Sep 04

Booting Linux from a USB Drive on Apple Hardware

After hours of frustration and failure, I finally set up a USB bootable Linux distribution that worked on both a BIOS-based PC or EFI-based Apple system. Ten minutes later, I repeated the process with a second distribution.

I’ve been perusing this fine internet of hours all day, reviewing and attempting to complete step-by-step tutorials that were supposed to allow me to do this. Unfortunately, none of them would actually work on my MacBook Pro, as they promised they would. After finally acquiring a resolution, I decided to post my own step-by-step set of instructions that also claimed to work for a BIOS system or an EFI system. Hopefully it actually works for you as it did for me :).

 

My System, My Recommendation, and My Disclaimer

The systems I was trying to get this work was in conjunction with my out dated, 2008, 2 GHz Intel Core Duo MacBook Pro with a measly 2GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM. I dual boot between OS X Leopard and Windows 7 using Boot Camp. I plug into a 24” Samsung display and use a Bluetooth Logitech MX 5500 keyboard and mouse set at my desk. Using Slax, all of this was compatible and immediately recognized!! I had absolutely no problems with hardware, so I highly recommend using Slax as your portable Linux distribution. I had success with DSL after initial frustrations (the track pad is not recognized, so I was forced to plug a USB mouse in), and it’s simply not as clean or power of a system as Slax is.

Doing all of this in no way effected positively or negatively the booting, reliability or functionality of OS X Leopard or Windows 7 on my system or Windows XP on any of the BIOS-based systems I ran this on. However, as always, proceed at your own risk.

I recommend the 4GB flash drive from Amazon below, as it is cheap and reliable. Though you don’t need a full 4GB flash drive, if you ever want to throw a larger distribution of Linux onto the flash drive at any time, or if you’d like to use the drive for other storage at a later date, this is a good size and a great price.  Also … it’s hard to find a smaller drive than 4GB these days!

 

Setting Up an EFI System

Boot into Mac OS and follow these steps:

  1. Download and install rEFIt.
  2. Restart your computer.

Complicated, huh? The initial restart after installing rEFIt will not show a boot loader, but all following restarts will display a boot loader if multiple bootable systems are attached to your Apple computer or other EFI-based system.

rEFIt will essentially overtake Boot Camp. Before installing rEFIt on my system, when I wanted to boot into Windows 7 I had to hold down the Alt-Option key when booting. Once rEFIt is installed, the boot menu is shown whenever the computer is booted. After a given number of seconds, it will boot into the default operating system, which is usually OS X.

 

Setting Up a BIOS System

Your BIOS must support the ability to boot from a USB drive. Follow these instructions on a BIOS-based (any standard Windows-based) computer:

  1. Restart your computer.
  2. At some point your computer will inform you that you can press some key to enter the BIOS setup (probably some key like F8, F12, or Del). Hold that key down. If you miss it, restart and try again.
  3. Unfortunately, every computer is different in the BIOS menu setup. Do not change anything you are unfamiliar.
  4. You may need to enable the ability to boot from a USB drive.
  5. You will most likely need to change the boot sequence, moving your USB drive higher than your standard HDD.
  6. Make sure that you save your changes to the BIOS before restarting.

 

Setting Up Your USB Drive

NOTE: Generally speaking, the instructions given on a portable Linux distribution’s website will tell you to run some bootinst.bat file that will configure your USB drive to boot properly. This will work for most BIOS-based systems, and may work with some distributions on some EFI systems, but it generally would not work for me. The solution given below, theoretically, works on all systems.

In a Windows environment (it’s just easiest that way, trust me), follow these steps:

  1. Download and extract Syslinux. Since we’re in Windows, it’d be most beneficial to download the zip file. Extract it to a convenient location like C:\Syslinux.
  2. Download your favorite portable Linux distribution. It has been verified that this works with DSL (I can’t spell it out … My Mom reads this!), DSL-N, and Slax.
  3. Plug your USB drive into your computer.
  4. Backup any data on the USB drive you wish to keep! Right-click on the USB drive and select “Format.” Format the drive to either FAT-16 or FAT-32. I recommend FAT-32. A quick format will be fine.
  5. Extract the contents of your favorite portable Linux distribution onto your USB drive using your favorite decompression program.
  6. In Windows XP, click Start then Run, type “cmd,” then press Enter.
  7. In Windows Vista or Windows 7, click Start and simply type “cmd.” Click on the Command Prompt icon to launch it.
  8. From the Command Prompt, navigate to the win32 folder of where you extracted Syslinux. So, in my case, type “cd C:\Syslinux\win32\”.
  9. From the win32 folder of Syslinux, type “syslinux.exe -ma :” where is replaced with the drive letter of your USB drive. Most commonly this will be E or F (it does need to be followed by a colon), but you can verify this by checking in My Computer.
  10. Assuming you don’t receive any errors, your USB drive should now be set up for booting.

