Unfortunately, finding documentation for getting it up and running is hit and miss. I’m hoping to correct this with this article.

I apologize ahead of time but I am a bit wordy. I’ll try to keep this to a minimum.

I am starting from a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.04 server plus the package ssh-server. My install originates from my local repository with a custom sources.list so you may need to update this with additional repositories to get all of the packages you need. My guest install will be Ubuntu 10.04. My host is called ‘ale’ and my guest is called ‘lager’. The host will have IP address 192.168.0.10 and my guest will have 192.168.0.11. My network uses dhcp to assign addresses, with which I am using static leases. I’m using the username “administrator” as the administrative user.

I am using the Ubuntu distribution of lxc, which is version 0.6.5. To install a newer version (as of this writing, 0.7.2 is the latest) you will need to install additional packages. I will not be covering this.

Configuring The Host

Installing The Software

Ubuntu provides all of the software we need to get started. In your host, run the following command and accept any dependencies that are detected:

sudo apt-get install lxc debootstrap bridge-utils libcap2-bin

Configure The Network

Networking requires bridging to work. You will need to add your primary network interface to a bridge so that the virtual machine has access to it. Once connected, the virtual machine will have access to the network as if it were directly connected.

Edit the file /etc/network/interfaces and make sure your primary interface is commented out and create a bridge connection:

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
#auto eth0
#iface eth0 inet dhcp
auto br0
iface br0 inet dhcp
bridge_ports eth0
bridge_stp off
bridge_maxwait 5
post-up /usr/sbin/brctl setfd br0 0

To set a static IP, in the case where you don’t have dhcp managing IPs for you, you simply add the configurations for doing so the same way you would a normal interface. Once completed, restart networking:

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

Control Groups

Lxc uses control groups, or cgroups, to manage resources. This is required to get up and running, but I will not explain how to use it.

First, create the directory /cgroup:

sudo mkdir /cgroup

Next, edit /etc/fstab and add an entry for the cgroup mount (if you don’t know how to use vi, substitute this command with your favorite editor):

sudo vi /etc/fstab

This entry should go on its own line:

none /cgroup cgroup defaults 0 0

Save the file and then mount the filesystem:

sudo mount /cgroup

If there were no errors, then there should be some stuff in /cgroup. This is a virtual filesystem similar to /proc and /sys.

Prepare The Guest

Create The Guest Structure

Now is the time you should decide where your guests will live. In my configuration, I’m putting my guests in /lxc/. Make sure your desired guest home exists. If it does not, create it:

sudo mkdir /lxc

I am going to use the layout of putting all of my core files and directories in the guest home. For each guest, a rootfs directory, a lxc fstab, and a lxc configuration file need to exist. I will use the format of item.guestname to name each item. I create each one up front:

cd /lxc
sudo mkdir rootfs.lager
sudo touch conf.lager
sudo touch fstab.lager

The result should look something like this:

administrator@ale:/lxc$ ls -l
total 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    0 2010-08-13 22:36 conf.lager
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    0 2010-08-13 22:36 fstab.lager
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2010-08-13 22:36 rootfs.lager

Bootstrap Your Guest

Now it’s time to bootstrap the guest. This will give us a base system to start with. Various sites appeared to try to overcomplicate this part and I’m not sure why. The following command makes a good starting point for me:

sudo debootstrap --arch amd64 lucid /lxc/rootfs.lager/ http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu

I actually used my internal repository instead of the Ubuntu repository. It should be easy to figure out which parts to substitute to meet your needs.

Modify The Bootstrapped Install

Unfortunately the bootstrapped install does not work out of the box.

The first thing to edit is the default fstab used by Ubuntu that is generally overridden by /etc/fstab. Lxc will be managing the virtual filesystems so we need to disable a few completely. Skipping this step will result in headaches. The file to edit is /lxc/rootfs.lager/lib/init/fstab:

sudo vi /lxc/rootfs.lager/lib/init/fstab

Find and comment out (add a # at the beginning of the line) the following:

none            /dev/pts                  devpts          noexec,nosuid,gid=tty,mode=0620   0 0

Save the file.

Next, the environment configuration needs some lines added. Edit the environments file in the guests:

sudo vi /lxc/rootfs.lager/etc/environment

Add the following lines:

LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
LANGUAGE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_CTYPE="C"

Save the file. There are a couple more files that need to be modified. first, modify the hostname file to define the hostname for the guest:

sudo vi /lxc/rootfs.lager/etc/hostname

Replace the value that is in this file with the new hostname and save the file. Next, edit the hosts file:

sudo vi /lxc/rootfs.lager/etc/hosts

Add the following lines (modified as needed) and save the file:

127.0.0.1	localhost	lager

The next part requires chroot. If all has gone well so far, there should be no errors in doing this.

sudo chroot /lxc/rootfs.lager/ /bin/bash

You will now be presented with a root prompt. All of the commands executed in the chroot will be executed without the use of sudo. Since we’re setting up a server, we want to be able to access it remotely via ssh. While I’m installing software in the guest, I will include language packs that are needed which should also configure the necessary settings for this as well.

apt-get install ssh-server libbsd0 libedit2 libwrap0 libx11-6 libx11-data libxau6 libxcb1 libxdmcp6 libxext6 libxmuu1 openssh-client openssh-server tcpd xauth language-pack-en language-pack-en-base

While this is running you may see some warnings about lang settings not being set properly. It is okay to ignore this. After this is executed, they should no longer appear.

