Musings on Backups, IPIP-NEO Personality Test

I've been musing on a lot of things lately -- well, I always have, but I have lately found a lot of interesting reading material and links. I've also been experiencing some hard drive crashes and file dis-organization, making finding even what I have backed up lately difficult.

Regarding backups, and the difficulty with which I've been getting cross-OS file transfer working between Linux and Windows, I've been thinking of backing up some of my more critical files to my Pair Networks webhosting, since their storage is significantly more reliable than anything I could do. Things such as my latest bookmarks, my most interesting e-mails received and my more useful responses (maybe saved as Unicode), small hard to find programs and utilities, and original artwork - things like that. Compressed and encrypted, of course, with passwords that are little more than random line noise. Then I'd be able to access it from any online computer, and all my most important data would be backed up in one place, offsite.

I recently ran across the IPIP-NEO Personality Test. It's apparently intended to assess one's standing within five broad personality domains, and the consequences of such standing. It's interesting. Certainly isn't pleasing or flattering, at least not in all respects.

Taking it while depressed will skew the results - I did that Monday, and got 1 out of 100's for five out of seven aspects of extraversion - in other words, very withdrawn. On the plus side, strangely enough, I did cheer up after taking the test - I guess mental stimulation will do that to me.

I took it again this Saturday and got somewhat more average results on some of the aspects, though I still certainly deviate from the general public a great deal (which isn't necessarily a bad thing in my mind). Two things that I feel willing to relate in a public (potentially; is anyone reading this?) venue, and might help people to get to know me better:

"Your score on Extraversion is low, indicating you are introverted, reserved, and quiet. You enjoy solitude and solitary activities. Your socializing tends to be restricted to a few close friends."

Comments: This is largely true; I tend to wait for invitations and hope for people to initiate contact because I can never tell how they'll react otherwise. I think there must be something about Humans, or the particular culture I'm living among, that I am not getting. I also find large crowds excessively tiring if they come within my personal space. However, I do enjoy events with up to about twenty people ;)

"Your high level of Agreeableness indicates a strong interest in others' needs and well-being. You are pleasant, sympathetic, and cooperative."

Comments: Also largely true. Ask me a tech support question and you'll get a long response, after I have time to think about it*. Bear in mind, though, I only scored high, not maximum - I rather prefer polite interactions :)

* -I also rated high on caution. I can override it if I need to, but I won't often do so.

Which OS Are You?

I came across this link (among other interesting reading) from the Changelog (.complete.org) after seeing a blog entry about some sort of "OS Test" on my Debian XScreenSaver (phosphor) and looking up John Goerzen on Google. Poor fellow; he got Windows XP.

However, I was surprised (and a little gratified) at my result. Maybe it was answering "If I end up Windows ME someone is going to be hurting." to that last question that did it.


Which OS are You?

Experiences of a Linux Newbie: Screensavers

I've tinkered with Linux before, but never really got into it until just recently, when I started using it on my main machine as a way to force myself to learn. One of the things I like best about computers is the gadgets and gizmos built into the programs. So, coming from Windows 2000 to Debian/GNU Linux, it didn't take me long to discover the vast array of screensavers built into XScreenSaver. I started off with the famous BSODs screensaver (blue screens of death from various operating systems), which kept me entertained for a couple of days. I also tried lightning, but that didn't hold my interest long - I like information!

Then, a couple of days ago, I discovered Phosphor, a screensaver that imitates an old vt100 green phosphor screen terminal, rather reminiscent of the text behavior in The Matrix, and displays various log entries from Linux experts and enthusiasts. I assumed that they were programmed in whenever the software was released, and that it was reading from a text file; that was what I was used to. After a while, looking one of the entries up in my web browser, I noticed that it was dated less than two days old, and matched the one on my screensaver. I found that the screensaver is getting information from an Internet URL (a user-configurable RSS newsfeed, to be specific).

I find that very cool - it reminds me of when you see the blinking consoles on the computers and the scrolling information on the monitors in the background on TV and in movies - not only do I have something like that now in my computers (photo will follow, if I can get a good picture), but it's actually potentially useful, up-to-date information in easily-digestable blocks that I can pay attention to or ignore, as I desire. Also, Phosphor usually repeats logs a few times, so if I ignore it once, chances are I'll see it again later before it gets pushed off by newer log entries.

Solving the Firefox/Mozilla tiny font problem on Linux

As I mentioned on Wireball.com, I recently suffered a hard drive crash, and took the opportunity to install Debian/GNU Linux on the new disk (I've got to learn sometime - I can't keep using Windows 2000 forever).

Installation went smoothly, and it has some nice software installed by default (including the latest version of the Mozilla browser suite, and the fully functional OpenOffice.org word processing suite). However, one thing I noticed was that once I installed Firefox (just to my /home/wireball/ directory, in its own directory/folder), the fonts were too small. For example, when visiting the Tech Report, the font was so small as to be practically unreadable - 11pt looked like 8pt.

I thought it had something to do with TrueType fonts (and I'm still not entirely sure it doesn't), but after futzing around for nearly four hours trying to install msttcorefonts, running into something about needing to configure Xwindows to use Defoma fonts, and supposedly the easiest way to do that was to use the x-ttcidfont-conf package, which I couldn't figure out how to get working, I had made little progress. I even tried to use alien. At least I learned to use the basics of Debian's apt and apt-get, which is truly a nice package management tool (automatically determines and takes care of dependencies, as well as installing packages so they work).

However, it turned out ultimately that I just had my Firefox dpi resolution setting under Edit->Preferences->General->Fonts and Colors->Display Resolution set incorrectly. I had tried changing it previously, but I hadn't exited and restarted the browser after doing so, which is necessary to see the changes. I found my error when I followed a suggestion and selected the "Other..." setting, measured the onscreen line as accurately as I could with a precise metric ruler, and entered in the value - it told me my display resolution was 96dpi (not 72dpi like it defaulted to). I OKed it, exited, restarted, and the Tech Report rendered at the correct font size.

I haven't installed Thunderbird yet, so if you've e-mailed me and are still waiting for a response, there's my explanation. I'm a packrat - I keep everything - so when I lose my old e-mail archives it drives me crazy. I remember when I lost four years of Eudora e-mail archives (from roughly 1998 to 2002, covering the height of the computer workstation company) - corrupted somehow so no e-mail client could read them - it kills me that I don't have easy access to those records. So much work and information. I still have large blocks of the files, but text editors take forever to load them up and sort through them, so it's impractical to refer to them. Maybe someday I'll find a solution. Hopefully something in Linux can parse through them and produce a usable output.