 

Conclusion

In theory, you should now be able restart your system and it will notice that you have a bootable USB drive in the computer (assuming, of course, that you do). If rEFIt opens, use the arrow keys to navigate to your USB drive and press Enter. If your on a BIOS system, you may need to press a key (if it tells you to press a key for the boot menu), but most likely it will pop up with a message telling you to press any key to boot Linux. If you don’t press any key, it may continue into your standard operating system, so you’ll want to strike that Enter key.

I hope this works as well for all of you as it did for me! It’s always handy to have a portable, friendly, and compatible version of Linux in your slacks that you can whip out and use anytime, on any computer.

Dec 03

Hotel California

Joe Kmetz and I were on our way to Krista’s house over Turkey Break and I had designated Joe as the DJ for the trip. At some point during the drive we ended up listening to “Hotel California,” probably the best song the Eagles ever wrote and performed. This spawned a discussion as to the meaning of the song. Unfortunately, neither of us knew for sure, but I promised Joe I would investigate the song as soon as I had time.

Though you can play “Hotel California” on Guitar Hero by yourself and sound surprisingly similar to the original track, there’s nothing realistic about that. On the Hell Freezes Over album, the Eagles used eight guitars to perform this song. In the original studio mix, only five were used. Still, this should give you some measure of the caliber of this song. It is an amazing piece for guitar, and I never tire of listening to it.

Musical melodies aside, the lyrics of the song span quite a bit of controversies. The interpretations of this song range from the drug use, cannibalism, Hotel California being another name for the Camarillo State Hospital (a psychiatric hospital), to devil worship and the Church of Satan.

I’m going to have to go ahead and debunk all the most popular rumors, as none of them are even remotely close to being true (except possibly the drug use one, though indirectly). Let’s lay out the most popular rumors and look at why they aren’t true. For your convenience, you can find the lyrics to the song here and you can listen to the song here.

Background on the Eagles

The Eagles are one of the most successful American rock bands of the 1970s. The Eagles were founded in the early 70s in Los Angeles, California, by Glenn Frey (singer, guitarist, songwriter), Don Henley (singer, guitarist, drummer, songwriter), Randy Meisner (singer, bassist, songwriter), and Bernie Leadon (singer, guitarist). It’s also worth mentioning the former member Don Felder (singer, guitarist, songwriter), as he helped write “Hotel California” and performed part of the guitar solo. The band has five number-one singles and six number-one albums so far. Their fifth album was Hotel California.

“Hotel California” is a song by the Eagles on the rock album of the same name, Hotel California, released in 1976. The theme of the whole album is essentially that of Manifest Destiny and the American Dream and the rise and falls in-thereof. The album isn’t exactly a rock opera, but it does seem to follow a common theme: it starts with “Hotel California” and comes to a culmination with “The Last Resort,” a song that narrates the demise of society as the conclusive warning to the theme of the album.

After its release, Hotel California received a Grammy for Record of the Year in 1978, the song has been considered by Rolling Stone to be the 49th greatest song of all time, and Guitar World Magazine ranked the guitar solo as the 8th greatest of all time. “Hotel California” reached 20th on the Billboard Top 100 in 1977.

It’s a Real Hotel

It turns out there’s a real hotel in California! A few of them, actually. Unfortunately, there is no hotel in California that goes under the name of Hotel California. There is, however, a hotel in Todos Santos, Mexico, just across the border, that goes by the name of Hotel California. The hotel also went under the name of The Hotel Mission (“I heard the Mission bell”). The name of the hotel changed several times after the popularity of the song grew so as to attract tourists. The problem is the Eagles never actually stayed there, and that location is not what the song is referring to.

It’s an Insane Asylum

“Next thing I remember / I was running for the door / I had to find the passage back / To the place I was before / “Relax,” said the night man / “We are programmed to receive / You can check out any time you like / But you can never leave.”

People who believe this rumor may simply be getting confused by the fact that the Eagles’s record company for the album before Hotel California was Asylum Records. The song isn’t actually about an insane asylum; there is no asylum anywhere in California or even the entire United States by the name of Hotel California.

Some still insist that the Hotel California is a nickname for the Camarillo State Hospital in Camarillo, California. But since the Eagles said in an interview in 1995 that it wasn’t in reference to a particular location, and since it wouldn’t really make much sense to take the pictures for the album artwork at the Beverly Hills Hotel if the song were really about the Camarillo State Hospital, the song probably isn’t in reference to an insane asylum. Though the imagery in the song does seem to describe states of insanity at times.