Now we need to create our administrative user. You could, if you so desired, set a root password, but I like to leave root locked out. I’ll use my normal convention mentioned above. First, create an admin group:

addgroup admin

Next, add the administrative user:

adduser administrator

This will prompt to set a password and some other information. Enter a password, the rest is option. Next, add the user to the admin group:

adduser administrator admin

Finally, we need to modify the sudoers file so administrator can sudo like on a normal Ubuntu install. Edit the sudoers file with the appropriate command:

visudo

Find the following line:

%sudo ALL=(ALL) ALL

Change it so that it reads:

%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL

Create The Configuration

The guest rootfs should be prepared. Now we need to set up the lxc configuration for the guest. This will exist in the file we created called conf.lager. Edit this file:

sudo vi /lxc/conf.lager

The following is the configuration I will use:

lxc.utsname = lager
lxc.tty = 4
lxc.network.type = veth
lxc.network.flags = up
lxc.network.link = br0
lxc.network.hwaddr = 08:00:27:83:C4:82
lxc.network.ipv4 = 0.0.0.0
lxc.network.name = eth0
lxc.mount = /lxc/fstab.lager
lxc.rootfs = /lxc/rootfs.lager

If you don’t understand how to modify these settings, please refer to the documentation. Remember, I’m using a dhcp setup with static leases, so your address settings are likely to be different. If you set a static IP, you will need to specify the address mask with it (192.168.0.11/24 for example). Save the file.

The next file to edit is the fstab file. We will take our cues from the default fstab file we modified in the rootfs of our guest. Edit the file:

sudo vi /lxc/fstab.lager

Add the following lines to the file:

none            /lxc/rootfs.lager/dev/pts                  devpts          defaults                           0 0

As you can see, this is very similar to the old contents, except that we added the /lxc/rootfs.lager/ prefix to the mount points. Save this file.

Now We Actually Get To Use lxc

Create The lxc Guest

Now that we have our configuration files and our rootfs for our guest, we need to tie it all together by creating the lxc guest:

sudo lxc-create -f /lxc/conf.lager -n lager

Run It!

All that is left now is to run it!

sudo lxc-start -n lager -d

The -d flag forks the process so we return to the shell.

It may take some time for the guest to come up. Once it is up, you should be able to use lxc-console or ssh to start using it and setting it up for its intended purpose.

In Closing

The startup scripts are not optimal for running in this environment and there are some startup configurations that cause delays in the startup process. There are different websites that have different ideas on how to handle this. At this moment, I have not sought a solution to this.

There are also a lot more things you can do to try to optimize this setup. I have not yet done much work on this so I can’t provide any advice yet.

I will note that if you make changes to the configuration file you will have to destroy and recreate the guest. The commands are trivial to execute so it shouldn’t be a big deal. Just know that stopping and restarting the guest is not enough.

Finally, I should note that I barely scratched the surface of using this virtualization. There are a lot of commands associated to lxc and I recommend reading some documentation. From here, however, you should have a lxc virtual machine running. It’s possible I’ll make a new entry for tips and tricks some other time, but for now, I need to go do some playing with this thing myself.

Some sites I referenced to try to build a better picture:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LXC

http://blog.bodhizazen.net/linux/lxc-linux-containers/

http://blog.bodhizazen.net/linux/lxc-configure-ubuntu-lucid-containers/

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-lxc-containers/

https://www.gnali.org/?p=230

http://lxc.teegra.net/

Every time I see cloud computing in this context, it always dumbfounds me, though.

Cloud computing hasn’t represented its original meaning for a long time now so I’m not sure why it still bothers me. It’s possible that it’s because the “technology” has nothing to do with the origin of the term.

In case you don’t know the origin of the term, I’ll explain it.

Many years ago mainframes were giant computers that were really expensive and powerful. There were even some in the classification of “supercomputer” that were used for scientific calculation (physics, etc). However, as technology advanced, these expensive machines became relatively slow and datasets were growing faster than technology could advance to crunch through the data. It was getting to the point where processing the data was taking a prohibitive amount of time, making it difficult to perform some actual science or other work.

Eventually, the idea of a compute cluster came about. This was, essentially, a bunch of computers networked together sharing the workload so that instead of a single big, powerful, and expensive computer being used, smaller, cheaper, yet a bit less powerful computers were getting much more work done faster. A large cluster could get more work done than a single mainframe for about the same price.

Still, doing this kind of thing was costly. Low budget projects didn’t have the monetary backing to buy compute time or build their own cluster to get the work done that was needed in a reasonable amount of time. Instead, these people would reach out to other people to donate compute time from their own computers. The data could be broken down into logical blocks of data for processing and sent to each computer over the internet. Over time, these projects grew in popularity and a project could gather thousands of computers to crunch numbers for them.

