Captain Awesome's Weblog
17Sep/090

My quick review on forum software

Hey guys. As you may or may not know, I've had quite a bit of forum-software experience. So, I give you some quick reviews on the common ones.

Let's start with Simple Machines Forum, or SMF for short. If you're looking at starting a quick and easy forum, this is for you. The admin CP is nice and quick for simple stuff, and most of the templates are quite nice. On the other hand, it is a royal pain in the ass for anything advanced such as user and board permissions, like TERRIBLY. Trying to make it so users must post in an Introduce Yourself board before anywhere else took me about two hours, and the help of ViperChief (thank you!) to accomplish.

Next up, is phpBB. This is probably the most common FOSS solution. It looks nice from a user's point of view, but the admin cp is a joke. It's pretty much a clusterfuck of buttons and knobs that don't really have a place, it asks for your password every 30 seconds, and simple functions take 25 more clicks than they should.

Now for the all-mighty vB. If you want something that your users will be used to, go for this. Most forums use this software, so people will already know how to do stuff like fill in their profile. Now, for the crap. IT'S BULLSHIT. People are used to it, but it FUCKING SUCKS, The admin cp is the biggest clusterfuck of shit ever, and the entire board is made from tables. (CSS? What's that?). Only use this if you feel your users would somehow benefit from it.

Now, my personal favorite, Invision Power Board 3. Let me start by saying the user profiles are awesome. It's more than a forum profile, it's a mini-Facebook profile. Users can set a status, upload images, chat, and more. If you really want a social community, go for IPB! I only had a brief time adminning IPB, but from the small time I had with it, the admin CP was quite nice, even if it took a few more clicks then necessary to add new boards (You can't set saved profiles for boards, and the default permissions are 000).

As for MyBB, Flux, and Pun, never used em. Leave your experience in the comments.

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5Sep/097

Hey, let’s all use DOS!

Well, we might as well. The people over at uzbl.org are working on a new browser. Will be be innovative like Chrome? Stable like Firefox? Glossy like Safari? Nah, people don't want that. People want to open up a Vim window just to visit a URL. And fuck graphics, nobody needs those. Clearly Uzbl is the only worthy browser choice. Let us dissect each and every one of their points from their home page:

very minimal graphical interface. You only see what you need

I don't know about you, but I "need" my nav buttons, my URL bar, my bookmarks, and my tabs. Cars don't really need stereos and air conditioning, let's just get rid of them because they are a distraction for my driving workflow.

what is not browsing, is not in uzbl. Things like url changing, loading/saving of bookmarks, saving history, downloads, ... are handled through external scripts that you write

Hmm, okay, let's again think about usability and productivity. Let's say I'm reading an article over at another blog and want to go back one page so I can see the index. I want you to read the following bullet points over, and tell ME what you find to be less of an asspain:

  1. Click the back button
  2. Open up Vim, write some code, save it, link it to the browser, see result.

Clearly #2 is the better option. We can't have back buttons because they take up too much space. In fact, a dedicated Vim window takes up LESS space than a toolbar!

controllable through various means such as fifo and socket files, stdin, keyboard and more

Wait... what? What's that you say? You've invented keyboard shortcuts. Great job! Nobody has ever heard of THOSE before! What innovation! I have a better idea for you, how's about just writing a Firefox plugin that allows for stdin (etc) communication? Oh right, you probably can't charge for the documentation on that.

advanced, customizable keyboard interface with support for modes, modkeys, multichars, variables (keywords) etc. (eg you can tweak the interface to be vim-like, emacs-like or any-other-program-like)

Ooh, a Vim-like browser! This is a very good idea, because almost 95% of the websites out there are plain text and do not contain images, or even links! Masturbating to Boxxy videos should be a hell of a lot easier with this.

focus on plaintext storage for your data and configs in simple, parseable formats

By this you mean text-based config files? Alright I'll give you this one. Maybe teach Xorg a lesson.

Uzbl keeps it simple, and puts you in charge.

In what way does Firefox not put me in charge? Sorry pal, you're 40 years too late.

Link to Linsux thread.

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5Sep/090

Back up your crap

Looks like someone over at UF, with a hard drive full of priceless music and photos, decided to screw around with Gparted without backing up...

Guys, anything important to you, BACK IT UP. Years worth of files can be gone in less than a second.

Mac users may be familiar with Time Machine - A backup program included with OS X. If you have a Mac, plug in an external hard drive, and it will make copies of all your files hourly. You can then use an interface to go "back in time" with any of your folders. Here's a screenie:

Time Machine

Time Machine for Mac OS X definitely wins in terms of easy, seamless backups. But what about our Windows and Linux friends?

For Linux, there is a similar program called Time Vault with the same idea. Seamlessly back up to an external drive and "go back in time" whenever you need to. Here is TimeVault's home page on the Ubuntu Wiki. The UI may not be as cool as Apple's, but if you're the type who never backs up, or is just too damn lazy too, you should consider trying this out. Here's a screenie:

And finally, our Windows users. Seagate has a solution called Replica that works pretty much the same way, although there is a catch, you have to use their hardware - you can't use just any hard drive. Damn anti-semites.

Of course, this is just the start. Even if you have 200 enterprise-class hard drives RAIDed together for the ultimate backup solution, what happens when your house catches on fire, or you get robbed? Gone. Another thing you should do for those really important files is off-site backups. I would do one or more of the following:

  • Put a copy of your system on an external, then store it at a (trusted) friends house.
  • Register with JungleDisk (or something) and store your important files on their servers. (That wasn't an affiliate link, I swear)
  • Put your treasured files on a flash drive and keep it in your anus (kidding)

And remember, never EVER screw around with partitions or hard drives without first having a working backup.

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5Sep/090

My review on the Acer Revo

I had to set a few of these up as an on-call job at a small private school. Let me start by saying, even though they may not be as pretty as the Eee Box, the Bang:Buck ratio is a hell of a lot better. You get a wireless keyboard, mouse, and webcam included, and it can be mounted to the back of your monitor via VESA mount.

Acer Aspire Revo

This thing can be mounted any of these ways:

  • Lying flat (pictured)
  • On a vertical stand
  • Attached to the back of your monitor with the included VESA mount

I was told to install the latest version of Ubuntu (eek!) on them. Surprisingly, everything worked out of the box. Wi-Fi, the keyboard and mouse, the screen resolution, the webcam, everything. Here are all the plugs and buzzers that can be found on the four sizes of this device:

  • Six USB ports (four on one side, one on another side, and another by the power button)
  • HDMI and VGA
  • Audio in and out (This thing does not have a built in speaker)
  • Ethernet
  • Power connecter
  • Flash card reader

This is quite a nice nettop. It's silent except for a small fan burst when you first turn it on. If you're a Mactard that likes screwing around with Photo Booth (I'm a Mactard :( ), you'll like using Cheese (in the repos) to take some crazyass pix.

By default, the system comes with Windows Vista. I can't say much about that because I wiped the computers before even booting from the hard disk.

Now, for the bad, but these aren't huge problems. First off, the included keyboard does not have a caps lock indicator. The only way to tell if your caps lock is on is by test-typing. If there is a panel widget that can show caps-lock status, do let me know.

Another con - It's kinda ugly. The way they bend the corner for the power button looks like crap, especially when standing vertically.

All in all, if you're looking for a small computer, this is a nice product! If you favor form over function, you may want to check out the Eee Box. It looks nicer (IMO), but it doesn't include peripherals and cannot be monitor-mounted.

This is my first review, so pardon any errors, etc.

Peace out!

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