In case you weren't aware Virtualbox had a major update to 2.1 last week. I decided to give it a try on my Ubuntu host. One of the things I've complained about when it comes to Virtualbox has been its rather hard to set up Host Interface Networking on both Linux and Windows. Yes, it's not really that complicated with TUN/TAP interfaces or manual bridging, but for a program that's competing with the likes of Parallels and VMWare, the annoyance of Host Interface Networking setup is something I consider a potential "barrier-to-entry" for a normal, non-technical person.

Well, with 2.1 one of the features is support for a new way of doing Host Interface Networking, more like the Mac OSX version of Virtualbox. Very neat, you simply just select the active network interface and Vbox does all the work for you.

Now, there are probably bugs :) I just noticed on my both my CentOS guest and my Ubuntu Server guest I'm getting duplicate ICMP packets being returned. It's a start anyway!

A note on Virtualbox and Shared Folders. I installed Windows XP as a guest on my Virtualbox OSE on Ubuntu (8.10) and noticed that my Shared Folders to the host, in this case a Fat32 partition that I share with my Windows Vista dual boot came up extremely slow. A couple quick questions asked of the Google oracle, the following suggestion on one forum definitely helped me: map the network shared folder to a drive. Note: this is actually noted in the GUI when you go to add any Shared Folders -- well fairly small fine print at the bottom... I suspect there is some networking code somewhere when you go through the Windows network neighbourhood that makes accessing the shared folders through it extremely slow.

For those who don't use Windows very often, open a CMD window and type the following to map:

net use [Drive Letter]: \\vboxsvr\[Shared folder name]

e.g.

net use v: \\vboxsvr\shared

Note: I am using the Virtualbox OSE which is currently part of the Ubuntu packages and is currently at version 2.0.4. Your mileage may vary!

Seems like with each update to Ubuntu, wireless seems to get better. This is just a quick note for anyone using Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) on a Dell XPS 1330 with a recent Dell Wireless. I've been having problems with the wireless dropping in and out (every 100 packets or so the wireless connection would reset, what a pain). To solve it (and don't ask me how this specifically works), I upgraded to the proposed new kernel (.10) and the key was to remove the entry from the network manager and create a new connection including wiping out my past WPA password.

Works peachy now! Hope this helps someone out.

One of the bad things about being online 80% of your waking life is that you end up creating a lot of content all over the place. This means that I have a blog that's personal that my family and friends occasionally check up on but is more a place for me to record my thoughts so that when I get senile in another 5 years I can actually remember what I did. I also have this blog on Sun. Oh yes, and I have a photo blog on my own personal site. Add to that possible twitter feeds, flikr feeds etc. well you get the picture.

For Facebook, where most of my friends keep track of me, you can only import one feed, so which do I choose? Considering I have work and non-work colleagues I figured I should somehow combine the three main "Dups" feeds into one aggregated feed. 

Before you start putting keystroke to an IDE or VI, you can simply use Yahoo Pipes. Pipes allows you to take different feeds and mash it all up. Now this isn't new, it's been around for a year, but I just didn't see the need for it till this past week.

So anyway, you can now link directly to my Piped news feed for all Dups, all the time...

You know I really need a new cell phone. Really. My current cell phone feels like a brick in my hand, is four years old and for a guy who likes technology, every time I use it makes me feel like I've gone back to an age of carving on stone. Granted, this Motorola phone has worked throughout Siberia and Mongolia so I do have a small bit of fondness for a phone that has worked in more odd places for me than any I've had before.

So that leaves me with a new choice seeing as how just a couple weeks ago I am now finally out of my contract with my cellphone provider. Now I can choose between an iPhone or an Android based phone. The only problem is that I live in the grand country of Canada where sometimes technology seems to seep slowly through the land. Current reports have no indication whether the G1 released by T-Mobile in the US today will ever see the light of day on the only GSM network available here. I'm a big fan of open source and truly Google's open platform is much more inspiring to me, even if the iPhone is the sexy beast that it is (hey I own an iPod and a MacBook Pro so I'm not exactly Apple-free).

Granted, if you can get yourself an unlocked G1 phone then this might be a guide for you to get it working in Canada, though true 3G is apparently not quite there in the land of Maples and hockey.

Ah phone choices... what will I end up with?

Can you hear me back there? Anyone have a problem hearing me?

Let's have a look here then... Blog is active, name chosen, sidebar seems to work. Hmmm this Sun blogging system isn't too bad. Looks like I can configure this pretty much how I want it as I get some time.

Well, this is Dups on the Sun/MySQL Web Team and this will be my technical blog of things done, of things to come, of things to do and of things a-happening for anything that isn't well, personal and about photography. If you're interested in that kind of stuff, you might want to mosey on over to http://www.dups.ca/blog and my photo blog at http://www.dups.ca

So what's my expertise?

I always joke that I am the dumbest person in the room. My "expertise" often involves me not falling up a set of stairs. Now mind you, along the way I've had the opportunity to not fall on my ass as I've done some coding. I'm a big believer in the Perl mantra of There's More Than One Way To Do It, no matter the language and the situation. I've been involved in many disasters, some IT/Technology related, and in every situation while there were acceptable options, thinking on your feet, coming up with laterally thought solutions proved more successful than following a manual blindly.

So, what's my expertise? Solving problems. You may disagree with how I solved them, there's probably a better way. In fact I hope there is, because I want to learn it from you.

Just be polite and we can have a discussion, my ego is not that large. At least I hope not! I've learned a lot from my years of Internet searching to solve problems, so time for me to give back.

If you want to know who I am, feel free to check out http://www.dups.ca, other than that, tune in semi-regularly for updates here!

Now, why the Arctic Dolphin? Well, I live in Canada, I'm a MySQL Dolphin and as I look outside and see Old Man Winter setting up his cabin, I keep trying to remind myself of why this Dolphin lives in the Arctic!