This is, essentially, the origin of cloud computing. But why is it called cloud computing?

A networking diagram basically has a standard set of images to represent different parts of a network. Often, there would be a section of the network to represent a connection between two endpoints that is rather mysterious because it can’t be accurately described in the diagram due to its traversal over the internet. This area is often wrapped in a cloud shaped bubble to indicate this mysteriousness. The cloud bubble has also been used to indicate other mysterious portions of a network not associated with the internet, but it’s almost always used in areas around sections of the network involving the internet.

So cloud computing, if diagrammed, would have a cloud bubble to represent the internet in between the endpoints, hence the name. In essence, cloud computing is accessing compute resources from geographically disparate locations over the internet.

At least, that’s what it use to be. The concept of accessing compute resources over the internet still exists, but this is not what the term “cloud computing” is used for anymore. These days, cloud computing is associated with any kind of clustering, particularly if it involves virtualization.

In reality, the term never stuck with the original idea, which became more widely known as distributed computing.

The hosting provider that I was looking at has cloud services. Basically, they have a large cluster of servers networked together for the purpose of hosting virtual servers that their customers can lease. It’s not even a clustering service that customers have access to. Customers only have access to the virtual server. Customers can purchase more than one virtual server, if he would like, and the virtual server can be delivered quickly. However, if cluster is what the customer has in mind, it is up to the customer to make it work.

The problem with this is if you were to diagram this system, you can do so without ever drawing a cloud drawing. None of the applications draw on compute resources outside of the cluster of servers. In the case of the hosting provider, the application may never draw on compute resources outside of the one server it runs on. The only cloud in existence is the endpoint connection where it serves its services.

At least Amazon’s EC2 services are more like clustering services to the customer.

What’s really hilarious out of all of this is the fact that the infrastructure hosting the virtual servers is now referred to as “the cloud.” When you consider “the internet” was the original “cloud” it kinda doesn’t make sense. That cluster of servers that you call “the cloud” is not the internet.

I’m not sure how the “cloud computing” term got so twisted and became such a buzzword, but in modern technology it only describes virtual hosting, which is something that is far from new. I suspect when someone tried to explain distributed computing to a non-technical marketing person, it somehow involved the term “cloud computing” and the marketing person saw something completely different than what was described. Many major corporates now equate cloud computing to virtual hosting, now, including those that should really know better.

I had been considering jumping into the whole eBook thing for a while, and even began doing some reading of eBooks on my netbook. Even with the display brightness turned down, I could not find a comfortable viewing experience with the display, and the netbook itself did not lend to being a good reading device. I wanted to hold off buying a dedicated eReader because I was hoping to either get one at a really low price or maybe spend more on the newer color ePaper devices that were coming much later. When I found a device that was less than $200, I jumped on it.

Enter: Kobo.

At the time that I ordered my Kobo, the price was $150, which made it around $100 cheaper than the other popular alternatives (Kindle and nook). Now, Kobo doesn’t have the price advantage anymore. I would recommend reading my article on why I continued with the Kobo despite the price drops before receiving it.

Now, I’ve had the Kobo for a little while now, but I wanted to wait on reviewing it until the recent firmware update was available and I got to play with it because I wanted to make a review that included the current edition in case some of my concerns were already addressed (some were).

Design

The first thing to note about the Kobo is it is a VERY basic device. It has a total of 6 buttons, 1 data/charging port, and a SD card slot. There is no keyboard, no touchscreen, no complicated mechanisms, none of that. From the very beginning, it was designed to be an eBook reader and that’s pretty much it. It has no wifi or 3G mobile connectivity. It’s thin and light. It’s easy to hold. All of the reasons I listed for choosing the Kobo apply here.

Build Quality

This is an important consideration for a device that is going to cost over $100, in my opinion. It needs to last. The Kobo feels pretty solid and durable. The back is a pretty hard rubberized plastic and the front feels like a pretty sturdy plastic. The buttons feel solid and pretty well integrated. The ePaper display is plastic instead of glass so it should be harder to break. However, it’s not going to be scratch resistant by any means.

Look And Feel

I’m honestly not a fan of the color scheme. The white and gray are okay, but the turquoise buttons are a little distracting, especially the big navigation button. I’ve seen images of an all gray model that I would have preferred, but I think it was a prototype model. It’s light and easy to hold and use. The only complaint I have is the placement of the navigation button. I think it would have been better placed in the middle rather than to one side.

Ease Of Use

Because of its simplicity in design, it’s very easy to get into and use. In fact, as soon as you receive it you can start reading any of the 100 included books. I used The Art of War by Sun Tzu (commentary by Lionel Giles, but that’s not noted…it’s from the Gutenberg Project) to get started. Unfortunately this was a terrible book to get started with because it was not properly formatted (it has chapters but for some reason this information was missing in the file) but still a good read.

