I've been downloading stuff for no reason at all again. First I downloaded Debian 2.2r3 (all 3 binary cd's) then I noticed it had some stuff I wanted missing (like XFree86 4.x to name one important thing) so I decided to rsync a debian mirror onto bluemidgit. It's done about 3.9 gig but I thought there must be a better way of this, so I posed google some questions and got some answers. Basically, if you want to keep debian up to date you need to update it often to the testing or unstable tree. This involves downloading packages usually via apt-get to update them as they change, fine, but a fresh install needs about 400 meg of packages to dist-update the system. Now since I've already partially mirrored the testing tree and considered mirroring the unstable tree I was looking for a better solution. After more reading and browsing around, and the essential reading of slashdot (the tomb of knowledge and flaming) I ended up with Progeny GNU/Linux. It's a commercial Debian made by Ian Murdock who is the Debian project's founder, and as an added bonus, it's only 2 small cd images to download. Apart from that, it's compatible with Debian 2.2 packages and its got most of the updated stuff I'm looking for. I'm downloading it now, I've got about half of CD 1 as I type this.

You might pose the obvious question, why mirror it in the first place? Why not just download what you need and be happy? Well my response to this would be: I'm not a fan of active setup stuff in general, even though apt-get does keep the packages around (in /var/cache/apt/archive/ if I remember rightly). Also what if you've got 2 machines, or more, well, for me it would be one Debian box initially, but then if I really got to like debian, it would most likely be 2, (my laptop), following this, when bluemidgit crashes (I don't want it to crash, but I would like to repartition it and I would like to add more ram and disk space, but 315 days is a long time, and I'd so like to be able to say that bluemidgit was up for a year without problems) It would most likely be updated to the latest and greatest, which if I walk down the isle with Debian would be it. In that case, a local mirror would be so useful, also for later releases it would be very simple to rsync the local mirror to an official mirror (rsync://planetmirror.com:/debian) and maybe use the Pseudo image kit to make a newer version of the install cds. Also there would be the l33tness of saying at a large lan (eg uwalan) that there is a full debian mirror present at blah.blah (assuming DNS is used, ala uwalan) Think of it as a legal front to l33ching l33t war3z or something. Also I'm not on a download or time limited internet account. Though I do have a stack of 13 free telstra setup cds here, each with unlimited hours and 300 meg download ... That would be a day each, but I don't think I could use more than one due to some well hidden policy somewhere.

Here is a traffic graph for my modem for a day or so ago (5th August 2001, taken at 2:52pm) showing some incoming traffic (green) and very little outgoing (blue) traffic. Graph uses samples taken every 5 minutes for traffic through the link. I averaged 3.2kb/s the whole day, I think I got about 275 meg total that day.

Hand Maid May had an amusing ending, sort of typical anime I guess, sad then everyone is happy then lets chuck a party people type ending. I'm now watching series 7 Voyager, though I'm missing 3 episodes I don't really care, it's all the same to me. Today I bought Neon Genesis Evangelion Collection 0:6 at Target, I'm yet to put it in the drive to see what new extras are there. Dvd 7 comes out this Thursday so I'm not doing too badly. New poll today too.

Find the fastest pub warez sites at http://3640001799/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=%67%75%6c%6c%69%62%6c%65 and fight da man!

Did you know that Visual Basic scripting edition, commonly called VBScript or affectionately referred to as SatanScript by some people, can't have variable parameter lists on functions (or subrouteines), and it can't have default parameter values either (for the record, VB does support both). Argh. I'm finding it just so awkward to do what you want. Maybe I just think weird so the way I would try to do something just won't work in it. Don't get me wrong, SatanScript isn't the only language with this problem, I find perl awkward as well, but for the opposite reason, there are just too many ways to do something. Python is meant to be the middle ground, but I'm yet to try much in it.

The new south park episodes I mentioned are great, get em. Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 captured fine last night. Cartman spent most of yesterday defragging a 57 gig volume for capture purposes. I've been watching Hand Maid May episodes, there are 10, I've got em all, I've seen 8 of em. It's interesting in an anime kind of way, some cute and funny characters ... I bought more blank cd's. I changed my wallpaper again, something brighter and more colourful.

I've got the Access 31 coverage of UWALAN and watched it. I'm not sure if I'm in it or not, I was trying to avoid it on the day but I think I might be in it (if only I could remember what I was wearing that weekend). Either way, both of my computers were on TV =)

Did you know that if you play a Windows 2000 cd backwards, you will hear the voice of Satan? That's nothing! If you play it forward, it'll install Windows 2000.