May 2005

Concrete Canoe

I found an old concrete racing canoe in the bushes near campus.

Sky on Fire

We had a nice big thunderstorm today in Pittsburgh, and just after the thunderheads moved by the sky opened up a little and you could see the sunset.

I sprinted out of my apartment up the street to where I could see more of the sky. It only lasted a few minutes, but I managed to get it.

This photo is 100% Photoshop-free…

Every time I set up a new system I have to figure out how to do this again, so I decided to post instructions for my benefit and for the benefit of those who might also be having problems with this.

Debian’s “Social Contract” forbids it from distributing “non-free” code as official packages. Thus, Sun’s version of Java is not in any of the official mirrors. You can sometimes find third-party packages from Blackdown and other groups, but they are often out of date and annoying. I prefer to get my Java directly from Sun.

I install my JDKs into /opt and use “dummy packages” to let Debian know that I really do have Java installed. That way I can install Debian packages requiring Java to be installed and everything will go smoothly.

This mini-HowTo assumes that you’re running Debian Unstable (Sid), but it should also work if you’re using Testing or even Ubuntu. It also assumes you’re doing all these steps as root.

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Make sure you check your pockets for MP3 players before you do your laundry. They really don’t like the spin cycle.