The software on the device is pretty easy to use, but I have to admit that some things are not as intuitive as I think they could be. As an example, if you are reading a book or have new books on the device, the default home screen is the Now Reading screen and you access the library through two small selectable links above the book list. This was not obvious to me at first, but I found it pretty quickly. Given my ability to figure things out quickly, and how this was not obvious immediately, it does concern me that another person might not catch on quite as quickly. There are a few other little things here and there that struck me this way.

One of my major complaints, however, is the inability to “close” a book quickly. Once a book is opened, the only way to close it without connecting to a computer is to skip to the last chapter then page to the end (at least as far as I can tell). Kobo could definitely use a “Close Book” option in the menu as paging on a device with an ePaper display is not fast.

Loading Books

One of the really great things about the Kobo is how service  agnostic it is. It only supports two eBook formats, ePub and PDF, but pretty much all book sellers these days sell their books in ePub format (the exception is Amazon, I believe, which uses a proprietary format for the Kindle). Additionally, no extra software is required to copy books to the Kobo. Once connected to a computer via USB, the Kobo presents its storage as disk drives. If the Kobo has a memory card installed, it will show a separate drive for the card. This makes putting books on it a matter of copying ePub or PDF files to the Kobo like copying files to another folder.

Since I’m in the USA, my Kobo is provided through Borders, which provides a branded version of the Kobo bookstore software to purchase books. This software makes it very easy to find books, buy them, and load them on the Kobo. Loading books in this way doesn’t actually load an ePub file onto the device in the same way as using the drive. Instead, it is loaded into the Kobo’s internal library. The books purchased from the Kobo book store as well as loaded through the software from the Borders library do contain DRM.

Performance

I really didn’t expect much in performance. In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised if some things might have been a little frustrating. I figured as long as I can read books reasonably, it should be fine. In fact, the performance is pretty good in this area. However, performance is severely lacking in other areas.

When loading a new book onto the device and unplugging it, it has to read through the files and set up some metadata information so that it can be displayed in the library interface more smoothly. The boot process is slow, but not to the point of unusable. However, the process of loading new books is damn near infuriatingly slow. If you make a change of more than one book, it can take quite a long time to refresh the library. As of this writing, I’ve been waiting about half an hour for it to refresh after adding a new book from O’Reilly, removing some PDFs, and adding a couple of publications (loaded through Calibre). One might think it might have crashed, locked up, etc, but experience tells me this is not the case. It can take quite a long time if there are enough changes.

The book I bought from O’Reilly is a large book. It seems that the Kobo does handle it well. It takes an unacceptably long time to process at boot, as well as an unacceptably long time to load it for reading. Some of the page turns take longer than I feel should be tolerable.

If I were to grade the performance using an academic scale, it would receive a big fat red F. The performance is tolerable once you can get it into a book, but it’s a complete failure getting to that point.

Battery Longevity

I’m not a power reader. I like reading, but sometimes it can be hard for me to get into it. However, since getting the Kobo, I’ve done a lot of reading. I’ve read 2 books in the last few weeks, which is more than I’ve done in quite a while. I haven’t really put my Kobo through its paces on battery drain, but I have gone several days without recharging without a worry.

eBook readers a rated in page turns when rating the battery longevity. The reason for this is because the majority of power draw is from screen refreshes. When the screen is idle, for the most part, the device is idle and consuming next to no power. In fact, it may even enter a low power mode without you even noticing. In fact, when you turn off the Kobo (and possibly others) it is still displaying something on the display despite the device being turned off.

Note: Originally it showed book cover art, now it shows a powered off notification. Many complained about this and the cover art may be returning in a later update.

Many of the major eReaders now are rated around 8,000 page turns. Realistically it won’t reach this as this is a maximum. However, depending on the size of the books, it can still go several books before needing to be recharged (prior to the latest patch there was a battery drain bug that reduced page turns to possibly around 1,000…but it should be fixed now). I have a tendency to recharge portable devices often so I don’t really see myself facing a dead battery situation.

The firmware update introduced some power save features that I don’t like, however. After 15 minutes, the device sleeps. In going into sleep mode, it switches to cover art. A little longer and the device turns off. There is no way to turn this behavior off. Before the update, I preferred to leave it on as I didn’t feel the drain was so much that it would come close to dying before I could charge it again because I wanted quick access to my books. Now, I’m forced to suffer through all of the load times, which, as mentioned, are horrendous.

Updating The Firmware

I mentioned before that I wanted to wait for the current firmware to be released before reviewing the Kobo. I wanted to do this because some things were addressed in it that might change my review and I didn’t want to put out misleading information that was quickly outdated. As an example, battery drain was addressed. I don’t think I faced the issue, but others did and it was worthy of a mention. Additionally, the included 100 books cluttered the internal library. This was addressed by introducing the ability to hide them so you can only see your books. Another major issue addressed was the confusion around the charging indicator. Originally it would show nothing while it was charging except for a note on the display, and would later show the red LED once it was done. This was changed to show the red LED while charging and blue when done.

