Edge of the World

Edge of the World Travel Company wants to offer a journey on the boat, Adventurer home based in Mā‘alaea Harbor in Maui Hawaii.  This is a very special yacht, a custom Sunreef Power 70 Catamaran with an elegant topside, extended interior, and exterior space along with its stability, safety, long cruising range with low fuel consumption maintained makes it an ideal vessel for long-term travel around the world. We can offer day trips around Maui or more extensive adventures to the blue lagoon in Rangiroa, Tahiti, and the Marshall Islands even to Fiji if you dare. Were not quite a Superyacht but with a crew of three certified mariners, you are pretty safe.  We offer Snorkeling, SNUBA and SCUBA Diving, Bike Riding on Distant Tropical Islands, Special Journeys Unpack in a luxurious cabin on the Adventurer and go relax and deck and wonder at the beautiful Pacific Ocean as the Explorer heads almost to the South.  Later, See the Southern Cross at Night, Crossing the Equat...

Looking for adventure?  How about traveling on a luxury boat from Maui Hawaii to the Marshall Islands, where US Nuclear testing began in 1946 on Bikini Atoll after residents were evacuated. Over the years, 67 weapon tests were conducted, including the 15-megaton Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb test, which produced significant fallout in the region. The testing concluded in 1958.  Time has past and a visit is pretty safe these days, we have a highly trained crew and we carry a good Geiger counter, just to make sure.  This area is close enough to the edge of the World. From 1946 to 1958, it served as the Pacific Proving Grounds for the United States and was the site of 67 nuclear tests on various atolls.[16] The world's first hydrogen bomb, codenamed "Mike", was tested at the Enewetak atoll in the Marshall Islands on November 1, (local date) in 1952, by the United States.  How about Pitcairn Island? Pitcairn is the least populous national jurisdiction in the world....

I grew up in the sixties.  Gasoline stations have been part of my life for a long time.  I remember Mr. Bonner, washing down the station every morning. Gas was about 25 cents per gallon and Ethyl gas was bright red and full of lead.  There were a few pretty fast cars around.   In the 1950s, geochemist Clair Patterson discovered the toxicity of tetraethyl lead; phase-out of its use in gasoline began in 1976 and was completed by 1986. In 1996, EPA Administrator Carol Browner declared, “The elimination of lead from gasoline is one of the great environmental achievements of all time.”  Now a revolution is sweeping into the automotive industry.  Lithium batteries have reached a power level that makes electric vehicles a reality.  25% of vehicles sold will be Electric by 2025.  I see a very interesting future for electric vehicle, and advances in battery chemistry, solid-state batteries and technology will be very interesting the next few years....

I'm using Ubuntu 18.04 on my Dell XPS 13

I have moved to historic West End Dallas, Texas.  I've been through the Tech Wars, VHS vs. BetaMax, Palm Pilot, Apple II computers, Pebble Watch.  Got on the Internet in 1991 on UNIX.  Life has changed.  I will give the blog a rebirth.  I still use no Microsoft or Apple proprietary software or hardware.

XFCE 4.10 was released about two weeks ago, too late to be included in Xubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin. But you can install the latest XFCE 4.10 in Xubuntu 12.04 using a PPA. XFCE 4.10 comes with many improvements which include a new application finder, a new vertical display mode for the panel: "deskbar", multiple rows support for the panel, the window manager supports tiling windows when dragging them to the screen edges, thumbnail rendering support for Xfdesktop, the mouse and touchpad dialog is capable of handling basic Synaptics and Wacom properties in the GUI, and more. For more info, check out the XFCE 4.10 tour @ http://www.xfce.org/about/tour Install / upgrade to XFCE 4.10 in Xubuntu 12.04 via PPA Lionel Le Folgoc, a Xubuntu contributor, has set up a PPA to make it easy to install the latest XFCE 4.10 in Xubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin. To add the PPA and upgrade to XFCE 4.10, use the commands below: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xubuntu-dev/xfce-4.10 sudo ...