It’s a Hospital

Still, people insist that the Hotel California must be a real building somewhere, so they conjecture that perhaps it is a hospital somewhere. The rumor further claims that the song is actually about cancer.

“My head grew heavy and my site grew dim.” It could be a reference to the pains of the cancer that is evidently killing the body. “There she stood in the doorway” is alleged to be a reference to a nurse, and “And she showed me the way / There were voices down the corridor” is the nurse leading him down the hallways of the hospital, other cancer patients calling out to the narrator as he walks by. “They stab it with their Steely knives / But they just can’t kill the beast” could be a reference to repeated attempts to kill the cancer.

The song could be a metaphor for cancer, if you chose to interpret that way, but that wasn’t the intention when it was written.

It’s About Steely Dan

The line “They stab it with their Steely knives / But they just can’t kill the beast” is a reference to Steely Dan, an American rock band that had a healthy competition with the Eagles around the time Hotel California came out.

The Eagles were apparently impressed by the fact that Steely Dan didn’t require any rhyme or reason to the meaning in the lyrics of their song. The Eagles decided it would be pretty sweet to mention Steely Dan in their song, even though the rest of the song has absolutely nothing to do with them. Steely Dan had previously mention the Eagles in their song Everything You Did with the line “Turn up the Eagles the neighbors are listening” in 1976.

It’s About Cannibalism

Apparently the references to a secluded hotel with corridors and hallways that were an endless maze that entrapped anyone who entered reminded too many people of H. H. Holmes and the Murder Castle. I guess he didn’t eat his guests, but his story probably set people up for paranoia.

One theory that got spread around via chain mail muses that the reason “You can check out anytime you like / But you can never leave” is because the only way to truly leave is to be stabbed by those “Steely knives!” Apparently the hotel in the distance enticed you only to serve you up for dinner the following day. There’s really not much evidence of this in the song, and the band members have denied it.

It’s About the Church of Satan

Probably the most well known (and most misunderstood) meaning for the song says that it is a reference to devil worship and the Church of Satan. Such lines as “I was thinking to myself / This could be Heaven or this could be Hell,” “We haven’t had that spirit here / Since nineteen sixty-nine,” “… they just can’t kill the beast,” and “You can check out anytime you like / But you can never leave” apparently solidify this claim. Additionally, the album artwork has a bit of an eerie feel, and people claim that the photographs were taken at the same place where the Satanic Bible was written. “The Beast” referred to in the song is alleged to be Satan.

Anton LeVay finished the Satanic Bible in 1969, three years after founding his church. Supposedly ever since the bible was finished the Holy Spirit hasn’t been present at the Satanic Church (as if he was before?) and that’s what the line in the song is referencing. This claim falls short when you recognize that the line directly before this clarifies a reference to the spirit of wine, not the Holy Spirit. Additionally, once you join the occult you are apparently unable to get out. Considering the previous claims fall short, I’m going to entertain the thought that “the beast” must be a metaphorical character referring to something other than Satan.

The artwork for the album was actually shot at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills. The Eagles say that the reason for the shadowy figures is due to poor lighting and a poor camera. The ghostly figure in the window who many claim is supposed to be either Satan himself or Anton LaVey is actually a publicity guy from Asylum Records. Any physical similarities to LaVey or the Devil himself are purely coincidental.

Further claims state that the Hotel California is a reference to a hotel on California St. in San Francisco which the Church of Satan purchased and converted into their headquarters. The building in question was called The Black House and was actually an old Victorian mansion, not a hotel. It was the headquarters for the Church of Satan used by Anton LaVey in 1966 until his death in 1997. The Satanic Church lost custody of the house after LaVey’s death, and it was torn down in 2001.

It is also rumored that the Eagles were members of the Church of Satan and that they were disciples of LeVay. While a very unreliable source claims that the Waco Tribune-Herald interview Larry Salter, the Eagle’s manager, and he admitted that the Eagle’s were involved with the Church of Satan, the interview was apparently back in 1982 and the original can’t be found …

Then there’s that whole bit about playing the song backward to hear a satanic message. That’s a bit of a stretch. Especially considering sites like that try to say the same thing about Metallica, Megadeath, and Kiss songs and, let’s be honest, you don’t need to play those songs backward to hear a Satanic message. Anyway, if you listen to the entire song backward yourself, you’ll find that it’s quite bogus.

Some have said that the Church of Satan is registered in California under the name “Hotel California,” but there is absolutely no evidence to support this claim.