Updating the firmware was an easy process, but only because very well designed instructions were provided. The instructions were included with the desktop software and provided easy to understand instructions and diagrams. However, the process itself, in my opinion, is overcomplicated. I feel like many device makers have caught on to the idea of simple update processes, but the Kobo is a massive step backwards by introducing multiple boot modes and convoluted button combinations. I think a shining example to follow is Cowon, where the process is very simple and almost completely stupid proof: Copy the provided files to the device’s root storage, reboot device.

A Note On PDF Support

Kobo separates ePubs from PDF files. ePubs are “Books” and PDFs are “Documents” regardless their purpose. They are processed differently, handled different, read differently, and there is nothing provided to convert between the files if I want to read a PDF eBook as though it were a “Book” and not a “Document.” I absolutely hate the PDF reader on the Kobo. It’s poorly implemented and not very eBook friendly. All of the PDF eBooks I’ve loaded so far had fonts that were far too small and PDFs don’t play well with the idea of resizable text, so the only option is to zoom in (like on a computer). Until I find a good PDF to ePub converter that seems to put out well formatted ePub files, I’ll be avoiding reading PDFs on the Kobo.

Get It Or Avoid It?

I actually wish I cancelled my pre-order as soon as I saw the other devices drop in price. I probably would have gone for the nook instead. Unfortunately I don’t think I can return it (though I will be looking into it).

I absolutely love how simple the device is and how much the company connects to their users. However, the performance of this device is absolutely terrible. I can’t really find any info on the hardware specs so I don’t know if the problem is software or hardware. I do know that I would not recommend this device to other people in its current state. The features are great for reading, but getting past the performance problems is very hard.

Choosing your first gun is an important decision, but at the same time you should remember that you won’t be married to it. There are a lot of options to consider, but I think some important questions should be answered first.

Why are you buying the gun?

This is probably one of the most important questions, not just because it can help narrow down your choices by a large margin, but also help you decide if you even should buy the gun. Owning a gun requires a huge amount of maturity. It can never be perceived as a toy, or as something that can be played with. A mishandled gun can result in an untimely death. So, what is the reason?

Once you get past the part where you are sure this is something you want to follow through with, the answer to this question doesn’t tell you what gun to buy, but gives an idea of where you should start looking.

What caliber should I shoot?

This depends on your goal and your comfort with the amount of power in various rounds.

In self defense, bigger is always better. However, it is possible to go too big. If you are looking for something for self defense, find the largest caliber you are comfortable shooting repeatedly. While a .357magnum sounds very appealing and dangerous to your aggressor, it can be unwieldy. I can shoot .44magnum pretty well, but it’s not a good choice, for me, as a defense round.

In target practice I like to stay small and cheap. I find .22lr helps train handgun handling and I can shoot it all day. I still practice with my carry weapon, but primarily to maintain training with it, not so much for recreation.

Revolver or auto?

This is actually a valid consideration. Revolvers are relatively simple firearms, especially compared to auto handguns. In fact, Texas makes the distinction in concealed handgun licensing certification (if you certify on a revolver, you are not permitted to carry an auto, but if you certify on an auto, you can carry a revolver as well). Revolvers also have a different range of calibers available to them than autos, and have different carry capacity. They each have a different feel and a different balance. Finally, revolvers can be heavier, mostly by the nature of firing larger calibers and the fact that autos have polymer frames available.

Steel or polymer?

This is a question for the autos. If you want an auto handgun (one that has an auto-loading action from a removable magazine), you have the choice of an all metal frame or a polymer frame.

If you don’t know what “polymer” means, it’s basically a blend of materials. In this case, it is primarily hard nylon polymers. Many people refer to polymer frame guns as plastic because that is the way they feel. Some don’t like this simply because it feels cheap or toy-ish. This tends to bring into question its durability. In reality, there are polymers that are harder than metal, friction points are always metal on metal, and in cases where a polymer frame might fail due to a malfunction, a metal frame gun is likely to do the same.

So when making this consideration, you should decide based on the way they feel. Because polymer frame guns are very light, though the friction points are all metal, polymer frame guns tend to be top heavy, especially when the gun is unloaded. The slide, barrel, action, etc are all metal and the lower part of the gun is plastic. Overall, however, the gun would be lighter than an all metal gun. Each have their advantages and disadvantages.

Big or small?

Believe it or not, guns come in different sized frames, and the answer to this should involve the purpose of the firearm.

Large frame, especially all metal handguns tend to be heavier. With the increased weight, you will experienced less recoil because more energy is required to move the handgun and you are more likely to have a more firm grip. However, large frame guns tend to be harder to carry, particularly concealed. Small frame and polymer guns tend to be lighter. Lighter guns will have increased muzzle flip (the act of the handgun’s muzzle flipping upwards) which can be stressful on your hands and wrists and increase recovery time to next shot. Small guns are easier to conceal, with some being small enough for pocket carry.

What brand?

This is pretty much where I stop. The major brands make reliable and accurate guns for most people, and I recommend sticking to the major brands. I’m not going to tell you which brand to buy but you should do your research.

