Don't throw out that old computer...

Every Thursday around 9pm I see a man in his mid-sixties riding his bike around my neighbourhood. At first I thought it was a bit odd to see someone of his stature riding around on a bike after the sun went down. While coming home late one evening I finally discovered why he was riding around so late, he was picking through everyone's trash. (Friday is garbage pickup day in my neighbourhood)

How does this relate to not throwing out an old computer? I'm getting to that. A friend recently picked up a computer at a garage sale for $5.00 CDN. The computer in question was a Celeron 533MHz with 64MB of RAM, and a hard drive over 10GB - more than enough to run a Linux server with a little work. This was someone's junk! With another 64MB stick Kev. could run a full blown Ubuntu desktop. (Though 256MB is starting to become a minimum)

I also picked up a "junk" machine. At work we strip anything less than a Pentium II 233MHz (which goes for $15CDN). This Pentium I 90MHz, 16MB of RAM, 1.3GB hard drive came in. What's great about this little box is that it's small, about the size of a size 12 shoe box, but a bit wider and about half the height. The box has no CD-ROM, but it might be possible to put a notebook-style cd-rom in it. Given my experience installing Linux over a network in the past, it didn't concern me that there was no CD-ROM. For those curious, the box has a model number: PDA-2000.

Of course I had to upgrade the box. I removed the Pentium 90 CPU and replaced it with a 133MHz CPU, and replaced the 16MB of RAM with 64MB. I left the 1.3GB hard drive because my plan is to build a simple game server. Lastly, I added a sound blaster, for no reason at all. Yes, the hardware sucks, but the convenience outweighs having a 2GHz processor inside.

Al Gore, who knew?

The world knows all about the past couple of "U.S. Elections." I don't think more needs to be said about what went on during the elections. I try not to stretch too far out of the Linux-blogging realm, but I'm making an exception tonight. While looking through Google Video I came across a brilliant trailer for "The Inconvenient Truth;" a docu-drama about global warming starring Al Gore.

After seeing snippets of Gore talking I want to watch the movie. Gore seems much smarter than the little I saw of him during the first U.S. election; though admittedly I didn't watch it close.

Linux Games... and iMacs

If you've glanced at my profile you'll see that I maintain a number of web logs. Maintain is probably a bad word to use because I've let languish most of the blogs. I've started a number of web logs and occassionally contributed to them. One of those blogs, Linux Games: http://www.linux-games.ca/ recently got a wordpress overhaul. I've started trying to post every second day, but today I couldn't because I forgot the admin password. I still have the password, but it's in a book. Writing down passwords isn't very secure, but I have to remember a lot of passwords in my line of work, so it's easy for me to forget.

I've been talking on Linux Games.ca about simple games. I was going to blog about Mahjongg this evening, but the post will be delayed until tomorrow (provided I remember to bring the book). What's interesting about my recent effort to blog about Linux Games is that I haven't used the same computer twice for any post. One post was done from a SuSE 10.1 workstation. Another post was done from my Compaq Armada E500 notebook. This post, and tomorrow's post will be from an iMac running Ubuntu Linux.

About 3 months ago I set up Ubuntu on the iMac to help train volunteers at The Working Centre. Unfortunately I became so busy that our hourly training sessions slipped, and the machine sat collecting dust -- until now.