn't tell if the idiot talking to him (and me) was just subtly developmentally disabled, or looking for a date.

The bus had lots of screaming kids, and lots of people carrying their lives along with them in garbage bags. It was, I have to admit, a slice of life I'm fine not experiencing next time. Classism? I suppose, but it is what it is. I just want a quiet place to sit without people talking to me or throwing stuff at each other.

The Chicago Greyhound terminal is nice, though. Large, has food, seems busy. I assume that's an important hub for them.

The Indianapolis side is quite a bit sadder. It's a terminal shared with the Amtrak, and since there's only one train going each way every day, it's not much of a destination.

I avoided taking the train back up to Chicago this time around because it leaves earlier in the morning than I'd care to rise. I may reconsider that for next time (or take the Megabus).

Amtrak: Empire Builder from Chicago to Minneapolis

Last week, my girlfriend had to go to NYC for business. I didn't go with her, and because I had nothing else going on, I decided to go visit some friends up in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

It's only an hour on a plane, but when you include getting to the airport, parking (or transit), security, waiting, delays, weather, etc., it becomes a big ordeal. I'm not a huge fan of flying, though I am certainly grateful that I live in a big city (Chicago) with two airports and affordable flights just about everywhere.

But, since this was going to be for fun, I wanted a more relaxing way to travel. So, I turned to Amtrak. I took the Empire Builder train from Chicago to Minneapolis-St. Paul last Wednesday.

It turned out to be a lot of fun. The train left around 2pm and arrived around 10:30 pm. After boarding from the "first class lounge" at Chicago's Union Station, I was ushered to my Superliner Roomette, a tiny cabin with two comfortable chairs that fold down into a bed (and there's another bed overhead). The accommodations were amazingly comfortable. There was free bottled water, and an offer of free champagne (which I declined; too early in the day for me).

The seats recline and were quite comfortable. There's not a lot of room to stand around, but that's okay -- a private room is a private room, and a quiet place to relax is to be cherished. There was a volume control for the train announcements, a power outlet for a laptop or razor, a heat control, and a tiny closet that could barely hold my coat. They leave you a couple of bottles of water, and there's kleenex and a garbage can in the room as well. That's about it. The restroom is down the hall, and I have no idea where or if you can shower if you stay in one of these overnight. I'll figure that out on a future trip.

I have a Sprint USB modem, so for a long while out of Chicago I was online checking email, listening to streaming radio, and killing time on IM as I watched the sites roll by. Lots of farmland, but it's still fun to watch. The internet lasted for somewhere around the first half of the trip, then started dropping out too much to be useful. I suppose we were outside of a major Sprint coverage area.

Booking a room apparently entitles one to a meal, so I had what I jokingly refer to as a "train quality steak" for dinner. It was perfectly fine. Not quite Morton's, but it was good and did the trick. The only downside to a sit down meal on the train is that you don't know who you're going to sit with -- the seating is communal, and you will end up sitting and talking to people you don't know. I don't consider that much of a relaxing experience, and it doesn't help that the trains are full of people who want to meet people and hang out and chat. I fended off questions about my job and what I actually do (you work with the computers?) while having dinner with a couple of random gentlemen, one of whom was older and probably not very technology savvy.

After dinner, I stopped in the bar car for a drink, which I brought to my cabin. I then watched a few recorded TV shows on my laptop to run out the clock until we got to the Twin Cities. It was quite relaxing.

After we arrived at the stop in Minneapolis-St. Paul, there were ample cabs available, and it was a short ride to my hotel in downtown St. Paul. (More on the hotel in a subsequent post.)

As far as booking my trip, I was hedging my bets because I wasn't sure what the train experience would be like. So I had only booked a one way trip. I was happy enough with the experience that I booked the train for the return trip the next day.

The eastbound train is supposed to come through very early in the morning (by my reckoning) -- it leaves at 7:50 AM. On Sunday morning, I dragged myself out of bed, had a minor freak out when a cab took forever to arrive at my hotel, then made it to the train station around 7:30.

When I go there, I found no train. The train should have arrived already and been there waiting for us. There were buses sitting there, which I didn't think anything about. I went inside and up to the counter, and found out that the train had been delayed far west of us, due to an avalanche. The train wasn't expected at Minneapolis until 3:30 pm, and I had no clue what to do.