This is where I’m going to tell you about gun rentals. Many gun ranges allow you to rent a handgun to fire using ammunition they sell. They will show you how to operate the handgun, but not all ranges will provide training for free or at all. I would recommend finding a range that offers gun rentals and try them out. If at all possible, I recommend finding a range that does offer training or getting to know someone that can help you out. You don’t have to just fire a gun in a single session if you want to get to know a gun before buying it.

There has been less emphasis on form work and more emphasis on push hands. We’ve also gotten into some of the theory beyond just application.

It seems like the “soft” or “internal” arts have a lot of theory discussion, particularly in terms of application, but not a lot of actual practice of application. This is why I like my school: it’s a martial school, and that means practicing the ideas behind the art. I’ve not yet started self defense training, nor learned how strike the right way, but that is because I need to learn how to use my body before I can do those things.

Push hands is a martial game in Taiji despite what any instructor tells you. The difference between push hands and sparring, or even fighting, is simply the energy used. Push hands is designed to train and test touch sensitivity and form. The same techniques can be applied to fighting by using more aggressive yang energy and being more sensitive with yin energy. That’s not really the complete story, but it is the basic idea.

Some of the things I’ve worked on in push hands are tackle negation, rear arm splitting, and some free form moving push hands.

I see, in my mind, tackle negation having some of the same blocking mechanics as should strike negation. The difference is instead of an upper torso negation, it is a lower torso negation, and the second arm plays a more important role in disrupting the attack. In negating a tackle, I use my elbow to roll my opponent around my structure and can then push or press, or use some other technique to disrupt his structure. In tackle negation, I use more of a peng technique with either an upper torso splitting or a push, depending on the type of tackle and where my arms are in relation to my opponent.

I’m really not likely to encounter a tackle maneuver in Taiji push hands because it can easily be done wrong, and cause a break in structure and loss of root. Strategically, it’s not a good idea unless you have a sure advantage in using it.

Previously, I had learned front arm splitting, which is the act of splitting my opponents structure using their front arm. Now, I’m learning how to do it from their rear arm. It’s not really that much different, but some of the energies are a little different. The advantage of using a front arm technique is it is easy to perform, and when done against someone who is less experienced, can be very successful. However, rear arm splitting adds a twist, so to speak. Rear arm splitting has the advantage of causing your opponent to be twisted, or crossed, making it very easy to knock him down.

I haven’t gotten into negating rear arm splitting just yet, but I have seen it briefly, and it appears to be quite different from front arm splitting.

During this next month (July) I will be taking a break from Taiji training. I am changing some focus in my life in order to attempt to break a problem I’m having that will take at least a month. Hopefully I’ll be able to make the appropriate adjustment to return to Taiji in August in much better health and begin new habits and start accelerating my growth into Taiji at least a small amount. With that said, I will most likely not be writing another This Month In Taijiquan until the end of August as I will only be focusing on form work during the next month while I pursue other goals.

Most of the names of the form movements used are referenced from http://www.egreenway.com/taichichuan/longyang.htm.

I train in traditional Yang style Taijiquan at Authentic Kung Fu Dallas under Sifu Bobby Garcia. Authentic Kung Fu Dallas also teaches adult and kids Northern Praying Mantis Boxing under Sifu Bobby Garcia, and Wing Chun Kuen under Joram Greber. http://www.authentickungfudallas.com/

These are my interpretations and thoughts on what I am learning and may not be entirely accurate. I do invite correction and discussion on anything mentioned. I encourage the use of my forum for further discussion.

Overall, the Kobo has far fewer features than the Kindle and the nook. The Kobo is, basically, a bare metal eReader with pretty much no wireless communication (it has Bluetooth for syncing books with a Blackberry, but I don’t count this due to its very specific use). It has no internet capabilities, no built-in store, no fluff. This really does explain why it was so much cheaper before. However, the Kobo has lost its price advantage, but I’m not canceling my pre-order.

Why would I pass up a superior device for the same low price? Because superiority is a matter of perspective.

It should be pretty obvious how the Kindle and the nook are superior (wireless connectivity, feature rich interfaces, etc), so what makes the Kobo superior?

The simple answer: Design.

I’m not a huge fan of the color scheme, but if it really gets to bothering me, I can easily fix that. However, the Kobo is designed to be light weight and easy to use. In reading various reviews, it has been noted that a user can start using it without even reading the user’s manual. This isn’t a major deal for me because I rarely reference the user’s manual for many of the devices I buy, but this goes to show how easy it is to actually navigate the device and get to reading a book.

Another major advantage of the Kobo is how easy it is to hold. People who have looked at the device noted that the side buttons didn’t seem intuitive and the D-pad was out of place, and southpaw hostile. However, when people actually use the device, everything, then, made sense. Well, that is if you were a righty. It actually is a bit southpaw hostile, unfortunately. This is one advantage of the Kindle and nook.

Another great advantage of the Kobo is it’s just plain simple. There are four buttons on the side and a D-pad for navigating the device. There are pretty big areas on the device for the reader to hold on to while reading without fear of accidentally mashing buttons or obstructing the page you are reading. This is a pretty big disadvantage of the Kindle and nook and is a common complaint about them.