For Pi Day (3.14), I ordered two Larsen NNO-K antenna mounts for the Honda Element.   Goal is to install two meter VHF and a 220 band amateur radios.  I will run 8 AWG power from the 12V battery to power this equipment.  On the HF scene, I am ready to bolt my Yaesu FT-897D and LDG AT-897+ together.  Looking at a Kent SP-1 single paddle code key for CW "morse code".  This is a side swipper "Cootie" key ;)

It’s about time for a 2012 blog update, still of big fan of Linux and Android. I have been an Ubuntu fan since around 2005 but bloat and the Unity desktop has got me pretty devoted to Linux Mint. I have Linux Mint Debian on my Dell OptiPlex and Linux Mint 12 on the Dell 2400.  I usually use an Xfce desktop but Gnome isn’t bad with Mint. I just like Xfce, I know how it works and I just love the little mouse. I was even a KDE fan for years but I gave up for a while after the KDE 2.4 confusion, I downloaded Linux Mint KDE 12 the other night and might even give it a try again, been hearing KDE is getting more stable lately. My trusty Dell Mini 9 has run Peppermint Two Linux for some time but instead of the typical OpenBox desktop, I use Xfce 4.8 and I am quite pleased with performance. This is my favorite web surfing, Google+ box. A new Acer Iconia A100 tablet has been in the etech inventory, it’s fun for very mobile web use, gmail and Twitter. I had to root it after about a week ...

Being one of the original nerds, a bit to the right of Attila the Hun. a crazy electronics tech, General Class Radio Op, US Army veteran and an Xfce computer geek. I traded the 2008 Honda Fit and got a 2011 Honda Element EX before Honda stopped production of the Elements. I love the Element so far, it feels so much more solid than the Fit. I do plan on on drilling a 3/4" home in the center of the roof later for a Larsen NMO antenna mount. Need a new Yaesu dual band FT-7900R (2-meter/70-cm) VHF/UHF radio then add the Larsen NMO2/70B antenna. Billy, etech18 @ Twitter

Being a Linux monkey and ham radio operator, I just got my "spare" WRT54GL router setup with as a HSMM-MESH node, N5EVD-1.  I find HSMM-MESH interesting since it combines my loves of ham radio, networking and Linux computing.  Already thinking about a Mini-ITX Ubuntu server in a NEMA box with my node ;)  I would like experiment with fixed and mobile Mesh networking for use in future public service and emergency response events.   Also looking at Freifunk Firmware used to build citywide wireless intranets by meshing with layer-3  OLSR routing. Check out http://www.hsmm-mesh.org/ http://wiki.freifunk.net/Freifunk_Firmware_(English)

Thinking of moving the Dell Mini 9 back to Peppermint Ice. Peppermint Ice is a derivative of Peppermint One. It replaces Firefox as the default browser with Chromium, as well as replacing Mozilla Prism in favor of Kendall Tristan's Ice SSB. Ice also drops printer support and other minor features in an attempt to be faster and lighter than Peppermint One. Default Ice applications include: Pixlr [Image Editor] Facebook Hulu Last.FM Pandora Seesmic Web The Cloud Player YouTube Google Calendar Google Docs Google Mail Google Reader Locally installed applications: Chromium Web Browser Dropbox Xnoise [Music Management & Player] Ice X-Chat [IRC Client] Transmission [Bit Torrent Client] Release history Peppermint OS uses a hybrid release schedule. Updates are rolled out as needed in a rolling release fashion. Periodically a re-spin is released which incorporates minor bug fixes and recent updates pre-installed. Initial Release July 20, 2010 Respin 10...

Being a Xfce nut, I got Linux Mint! Xfce RC (201104) running great on the Dell Mini 9, finally got wireless working with "sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-lpphy-installer" for the mini9 B43 driver, loaded HeyBuddy, Viewnior and all my backed up data.. I just love the #Xfce mouse! You can read more @ http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1708

Ok, I got to post an update.  I now have a QR code for my blog @ Life in the Sugar Bowl.. You can get these 2-D barcodes from http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ For more info on QR codes, check out the Wikipedia page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code For other news, the Dell Mini 9 is now back on Xubuntu 10.10.1, I just gotta have my Xfce desktop and it runs good my the Dell with my 32GB SSD and 2 Megs of RAM.  I tried the Xbuntu 11.04 Natty Alpha-2 last night on my trusty Panasonic CF-72 Toughbook and it's not too bad for Alpha and new new Xfce 4.8.