It turns out that Amtrak had a plan -- they procured buses for us. They split us up based on destination, and then we left on big "Greyhound"-style buses instead of a train. On time, even. What can I say? It was disappointing. I was really looking forward to a private cabin and a quiet nap on the way back to Chicago. Instead, we're crammed into buses instead, with no room to stretch or walk around. Sitting next to some random stranger, trying not to elbow them the entire time.

On top of that, I forgot my book and my headphones back at the hotel. Meaning, no iPod, and no book to read. Nor was my laptop battery very charged, as I had intended to plug it in on the train, if needed.

Somewhere in the western side of Wisconsin, the bus stopped and changed drivers. A bit further down the road, at Wisconsin Dells, the bus stopped and Amtrak bought everybody lunch at Burger King. Then, we were back on the road, and straight through to Union Station in Chicago. We actually got to the station a bit faster than if we took the train, and as always, it was easy for me to catch a cab from Union homeward. I would've taken public transit, but I had luggage and was tired.

I was quite bummed that I didn't get to ride the train home on Sunday. However, I am amazingly grateful to Amtrak -- they had a contingency plan, and they executed on it perfectly. We left on time, they provided a meal, and we made it into Chicago safe and quickly. It wasn't my favorite traveling experience, but we were not left stranded or hungry. We weren't even delayed.

Verdict: I'll take Amtrak to Minneapolis again! Maybe with a contingency plan of flying home if the train is delayed.

Stephen Fry Reviews the Asus Eee

His review is much better than Walt Mossberg's was. I think it's safe to say that Stephen gets it.

Slingplayer on Linux: Blah

So, I've gotten Slingplayer to run on Debian Linux, thanks to various how-to guides.

Previously, I got it to run on my Asus Eee laptop using the same guides. The audio and video quality were crap, though. At the time, I figured, oh well, the Eee just doesn't have enough horsepower to run Slingplayer under Wine.

But, my Debian desktop is much faster, and it still sucks:

• Video: The video quality is awful, though potentially tolerable considering this is all a hack.
• Audio: Fail, fail, fail. The audio skips constantly, gets stuck if you resize a window, and randomly will spew static for many seconds at a time.

Does anybody have Slingplayer working ... acceptably ... on Linux? Well enough that you could watch a whole half-hour television program?

As far as my tries at it, no matter what I run it on and how I configure it, it just blows.

Sling Media, I'm bummed. Where's the Linux client that Slingplayer should've had from day one?

Congress Hotel Zoning Change Rejected

Over here, Chicagoist reports on the Congress Hotel's request for a zoning variance to add additional floors. The Chicago Plan Commission denied the request.

I used to stay there quite a bit, long before I moved to Chicago (and long before the strike). It was a neat old hotel, if a bit worn around the edges. It was affordable, and was in a great location. It was a lot of fun to stay there, and it was neat to see all the amazing architectural details in that age of building (two buildings, actually, if I remember correctly).

After I started hearing about the strike, a few years ago, and reading up on it, I was bummed out to learn that the hotel owners really seemed to be sticking it to their union employees. I don't necessarily consider myself pro-union, but the hotel doesn't seem to be playing fair and what they've offered their employees (wage cuts?) is lame. So, I supported the strike by never again staying at the Congress.

The hotel has left these employees on strike for more than five years. I think the hotel has suffered, and it's sad to hear tales about the hotel getting more and more run down over time. Sad.

Something definitely needs to change. Allowing the current owners to expand the hotel doesn't seem like the right answer, and I'm glad their request was rejected.

Tas Restaurant Update

Tas, the new restaurant going in the Cafe Suron space, received a positive nod from alderman Joe Moore this week.

It's not quite accurate to say Joe approved a liquor license for Tas, since it's not his call, but in an email blast today, he does indicate that he's OK with it and will support an incidental liquor license.

According to Joe Moore, the new owner, Aykut Sinanoglu, brings 22 years of experience in the food and hospitality industry, having most recently served as the corporate manger for the Chicago-based da Vinci Restaurant Group, overseeing its six restaurants.

Neither my girlfriend or I were able to find any other info on Mr. Sinanoglu's previous involvement in the restaurant industry, but now that we know about the connection to da Vinci Restaurant Group, perhaps more info can be found.

The restaurant, at 1146 W. Pratt, intends to be open seven days a week from 5 p.m. until 10 or 11 p.m, as well as serving brunch on weekends. The owner hopes to open this spring.