Honestly, given the limited feature set of the Kobo by comparison to the Kindle and nook, I would like to see a price drop on the Kobo as well and be able to take advantage of it. Unfortunately, I don’t think that will happen. I haven’t canceled my pre-order and plan to completely go through with it and not take advantage of the price drops of the other bigger players. I’m not looking for a ton of features in an eReader. The Kobo appears to provide everything I want out of it. I’m betting Borders will see some Kobo pre-orders cancelled in favor of the cheaper Kindle or nook (Kindle is now $190, Wifi only nook is now $150) and maybe that will give them incentive to lower the price to keep or recover pre-orders.

Note: I have not used any of these devices, and this should not be construed as a review of any of them. As the title should imply as it explicitly states, this is simply why I chose to go with the Kobo. I’ll review the Kobo once I get it next month.

It seems the general conclusion is gaming computers just aren’t really able to hold a disk array that can make a difference. One of the great things about RAID is if you use a high performance controller and host numerous drives on it, you can get some serious speed out of it. However, consumer level computers neither have the capacity to hold enough drives to make a difference, nor have powerful enough RAID controllers to handle them. Even some of the cheaper discrete RAID controllers can be fairly expensive ($300+ at last check for something worthwhile). The gains of 2-5% from two or three drive arrays are just not enough to justify the cost.

The only way to get a high performance RAID array is to spend a good amount of money on a dedicated RAID controller and connect a lot of drives to it, probably six or more. The more spindles, the better, when using a striping configuration (RAID levels 0, 3, 5, 6, etc). This costs a lot of money to get to the level of performance that it truly makes a difference. Shaving off just a few seconds from load times makes it hard to justify a two or three drive configuration, and going beyond that will cost much much more. Bear in mind that when I say spend a good amount of money, I mean potentially multiple thousands of dollars.

The other option is to use faster or bigger drives, or both, if you don’t mind spending a little extra. You see, there are two ways to speed up a hard drive: data density and spindle speed.

A drive that spins faster is obviously going to be faster. Going from 7.2k RPM to 10k RPM may not sound like much, but it’s enough to make a huge difference in latency and throughput. The down side to a faster spinning drive is the heat it produces. This is kinda why Western Digital developed their VelociRaptors the way they did. These drives are 2.5″ 10k RPM drives with heatsink fins to fill it out to a 3.5″ enclosure.

A larger hard drive is not just larger, it’s faster. Seek times will increase slightly, which contributes to latency, but data throughput will increase because you pack more data in the space that is spinning by. Random reads might not improve much, but sequential reads can improve a lot, depending on how much larger the drive is and how many platters it uses to get there. This is why having a 1tb drive is not necessarily a bad idea on a gaming rig. As a RAID drive it’s a terrible idea, and the reason varies depending on the RAID level used.

Another consideration is the physical size of the drive. I mentioned the VelociRaptor from WD before, which has not just the spindle speed going for it, but also improved data density. You see, the largest VelociRaptor available, currently, is 600gb, which is quite large for any 2.5″ drive. To achieve this, WD might use a combination of multiple platters or just really high data density. The VelociRaptor 300gb uses two 150gb platters. The newer 600gb drive uses three 200gb platters. The platters have to be the same physical size so each platter has  an additional 50gb crammed in. This means as the platters spin, more data is passing by the drive heads. This is why the VelociRaptors are some of the fastest consumer drives available.

I’m currently using three 160gb 7.2k RPM drives in RAID0. I tried to keep the sizes low to keep costs low and that was probably part of my mistake on performance considerations. Now I’m looking at upgrading. I’m most likely going to go with a large 10k RPM drive, like the VelociRaptor, it’s just a matter of deciding which size. The 600gb drive is still new and most likely very expensive so I’ll likely go with the 300gb drive to keep it under $200. This should simplify my configuration and improve my performance quite a bit by increasing spindle speed, increasing data density, and reducing complexity (no more RAID).

I’ve been progressing well in my Taiji study. I now know the long form, and I believe I mentioned what my unofficial rank is in a previous post. Now, the emphasis is on body movement quality and moving push hands. After doing so much stationary push hands, I’m struggling a bit to get my body to do the things I want it to do, that I know it should do.

Stationary push hands is fairly easy to learn once you get the basics down from the forms, silk reeling, etc. There weren’t a lot of vectors to deal with and it was a matter of manipulating your opponent in a way to force him to move his feet while you stay stationary.  It sounds pretty easy, but it does require some basic knowledge of Taiji to do properly. You can’t just push and expect a result if your opponent is trained in Taiji.

Moving push hands, on the other hand, allows you to step, which introduces a whole new world of Taiji practice and usage. It’s not just a matter of training yourself to step when appropriate, but also training yourself to know where to step defensively as well as offensively.

Moving push hands is a more true test of Taiji knowledge and skill.