Mark your calendars with these hot release dates! Ubuntu 11.04 - 04/28/2011 Fedora 15 - 05/10/2011 OpenSUSE 11.4 - 05/10/2011 Centos 6 - soon ! Debain 6 - 02/06/2011 - I DL this one at it's nice but built from totally free source software, nothing fancy ;)

I backed up the Panasonic CF-72 running Salix Xfce last night to my 500G portable hard drive, 3 hours of fun. I still like Salix Xfce, it's very stable but since it is based on Slackware, but good luck running things like the Chrome browser or the Amazon MP3 downloader, or other exotic apps ;) Thinking about moving the CF-72 to BSD "UNIX".  PC-BSD is fairly easy, been running it since 2.1 or so but I would love to try OpenBSD on this machine. It is a bit harder to setup but OpenBSD is very secure.   PC-BSD 9.0 (still in Alpha) till June/July 2011, will offer the ability to select system “meta-pkgs” at install / post-install time.  This is a huge departure from previous PC-BSD releases. Now you will be able to customize your installed desktop easily, with various window managers such as KDE4, Gnome2, XFCE4, and LXDE. After installation, you can easily add / remove components of these meta-pkgs via the System Manager. On the small front, the D...

It's been awhile so I am moving the Dell Mini 9 back to #! Crunchbang Linux Xfce.    #! Crunchbang is light, dark and excellent under Xfce.  I love the #! Disclamer, "CrunchBang Linux is not recommended for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. CrunchBang Linux could possibly make your computer go CRUNCH! BANG! Therefore CrunchBang Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law."  So if you can't fix it, find another distro ;) The DL fun is at : http://crunchbanglinux.org/downloads/statler/20110105/

I loaded Pinguy OS on the Dell Mini 9.  This distro has a funny name but it is based on Ubuntu and it looks great.  I did a little tweeking on Conky to fit the tiny Mini 9 screen but the results look great.. From the Pinguy website... Ubuntu is a great OS and undoubtedly the most popular and easiest Linux based Distro to use but even with its default setup and chosen programs it's still  lacking functionality and ease of use for most new users. So what I decided to do was build a Distro that looks good, could do everything most user would ever want to do and that was very simple to use. I started out by listening to what my friends and family wanted to use their PC for and found the most user friendly programs for the task they wanted to do. After a while I got a good idea what most people use their PC for and what programs where the easiest to use. Like using Shotwell for easily uploading images to Facebook, gtkpod for putting music, photos and video on a ipod/ipho...

Monolithic Domes are constructed following a method that requires a tough, inflatable Airform, steel-reinforced concrete and a polyurethane foam insulation. Each of these ingredients is used in a technologically specific way. Our domes can be designed to fit any architectural need: homes, cabins, churches, schools, gymnasiums, arenas and stadiums, bulk storages, landlord dwellings and various other privately or publicly owned facilities. Monolithic Domes meet FEMA standards for providing near-absolute protection and have a proven ability to survive tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, most manmade disasters, fire, termites and rot. They are cost-efficient, earth-friendly, extremely durable and easily maintained. Most importantly, a Monolithic Dome uses about 50% less energy for heating and cooling than a same-size, conventionally constructed building. Beginning in 1970, Monolithic Domes have been built and are in use in virtually every American state and in Canada, Mexico, Sout...

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law) English physicist & science fiction author (1917 - 2008) Checking the morning random Internet info and I clicked on http://www.quantumjumping.com An interesting concept, I have read about the work of Dr. Brian Greene on mirror symmetry, relating two different Calabi-Yau manifolds (concretely, relating the conifold to one of its orbifolds). He also described the flop transition, a mild form of topology change, showing that topology in string theory can change at the conifold point. The whole 26 dimensions thing. Interesting ties into the teachings of Max Freedom Long @ http://www.maxfreedomlong.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory Your local Calabi-Yau manifold ;)

Why lifeinthesugarbowl?  My wife and I and the cats live in Sugar Land, Texas.   Sugar Land is a city located in Fort Bend County in the U.S. state of Texas within the Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown metropolitan area (about 20 miles South of Houston).  It is one of the fastest-growing cities in Texas, having grown more than 158% in the last decade (scary).  Sugar Land is home to the headquarters of Imperial Sugar and the company's main sugar refinery and distribution center was once located in this city. As a nod to this heritage, the Imperial Sugar crown logo can be seen in the city seal and logo. The city also holds the headquarters for Western Airways and a major manufacturing facility for Nalco Chemical Company. In addition, Sugar Land has a large number of international energy, software, engineering, and product firms. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Land,_Texas My Linux experience started on the kitchen table with Red Hat Linux about 2004, when I ...