Baby, if you've ever wondered...

[c9]

I'm teaching in Ottawa this week at Polar Bear's Ottawa office. Not a bad gig, beyond the being alone all week, and leapfish being alone all week. That's no good.

Flew here on QuikAir (www.quikair.ca).The plane was roughly the size of a typical airport shuttle. Note: not intercity shuttle plane, I mean the minibus you might take to get TO the airport. 19 seats. almost no aisle, no services at all. But kinda fun. I was seated on the wing, and the plane was small enough that I could feel all the lateral and vertical movements. Fairly smooth, fairly noisy. No tray table for my laptop.

Checked into hotel, got high-speed internet, went out to supper with friends, talked to Vinny, hung out and chatted with Jason (who will soon join LJ if we all bug him enough), talked to Vinny one more time, headed for bed.

This morning I realized that I still had setup to do on my laptop, so I frantically installed Red Hat 9 while eating a croissant. It's not easy to frantically install Linux, let me tell you. But the day went fine, and now it's done and I'm just sitting here in te empty classroom, letting Red Hat 7 install itself for my students. Dang, anaconda is slow.

Tonight, I think I shall go to Paddy Boland's, the bar my little brother (the one who's three inches taller than me :-) works at, for a visit. Then probably hang out in the hotel and veg.

Comments

[lifeofprad.livejournal.com]

Wow, never heard of QuickAir. The jets look similar to the tiny things I used to take for my weekly flight from Toronto-Windsor a few years back when I worked as a consultant for a co-op position. They list Toronto (Buttonville - which is not too far from where I live) as an option on their website, but I don't see Toronto in their schedule. Was it an expensive flight?

[c9.livejournal.com]

Yes and no. It was only $470 with everything included, which is decent for a flight booked less than a week ago. But it was only an hour, compared to probably the same price to Halifax from Toronto. :)

I think they're small enough that they adjust their schedules based on demand pretty fluidly. So maybe TO is on there some months, but not others? Dunno.

[lifeofprad.livejournal.com]

$470. I guess that's about as low as it'll get. Toronto-Windsor was $500, but I that was flying out of Pearson, which probably meant more in airport taxes. In comparison (TO-HALIFAX, etc), it is a lot actually. Oh well.

In any case, have fun in Ottawa. Hopefully leapfish won't get into too much trouble while you're away (or vice-versa?)
;)

[c9.livejournal.com]

Naah, I'm in trouble enough for being away for two weeks. Don't need any more trouble! :)

[instynct.livejournal.com]

Whats your take on Linux distributions. Which one do you think is the best right now?

[c9.livejournal.com]

Depends on your goal. Best hardware support: Fedora Core 2. Best response time: SUSE Personal 9.1. Good mix of modern drivers and software while still fairly standard (unlike FC): Mandrake seems OK in this regard.

If I'm installing, it's FC2. Unless the system is slow, in which case it's Red Hat 9 or maybe SUSE. I discovered that a few scripts I have for teaching don't work on SUSE, and rather than take the time to figure it out, since I don't have the time, I switched to RH9 instead.

[instynct.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Most helpful.

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

SUSE puts config files in weird places and YAST stubbornly generates config files that are impermeable to mere humans when if you want to edit something by hand. FC lets you stay closer to the metal, and the ability to add in non-distro provided channels for extended software support (see Fedora.US, FreshRPMS.net, and ATRpms.net for some examples). FC is harder to learn, but worth it for power-users. Also, it has a beautiful GNOME desktop if you're not a fan of KDE.

[c9.livejournal.com]

I find it hard to figure out what's default in Linux distros and what's modified these days. For example, so much in FC is different from the other distros (including but not limited to Bluecurve) that I don't know if it's as good a teaching platform as some others. But I do know it better, to I suppose that makes it pretty good.

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

As long as you're teaching skill as opposed to procedure, it shouldn't matter what distro you use. Teaching someone to recognize a problem caused by a bad /etc/hosts file is more important than teaching them to use distro-specific-config-tool-for-networking or whatever.

[c9.livejournal.com]

Too often I'm asked "how do I set X to understand my video card?" That's a little too customized in most distros. But yeah, everything that's networking-related is a little easier.

[sp-cst-cubby.livejournal.com]

Hey Cam!

Hope the teaching goes good.

If you get some free time and want to grab a coffee and catch up, gime a call.

I hope the new place and the couch are doing well.

Shawn--613-795-1348 (my cell.. It's off during the day as I get no reception in the courthouse...)

[c9.livejournal.com]

Hey Shawn -- sorry I didn't get a chance to call, the week ended up pretty hectic. Thanks though -- I'll try to give you a ring next time we're in town.