The last Kung Fu tournament I went to had some strange rules for the push hands competition. Unfortunately this lead to moving push hands digressing to shoving matches because so much of Taiji was eliminated by the rules. Still, a good Taiji practitioner can overcome this pretty easily. Shoving matches are easy because all you have to do is, essentially, sumo wrestle. However, this would not stand up to someone who can do a proper rollback of any kind.

Sifu has taught me quite a bit of moving push hands, at this point. He’s now teaching me about the energies and how to deal with them and use other energies in response. Some of the practice is becoming a bit more free form, and it’s proving to be difficult to transition to stepping versus staying stationary. There’s a lot more to think about, now, rather than just where my hands are, what to do with them, and how to move my body.

Outside of push hands, I have been drilling the form and working on body movement quality with the form and silk reeling.

I’m still struggling a bit to complete the long form from memory, but at least my legs are getting strong enough to do long stretches of the form without rest. I remember the whole form, but I need help remembering some of the steps as I go through it. I guess that comes with the territory, though, since the long form is, well, long. It’s not just long in relation to other Taiji forms, but it is just damn long.

The silk reeling has a new focus. Before it was just an exercise in moving the body in a connected fashion. Now I am working on moving the body in a connected fashion starting at the core and ending at the extremities. This is where I really get into the silk reeling aspects of silk reeling. The importance of the proper movements is in the fact that this is how Taiji is able to increase its efficiency in body movement and issuing force. I won’t be getting into issuing force for some time, but it’s important that my body learns these movements correctly so I do it right later on without injuring myself.

Thanks to work, I’ve been missing days here and there so my advancement has slowed a bit. However, this month marks my year of Taiji study. If I were to go by my recreational center membership, the day that marked my anniversary is May 3. In one year’s time I have progressed from having no martial arts experience to being well into moving push hands in Taiji. In the next year it’s expected that I should have some of the start parts of self defense. This being a martial class, I will be learning to fight with Taiji.

Most of the names of the form movements used are referenced from http://www.egreenway.com/taichichuan/longyang.htm.

I train in traditional Yang style Taijiquan at Authentic Kung Fu Dallas under Sifu Bobby Garcia. Authentic Kung Fu Dallas also teaches adult and kids Northern Praying Mantis Boxing under Sifu Bobby Garcia, and Wing Chun Kuen under Joram Greber. http://www.authentickungfudallas.com/

These are my interpretations and thoughts on what I am learning and may not be entirely accurate. I do invite correction and discussion on anything mentioned. I encourage the use of my forum for further discussion.

If you’ve looked at portable or notebook mice, you’ve probably seen a lot of the same thing in different colored packaging and different feature sets. They are all shrunken down mice. They are compact and look pretty portable. However it seems the manufacturers of these mice haven’t, yet, figured out what the mobile phone makers did a while back: it isn’t really portable unless it’s flat.

So what’s wrong with portable mice?

First of all, they are narrow. I have big hands, but I can’t imagine even an adult person with smaller hands would be comfortable using one of these mice. I’ve found that after a short period of usage, my hand actually starts cramping up. I’d rather use a touchpad over one of these mice.

Another major issue is they tend to not be all that portable. Sure, they’ll fit in a pocket somewhere in a bag, but it causes the pocket to bulge. This is bad for a number of reasons. A couple of major reasons are rather simple. This will cause neoprene or other similar materials to bulge and stretch. This isn’t just a cosmetic problem, but can damage your bag. Also, the pressure of it being inside of a bag adds a point of pressure against your computer. Do you really want such a large item adding a point of pressure against your precious computing device?

A couple years ago I went hunting for a portable mouse to use with my work laptop. I found a bluetooth mouse that was wide enough to use, but was quite bulky, yet stubby. It was marketed as a portable mouse, and I used it for a short period of time. However, I wasn’t happy with how it fit in my bag so I kept shopping. I eventually gave up looking for a portable mouse and decided to expand my search to include full size mice. This is where I ran into a wireless Logitech mouse that was the closest to being what I was looking for.

The mouse I found is the predecessor to the V550 Nano. It’s a full width and length mouse, but squished a bit to flatten it out slightly. It’s still bulkier than I would like, but I was comfortable in that it didn’t seem to create any problems in my bag. It fits well with the power adapter so that there are no major points of pressure. It is also flat enough to fit well in one of the various pockets should I need it to.

I liked this mouse so much that recently I bought an updated version of it that connects via bluetooth called the M555b. Since I was enjoying using the older mouse, and I really liked the color of the new one, I went for it to use with my netbook.

However, as I mentioned, these mice do not meet my requirements 100%. I have seen flatter mice in the past but were much too narrow for my big hands. I would like to see these mice flatter than they are, but not so much that they get prohibitive to use. From what I’ve seen of the internals it doesn’t really seem like there’s room to shrink them, but then again, the internals could be rearranged. Additionally, component design improves could allow for the reduction of the size of the PCB.

What I’m getting at is a truly portable mouse isn’t simply one that is tiny, but rather one that fits well in a compartment or pocket with a computer. Flattening a full size mouse is a good start.