It’s about Sex and Drugs

“Warm smell of Colitas / Rising up through the air”
“I saw a shimmering light”
“There she stood in the doorway / I heard the mission bell / I was thinking to myself / This could be Heaven or this could be Hell. / Then she lit up a candle / And she showed me the way”
“She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys / That she calls friends / How they dance in the courtyard / Sweet summer sweat / Some dance to remember / Some dance to forget”
“And still the voices are calling from far away / Wake you up in the middle of the night”
“Mirrors on the ceiling / Pink champagne on ice / And she said, ‘We are all just prisoners here / Of our own device’”
“You can check out anytime you like / But you can never leave”

This theory has the most overwhelming amount of evidence straight out of the song, and it’s also closest to the true meaning.

Probably the most explicit reference in the song is that of Colitas, a Spanish term meaning “little tails,” which could be a reference to the Cannabis plant (marijuana). The rest of the imagery in the song is a very strong implication that the narrator may not be entirely sane (or lucid) while he’s telling us his tale. A shimmering light and a vision of a hotel? Voices echoing down the hallways? Mirrors on the ceiling (seeing many things from many angles, which would happen when you hallucinate)?

It’s usually said that the song is warning against the use of drugs, given it’s generally negative view towards the subject, especially considering the narrators regret that he can’t seem to get out of the lifestyle he has become trapped in.

So What’s it Really About?

And now we come to the true meaning of this song, which is only slightly disappointing after reading all the wild previous possibilities!

Well, Henley and Frey claim that Colitas is a desert flower that smells good. Well, it may very well be a desert flower, but it’s still most likely slang for Cannabis. In their defense, I did read somewhere that a Mexican translated the words “little bud” to “Colitas” for them, neglecting to mention the marijuana reference, so they may not have completely understood what they were saying.

That being said, they explained in an interview in 1995 that the song is about the dangers of hedonism and greed, specifically as it applies to the American Dream and their own achieving fame and fortune in the worlds eyes. They wanted to warn not only California of this, but the entire nation. Unfortunately, due to a poor choice in the title of both the song and the album, it’s most commonly only associated with the Californian mindset.

It’s not a reference to any type of building, it’s not about cannibalism, and it’s not about the Church of Satan. The Steely Dan reference was, in fact, true. The song was the Eagles’ look back at their own lives, realizing how they had become caught up in the famous lifestyle (“Her mind is Tiffany-twisted / She got a Mercedes-Benz”), a lifestyle which has trapped them and isn’t turning out to be everything they had wanted (“We are all just prisoners here / Of our own device,” “You can check out anytime you like / But you can never leave”).

It makes sense if you consider that the song is the first on the album that addresses the issues of drugs, temptation, fame, relationships, and the American Dream.

 

There you have it! That’s the true meaning of the song Hotel California. I’m glad we had this discussion. I was sick of hearing comparisons to the Church of Satan.

Nov 19

The Question of Music, Meaning, and Life Project

After viewing a few John Cage videos on YouTube (like this one, this one, and possibly this one), I thought to myself, “What the heck … I could write this crap.” And so, using his song 4’33” as my deepest inspiration, I proceeded to do just that. In fact, I made an entire album, with philosophical song explanations and artwork to go along with it.

If you’re going to download the album, just realize that it probably won’t actually make much sense unless you read the liner notes (which are only provided on the website at the link below). If you don’t read those, you will basically miss the point of this project.

People make money off this stuff. I just do it for fun. I apologize if you actually like John Cage, but that is not music. The following is meant for satirical purposes and not meant to be taken seriously … At all.

The Question of Music, Meaning, and Life Project

Sep 25

Browser Reviews: A Brief History

After Al Gore invented the internet for us, we realized we needed a way to walk around the thousands upon thousands (and now billions upon billions) of sites that were out there. Meet the browser. To the best of my knowledge, Al Gore has never claimed part in inventing the browser, but I wouldn’t put it past him.

Just for fun, and before we start to really rip apart the benchmarks of Google Chrome, let’s look at some old, failed browsers so we can scoff at them (by order of appearance).

WorldWideWeb (1991-1994) – I actually can’t call this pioneer a failure. After all, it was the world’s first web browser. By the way, it was only released for NeXTSTEP OS. The operating system created by NeXT Computer, a company that was founded by none other than Steve Jobs. The NeXTSTEP OS was quite literally the parent of Mac OS X, and it was also the very first object-oriented and multi-task-ready operating system. (Boy, it’s amazing what that Steve Jobs can do …) However, in 1993 the developers released the source code, thus making the program freeware and allowing for the development of it’s children, ViolaWWW, MidasWWW, MacWWW, and their big brother Mosaic.

Netscape Navigator (1994-2007) – Mosaic/Netscape rose to power and popularity much faster than Internet Explorer did, and since it was owned by Netscape Communications, a successful company that was pivotal in getting internet readily accessible in every home, the browser had plenty of funding. However, Microsoft was simply a bigger, more powerful company, and the beneficial wars between Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer were eventually won by Internet Explorer. While Netscape failed miserably by allowing their poorly coded browser to get disgustingly bloated with features, their ultimate failure was in 1999 when they allowed America Online to buy then. Who cares if they offered you ten billion dollars! Immediately following Netscape’s acquisition by AOL, they lost over 30% of their market share in less than one year.

HotJava (1994-1999) – A very customizable, extensible browser that was built around Java in order to easily execute Applets. The ingenuity of HotJava is that it’s a browser coded entirely in Java, thus making it extremely portable. The downside to HotJava is that it’s coded entirely in Java, thus limiting it to the JRE and leaving it a fairly slow memory hog, and with the presence of Java so readily incorporated into more recent browsers and the growing popularity of Macromedia’s Flash, the project was terminated.

Internet Explorer (1995-Present) – It doesn’t need much introduction or explanation. But Internet Explorer has always been interested in integrating (not outsourcing to extensions) functionality at the expense of ease-of-use, security, and speed. And, let’s be honest, it’s Microsoft … Therefore, a failure.

OmniWeb (1995-Present) – Wouldn’t you know it, it’s another NeXTSTEP OS browser! That being the case, it graduated, along with it’s OS, to Mac OS X, and that is where it resides today. Unfortunately, this is a limit for it. While it was a good browser in the area of speed, and very minimalistic, it lacked key functionality and compatibility with some of the most recent web innovations, so it falls short.

Internet Explorer for Mac (1996-2005) – Wow. It was simply horrible. Probably the worst maintained browser of all time. It went through three updates in one year, went silent for three years, released it’s fourth update in 2000, then was untouched until it’s termination in 2005. It was incompatible, buggy, crashed more than anything, and incredibly slow!

Opera (1996-Present) – I’ve always felt that Opera failed when it came to honesty in advertising. They used to claim to be the “fastest browser” ever made. Well, they’ve since revoked that claim … It claims it’s “faster” on their website now. Faster than what? I’m not sure, because until the most recent release (9.5) I’ve never been pleased with the speed of the browser. Though, even with 9.5, I still think Firefox is faster, and you can’t argue with the speed I get from Safari. Around version 7, Opera bloated the browser beyond belief, thus slowing it to a crawl. They’ve since revamped the interface and it the newest release it’s actually quite efficient. However, compatibility has always been an issue with it.

Gzilla (1997-1999) – The developer was last heard from on August 16, 1999, pleading for help on his very own site. Apparently he could get his browser to compile on anything other than Linux/x86, so he was begging for outside help. It’s rumored the browser emerged a few months later as as Dillo, but that’s just probably not true. I’m guessing Mozilla felt threatened by the last five letters of his browser’s name, so they took him out.

MyIE/Maxthon (2000-Present) – Maxthon’s clincher is that it’s extremely customizable. It advertises itself as an adaptable alternative to Internet Explorer. The negative clincher is it’s only for Windows. On top of that, it crashes too frequently. It’s not slow, but reliability is a big factor when writing a browser, and if your browser crashes on me too often, I’m not going to use it.

Firefox (2002-Present) – The most successful browser to incorporate extensions. Since Netscape completely fell of the face of the planet somewhere around 2003, Firefox has been the most used cross-platform web browser. It boasts speed, elegance, and integrated functionality. Even better, you can add basically any functionality you desire through extensions; this is what has made Firefox so well known. Unfortunately, Firefox loses a lot of security when they allow third-party extensions. More than that, extensions are impossible for the creators of Firefox to maintain, so when the browser is updated, there’s always the risk (and it very frequently happens) of losing compatibility with extensions. Not very convenient for the extension programmers or their users.

AOL Explorer (2005-Present?) – It’s AOL … We already know why it fails: Overpriced, slow, inefficient, and unstable. Apparently the browser is still around, but it’s now a part of the AIM package.

Flock (2005-Present) – Flock’s biggest asset is that it’s multi-platform. On top of that, much like Maxthon, it boasts customizability! It integrates beautifully with many popular websites, including Facebook, iGoogle, Flickr, Digg, Twitter, etc. On top of that, it does allow extensions. It has a main page that keeps all of your favorites and information organized and easily accessible. Unfortunately, it still is rather buggy, and speed is also a bit of an issue with it. It enjoys freezing on it’s users.